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Amazing how such a tiny person could engender such great amounts of love.
From the moment she’d discovered she was pregnant, Kelly had loved her child with a fierceness she hadn’t thought she was capable of. And she’d wanted to tell Jeff about the baby. But he’d told her in the beginning of their relationship that he was in the Marine Force Recon. Always on the move. Always involved in some covert action, stealing in and out of hostile situations.
She had every postcard he’d sent her over the past year and a half. But there’d been no return address. No way to reach him. And when she’d contacted the base, trying to get in touch with him, she’d been told simply that he was in the field.
“But I called you—” he said, glancing at her briefly. “six months ago, I telephoned you from Guam.”
“A five-minute phone call, Jeff,” she said in her own defense. “Five minutes on a static-filled line.”
She remembered that phone call all too clearly. The sound of his voice, so faraway, so faint. The bursts of white noise that slashed at their tenuous link. She’d wanted to tell him so badly. Wanted him to know about Emily. But how could she have done that to him when he was so far away, going into who knew what kind of danger?
She hadn’t wanted to distract him. Hadn’t wanted to be the cause of his getting hurt or killed on some mission or other because his mind was on something other than the job.
His hands tightened on the crib rail until his knuckles went white. “How long does it take to say, ‘We have a baby girl’?”
A flush of anger swept through her. “Longer than five minutes,” she said. “I couldn’t just announce Emily’s existence and then not be able to talk to you about it.”
“Damn it, Kelly, I had the right to know.” “Yeah, you did. But how was I supposed to track you down to tell you?”
He pulled in a long, deep breath and slanted her a look. “Okay, fine. Maybe there was no way to tell me before. But tell me now. How did this happen?”
She drew her head back and looked at him. “How? For heaven’s sake Jeff, we made love nearly every day for two solid weeks.” “And used condoms,” he pointed out. “Apparently, one of them didn’t work.” “Didn’t work?” he demanded. “How could they not work? That’s their only job!”
Kelly laughed shortly. Hadn’t she asked herself those very questions when she did that first pregnancy test? But asking how wasn’t going to solve a thing now. It was a little late to worry about the inadequacies of condoms.
“Yeah, well,” she said softly as she smiled down at her daughter, “that’s not really important now, is it?”
He sighed and followed her gaze back to the child staring up at them with wide blue eyes. “I guess not. But damn, Kelly. This wasn’t exactly the kind of reunion I was expecting.”
“I know,” she said, and reached out to lay one hand atop his.
A short, choked laugh shot from his throat. “Well, at least I know why your brother tried to tear my head off.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Since telling her brothers that she was pregnant, all four of them had been just itching to get their hands on the man responsible.
“I’m sorry about Kevin,” she said, “but my brothers have always tried to protect me—even when I didn’t want them to.”
“Can’t blame ‘em,” Jeff said, and reached out to touch her cheek before letting his hand fall to his side. “If I were in their shoes, I’d be pretty damn mad at me, too.”
“As much as I love them,” Kelly told him, “it doesn’t matter what they say in the end. Emily is our daughter. We decide what to do and where to go from here.”
“You’re right,” Jeff said, nodding and straightening up to full attention. “And where we go from here is to the closest justice of the peace we can find.” “Huh?”
“We’re getting married.”
Four
And that was a word he’d never thought to use in a sentence.
Married.
He scraped one hand across his jaw and looked down into Kelly’s sea-green eyes. Jeff had never once in his entire life considered the idea of marriage. Hell, why should he? He’d spend most of his growing-up years in a too-crowded county home. And when he’d finally been placed in a foster home, he’d seen up close and personal just how miserable a bad marriage could be on everyone.
He’d escaped that home as soon as he turned eighteen and enlisted in the Corps. There, he’d found his niche in the world. The one place he belonged. The notion of honor and duty had struck a chord with him, giving Jeff the firm footing he’d always craved. He’d excelled in marksmanship and handling explosives, eventually earning himself a spot in Recon Forces, the Marine Corps’s answer to the Navy SEALs—only better. It was an important job and a dangerous life. One that didn’t lend itself to home-and-hearth type relationships. Which had never bothered him any, since until Kelly he’d never really had anyone to care about.
And as to being a father? Well, that went along with marriage in his mind. He’d been the unwanted child of an unwed mother and wasn’t about to foist that burden on some unsuspecting kid of his own.
Nope. Emily was his daughter. And he was going to do right by her.
“We are not getting married,” Kelly told him with a shake of her head.
“Oh, yes, we are,” Jeff told her. “As soon as I can arrange it.”
“Listen, Jeff,” she said.
“No,” he interrupted her quickly. He knew what his duty was here. He’d left Kelly holding the proverbial bag eighteen months ago. Okay, sure, he hadn’t known about it. But now that he did, he was going to make up for not being around when she’d needed him.
He’d thought of Kelly so often during the past year and a half. Every dream was filled with her image. Every spare moment, his thoughts turned to her. He’d mailed postcards from every port, enjoying for the first time actually having someone at home to write to. It hadn’t mattered that there’d been no way to receive mail from her. It had been enough just knowing she was there. At home. Safe. He’d enjoyed the thought that she might actually miss him. And how many times had he wondered if she thought of him as much as he had her?
Well, now he knew that she couldn’t have helped thinking of him. She had a living, breathing reminder of him right there with her, twenty-four hours a day.
And something inside him was so damn grateful that she hadn’t ended the pregnancy. That she hadn’t given his child away. Emotion coiled in his gut, and he fought it down. The only way to win a battle was to stay clearheaded, and judging by the look in Kelly’s eyes, they were about to go to war.
“Jeff, getting married isn’t the answer here.”
“What is?” he asked, and from the corner of his eye, he saw little Emily pulling herself up in the crib again. Strong, he thought. And healthy. And damn pretty, he told himself.
Kelly opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. Lifting both hands high, she let them fall back to her sides and then shrugged. “I don’t even know if there is an answer. I just wanted you to know about Emily. I want you to be a part of her life, if you want to.”
“If I want to?” he asked. Could she really believe that he’d turn and run when confronted with a child he’d created? Did she think so little of him?
“Wrong choice of words,” she said, lifting one hand, palm out in a peaceful gesture. “Of course you want to. All I meant was that Emily deserves to know her father.”