Suze had no trouble locating the master bedroom suite. The oak-tread staircase opened directly onto it. Gabe had knocked out the walls up here, too, she saw with an admiring glance. Gone were the dime-sized bedrooms that characterized most early Oklahoma territorial homesteads. What was left was a clean, uncluttered space with skylights that opened the sloping roof to the swiftly darkening night sky and a king-size bed positioned for a perfect view of the stars.
The master bath was just as spacious, Suze saw when she ducked in to use the john and wash off the residue of the dog’s effusive greeting. Another skylight let in the light and would sound a noisy tattoo during Oklahoma’s frequent hail storms, she suspected. Still, the prospect of lying beside Gabe and watching lightning flash across the sky above them was almost as seductive as the idea of curling against him under a blanket of stars.
The guilt rushed back. This was his home. He’d put so much of his heart and soul into it. How selfish, how wrong, was she to give up so little when he proposed to give up so much?
Then Gabe came up the stairs, shedding his shirt and barking a stern command over his shoulder in the process. “Stay! Right where you are. I mean it, Doofus!”
Suze flipped off the bathroom lights and met him in the middle of the room. Enough moonglow now spilled through the skylights to wrap him in soft light and dark shadows. Hunger curled in her belly as she ran her palms over his shoulders, his upper arms, his chest. His biceps bunched at her touch. His pecs went rock hard.
Did that deep-throated purr come from her? That low, vibrating hum? She didn’t know. Didn’t care. Hunger for this man, for her man, consumed her. This was her mate. The man she’d chosen. Claimed as her own before God and their families and damned near half the town. She’d claim him again, Suze thought fiercely. Tomorrow. But tonight there was just Gabe and her and the bed that beckoned like a safe port in a storm.
They took their time. Heeling out of sandals and shoes. Unsnapping and peeling down jeans. Disposing of extraneous items. And exploring each new patch of bared skin with eyes and hands and mouths.
Gabe forced himself to go slowly. Gently. His sisters had once embarrassed the hell out of him with an impromptu discussion of their heightened sex drive during their pregnancies. He did his damnedest to block their respective spouses’ too-frank comments from his mind by focusing on the fact that this was Suze. His Suze. And it was their baby she was carrying. He’d cut off both arms and a leg before he’d do anything that might harm either of them.
Still, his lungs burned with the effort of holding back. He gritted his teeth. Waited until she opened for him and rose to meet his slow thrust. His jaw still locked, he harnessed his hunger until she clamped her calves around his and drove to a shuddering, spine-arching climax. Then he tangled his fingers in hers, pinned the backs of her hands to the mattress beside her head and let the pleasure sweep over him in hot, dark waves.
Wrung dry and damned near catatonic, he collapsed beside her. His breath was harsh and rough, hers a soft, ragged sigh. They lay side by side while the sweat cooled on their skin and the sky above them darkened to night.
“Gabe.”
He could barely manage a grunt when she poked an elbow into his ribs.
“Gabe, wake up. I need to call my folks and tell them I won’t be home tonight. Unless...”
“Unless nothing.” His brains hadn’t totally unscrambled but he had no trouble interpreting the question behind her hesitation. “We’re back where we belong, Susie Q. In bed. Together. Tell your folks we’ll explain tomorrow.”
“I doubt they’ll need much of an explanation but...” She poked him again. “Pass me my phone.”
With another muffled grunt, Gabe rolled onto his side. Her jeans were too far away to reach so he retrieved the phone from his. At which point he discovered Doofus crouched at the top of the stairs. The dog’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight and his snout was flattened against the hardwood flooring. When he saw his human show signs of life, he gave a pitiful whine.
“Stay where you are,” Gabe commanded sternly as he snagged his jeans and fished out the phone. “Right where you are.”
Another whine, even more desolate that the last, brought Suze up on one elbow. “Am I usurping his side of the bed?”
“You are, but he’ll have to get used to it.”
“Poor baby,” she cooed to the mournful watcher.
“Don’t give him any encouragement!”
The warning came too late. Translating her sympathy into an invitation, Doofus launched himself across the room and took a joyful leap. When he landed in the middle of the bed, Suze laughed and scooted over to make room for him.
“I warned you,” Gabe said in mock disgust as he handed her the phone. “Your folks are on speed dial. Just hit five.”
When her mom answered, she didn’t comment on the fact that Gabe’s number must’ve come up on caller ID but she almost choked when Suze said she wouldn’t be home that night. Then staunch, upright, church deacon Mary Elizabeth Kingfisher Jackson chuckled and issued a delighted invitation.
“Why don’t you and Gabe come for breakfast?”
Suze mouthed the question at the man beside her. His response was to tug the phone out of her hand.
“We’ll be there, Mary. And if you should feel inclined to make your world-famous blueberry pecan pancakes, I’d be real grateful.”
“I think I can manage that.”
“That went well,” Suze commented drily when he cut the connection. “If she makes you pancakes for fooling around with your ex-wife, just think what she’ll cook up when we tell about the baby.”
“We’ll eat extremely well for the foreseeable future,” Gabe said smugly. “Speaking of which...” He propped himself up and aimed a stern finger at the foot of the bed. “Off, Doofus. Now.”
The dog tried to burrow in but Gabe was relentless. “Off. The. Bed.”
Looking aggrieved, the hound wiggled backward on his haunches and just sort of slithered off the end, taking the rolled-back comforter with him.
“Back to the foreseeable future.” Still propped on one elbow, Gabe rested a hand on Suze’s sheet-covered belly. “How long can we let your mom feed us?”
“How long can I stay, you mean? I’m on two weeks’ leave but I took my time getting here.” She laid her hand atop his. “So we have another eight days, Gabe. Nine at most.”
“Plenty of time for your mom and mine to get a head start on fattening you up. The baby and I will take it from there. Now we’d better get some sleep. We’ve got a busy nine days ahead.”
* * *
Suze’s parents took the news that their daughter and her former husband were getting back together exactly as she’d anticipated. Her dad whooped and pounded Gabe on the back. Her mom laughed and cried at the same time. They greeted the news that they were going to be grandparents even more ecstatically.
“Oh, Suzanne! You can’t imagine how happy this makes us. When are you due? I need to start planning a baby shower.”
“Not until February.”
“Perfect. We’ll have it in January and do a snowflake theme. I saw the cutest decorations on Pinterest the other day. Have you told your mom yet, Gabe? I want to get her and your sisters in on the planning, too.”
“Not yet. We’re going to see her after we leave here.”
“Well, then, my gracious. Let’s feed you so you can get over there!”
Still beaming, she led the way into the kitchen. The round glass table was already set with cheerful yellow placemats and her mom’s favorite mishmash of china. A lone sunflower poked its head from a chipped pitcher.
With the ease of long habit, the four of them divided the labor. Suze popped slices of wheat bread in the toaster, her dad pan-grilled thick slices of Canadian bacon and her mom poured the prepared batter onto a griddle. Gabe did his part by filling the juice glasses.
Once they were all seated and digging in, her mom wanted to know about the wedding. “When do you want to have i
t and who shall we invite?”
Suze and Gabe exchanged glances. They’d tossed around various options and had agreed on one that worked best for them, given the circumstances.
“We did the big church wedding last time, Mom. This time around we’re going for quick and easy. We plan to detour to Vegas on our way to back to Arizona and get married there.”
“Oh, no! You’re not going to go through one of those tacky, drive-up chapels.”
“No, ma’am. Suze has a friend who works out there. Since we’ve got so little time, we thought we’d call her and ask her to set it up for us.”
“Why so little time?” Her mother angled her head with its turquoise-tipped bob. “You’ve got months to do this right. Why not wait a few weeks and have a nice, quiet celebration with your families when Suze gets out of the service and moves back to Cedar Creek?”
“I’m not separating from the service, Mom, or moving back. Gabe’s moving to Arizona.”
Confusion blanked the faces of both her parents. They exchanged surprised glances, and it was her hard-working, traditional, nose-to-the-grindstone dad who posed the inevitable questions.
“But your job, Gabe? Your responsibilities as mayor?”
“School’s out for the summer. The school board has plenty of time to find a replacement. And Joanna Hicks can handle the town council until or unless they decide to hold a special election.”
“What about your house? You’ve worked so hard on it. Surely you’re not going to let it just stand empty?”
“I’ll rent it out until we see what happens after the baby comes.”
Her folks were raising the same objections Suze had, and Gabe was answering with the same calm certainty. But the guilt came back and made the blueberries in her pancakes suddenly taste too tart.
Still, she’d offered him the chance to be part of their child’s life without completely uprooting his own. Getting remarried and moving to Arizona had been his idea, after all.
“What will happen after the baby comes?” Her mom wanted to know. “I’m assuming you won’t have to deploy while you’re pregnant, Suzanne, but what about afterward?” Her anxious glance went from her daughter to her former son-in-law and back again. “You two split up because of all the separations and, well...all those separations. How is adding a baby to that mix going to make it any easier?”
“I’ve changed,” Gabe answered calmly. “So has Suze. We’re different people now, Mary, with very different priorities.”
Suze knew he’d never told his in-laws the precise reasons behind his decision to separate from the Air Force. Only she knew how much launching lethal drone strikes from thousands of miles away had played on his conscience. Her folks had just assumed, as had the rest of their friends and family, that since his marriage had fallen apart just as he was finishing his service commitment, he’d come home to heal.
Now he was thrusting himself back into the military environment. Not as an officer this time. Not as a war fighter. As a military spouse. It would be a completely different and challenging role for him.
A new role for her, too. She’d worked with enough other military woman to know how tough it was to combine wife, mother and warrior. Suze would need to adjust her career goals and assignment preferences to accommodate her family.
Gabe sure was right about different priorities.
* * *
His mom pretty much mirrored her parents’ reactions. Violet was thrilled that Gabe and Suze were together again, overjoyed to hear about the baby and shocked that her son’s life was taking such an abrupt one-eighty.
She didn’t question their decision, though. Violet had lost her husband when he was in his forties and pretty much raised her four children on her own. If nothing else, she’d taught them to make their own choices in life.
“She looks so frail.” Suze worried when they left. Her mother-in-law’s limp had added to her growing guilt. “The hip replacement must’ve taken a lot out of her.”
“It did. I’ve tried to talk her into moving in with me. So have Jill and Dave. Penny and Lyle even offered to build one of those snazzy mother-in-law retreats behind their house. But mom’s determined to remain queen of her own castle.”
A little more of Suze’s joy had seeped away with each of these encounters. Dinner at his middle sister’s house that evening pretty well drained it. Penny and Jill and their spouses were there, along with Kathy’s husband, Don. Kathy was pulling midnights at the big new healthplex that served Mustang, Cedar Creek and surrounding communities. Of all Gabe’s family, Kathy had been the most unforgiving. She’d made no secret of the fact that she blamed the demands of Suze’s military career for the divorce—totally ignoring the long hours she herself put in and the many emergencies she responded to as a critical care nurse.
The sisters and spouses present voiced the same hearty congratulations at the news that Gabe and Suze were getting back together. And the same incredulous surprise that he intended to leave Cedar Creek to take up duties as a househusband. By the time Suze and Gabe left, her emotions were all over the place again.
“Dammit!” She gripped her hands in her lap and glared through Ole Blue’s windshield at the leafy oaks twisting and bending in the breeze. “I woke up so happy this morning. Now all I want to do is run away from home. Again.”
“No running this time, kid. For you or for me.”
She angled in her seat. “We screwed up so badly last time, Gabe. How do we know we’re not screwing up again?”
“We don’t.”
“It’s not just us this time,” she said with a touch of desperation as he turned in to the curving drive. “As everyone we’ve talked to today has pointed out, we’re adding a baby to the equation.”
“We’re adding more than a baby,” he said wryly as the twin spears of Ole Blue’s headlights initiated a booming chorus from Doofus.
“I’m serious. Maybe we need to rethink this whole thing. Maybe we’re making another mistake and... Whoa!”
She slapped a palm against dash to brace herself as Gabe hit the brakes and jammed Ole Blue into Park. Without saying a word, he killed the engine. Then he shouldered open his door and marched around the hood. Yanking open her door, he reached across her to unclip her seat belt and almost dragged her out of the truck.
“This is not a mistake.”
This being the hard kiss he laid on her.
“Neither is this.”
Scooping her up, he took the front steps in two swift strides. He had to balance her on his knee to unlock the front door, then scoot sideways when Doofus burst out. The dog was still emitting a vociferous welcome when Gabe let the screen door slam and kicked the front door shut behind him.
His muscles were taut, his stride swift as he hit the stairs. Moments later, Suze was stretched on the bed where she’d wakened to such sleepy, all-pervasive joy a mere fourteen hours ago.
“Forget Vegas,” he told her, popping the buttons on his shirt. “We’re heading to the county courthouse tomorrow and forking over fifty bucks for a marriage license. Since Oklahoma doesn’t require blood tests or a waiting period, I’ll get Judge Porter to marry us.”
“And I don’t have any say in this plan?”
“Yeah, you do. Two words. I do. Now shut up and kiss me, Captain.”
So she did.
And would’ve done a whole lot more if Doofus hadn’t chorused his eagerness to rejoin the party. Gabe muttered an oath and went downstairs to let him in. When the two of them came back upstairs, Suze welcomed her soon-to-be husband with open arms.
* * *
The Canadian County Courthouse was housed in a low, sand-colored building on Choctaw Avenue in El Reno, Oklahoma. Part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan statistical area, the county ranked as the fifth most populous in the state. As such, it did a booming business in marriage licenses. The clerk was friendly and efficient. Gabe’s driver’s license and Suze’s military ID satisfied the age and identification requirements. Since Gabe knew the ques
tion of their current marital status would come up, he also presented their divorce decree.
“As you may know,” the clerk explained, “divorced persons can’t marry anyone other than their previous spouse for a period of six months. But,” she continued as she skimmed the court documents, “it looks like you’re good on that count. As you also know, the normal fee is fifty dollars. Only five if you had premarital counseling.”
“Our pastor did the counseling the first time around,” Suze confirmed. “The certificate should be on file.”
“Hang on, let me scroll back to the original license.”
Now that she thought about it, Suze had to admit that premarital counseling should probably be an even more stringent requirement for couples who failed miserably the first time around. Luckily for her and Gabe, it was not.
“Yep, there it is. Okay, folks, five dollars and you’re on your way.”
When Gabe handed her the bill, she printed out the license and passed it across the counter with a pointed reminder. “It’s good for ten days.”
* * *
“Ten days,” Suze echoed as she and Gabe crossed the sun-baked parking lot. “That’s two more than we have left in Cedar Creek. Think we can do everything that needs doing in just over a week?”
Gabe slanted her an amused glance. “This from the woman who maintains three separate go-kits and can clamber up the ramp of a C-17 with less than five hours notice?”
“That’s different.”
“What’s different? You get the word, you pack up, you go.” Grinning, he dropped a kiss on her nose. “Besides, we’re not exactly charting unfamiliar ground here, woman. You. Me. A marriage license. A promise to hang on. This time,” he added, his expression and his voice going dead serious, “forever.”
“This time forever,” she echoed.
* * *
Yielding to her mother’s fervent pleas, they’d asked their pastor to conduct the marriage ceremony. Suze had spoken to him personally, explained it would be a private ceremony with only immediate family in attendance. They’d settled on four o’clock the same afternoon they obtained the license.
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