The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin

by Maureen Child

  He sniffed the air appreciatively. “Yeah. It smells great.”

  She shook her head, lifting one hand to cover her mouth. “What did you get, anyway?”

  “Your favorites,” he said, really confused now. “Egg rolls, fried rice, cashew chicken and sweet-and-sour pork.”

  “That’s the smell.” Her lips pulled back from her teeth, and she nearly snarled at the cartoned food.

  “What?” He reached into the sack, pulling out one of the small white cartons. “The pork?” he asked, opening the top and taking a step toward her. “It’s the same stuff we had last week. You loved it.”

  She backed up like a vampire from a cross. “No. It’s different. The sweet-and-sour sauce. Must be bad.”

  He inhaled deeply, letting the mingle of spices and seasonings rush into his lungs. Nothing wrong there, he told himself, and glanced at the woman still backpedaling out of the kitchen. If he wasn’t mistaken, Elizabeth’s features had taken on a decidedly green cast.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly, then shook her head. Her eyes wide, she mumbled, “No,” just before she turned and ran out of the room.

  Hot on her heels, Harding rounded the corner to the bathroom in time to hold her head as she was thoroughly sick. Several minutes later he offered her a damp washcloth and led her to the living room. There, he sat her on the couch and eased down onto the coffee table directly opposite her.

  “How long have you been sick?” he asked. He didn’t want to think about her lying around the house all day, miserable and alone.

  “I wasn’t sick,” she said. “Not until I got a whiff of that…” She shuddered and pointed at the kitchen.

  “You mean the—”

  She held one hand up. “Please. Don’t even say it.”

  Reaching out, he touched her forehead again, pleased to note that she didn’t seem quite so chilled and clammy anymore. “No fever.”

  Letting her head fall against the overstuffed sofa back, she muttered thickly, “I told you. I’m not sick.”

  “Then why else would you—” He stopped dead. As far as he knew there was only one reason—other than the flu or food poisoning—for a woman to be sick to her stomach.

  The same thought had apparently occurred to her. She lifted her head gingerly and looked at him. “This doesn’t necessarily mean a thing.”

  “Yeah, right.” He stood up, keeping his gaze locked with hers. “When were you due?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Stow it, princess,” he said softly. “When?”

  “A few days ago.” When he jerked her a nod and started for the front door, she added quickly, “But I’ve been late before.”

  “I’ll be right back,” he told her as he grabbed the doorknob and turned.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To the drugstore,” he said simply. “It’s time to find out one way or the other.”

  He actually purchased two different pregnancy test kits. Elizabeth stared at Harding as he paced aimlessly around her bedroom. When he returned from the pharmacy with the kits, he had told her that they shouldn’t trust such a major test to one kit. She couldn’t help wondering though if the real reason was he was hoping for two different responses so they could have another bit of breathing space.

  Elizabeth didn’t know what she was hoping for.

  She’d gone over and over the options in her mind, but none of the other choices were valid ones for her. She couldn’t give away her own child, only to perhaps have to one day face an eighteen-year-old adult angry about being abandoned. As for the other choice, she couldn’t reconcile herself to that idea at all.

  “Isn’t it time, yet?” Harding asked.

  She glanced over at him and sympathized. His solemn, almost-grim features echoed her own.

  “No,” she said. “The timer’s set. It’ll ring when the tests are finished.”

  He nodded, rubbed one hand over the back of his neck and stared down at the rose-colored carpet. “Five minutes never seemed so long before.”

  “I know.” She wished time could stand still. She wished she could think of something brilliant—or comforting—to say.

  A digital timer screeched suddenly, sending both of them into a dash for the doorway. Elizabeth beat him since she was a good three feet closer. Shutting off the ringing alarm, she took a deep breath, picked up the two plastic wands and looked down into the test squares.

  “Well?” Harding asked from behind her. “What’s the verdict?”

  Her hands trembling, she inhaled sharply and forced a smile as she turned around to face him. “The verdict is mixed,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” He took a step closer. “One says yes, the other no?”

  “Not quite,” she told him as a wave of uneasiness washed over her. “According to these, I’m definitely pregnant.”

  Not a flicker of emotion showed on his face. “Then what’s this ‘mixed verdict’ business about?”

  “Well.” She choked on a laugh. “One’s pink, the other’s blue. So I’m pregnant, we just don’t know what it is, a boy or a girl.”

  “That’s not very funny.” If anything, his features had become even more solemn.

  “Give me a minute, I’m new at this.” She was babbling. She could feel it. She just couldn’t stop it. “I know, it’s twins. A boy and a girl.”

  “Elizabeth…”

  “Or, no.” She waved both wands in the air like a drunken conductor. “I know—with our luck, it’s quadruplets!”

  Harding stepped up close to her. Taking the test sticks from her hands, he glanced at the results, then laid them both down on the counter behind her.

  Elizabeth shivered, suddenly cold right down to her bones. She was talking a mile a minute and he was too damned quiet.

  A baby.

  At thirty-two years old, she was going to have a baby.

  A sheen of tears filled her eyes, and her vision blurred. Dropping one hand to her flat abdomen, she laid her palm gently atop her nesting child as if to apologize for ever wishing it away.

  Harding saw the movement and immediately covered her hand with his. She looked up at him, and he was struck to the core by the unexpected film of tears shimmering in her eyes.

  “Good heavens, Harding,” she whispered, her voice catching on a strangled sob. “We actually made a baby.”

  His throat too tight to speak, he simply pulled her into the circle of his arms. Nestling her head beneath his chin, he gently stroked her back with long, caressing movements in an attempt to calm and comfort her.

  A baby.

  At thirty-eight he was going to be a father.

  Something inside his chest tightened around his heart until he thought that organ might burst. Most of his life, he’d been alone. He hadn’t had a family since he was a kid. And except for his one glaring failure at marriage, he had never tried to create a family of his own.

  The Corps had always been enough.

  Until now.

  “I suppose,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest, “you want to talk about it right this minute.”

  He smiled briefly. She knew him well. “Yeah,” he said, dropping a kiss onto the top of her head. “I do.”

  She pulled in one long, shuddering breath and nodded before stepping away from him. “Okay, but let’s go into the kitchen, huh? I could use some coffee.”

  He frowned as she stepped past him and made her way down the hall. “Do you think you should be drinking caffeine?”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth’s steps faltered slightly. “I don’t know. I guess not, though. Okay, I’ll settle for herbal tea.”

  Following after her, he took a seat at the kitchen table and waited for her to settle herself. Strange, how well he had gotten to know her in the past three weeks. He knew that she needed to be moving when her mind was busy. He also knew that until she sat down with her cup of tea in hand, she wasn’t going to be listening to him.

  As she
moved around the room, he let his mind drift. In less than a week, he would be shipping out for Okinawa. He wouldn’t be here to help her through the next several months. He wouldn’t be able to hold her head for her when she was sick or to comfort her when she was worried.

  Harding leaned back in his chair and reached up to undo his collar button and yank his tie off. She sat down on the opposite side of the table, cupped her mug between her palms and took a long, slow sip of tea. Only then did she look at him.

  “You haven’t said much,” she accused gently.

  That was only one of the differences between them, he thought. When her emotions ran high, so did her tongue. He, on the other hand, had a tendency to keep quiet until he had his thoughts together.

  “I want to make sure I say what I have to say right.”

  Her gaze flicked away from his, then back again. She looked to be steeling herself. “What do you have to say, Harding? Just spit it out. Lord knows, I did.”

  “All right,” he said. Reaching across the table separating them, he took her mug and set it aside. Then he covered both of her hands with his. There was really only one thing to say, and he had to get it right. Everything depended on it. Inhaling sharply, deeply, he said on a rush, “I want you to marry me before I ship out, Elizabeth.”

  She drew her hands out from under his. Staring straight into his eyes, she said softly, “Somehow, I knew that’s what you were going to say.”

  “That’s not an answer,” he reminded her.

  “You’re right,” she agreed and nodded absently. “But this is. My answer is no, Harding. I won’t marry you. I can’t.”

  Eleven

  “Why the hell not?”

  She winced inwardly. That short, sharp question came out in a voice rough with undisguised frustration. Elizabeth could understand how he felt, and she really didn’t enjoy turning down a marriage proposal from the father of her newly discovered child. But she wasn’t about to sacrifice the lives of three people on the altar of propriety.

  Preparing herself for what she knew would be a fierce battle, she deliberately kept her voice even and calm as she said, “Because you don’t love me, Harding. You’re proposing for the wrong reason.”

  He jumped to his feet, sending his chair clattering to the floor. Stopping, he bent, righted the chair again, then strode to the sink where he turned around to look at her again. “How do you know I don’t love you? Maybe I’ve loved you all along and was too stupid—or too wary to say so.”

  Something inside her leaped at that notion, and she deliberately quashed the budding eagerness. She knew Harding Casey well. He was an honorable man to whom doing the right thing came as second nature. Of course he would lie and proclaim his love. He didn’t want to ship out on deployment leaving behind his pregnant lover without trying to help.

  “No, Harding,” she said firmly. “You never would have asked me to marry you if I weren’t pregnant.”

  “We’ll never know that for sure, will we?”

  No, they wouldn’t. A small spear of regret shivered through her. How strange life was, she told herself. A month ago she would have sworn that she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in marriage. She had long since buried her old dreams of children and resigned herself to the knowledge that she would never be a mother.

  Now, four weeks later, she was pregnant and refusing the proposal of a man she loved.

  Love. She breathed slowly, deeply as the acknowledgment settled into her bones. She loved Harding Casey. Career Marine. That elusive emotion had sneaked up on her when she wasn’t looking, and now things were too complicated for her to surrender to a love that might be all one-sided.

  “You wouldn’t have proposed, Harding,” she insisted. He’d made it perfectly clear from the beginning of their relationship that he wasn’t looking for a wife, any more than she wanted a husband.

  “Oh,” he said, slipping into sarcasm, “so now you’re the Psychic Princess of Party Cooking?”

  “You said yourself that you had already tried marriage once and weren’t interested in trying again.”

  “That was then. Things are different now.”

  She nodded sadly. “I know. The baby.”

  He inhaled sharply and curled his fingers tightly around the edge of the countertop. “Yes, the baby. This changes things. But dammit, Elizabeth, I cared about you before the baby, and you know it.”

  “Caring and wanting to marry someone are two entirely different things.” Elizabeth folded her hands in her lap and tried to rein in her rising temper. “There’s no reason for us to fight about this, Harding.”

  “There’s plenty of reason, princess,” he countered and crossed her kitchen floor in a few long, angry strides. Glaring down at her, he went on. “In less than a week, I’m out of here. I’ll be thousands of miles away for six damn months.”

  “Harding—” She tried to interrupt.

  “And you’ll be here, pregnant with my baby. Alone.”

  She stood up, folded her arms across her chest and met his glare with one of her own. “I’ve lived alone for quite a while now, you know. I’ve managed to take care of myself quite nicely so far without the help of a certain Sergeant Major.”

  “Yeah, well up to now you haven’t been pregnant, have you?”

  No, she hadn’t. A momentary thread of worry unwound within her. Oh, she didn’t doubt that she could handle the pregnancy on her own. But once the baby was here, then what?

  She paused mentally and almost sighed in relief. Apparently she had already made the most important decision. There would definitely be a baby.

  Already Elizabeth felt the first stirrings of a long-denied maternal urge. She could no more rid herself of this baby than she could stop breathing. But answering one question only posed more.

  What would her fairly liberal parents have to say about their unmarried, oldest daughter giving birth to their first grandchild? Could she handle the incredible responsibility of raising a child? And most important, was she capable of giving a child enough love so that it wouldn’t miss having a live-in father? Or would she louse things up so badly her child would one day tell a doctor that “it’s all my mother’s fault”?

  “Elizabeth?”

  She dismissed her wandering thoughts and focused her attention on the man standing so close to her. “I’m sorry, Harding.”

  He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her closer. Staring into her eyes, looking for reassurance, he asked, “Are you going to—”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not going to end the pregnancy.”

  He exhaled heavily, clearly relieved.

  “In fact,” she said and forced a half smile. “I want to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For the baby.”

  Harding shook his head briskly as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Thank me?”

  “Yes. I had given up on the hope of having children. So thank you.”

  “Oh.” He released her and took a long step back. “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

  She stiffened slightly, and Harding was sure his sarcastic comment had struck home. Dammit, she was shutting him out as completely as if he had already left the country. He felt like a sperm donor. Thanks so much, goodbye now. Have a nice life. Well, she wasn’t going to get rid of him so easily.

  Reaching up, he smoothed both hands along the sides of his head. How was he supposed to convince her to marry him if he couldn’t convince her that he loved her?

  Blast it, he should have said something at the wedding. Or any time during the past two weeks. Why hadn’t he asked her to marry him sooner? Before the baby. Hell, he knew why. Because he’d been a husband once before…and done a poor job of it, too. He hadn’t wanted to risk hurting Elizabeth or himself with another failure.

  Even now the thought of marriage terrified him. But the thought of living without her paralyzed him. And now there was his child to consider, too. His child. A well of emotion rose up in his chest. He wanted to be a
part of his kid’s life. Not a part-time parent every other weekend and three weeks in the summer.

  He wanted it all. A home. Elizabeth. The baby. But even if she believed he loved her, would she marry him? Or would his being in the Corps stand in their way? What would he do then? Was he willing to give up his career? The only life he’d ever known? The Corps was more than a job to him. It was his life. It was a matter of pride. And honor. And duty. Could he stop being a Marine? Even if it meant having Elizabeth?

  “You want me to resign, Elizabeth?” he asked suddenly, steeling himself for her answer.

  She took a step toward him. “I would never ask you to give up who you are for me.”

  “You hate the military.”

  “I hate the absences. The moving around.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “I know,” she said. “But, Harding, your leaving the Corps wouldn’t change the fact that you proposed for the sake of your child.”

  “I didn’t, though,” he retorted, and reached for her again. He felt her tremble beneath his hands and lowered his voice. “I love you. Dammit, I never thought I’d be saying those words, Elizabeth. But I am, and I mean them.”

  “Harding,” she started.

  “No.” He pulled her tightly to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding on for dear life. “I love you.” Staring down into her soft brown eyes, he willed her to read the truth in his. But all he saw shining up at him was a deep sadness. “You’re a hardheaded woman, Elizabeth, but I don’t give up easily.”

  “You should, Harding,” she said. “For both our sakes.”

  “I can’t,” he told her solemnly. “For that very reason.”

  She laid her palms against his chest and pushed out of his arms. The ache inside him blossomed as she tried to distance herself from him. He saw her close herself off as effectively as if she had stepped into a tiny room and shut the door behind her.

  “Elizabeth,” he said softly, already feeling her loss. “I won’t be pushed away. Not from you and not from my child.”

  She threw a quick glance at him. “I would never try to keep you from your child.”