Secret Maneuvers (34 page)

“What about the pregnancy? Have you seen a doctor yet?”

“I went to my OB/GYN a few days after taking the home pregnancy test to have it confirmed. She was amazed the baby had survived the trauma I’d endured in Mexico, but she says it looks healthy. I’m two and a half months along now.”

“It? When can we find out the baby’s gender? I don’t like the idea of calling it ‘it’.”

I smiled indulgently at him. This pregnancy would be a first for him since he’d missed Seth’s, so everything was new and exciting. “In about two months they should be able to tell us from an ultrasound.”

He leaned forward until our faces were only a few inches apart. “Do you want a boy again? Or a girl this time?”

“I want a healthy baby with ten fingers and ten toes. I don’t care what he or she is.”

“Me, either, babe.”

I closed the distance between us and softly placed my lips on his. They were warm, familiar, and too good to be true. They felt like I’d come home. Bobby quickly took the kiss further, slipping his tongue inside my mouth to intertwine with mine, and I quickly got lost in the feel and taste of him. So beautiful. So masculine. And all mine.

Just when I thought things were about to get infinitely better, he pulled away, leaned back to snag the strap on his bag, and pulled it to his lap so that he could start digging through it.

Confused at the abrupt change of plans, I asked him, “What are you doing?”

“Hold on just one second. I’ve got something important to give you.” Digging out a folded piece of paper, he held it out to me and said, “It’s long past time for you to have this.”

Unfolding the paper, I noticed that it was a bit dingy looking, as if whatever it was was old and had been handled a lot. Looking up at the top, it didn’t take long to realize that I was right because it was dated fifteen years ago, about a week after Bobby had sent the letter breaking things off with me. My heart plummeted.

Looking back up to him in alarm, I said, “This better not be another break up letter, Bobby Baker. After everything you just said to me, if you are handing me another breakup letter, I will do things to you that most others would consider anatomically impossible.”

With a gentle grab of my wrist to the hand that held his letter, he started rubbing slow circles on my skin with his thumb. “Just read it, Belle.”

So, with nothing else to do except take a giant leap of faith, I read it.

Dear Belle,

I’m sitting here, waiting to hear from my parents. Praying that they found you and explained that I’m a moron for sending you that letter. That I didn’t mean it. It was a temporary moment of insanity; just the fear that if I tied you to me too young, you would resent me for it down the road, but I can’t let you go, Belle. If you end up hating me later for us getting married so young, I’ll just have to find a way to make you love me again.

So, like I said, I’m sitting here, hoping they found you. My buddy here in boot camp told me I had to think positive. So I’ve decided, that in the spirit of positive thinking, we should write our own vows when we get married. I’m proud that you’re going to be my wife and I want anyone and everyone at our wedding to know it. Here’s what I was thinking about saying for mine:

‘I’m just an ordinary man, but you make me feel like I’m the strongest man in the world. I’m not worthy of the gift of your love, but I promise to work each and every day to become worthy of it. Today, you do me the honor of becoming my wife. To putting on paper with pen and making it official for the world to see what I already know. That you were made for me, as I was made for you. With that gift, I promise to always love and cherish you. To be the strength you need when you feel weak. To hold you in my arms and make you feel safe when you are scared. To catch you if you should fall. Be your shelter from any storm. Most importantly, though, I promise to be your faithful best friend and lover from here until eternity.’

I hope you like them. They may be short and simple, but they’re from my heart. Hopefully I’ll get to hear from you soon. A letter saying that you forgive your dumb Army grunt. I miss you so bad it hurts, baby. Please forgive me. Can’t wait to see you and hold you in my arms again.

Forever Yours.

Love,

Bobby

A small wet drop appeared on the paper from a tear that had fallen off my face and it smeared a portion of one of the sentences. This was instantly the best letter in the history of the world to me. It wasn’t poetry pretty like others might be. It wasn’t something epic like people read in tales of unrealistic love stories like Romeo and Juliet. No, this was just Bobby’s heart manifested in short, boxy little slashes that formed words in a letter so beautiful that I could read it and see the physical proof of his love and devotion to me. It was perfection.

I heard and felt him move in front of me. When I looked up from his letter to see what he was doing, the sight of what he was holding shocked me all over again. A black velvet box held open in his hand, where a diamond ring was barely visible in the last fading rays of the day.

“Marry me, Belle. You’re already my heart and soul, now be my wife.”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He slipped the ring out of its box and onto my finger before bringing my left hand to his mouth and kissing the palm of it before placing it over his heart. “Yes?” he whispered.

With fresh tears sliding down my face, I reached up with my right hand and cupped his jaw. “Yes, Bobby.”

He released the breath I hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thank you, baby.”

“No, Ace, thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for?”

“For giving me my happily ever after.”

Epilogue

Belle

Two months later in Woodbridge, Virginia…

“You want to name our daughter WHAT?”

I bit my teeth into my bottom lip so I wouldn’t laugh at the look on my fiancé’s face. It was so sour you would have thought I’d shoved a lemon slice in there while he was talking or something. We were lying side by side in bed, so he was close enough to see my shoulders shake from my restrained laughter, and huffed in mock frustration. “Don’t get your boxers in a wad, Ace. What’s wrong with the idea of naming the baby after Teagan?”

“I don’t know, maybe because it doesn’t seem fair to her to name her after such a—”

I slapped a hand over his mouth. “Ah, ah, ah now. You promised to be nice about her from now on.”

He pulled my hand off his mouth and gave me a look like I’d sprouted an extra head. “Uh, yeah, but that was before that message she left on our answering machine. Did you honestly think I could keep that kind of promise after my son heard her call me the wart on the ass of all of humanity?”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh, but a snort slipped out anyways. When he cocked an eyebrow at the sound, I didn’t bother to try and hold back my laughter anymore.

“Find that funny, do you?”

Holding up my thumb and forefinger a half inch apart, I snickered. “Just a little.”

He growled. “I’ll show you funny, you little hussy.” Then he pounced on me, tickling my ribs before pinning me down on my back with his arms and legs. He’d left enough room in between our bodies so that he wouldn’t lie on the slightly protruding belly I was carrying around these days. “I know we’re not married yet, but you should still stand by your man, you know.”

Giving him a big grin, I promised, “I’ll always stand by you, Ace, but that doesn’t mean my best friend won’t be standing on my other side.”

Bobby snorted. Then, dropping his face until our foreheads touched, he murmured, “I’ll let you name our daughter after that harpy on one condition.”

“And what would that be?”

“That this isn’t our last baby.”

Gasping in surprise, I used my hands to push on Bobby’s shoulders until I could see his face again. Naturally, with Bobby’s size, I wouldn’t have been able to push him back unless he let me, but luckily I had a man who wouldn’t let me strain myself at all while I was carrying his child. Some days it came in handy like today and some days it drove me so crazy I wanted to bash his head in with a frying pan. “Just how many kids are you wanting me to pop out, Bobby Baker?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I was thinking we could have our own football tea—”

I didn’t let him finish the word before I had a pillow flying at his head, beating him with it repeatedly. “You are not using me as an incubator so that you can have a Baker football squad!” Dropping the pillow, I reached for my cell phone on the night stand.

His laughing voice asked, “Who are you calling?”

“Jaxon! I’m going to tell him that you’re delusional and shouldn’t go on any more missions until your head’s been straightened out.”

One minute I was pretending to scroll through my contacts and the next, the phone was out of my hand.

His voice was neutral when he spoke, “I’ve already talked to Jaxon today, honey.”

The almost somber tone alarmed me. “And?”

“We leave in three days.” He was watching me intently for a reaction.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t tell you.”

In a small voice, I asked, “Will you be following up about Laura?”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

That meant he was headed straight into danger, which I didn’t like, but this was his job, which he loved, and I loved him so I had to accept that. After having the baby, he’d already told me that he would support me if I wanted to go back to work for the ATF since I was on an extended leave of absence at the moment, which was probably what I’d do. So I couldn’t very well say I wasn’t willing to support his job when he was willing to support mine. At least I would have Seth here with me so I wouldn’t be totally alone. We could probably take a trip out to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum again in D.C. There was a good chance I had a future pilot in the family.

Not to mention that how Laura had died and what she’d suffered through before she’d died, haunted me nightly. The thought that other women were suffering as she had felt like a knife through the heart. Thankfully, the guys hadn’t found any more women in Rivera’s house in Mexico. Laura and I had been the only ones there at the moment. However, they had found signs that plenty of other women had been held there at some point in time. If the Ex Ops Team could help them, then I needed to support that as well.

“You’ll contact me when you can, right?”

“Absolutely, baby.”

“Okay, Ace. Do what you’ve got to do to shut those assholes down.”

Bending over to kiss me on the lips, he stayed there afterwards so that when he talked, our lips were still touching. “That’s my girl. Now, I’ll make you a deal. You can name this one Teagan if you’ll give me at least one more after her.”

Well, that was a hell of a lot better than a damn football team.

“Deal.”

“Good. Now come here and give me some love.”

He wasted no time in pulling down the top of my nightie to bare my breasts so that they were now accessible for his touch. Grasping one, he lowered his mouth to trace his tongue around the outside of my now overly sensitive nipple so that it puckered up hard as I moaned at the fierce pleasure of it. Sucking it deep into his mouth, he lashed his rough tongue over the peak until I was arched under him from the fiery sensation. His free hand lightly traced circles down my abdomen, adding another sensation in his assault. My hands skimmed over his cut, rock hard abs as he moved from one breast to the other. Shooting a pleasant burn all the way down to the heated core that was throbbing between my legs.

When I started begging for more, he moved down my tummy, to tease me below where I ached. My breath hitched as he circled my little nub, rubbing it so that the burning pressure built slowly. When he breached me with a finger, I gasped at the familiar intrusion. It never ceased to surprise me how good he felt when he touched my body. Adding a second finger, he started to pump a little faster as I spread my thighs further apart while pushing down on his fingers for a deeper feel. Bobby’s touch was heady, like alcohol shot straight into my brain, making everything fuzzy, warm, and oh, so good.

“I can’t wait any longer, babe. I want to feel you. Let me fill that sweet little body up.” In one smooth stroke he sheathed himself inside me. His flesh rubbing against mine—skin on skin—to create what felt like thousands of mini lightning bolts of pleasure shooting through my body. Apparently, we’d both missed out on the phenomenon of pregnancy sex the first time around, which was a travesty since it was way more intense than regular sex and I had a habit of barely lasting longer than an eight second rodeo star before having an orgasm that was so off the charts that I could swear I was floating in space.

I was already on the edge of that aforementioned spatially, fantastic orgasm. Bobby was pumping himself furiously in and out with my legs wrapped around his hips, locking my ankles low on his back. As I finally exploded with a scream that Bobby managed to muffle with a kiss, my toes curled and I damn near lost consciousness. My inner walls clamped down on him so hard that, mere seconds later, I felt his warm release filling me as he gave a guttural yell before collapsing to his side, turning me with him.