by Jane Toombs
“You what?” Dan asked after a minute.
“If you must know, I love you so much, no other man will ever do.” Her words came out defiantly, almost angrily. “It can only be you. Now and always. So, will you marry me?”
He couldn’t believe his ears. He’d about decided she might be going to propose they live together—but marry her?
“Well?” she demanded. “Did you leave your tongue home with your cat?”
Speechless didn’t halfway describe his condition. Dumbfounded, aghast, shocked, knocked for a loop, and plain old flabbergasted were all crowded together.
“I didn’t expect—” he began.
“I don’t care what you expected.” She kept her voice low to avoid disturbing the baby, but urgency throbbed through each word. “Answer me.”
“Man, what a boss you’d make,” he said, skirting the crib and taking her arm to lead her from the nursery into the living room.
“Don’t change the subject!”
“All I was trying to say is you sure make it tough on a poor plodding detective who isn’t used to you high-powered types.”
“Don’t make fun of me. This is my life. And yours.”
He put his palm to her cheek, looking into her changeable eyes. “I’m not making fun. I figure I began to love you the moment I hauled you off the porch of my cabin, half-dead and pregnant. And it’s gotten worse since. Speaking about our lives, you’ve got to realize it scares the hell out of me to tell you I love you, because, to me, that’s a life-long commitment. The kind you get married for.”
“Too scared to come right out with it?”
“Woman, you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Oh, yes, I do. And I still haven’t gotten a definitive answer.”
He leaned so close to her their breath mingled. “Here goes. Listen up. I love you. I want you for my wife. Forever.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Dan,” she whispered. “That was so romantic.”
It was? His surprise at her words didn’t prevent him from kissing her, though he pulled away after a moment to murmur, “Those better be tears of happiness.”
Then he put his heart into the kiss, holding her hard against him. He wasn’t quite sure how she’d forced his hand, made him face what was happening to him. Marriage might scare him, but he knew now he was ready and willing to do anything to make Fay his.
“Do you know you smell of roses, but you’re the spiciest gal I’ve ever met,” he told her as, between kisses, they made their way to her bedroom.
“Do you know you’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met?” she countered.
He grinned at her. “Why else would you ask me to marry you?”
“Try because I figured it’d be forever before you asked me. Someone had to put the kettle on the fire or it’d never boil.”
“Lady, there’s a lot more than a kettle boiling right now.”
By the time he’d shed his clothes and she’d removed her robe, and they were in bed together, his need for her was overwhelming. But he took time to explore her breasts, something he hadn’t had the chance to do much of before she stopped nursing, touching them, tasting them, teasing her nipples erect until she moaned.
“I hear there’s all sorts of tasty things to do with whipped cream and chocolate syrup,” he murmured.
“Heavens, the company you keep.” Her husky whisper told him how much she wanted him. “I’ll stock up.”
Then she claimed his mouth, deepening the kiss, her hands caressing him, her fingers seeking out places on his body he hadn’t even known were touch-sensitive. Not interrupting the kiss, he slid over her until his arousal was nestled between her thighs.
She opened to him, an invitation he couldn’t resist. Plunged deep into her warmth, he had a fleeting memory about once vowing to bring her to the point where she wouldn’t know where she left off and he began. Hell, here he’d gone and done it to himself. They were one, he and Fay, and, at the moment, nothing else existed.
Afterward, he fell asleep with her in his arms.
He woke to daylight and found Fay next to him, up on one elbow, her gaze fixed on his face.
“Trying to decide if I’m worth it?” he murmured.
“Just admiring the first man I’ve ever slept all night with. Which will end in a minute because your namesake is beginning to stir. Shall we toss to see who gets up and feeds her?”
Before he could answer, she said, “No, wait, I have a better idea. I’ll feed her here in bed while you tell me what happened on Tenth and Holland. Or as much of it as you can share.” She gave him a quick kiss and rose.
He took a bathroom break, returned to bed and closed his eyes, lying there with what he knew must be a sappy smile on his face. What a package deal, Fay and Peanut both his.
In a few minutes Fay was back with the baby and a bottle. She propped herself up so she could hold Danny Marie comfortably and began to feed her. “So, got your story straight?” she asked.
He told her what wasn’t classified about the shootout, finishing up with, “Gary Livinsky was the only one who got a straight shot at the perp. Nailed him. But it gave away Gary’s location to the other perp, who shot him. That guy got away. Not for long, though. Before I left the hospital, I heard he’d been captured. It was touch and go with Gary for a few hours. I stayed around until I knew he’d pull through.”
“How about the guy he shot?”
“He’ll live, worse luck, and be around to cost the taxpayers more money.”
“I’m glad your friend Gary will be okay.”
“So are his wife and two kids.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I thought you told me cop marriages always failed.”
“Lots do.”
“But not all. Ours won’t. I’m in for the long haul.”
He grinned at her. His Ms. Know-It-All.
“Do you think your brother will be upset about us getting married?” she asked.
That came out of the blue, as far as he was concerned. “You mean Bruce? Why should he?”
“I got the impression he didn’t want me to stay in the cabin with you.”
Dan chuckled. “Maybe so, but it had nothing to do with you. He was worried I wouldn’t understand that a woman who’s recently delivered a baby is off bounds sexually. You don’t want to hear the lesson he read me.”
Fay finished feeding Danny Marie, burped her and laid the baby between them.
“Hi, kid,” Dan said. “Think you’ll like your new dad?”
His namesake turned her head and regarded him solemnly for a long moment before smiling. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.
“You know,” he told Fay, “it might have taken me a while to admit to myself how I felt about you, but, from the moment I first held her, in my heart Peanut—Danny Marie—has always been mine.”
Four months later, just before Christmas, Fay’s father led her down the aisle of St. Dunstan’s, the same church he’d married Nell in. Seeing Dan at the altar, waiting for her, Fay remembered her momentary vision of the two of them at this altar and smiled. She hadn’t realized then marriage to Dan was what she wanted, but sometimes even unrecognized dreams come true.
All the Sorensons had come for the wedding, including Will, the brother she hadn’t met before. And Dan’s father, up from Florida. But not, of course, Dan’s mother. Which might have made her sad if this hadn’t been such a joyous occasion that nothing could get her down.
Fay viewed the ceremony through a happy blur, not quite believing it was real. Once they were really and truly married, sealed with a kiss, and she’d hurried from the church with Dan, only then did it have any reality to her.
“You didn’t seem too uneasy,” she told Dan as the limo drove them to their reception.
“That’s ’cause I was in a fog. Didn’t even manage to tell you how beautiful you look.”
“Should I believe a man who told me he thought I was beautiful even in the cabin, anemia and all?”
“You were and you are.”
“Did I ever tell you I foresaw us getting married when we were at Dad and Nell’s wedding? It shook me up so much I had to drink those two flutes of champagne to recover.”
“Still jealous of your stepsister?”
She smiled. “As long as you remember which sister you’re supposed to take on the honeymoon, you can dance with Jo all you want.”
He pulled her closer and kissed her all the rest of the way to the reception hall.
“Out!” Fourteen-month-old Danny Marie demanded, using one of the words in her increasing vocabulary. She reached for the doorknob of the cabin, fortunately not quite within her grasp.
“Hang in there, kid,” Dan told her. “It might be summer everywhere else, but even though it’s almost July, the U.P. doesn’t always realize that. You need your jacket on.”
He was amazed and pleased at how enthusiastically his daughter had taken to the woods. When he’d suggested to Fay that they spend his June vacation in the cabin, he’d known she’d like the idea, but Marie was a question.
They’d solved the problem of Spot by bringing the cat with them and dropping him off with Megan. No way was he going to leave any animal in a boarding cage for a month.
Fay slipped a jacket on Danny Marie, then one on herself, and the three of them ventured out into the sunny but cool afternoon. The toddler immediately spotted a chipmunk and ran ahead, trying to catch it. The chipmunk disappeared into a fallen log and she stopped and peered into the log.
When her parents caught up, she said, “Gone.”
“That’s a chipmunk for you,” Dan said. “Now you see him, now you don’t.”
“When you were a little baby,” Fay told her, “your father and I used to take you for walks in this woods. Daddy carried you in a little pouch.”
“Daddy carry,” she repeated and Dan swung her up into his arms. Almost immediately she wanted down and wandered happily between the trees.
Never in his wildest dreams had he ever pictured the three of them together over a year later in this same woods. A real family.
Later, back in the cabin, a sleepy Danny Marie didn’t want to lie on the couch for her nap. Dan picked her up, brought her to the old bentwood rocker that Megan had insisted they needed in the cabin, and sat down with her in his lap.
“Bye, baby,” she insisted.
“Bye baby bunting,” he sang. “Daddy’s gone a-hunting…” As he repeated the familiar words, he had the satisfaction of knowing that’s exactly what he was—her daddy.
She fell asleep and he carried her to the couch. “Double solitaire?” he asked Fay.
She shook her head. “Scrabble, maybe.”
“Or we could just fool around.”
“That’s the best offer I’ve ever had in this cabin,” she told him.
In the loft, she fell into his arms and they took a slow, sweet ride to completion.
Afterward he said, “Some would say fate led you to this cabin and into my arms.”
She’d been putting off telling him, but here was the perfect opening. “Speaking of fate,” she began. “Well, not exactly fate because how was I to know I’d tucked away an outdated prescription in a dresser drawer? I do tend to save things, then forget how old they are.”
“So?”
“You remember how I ran out and had to have Dr. Morse call in a new prescription?”
He shook her head.
“Well, I did and he did,” she went on. “Right after I called him, I found this other packet in the dresser and began taking those first. I did pick up the new ones, but went on with the others I found in the dresser until the container was empty. When I went to throw it away, I happened to see how outdated it was. Two years! I couldn’t believe I’d done something that—well, foolish.”
“What pills are you talking about?”
“My birth control pills.”
He rose up onto one elbow and stared down at her. “Don’t tell me this is a roundabout way of letting me know you’re pregnant.”
She bit her lip. “I knew you’d be annoyed, but I really didn’t do it on purpose. At least I don’t think so. I mean, it affects me, too. I’ll have to cut back still more on my work.”
Dan took a deep breath and whooshed it out. “Do I have this straight? Danny Marie’s not going to be an only child?”
“Actually, once we got married, I really didn’t want her to be. But, believe me, I never would have gone behind your back to—to—” her voice quivered.
He pulled her into his arms.
“You’re not angry?” she asked.
He held her closer, his lips nuzzling her neck.
Angry, no. Some scared, yes. Bringing a child into today’s world worried him. But Danny Marie had taught him some things were worth the worry.
Into her ear, he said, “A twist of fate brought you to me. Why should I get upset because another of fate’s tricks is making me a father for the second time? No, sweetheart, I’m happy for us.”
He held her a little away from him and smiled. “But please, let’s arrange it so I don’t have to deliver this new one.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2924-2
DETECTIVE DADDY
Copyright © 2004 by Jane Toombs
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