An Officer and a Gentle Woman
Page 22
“Around Thanksgiving.”
“Plenty for us to be thankful for this year. So, counting back, was it the time on the kitchen table at my place after the St. Patty’s Day party?”
“Probably,” Alicia replied, blushing.
“You ravished me shamelessly, if I recall correctly,” he said, laughing.
“Please don’t remind me. I think your landlady heard us. She has been looking at me sidelong ever since.”
“She looks sidelong at everybody. It’s part of her job description. If she asks me one more time when I will be vacating my apartment I am going to bind her hands and gag her and chain her in the cellar.”
“Well, she knows we don’t need two places, and you told her about the new house.”
“I should have kept my mouth shut.” He peeled her satin dressing gown off her shoulder and kissed her collarbone. “So I assume that we can still, uh... I mean, it will be some time before the baby comes.”
“We can,” Alicia replied.
“Do we have to be careful?”
“Not really. Not yet.”
He was very gentle, anyway, treating her as if she were made of porcelain, holding her to him as if she might break. When they fell to the bed together there were tears in her eyes.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, catching a welling tear on his fingertip.
“I am so happy, so lucky. I have everything I ever wanted. It scares me. I am so afraid of losing you.”
He pulled her back into his arms. “You aren’t going to lose me. I am not going anywhere.”
“Your job is so dangerous, Mike. You could be killed.”
He was silent, tightening his grip on her.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to look for another career,” Alicia added. “I know that you love your work and you would not be the same man, the man I fell in love with, if you were willing to change. But I have nightmares about your being killed on the job. It haunts me, I can’t help it.”
“I understand that,” Lafferty said quietly. “But I am always careful, and I will be even more careful now that I have so much to live for, with a new wife and a child on the way.”
“I’ll have to talk to Charlie and tell him to take care of you,” Alicia said, smiling and brushing away tears.
“You’ll have to wait until he sobers up,” Lafferty replied dryly. “He was putting the scotch away as if he was getting married.”
“He was getting emotional when I spoke to him, reminiscing about when you first started as partners. I think he is very attached to you.”
Lafferty snorted.
“I mean it. His wife said that when you took that beating he was very upset.”
“Not nearly as upset as I was,” Lafferty said darkly, and Alicia laughed.
“That’s better,” Laffety said. “No more tears.”
“No more.”
He lifted her into his lap and said, “When will we know if the baby is a boy or a girl?”
“At four months. Amniocentesis will reveal the sex of the baby. Do you care?”
“Not at all. I’d like a son, but a girl as gorgeous as you would be just as nice. We’ll have to have at least two.”
“Please. One at a time.”
“What about names?”
“If it’s a girl I’d like to name her after my mother and call her Margaret,” Alicia said.
“Fine.”
“And for a boy Michael junior? Same name as yours?”
“Uh, not entirely the same. My middle name is Chester.”
Alicia grinned. “Chester?”
“Don’t ask. My mother’s brother. He hates it, too.”
“We have plenty of time to decide on a name,” Alicia said.
He nodded and gestured toward the bathroom. “Want to take a shower with me?”
“I know what happens in your shower stall, Detective Lafferty.”
“So are you game?”
She was.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5911-9
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLE WOMAN
Copyright © 1999 by Doreen Owens Malek
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written perinission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U S A
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
He had never made a bigger fool of himself in his entire life.
Letter to Reader
Books by Doreen Owens Malek
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Copyright