Pregnant and Protected. Lilian Darcy

possible scenarios that would require immediate medical attention. He had a pretty good basic knowledge, but needed specifics for pediatric care. And all the while her wayward heart kept beating a little faster. It certainly wasn’t because she found the topic of a first-aid check list exciting. No, it was because he’d given her a certain kind of look, the kind a man gave a woman he was interested in.

      Things got worse when she handed him a refrigerator magnet with the toll-free number of the Poison Control Center on it. His fingers brushed hers and the resulting tingle of awareness traveled up her arm. A simple touch, a familiar reaction—but one she hadn’t experienced since her high school days.

      Oh, there had been men in her life since then. And she’d felt at traction before. But not this spine-tingling current accompanied by a deep-felt recognition that this person’s touch felt right and deliciously wicked at the same time.

      Flustered, she glanced down to consult her master list. “Uh, the next item on the agenda is mealtime.”

      “Is there a reason we’ve gone from emergency first aid to food? Makes me think you’ve tasted my cooking,” Curt noted wryly.

      It was hard not to smile. “What are you feeding Blue?”

      “Candy and potato chips,” he replied mockingly.

      At her startled look, he added, “What? That’s what you’re expecting, isn’t it? For me to fail.”

      “That’s not true.”

      “No? Then why are you treating me as if I were some raw recruit who didn’t know my…foot from a hole in the wall?”

      “I’m sorry if you don’t approve of my teaching style,” she said stiffly. “I’m no expert at educating adults.”

      “And I’m no expert at taking orders from a civilian, but you don’t see me complaining.”

      “That’s because you’re the one who needs my help.”

      “And you’re the one who offered that help,” he reminded her.

      Offered? Pressed into duty was a more accurate description but she wasn’t about to quibble over se man tics. “I’m trying to help you, but it would be easier if you weren’t so stubborn and didn’t have such an attitude.”

      “I’m not the one with the attitude, you are.”

      “I am not,” she vehemently denied.

      “Are so,” he taunted her.

      “Am not!”

      “Am not, am so, am not, am so, am not, am so,” Blue said in a singsong voice.

      Startled at hearing herself mimicked, Jessica had to laugh. “We did sound like a couple of three-year-olds,” she noted ruefully.

      “I am three,” Blue proudly stated, holding up three fingers. “This old.”

      Jessica smiled down at her. The little girl was such a sweetie. “You certainly are.”

      “What did you do to G.I. Joe?” Curt’s voice reflected his dismay.

      “I made him pretty.” Blue held the action figure up to show off the large flowered hat she’d put on it.

      “G.I. Joe doesn’t wear flowers,” Curt stated with emphatic outrage. “All the other G.I. Joes would laugh at him. Put his helmet back on.”

      Blue looked at her father uncertainly before her big brown eyes slowly filled with tears.

      “Jeeez.” Curt exhaled as if someone had just stomped on his foot, or maybe even his heart. “No crying. Big girls don’t cry.”

      “Sure they do,” Jessica inserted. “It’s okay to feel sad, honey.” She scooped the little girl in her arms. “I think that G.I. Joe looks great in that hat.”

      Blue sniffed and hid her face in Jessica’s neck. Which allowed Jessica to give Curt a look that would have scorched steel.

      “Okay, big girls cry,” he allowed. “Some times. But a marine’s daughter doesn’t cry.” He reached over to awkwardly pat Blue once on the back. “You’re a marine kid now and you can…” He’d been about to say chew nails, but then he reconsidered the wisdom of that, knowing how Blue tended to take everything he said literally. “And you’re even more powerful than G.I. Joe. You’re tougher than other kids.”

      Her tears stopped, and she held out her arms for Curt.

      He took her, and his embrace was easier now than it had been when Jessica had first walked into the apartment. A second later Blue was giggling at Curt’s Three Stooges im per so nation. Or maybe he was making Jim Carrey-like funny faces. Whatever, it made Blue laugh.

      “Come on, let’s show Jessie how you can put away some of these toys.” Lowering Blue, he pointed to the pile of toys his daughter had strewn around the living-room floor. “One, two, three, four,” he said in a softer version of a drill sergeant’s voice. “Get those toys off Daddy’s floor. Left, right, left, right. Move those trucks right out of sight.”

      Jessica waited until later that afternoon, when Blue had finally tired herself out and fallen asleep to approach Curt on the subject of toughness.

      “I’m amazed how she’s able to keep going as long as she does,” Curt noted from the doorway to Blue’s bedroom. His daughter was curled up on the bed, with her right arm around her teddy bear. G.I. Joe, minus the flowery hat, sat on her bedside table. “She was supposed to begin her nap at fourteen hundred hours. That was thirty minutes ago.”

      Re turning to the living room with him, Jessica said, “Some times you have to be flexible. And you have to remember that she’s barely three years old. She’s a little girl, not a marine. A little girl who’s recently lost her mother.”

      “I’m aware of that,” he said stiffly.

      “Does Blue ever talk about her mother, about missing her?”

      “She told me her mother is ‘upstairs in heaven’ and asked me if that made me sad.”

      “And what did you tell her? That marines don’t get sad?”

      He glared at her. He hadn’t put it exactly like that, but pretty close.

      Jessica sighed, as if Curt’s gaffe was to be expected. “That might explain why she’s being so stoic about things. About not crying, about wanting to behave and not do anything wrong.”