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Ally looked up from busily policing her stuff. Obviously startled by the sound of his voice, she nearly dropped the notes she’d been gathering. “Oh,” she squeaked, “I thought I was alone.”
“I said,” Danny repeated, pausing for effect, “that I thought I needed to congratulate you.”
Her expressive, dark eyebrows knitted in consternation above her gray eyes. “For what?”
“Your marriage…so soon after leaving my bed.” The Ally he knew might have wanted a career and family, but he didn’t think she would want it alone. He hadn’t meant to mention his bed, but his hurt had won in the battle between manners and truth.
How could she have gone from him to another man so quickly, and seemingly without a second thought? Not the Ally he loved.
“Your husband doesn’t mind that you haven’t taken his name?”
“Husband?” she asked. “I’m not married. What made you think I was married?”
Danny arched an eyebrow and glanced pointedly at her swelling stomach. She might still be wearing regular clothes, but the way her skirt was hiked up over her rounded belly was a sure indication that maternity clothing was not far away. “I’ve never known you to overeat, so I don’t think that bulge around your middle has anything to do with the usual kind of weight gain.”
“No…it doesn’t,” Allison said.
She paused, and Danny wondered if she would deny it.
“Yes, I am pregnant,” she finally admitted.
“When are you due?” Danny asked bluntly. He might have a stake in this. After all, he was as capable of counting as anybody else. Though six months had passed since he and Ally had been together and they’d used protection, accidents did happen. From what he could see, six months was about how far along she was. After all, he came from a large family, and he’d seen a lot of pregnant women in his thirty-three years. But then, he reminded himself, Ally was a small woman and any weight gain would be magnified on her tiny frame.
“That, Sergeant Murphey, is none of your business.” Allison snatched her papers off her desk and scurried out a side door, closing it firmly behind her.
“None of my business, my ass,” Danny muttered as he stared at the door. He’d wanted to spend his life with this woman. He deserved to know the truth. “I will find out if you’re carrying my baby if it’s the last thing I do.”
Then he pivoted sharply and headed after Jake Magnussen.
Even though he wasn’t the least bit hungry. At least, not for food.
ALLISON SANK into her desk chair and tried to slow her racing heart. Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with a stack of notes on her desk. Finally, she gave up any pretense of trying to pretend that Danny’s…reaction had surprised her.
She’d never imagined that Danny might turn up in her classroom. He’d caught her off guard.
If she’d been thinking at all, she would have thanked him for his congratulations and let him go on assuming what he had. It would have saved them both a lot of heartache. But no. She had pretty much given him more reasons to wonder.
She’d once expected to make a life with Danny. Had dreamed of growing large with his child. But when he’d issued that stupid macho ultimatum that she relinquish her job once they were married, she had walked away.
Funny, she had known that he’d had a traditional, blue-collar upbringing, and she’d certainly enjoyed some aspects of his protectiveness toward women. But she’d always assumed that she’d be able to persuade him to see her side of the issue. His refusal to bend on that one important aspect of her life, however, had definitely been a deal breaker. There was no way she’d ever spend her life dependent on a man who intended to orchestrate her life in the manner her mother had always believed was proper.
Raneea Hassim Carter had met and married Allison’s father when he was an exchange student at the university in Tamahlya, Raneea’s home. In spite of her traditional upbringing, they’d fallen head-over-heels in love, and Raneea’s forward-thinking, college-professor father had given them his blessing. Though Raneea had attended university, she’d been content to take on a passive role in their marriage, as her grandmother had, and her mother, and her mother before her, even after she and her husband had come to the United States. She’d seldom ventured from the house and hadn’t made much of an effort to learn the language of her new country.
Ally’s father died when Ally was a senior in high school in Chicago, and Raneea had been unable to accept the idea of getting a job and supporting her child. Even if she had wanted to, the language barrier would have been insurmountable. For that matter, she hadn’t even been able to manage something as simple as paying the bills or balancing her checkbook. That had been a real eye-opener for Allison. Finally, her mother had gone back to Tamahlya to live with her family, and only the fact that Allison had, by that time, already entered college, kept her from being forced to leave the country herself.
Yes, she had loved her mother, but she would never allow any man to rule her life. She’d found her mother’s behavior so abhorrent that she’d never really wanted to understand her or her Tamahlyan family. Courses in college had given her some appreciation of the culture she’d come from; but by then it had been too late. Her approach to life had been formed.
Allison sighed, realizing that her memories had replaced her upset. Fortunately, she did not have to teach the afternoon session. But she did have to eat lunch. Even if she wasn’t hungry, she had someone else to think about.
Rapping on the jamb of her opened door startled her, and Allison looked up with a jerk.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you,” Kathryn Palmore said. “When you didn’t come to my office, I thought you might have forgotten our lunch date. Is there a problem with your class?”
Boy, was there! But no way would Allison drag Kathie into it. She simply shook her head. “Just tired, I guess.” She placed her hand over her expanding belly. “I didn’t think carrying an extra little person around, even one this tiny, would be so exhausting.” It was the truth, just not the answer to the question that Kathie had asked.
“Been there, done that,” Kathie said with a laugh. “And you’ve been deprived of the pleasure of coffee, to boot. I swear, that was the hardest part of having all my kids. Well, the last two, anyway. The first time, they still hadn’t come up with the no-caffeine rule. Or maybe I just ignored it.” She made a dismissive motion with her hands.
Allison pushed herself up out of the chair. “I’m with you on that one. Decaf’s better than nothing, but barely. And I’m already sick of being so tired that I have to go to bed early. That is definitely for the birds.”
As she took her jacket off the chair back, realized that Danny wouldn’t know any good restaurants off base, so she and Kathie would be better off going to one in town, though they had originally planned to eat at the Servicemen’s Club. “How about Romano’s? I have a craving for one of their spinach salads.”
The colonel laughed as Allison collected her purse from her desk drawer. “No wonder you haven’t gained very much weight. Most people have cravings for fattening things like chocolate marshmallow ice cream. By the time I was six months pregnant, I was as big as the side of a barn.”
“Oh, I crave chocolate,” Allison confessed. “I just eat it when nobody’s looking. It doesn’t count then,” she added, wishing fervently that were true.
“They make great chocolate cheesecake at Romano’s,” Kathryn said, wagging her eyebrows suggestively as Allison followed her into the corridor.
“Let’s just change the subject. Have you seen the latest Reese Witherspoon movie?”
“No. Is it good?” Kathie asked as they stepped outside into the blustery, fall air.
“It’s gotten some good reviews. Want to go with?”
“Maybe. I’ll have to see what Robbie has to do this weekend.” Kathryn’s husband, Robert, had been killed in Operation Desert Storm, and Kathie had pulled herself together and gone back into the Air Force to support her children and be an example to her daughters. Robbie, the youngest, was the only one still at home. Allison admired the way Kathie had picked up the pieces and carried on. Colonel Kathryn Palmore was certainly a role model any young woman could admire.
And Allison wanted to be a similar example to her own child. She didn’t need a man to cling to. She was quite capable of taking care of herself. And her baby. Thank goodness, attitudes had changed and she would face few ramifications for being single and pregnant. Of course, she would have preferred to do it the right way. But only with the right man.
Danny Murphey’s antiquated beliefs had made it clear he wasn’t.
She had willed herself not to think about the man who had fathered her child—not an easy task since that moment Danny had strode into her classroom this morning. Until then, he had simply been the sperm donor. She had told herself that he did not figure in her and her baby’s lives at all. Yet somewhere in the deepest recesses of her heart, she wished he did.
THE AROMAS coming from the kitchen were tempting. Danny’s mouth watered as he waited in the chow line. His mood ranged from irate to curious to confused, and he welcomed to opportunity to puzzle it all out. One minute he wanted to know who had fathered Ally’s child so soon after that wonderful, awful night they’d had. The next minute, he was furious.
And Danny wasn’t the least bit certain whether he was angry that Ally had had the audacity to find another man so soon after she’d been with him, or that she hadn’t deemed him good enough to father her child.
Then again, he wasn’t so certain that he wasn’t the father. The timing was about right, according to his calculations. She could have visited a sperm bank. However, Danny didn’t think so. Ambitious and independent or not, she wouldn’t want to go that route just to have a child.
Danny couldn’t imagine her casually drifting from one man to another. And he knew the importance she’d always placed on marriage and family. To the right man.
It just hadn’t been him.
They had used protection the last night they had been together, but that condom had been in his wallet for a long time….
He drew in a deep, exasperated breath. Sisters or no, he’d never really understood women, particularly educated, ambitious ones. Why in the hell had he had to fall in love with this one?
“Hey, Murph. You in there?”
Danny blinked himself out of his thoughts as Jake Magnussen waved his hand in front of his face. “Huh? What did you say?”
“You’re holding up the line,” a chief master sergeant, standing a couple of people back, growled.
Danny snapped to. He was standing at the silverware bin and the line in front of him had moved all the way to the dessert section.
“Sorry,” he muttered, then grabbed the necessary utensils and quickly moved on, not bothering to look at what he was selecting.
“What’s with you, man?” Jake challenged. “You were so fired up about taking this class and being shipped out to where the real action is, and now you’re all moody about it. You change your mind?”
“No, I have not changed my mind,” Danny snapped as he picked up a cup and filled it with high-test, full-caffeine coffee. They’d loaded on a C-130 transport at Hurlburt at zero-dark-thirty this morning so he could accept this last-minute opening, and he needed the jump start. Maybe if his mind was clear, he’d be able to wrap his brain around this wholeAllison thing.
Maybe.
Yeah, sure.
“Well, what’s got you breathing fire, then?” Magnussen was nothing if not persistent.
Danny had a good mind to tell Jake to shove it where the sun don’t shine as he followed him to a vacant table. But he didn’t. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” he finally said, taking a seat. Hell, he knew that was a lame excuse.
Jake started to say something, then wisely shut his mouth. Danny shrugged, sat down and started to eat. He didn’t speak until he was through. Only then did he realize that he didn’t even know what he’d eaten.
He had been thinking—a dangerous thing, some people might say—and he’d made up his mind. He no more believed that Allison Carter would casually have somebody’s baby than he believed in the man in the moon—unless you counted Neil Armstrong.
He picked up his tray and headed for the door, not even waiting for Jake. He had to get a game plan in place, and he didn’t need Jake sticking his pointed, Norwegian nose into it.
Ally was the woman he’d always dreamed of, the woman he loved. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to make Allison “I want to be independent” Carter agree to let him be the father to her baby. His baby, he was almost positive.
And he was going to marry her. Even if he had to kidnap her and carry her to the nearest justice of the peace.
Chapter Two
At least Captain Haddad was teaching the afternoon session, Allison thought with relief as she rested her chin wearily on the palm of her hand, elbow propped on her cluttered desk. She wouldn’t have to face Danny again today. His accusing glares during the morning session had been bad enough, and the scene right before lunch had thoroughly unnerved her.
She’d had some time to think this afternoon, though she should have been preparing for tomorrow morning’s session. She had been unfair to Danny, she realized as she began to gather her things together to take home. She hadn’t really planned to…steal his “donation” that night—they had used protection—but when she’d discovered she was pregnant it had been the answer to many prayers.
She had wanted to be a mother for so long. When she and Danny were together, she’d wanted a baby, but the stupid man had ruined it all with his pig-headed, old-fashioned attitude. She’d erroneously assumed that men working side by side with women in uniform would have transcended that approach. However, as far as Danny was concerned, there could be no compromise.
At the time Ally had been nearing thirty. Since her chances of finding the right man would diminish as she got older—if published statistics were accurate—she’d reluctantly said goodbye, in the hope of finding someone else to make a life and have a child with, but on her terms. Later, with no man in the picture, she had even considered artificial insemination to conceive the child she wanted.
As it happened, she didn’t have to.
To kill her last evening in town after attending a conference at Hurlburt Field, Florida, where Danny was stationed, she’d accepted a ticket to a Charity Bachelor Auction given to her by a sweet elderly lady in a red hat and a purple dress, who’d said that her niece couldn’t use it. Among the bachelors for sale was Danny Murphey.
After Ally had realized that she’d become pregnant from that one night’s reunion, she’d wondered if the lady in the red hat had been her fairy godmother making her fondest wish come true. Of course, she knew that those kinds of things only happened in fiction, not real life. But it had seemed like fate.
Karma.
Destiny.
Still, she had been so elated that that night had produced a miracle that she hadn’t really considered how her situation might affect Danny.
And it had never occurred to her that he would find out.
Or that he might actually care.
Now he has found out, and he apparently does care, Allison thought as she shoved her notes for tomorrow’s class into her already overstuffed briefcase. But was it a real desire to know his child that motivated him, or simply stupid macho pride. She jammed her arms through the sleeves of her coat and looped the belt loosely around her waist.
Danny was here, and had figured out she was pregnant. Now she had to figure out what to do.
DANNY HATED resorting to subterfuge, but he had already scouted out Allison’s car in the staff parking lot. She still drove the same one she’d had at Hurl-burt Field, so finding it hadn’t been hard.
Ally wouldn’t recognize the rental he’d picked up at noon. He sat in the driver’s seat, motor idling, as the late-September sun began to sink behind the Headquarters Building. As much of a workaholic as Allison had been in the good old days, he couldn’t imagine her staying into the night to work with a baby on board.
A recorded bugle call announced “Retreat” and Danny stepped out of his car and stood at attention as the flag in front of HQ was taken down for the day. He couldn’t actually see the ceremony, but he knew what that distinctive melody meant, and he knew what he had to do.
If Ally picked this moment to come out, she was supposed to stop, as well. Maybe she wouldn’t notice him, just see him as one of many nameless, faceless airmen coming to attention as the flag came down. She didn’t appear. When the last strains of “Retreat” faded, Danny relaxed and climbed back into the car to wait.
Within minutes Allison emerged from the building and headed for her car. Yessss, Danny cheered inwardly. Right on time. Ally hadn’t left early, but she hadn’t lingered, either.
Danny watched as she’d stowed her bags in the back seat, settled herself into the car, turned on the engine and pulled out of her slot. Once she’d steered out to the main road, he pulled out behind her.
ALLY DRUMMED HER FINGERS impatiently against the steering wheel as she idled at the red light on the congested road leading out of the base. She just wanted to go home, where she could relax and unwind. Maybe five in the afternoon didn’t seem late to anybody else, but to Allison Carter it might as well have been midnight. Every muscle in her body ached with a kind of fatigue she’d never experienced. This wasn’t the normal pregnancy weariness she’d been having so far. This feeling was something entirely different.
It was because of Danny. Of that she was certain.
Her fatigue was easily explained. It was from the tension of wondering what Technical Sergeant Daniel Xavier Murphey was going to do next.
So far so good, though, she thought with relief. She’d made it through the day without any more scenes from Danny, so maybe that was the extent of the problems he would cause. Maybe Danny had just needed to let off some steam, and he’d let her be from now on.
Maybe she’d convinced him that the baby she was carrying was not his, even if it was and even if she longed with every fiber of her being to acknowledge him as the father. Not only that, but she wanted so much to be gathered into his arms and to enjoy that safe and protected feeling that only Danny could give her.
Of course, she’d ruined any chance of that happening by her refusal to satisfactorily respond to his probing this morning.
An impatient driver leaning on his car horn brought her to attention. The light had turned green while she’d been woolgathering. She quickly eased out onto the main road, the better to avoid the wrath of an entire crew of tired workers angry at her for keeping them from their homes and their dinners.
She had leftover homemade soup in the fridge. Nothing would make her happier than to kick off her shoes, slip into her most comfortable old sweats, heat up the soup in the microwave and just sit. She’d have the rest of the evening to regenerate and to rehearse what she would say if Danny confronted her again.
Of course, she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to give any speech, but it was always better to be prepared. If she’d anticipated seeing him, she probably should have been prepared to face Danny, instead of assuming that he was out of her life for good. If she had, their encounter might have gone better than it had this morning.
After all, the military, as spread out as it was, had always been a small community, more like a small town than a giant corporation. News traveled fast, and even if Danny hadn’t appeared in her classroom this morning, one of the other members of Silver Team based at Hurlburt Field in Florida could easily have gone there and reported back to him.
She really should have been prepared, she chided herself.
Ally drew up in front of her small, ranch-style house and paused long enough to retrieve the mail from the box at the side of the road and scoop up the newspaper, clothed in a bright orange plastic bag. That portended rain. What else did she need to polish off her crummy day? She jabbed the remote to open the garage door.
A car cruised by as she steered hers into the garage. It wasn’t a car she’d noticed in the neighborhood before, and its leisurely pace indicated that the driver was probably looking for a house number. The vehicle hadn’t stopped at her house, so as far as Ally was concerned, the problem was somebody else’s.
The garage door closed behind her and Ally sighed in relief. She was home.
She was safe.
