LITMIR.BIZ

       His Baby!

      Maureen Child

      About the Author

      MAUREEN CHILD is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website at www.maureenchild.com.

      One

      In the moonless night, bullets bit into the ground and snatched at the bushes and trees around him. Jeff Hunter knew the enemy was firing blind. They sure as heck couldn’t see him, hidden as he was. But that didn’t mean that one of them couldn’t get lucky.

      He kept his head down and a tight grip on his weapon as he used his elbows and knees to move closer to shore. To the boat that was waiting for him. The rest of his Recon team was already on board, he knew. He was the last man out. As always.

      As the next in a series of explosions rocked the night, Jeff grinned briefly and kept going. Elbows, knees, through the plants, closer to escape. He didn’t look back. Didn’t have to. He knew his job and did it well. Everything was blowing up right on schedule. Flames lit the darkness, and flickering shadows jumped around him like shadows of the damned. Mission accomplished, he thought and shifted his focus from the job to the matter at hand—getting the hell out of Dodge.

      Belly-crawling faster now, he ignored the slap of bullets, the roar of the inferno behind him and the frantic shouts of the enemy as they searched for him. Slipping out of the tangled undergrowth to the sand, he rolled, came up onto his feet and crouching, dashed the last few feet to the boat. Here it was most dangerous. Here he was unprotected by the foliage. A straight, clean stretch of beach lay between him and safety, and Jeff set a new world’s record in running while bent nearly in half. Instinct drove him and he ducked as a couple more charges were detonated, crashing into the hot night air.

      Even as he rushed clumsily through knee-deep water and dived headfirst into the safety of the rubber Zodiac boat, the outboard motor was firing up. Eager hands reached for him, grabbing hold of his Kevlar vest and yanking him the rest of the way into the boat. He lay flat for a long minute, catching his breath. Safety. His team members. His friends. Hell, his family.

      “Called it close enough that time, Gunny,” Deke muttered, shoving the throttle forward and sending the Zodiac into a screaming takeoff that left white foam plumes of water in its wake.

      Damn, but that engine sounded good. They’d had to row in when they’d arrived, but now, it didn’t matter how much noise they made. Get in quiet—get out fast.

      He slanted the other man a look and smiled. Shouting to be heard over the full-out motor, he said, “Yeah, yeah. Quit whining. You ladies were safe in the boat while I’m out saving the world for humanity.”

      Deke laughed, throwing his head back and whooping a little just to celebrate surviving.

      “Oh, I like that,” J.T. quipped loudly, “here we sit around waitin’ for him—lookin’ like targets a boot recruit couldn’t miss and he insults us.”

      “Yeah,” Travis drawled, keeping his mounted gun trained on the retreating shore to cover their escape, just in case some of the enemy survived all of the explosions and were just a bit testy. “Sounds to me like the Gunny’s getting a little cocky in his old age. Maybe we ought to throw him out and make him swim.”

      Deke steered for the ship waiting just out of sight around a point of land a few miles off the starboard bow. “Nah,” he countered, gaze locked ahead, “some shark would take a bite out of him and get poisoned. Doesn’t seem fair to the fish.” Jeff chuckled to himself and lay back. The other guys had it handled. In a few short minutes, they’d be picked up by the ship, and five days from now, they’d all be on leave. Their first leave in way too long. The moon peeked out from behind a trail of clouds, and in the brief flash of silvery moonlight, Jeff looked at the faces around him. Camouflage paint obscured their features as well as his, and their eyes and teeth shone weirdly against the darkness. Jokes aside, he’d trust any one of them with his life. And had. Too many times to count.

      Then his gaze shifted to the other man in the boat. The reason for the team’s presence. The man they’d been sent in to rescue.

      Some diplomat who’d stayed too long in an unfriendly country and worn out his welcome, he’d been taken hostage a month ago. No doubt he’d given up hope of ever going home again. Until Deke had slit open the back of the guy’s tent and whispered, “U.S. Marines.” Hell, the man had nearly wept and Jeff was pretty sure if he’d been able to, he would have given them a brass-band welcome.

      Now he sat, leaning forward in the boat, as if reaching toward home would get him there faster. And that was okay by Jeff, since he was in a hurry to get back to the States, too. It had been eighteen months since his last real leave. Eighteen months since he’d last seen Kelly.

      In the darkness with only the hum of the engines and the distant roar of explosions breaking the silence, Jeff relaxed for the first time in ten hours and let his mind wander. Back to that night. The last one he’d spent with the woman who now haunted his every dream.

      Kelly reached for him and he pulled her close, relishing the feel of her warm, naked flesh against his. It had been a hell of a two-week leave. Starting with that first day, when he’d pulled her, unconscious, from the ocean after a loose surfboard conked her on the head.

      Once on shore, he’d given her mouth-to-mouth and they’d pretty much been that way ever since. He’d never experienced anything like it before.

      Such a rush of emotion. Such a tangle of feelings. Such incredible want and need.

      And now it was their last night together. He’d be shipping out in the morning, headed who knew where. And when he’d be back, even he didn’t know. He held her tighter, closer, in response to that thought and tried to block out the image of goodbye.

      “These two weeks went so fast,” she murmured, and her breath dusted across his skin. Her fingers trailed through the dark hair on his chest, and his breath caught at the fire in her touch.

      “Yeah,” he said, inhaling the light, flowery scent of her hair, “it did.”

      She tipped her head back to look up at him. “How early do you have to leave?”

      In the soft haze of candlelight, her long, curly auburn hair looked golden, streaks of light and dark color coming together to blend into a whole that made him think of fires at night. So soft, so … “Early,” he said. “Have to be on base at six.”

      She looked past him at the digital alarm clock on her bedside table. “It’s only midnight. We still have hours.”

      “Not nearly enough time,” he said, knowing it for fact. But then if he had fifty years at his disposal, he didn’t think it would be enough time.

      There was something about this

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