“My father had left my mother well-off, particularly by Tamahlyan standards. For all practical purposes, she was a wealthy woman.”
“Then I—I don’t understand,” Danny said, wishing that he hadn’t asked. He didn’t think he was going to like what he was about to hear. However, he’d all but forced Ally to tell her story. He would have to listen to the end.
“My mother found a lump on her breast,” Ally said simply.
“Cancer?”
Ally nodded. “She knew what it was, knew what was required to cure it, but there were no women doctors, and she wouldn’t go to a male doctor to get it treated.”
“But there were doctors who could have taken care of her?”
“Yes. However, she wouldn’t go.” Ally squeezed her brimming eyes shut to hold back her tears. “She couldn’t bring herself to be seen by a man.”
“She refused treatment.”
“Until it was far too late to do anything.” Ally bent her head and buried her face in her hands.
For a moment, Danny held her to him while she wept. Finally, she looked up at him, her eyes red, her lashes glistening with tears. “Maybe if I had gone with her, I could have talked her into seeing the doctor sooner.” She paused, then said dully, “In time.”
Danny couldn’t find words that would help. He could see how painful the telling was, but he still didn’t understand why what happened had made Ally so determined to do everything on her own.
Ally’s mother died because she had failed to do what she knew had to be done to take care of herself. For all he knew, Ally’s mother might not have cared enough to continue living without her father beside her.
That was something they couldn’t prove.
“You couldn’t have done anything,” he finally felt compelled to say.
Ally nodded gravely. “I know that. But I also know that I will never let any man, husband or stranger, or any society keep me from doing what I feel I have to do. I will fight to the death against any threat, be it man or nature, to me and my child. I will never, ever put a man’s will, a man’s needs ahead of my own and those of my child.”
Danny was helpless to respond to that. If Ally had thought things through, she would have realized that a man hadn’t kept her mother from seeking treatment; the woman’s own personal modesty had. Still, these were Ally’s feelings. He had no right to try to change them.
He could only try to make it better.
“I’m so sorry, Ally,” he crooned as he drew her closer. Rocking her slowly, he rested his chin tenderly against her silken, shampoo-scented head and breathed in the fragrance that was so uniquely her. Then he sighed.
All he could do was be there. Understand. All he could do was love her.
And love her he did.
Now he just had to figure out how to get the two of them singing from the same page of the hymnal.
ALLY HATED HERSELF for falling apart like that, but at the same time, trying to help Danny understand felt good. She’d had no one to talk to at the time, no one to share that story with, and maybe by not getting it out, the wound had festered. It felt wonderful not to be holding that story in anymore.
As much as she’d been annoyed at Danny for pressing her into telling it, now she was glad she had.
And she loved sitting there in the shelter of his arms. Never had she felt more wanted and more loved than while leaning against his broad chest and having his heart beat so strong and steady against her cheek.
She tipped her head up to see him. “Thank you, Danny, for letting me get this out. I needed to.”
Danny smiled gently. “I know you did. And it helped me see where you’ve been coming from all this time. I’m so sorry I made you cry, though.” He wiped at her tears with the pad of his thumb.
As much as she loved being in Danny’s arms, she was afraid of what it might lead to if she stayed there. Her emotions were too raw for her to be so close to temptation right now.
Ally pushed herself reluctantly away from him and forced an anemic smile. She nodded toward the almost-assembled crib. “It’s getting late and we haven’t quite finished the job.”
“We?” Danny asked archly. “I don’t remember you doing so much as turning one screw on that puppy,” he said.
“I did get you the toolbox,” Ally said in her own defense. “You couldn’t have done it quite as quickly without it. I saw that funny little doohickey they put in there for you to use.”
“All right, you win,” Danny said, raising his hands in mock surrender as he got up. “I’ll finish the job ‘we’ started.” He wiggled his fingers in imaginary quote marks in the air.
“Thank you,” Ally said simply. It was enough to watch him work.
She scooted back against the pillows and supervised as Danny put the finishing touches on the crib. Somehow, that piece of furniture relieved the awkwardness of having Danny present in her bedroom after so long. It was almost as if the coming baby was a tiny chaperone in the room with them.
Ally placed her hand against the growing child in her womb and was rewarded with the slightest nudge beneath her fingers. She smiled.
“All done,” Danny said, stepping back to survey his handiwork.
“Suddenly, the baby seems so much more concrete, real, than she did before,” Ally murmured, more to herself than to Danny.
He eyed the mound of her stomach, a smile twitching the corners of his mouth. “Oh, yeah. I’d think that growing stomach would have made it seem pretty damn real to me.” He bent to pick up the discarded packing crate.
“Don’t do that right now.”
Danny glanced up, startled, but waited to hear what she had to say.
“Come here,” she said, motioning to him. “The baby is kicking. Would you like to feel it?” The experience was so wonderful that Ally had to share it with the baby’s father. This might be Danny’s only chance.
His eyes lit up like emerald flares, and then he broke into a brilliant smile. “Would I? You don’t have to ask me twice.” He all but leaped across the room, and settled quickly on the bed, beside her.
Danny held one hand over her stomach. “Where? Here?”
Ally closed her hands over his and guided his hand to the spot. She held it against her tummy and waited, hardly daring to breathe, for the responding flutter.
The baby didn’t keep them waiting long.
If the smile he’d gifted her with at the invitation had been wide, the resulting grin threatened to split his face in two. “That’s it? I think we’ve got a little football player.”
“Football? I don’t want my daughter dressing up in shoulder pads and having guys piling on top of her.”
“Now that you put it that way, I don’t want that, either, but she could be a place kicker.”
He caressed Ally’s rounded stomach, and Ally had never felt so much in love with this man as she did at that moment.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll wait to see what she wants.”
The baby stopped kicking and Danny removed his hand, disappointment evident on his face. “I guess the little kicker is worn out,” he said.
Ally yawned. “She’s not the only one,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the clock. “Oh my goodness. It’s past my bedtime.”
Danny pushed himself up off the bed. “It’s past mine, too. Jake and I have been doing PT before class, and zero-five-hundred comes awfully early.”
“Well, thank you, Danny,” Ally said, wondering how she could tactfully suggest he should go. He’d done so much. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful. “Thank you for going to all this trouble,” she added, as if he wouldn’t know why.
She wasn’t accustomed to asking for help, but after having watched Danny put the crib together, she acknowledged that she would never have been able to do it herself. Of course, she’d leave that part un-said. “You didn’t have to do this.”
Danny stood there, the brown, corrugated cardboard box at his feet. “Yes, I did. How many times do I have to tell
you that I’m a part of this as much as you are? I should provide for my baby, too.”
Tears welled in Ally’s eyes anew, but she blinked them back. Lately, she became a weeping wreck at the most inopportune moments. She needed to present a strong front now, not behave like the helpless female Danny appeared to think all women were. At least he hadn’t said he wanted to take care of her.
“I can provide for my baby myself,” she protested gruffly, even if she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to anymore. Not since Danny had marched back into her life and sent her emotions cartwheeling.
Why did he always seem to annoy her one minute and make her want to melt into his arms the next?
“I know you can, Ally,” Danny said gently, his acceptance and his thoughtfulness still surprising to her. “But I need to. Is it wrong for me to expect to be a part of the baby’s life, even if you won’t let me be a part of yours?”
That statement, coming from Danny, was certainly not what Ally had expected. She’d spent so much time denying that Danny had had more than an incidental part in the creation of this baby that she hadn’t really considered his feelings. Or his rights. And now in gentle but certain terms, he had reminded her.
Ally shook her head, too moved for words. And maybe just a little bit disappointed, as well. “No, it isn’t wrong.”
Danny had just indicated that he wanted her baby, but he’d said nothing about her. Had her subterfuge, intentional or not, made him change his mind about her? Had he fallen out of love with her?
Why now, after all this time, did that notion hurt? Was it because he was here, in her bedroom, in the handsome, fascinating, tempting flesh?
“We’ll have to work something out sooner or later, Ally. You need to think about it,” Danny said softly. Then he collected the rest of the packing debris and strode out of the room, leaving Ally wondering just how much she really wanted from Danny.
ALLY WAS LATE coming to class, and Danny worried what that was all about. Maybe she had been so upset by her confession last night that she couldn’t make it to class. He hoped he wasn’t responsible for anything like that.
Danny figured the best thing to do was let Ally stew for a while. He wasn’t entirely happy about what had transpired last night. Yes, he had learned a lot more about Ally, and he was closer to understanding what made her tick, but he hated that he’d made her cry.
He loved that she’d trusted him enough to let him feel the baby move, though. He smiled to himself at the memory. That little guy—girl, if Ally had her wish—sure had quite a wallop for such a tiny thing.
In spite of that, he didn’t seem to have gotten any closer to winning Ally over. He hated that Ally still didn’t trust him not to be like Runt Hagarty, the one guy he knew who really did believe in leaving the little wife at home. Ally seemed to think that all combat controllers were Hagarty, yet he was the last person Danny would ever want to emulate. The idea of Runt Hagarty put a sour taste in Danny’s mouth. He figured the best thing for him to do, for now, was to lie low a few days and try not to make any waves.
Instead of coming in early and chatting with the students, Ally quietly stepped into the classroom and called them to order right on time. She greeted them with a phony-sounding “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Ms. Carter,” he replied along with the rest of the group. She might have thought she had everyone fooled, but he wasn’t fooled. He could see that she was still bothered about last night, and he hated that he was the cause of the dark circles under her eyes that showed, maybe better than words, how poorly she’d slept. How could he make her life easier? What could he do to help? He’d have to find a way that Ally would accept.
He blinked, startled. Was someone talking to him?
“Do you have anything to contribute to the discussion, Sergeant Murphey?” Allison asked.
“Sergeant Murphey?”
Danny shook his head to jar himself out of his thoughts. How long had he been brooding instead of paying attention to class? “I’m sorry, Ms Carter,” he said. “I was thinking about something else.” He’d been so busy plotting how he was going to demonstrate that he wasn’t the narrow-minded man she seemed to believe he was that he’d daydreamed half the morning away.
FINALLY, IT WAS LUNCHTIME, and though Ally was aware that Danny had something on his mind, she had done what she could to avoid any personal interaction with him. Besides, she’d planned, long before last night’s exchange with Danny, to meet Colonel Palmore for lunch today.
“I don’t know, Kathie,” Ally later told her friend over lunch at their favorite off-base restaurant. “Now that Danny is here, I have no idea what to do about it.” She had finally confided in Kathie, and it felt good to have someone to talk to.
“When I first found out I was pregnant, I wanted to call him, but I remembered his attitudes about women’s and men’s places in the world. Can you believe he thinks that the little woman should stay at home and the man should provide? I didn’t spend four years in college and the last eight years getting myself established in a career to give it all up so he could act like a Neanderthal.”
“You could have told him about the baby, though. Didn’t you believe he had the right to know?”
Ally sighed. “Yes, but I was afraid he’d insist on marrying me.”
“And that would that be a problem why?”
“Because I don’t want him marrying me out of a sense of responsibility because I’m having his baby. I want to be certain that he loves me for me. He has to accept me for what I am, what I do.”
“So you didn’t tell him.”
“And I guess I didn’t think far enough ahead to consider that he’d ever find out about the baby.”
“And now that you have, you’ve had second thoughts about keeping it from him,” Kathie said as she lifted her coffee mug.
“And thirds and fourths,” Ally confirmed.
“How did he take the news?”
“Better than I’d have expected. He actually wants to be in the baby’s life.”
“I repeat myself. And that would be a problem why?” Kathie prodded, one dark eyebrow arched, as if she were watching someone or something behind Ally.
Ally sighed. “He doesn’t seem that interested in me—” She stopped and tried to see what Kathie was looking at.
“Don’t look now, but the subject of our conversation just walked in.”
Ally glanced over her shoulder.
“I said not to look,” Kathie hissed through clenched teeth.
It was all Ally could do to keep from turning the rest of the way around.
“Don’t you know that the best way to get a guy’s attention is to ignore him?”
“Really, Kathie, I haven’t played games like that since junior high school.” But curiosity was killing her. “Has he spotted me?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he noticed you. Something tells me he isn’t normally a fern-bar kind of guy. Don’t those combat controllers like to sit with their eyes toward the entrance, for security’s sake or something?”
Ally nodded. “It used to drive me batty when we were dating. He’d refuse a table in a restaurant and make us wait for another one if it wasn’t in the right position. Why?”
“He definitely isn’t facing the door.” Kathie chuckled. “In fact, he’s got himself stationed perfectly for a ringside view of us. But…” She feigned a longing sigh. “I’d say he only has eyes for you.”
“Should I wave or say something?” Ally asked, starting to turn again.
“No,” Kathie said sharply. “Play hard to get.”
“What’s the matter with me, Kathie? One minute I’m mad as heck at him, and the next it bothers me that he hasn’t come over to say hello. We didn’t exactly part on the happiest of terms six months ago. Or the other night.”
Kathie dug into her tuna salad. “Don’t worry, Ally. I think TSGT Murphey is definitely interested.”
Ally sighed. “I don’t know whether to be happy about that or not. I�
��m still not sure whether it’s me he wants or just the baby.” Of course, the way he’d kissed her the other night was an indication that maybe he wanted a package deal.
“Eat, Ally. You need to provide for that baby you’re carrying. Regarding your Sergeant Murphey, let nature take its course. He appears to be a definite take-charge guy. I don’t think he’ll wait very long to stake his claim. And,” Kathie added, “it’s not my stomach he’s focused on.…”
Chapter Six
Danny wondered if Ally wasn’t aware that he and Jake had come in. Surely she would have waved or something if she’d seen him. Still, it was fine to sit and watch her eat. At least she was taking proper care of the baby.
“What’s so interesting that you let me have the catbird seat?” Jake said once they’d given the waiter their orders.
“Ms. Carter and Colonel Palmore are over there,” he said, hoping that Jake wouldn’t realize which woman was the object of his attention.
“Oh? Something tells me that it isn’t Colonel Palmore you’re watching. Should we go over to their table and say hello?”
“Maybe later,” Danny said, ignoring Jake’s assertion. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Let them eat.” There was plenty of time to make their presence known. Besides, he wanted to figure out what was going on with Ally.
One minute she was hot, the next thing she was as cold as a dead fish, and he wasn’t sure he could chalk it all up to pregnancy hormones. Maybe she really didn’t want to have him back in her life. Until he was sure, he figured the best thing to do would be to play it cool.
The waitress brought their burgers, and Danny tucked in to his without saying anything else. The good thing about his position was that even while he ate, he could see what Ally and the Colonel were up to. Too bad he couldn’t read lips.
He’d love to know what they were talking about. From the animated expression on the colonel’s face, he was pretty certain it didn’t have anything to do with operations or the class.
He finished his burger in short order and sat and waited as Jake finished his. He wasn’t sure he’d tasted a bite, but then, he was eating because he had to. Food was fuel and nothing else. Of course, if Ally were across the table, instead of across the room with her back to him, he might have enjoyed his food more.
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