Another Man's Baby (7 page)

“Then why?”

It wasn’t necessary to voice what Gabi meant. Eric had always known if he screwed up he was history. Reggie, her boyfriend before Eric, had screwed up. Reggie’s bad luck had become Eric’s lucky day.

“Sometimes I look at you and I thank the universe for every good thing in my life that begins and ends with you. Then I can’t help but think how much I want you in my arms, to make love to you. And I wonder if the blackness of my soul will rub off on you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes I feel too dirty to touch you. That’s why I was tempted.”

Gabi’s eyes widened at his comment. “Then let me do the touching.” She walked toward the stairs holding out her hand for his. He clasped it tightly and she pulled while he remained where he was standing. “Baby, please,” she pleaded, griping him tighter. “We can fight your memories together. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

He sawed his bottom lip with his teeth. Why was he fighting her? Eric wanted her so badly. He looked at her, shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. “I think I’d like you to help me to forget, not help me remember. Is that okay with you? Can we stop the questions?” He didn’t want to tell her about the horrors of war and he definitely didn’t want to tell her about the booby-trapped babies.

He saw the slight tightening of her lips and knew she was hurt. He didn’t want her to be. “Don’t go there, baby. I didn’t cheat on you in
Iraq
. I wasn’t even tempted. I was too busy trying to stay alive, to come home to you, to keep my men alive. This has nothing to do with us.”

“Can’t you forget about what happened there?”

“Not until this war is over, baby, but I’ll try. She smiled and her dimples showed. Her anger and hurt had subsided. So had his.

***

“I thought you wanted to make love.” Eric asked as Gabrielle held his hand tightly and pulled him through their bedroom to the master bath.

“I do,” Gabi answered, turning on the shower, adjusting it and undressing her husband, then herself. She stepped into the shower and held her hand out for him. Then she smiled at him. “But there are some things that we need to do first. Getting rid of that woman’s perfume is one of them.” Pouring the scented body wash in her hands and spreading it across her husband’s chest she rubbed it in a little harder than necessary.

“And the other?”

She grinned. “I guess that is the only thing.” She pressed her body against her husband’s. The slickness of the soap made her hands slid downward. He caught her hand and looked at her, fire in his eyes. She knew what he wanted and she was more than willing to oblige.

She curled her hand around him, feeling him throb, feeling his heat as he thickened in her hand. A moan escaped her at the same instant as he exhaled.

“How could you ever put such a silly thought in your head that I would want someone else?” Eric whispered into Gabi’s ear.

Eric moaned as he covered her mouth with his own and sucked gently on her tongue, pulling her even closer with the action. His hands slid to her hips. She was deliciously wet from the soap, the water, and from him.

He smiled at the thought, not breaking the contact, wondering how on earth he’d slept in a bed with her for over a month and entered her body covered in latex, had not made love to her completely, the way they both wanted. What a moron. One promise he was keeping to her was that he was going to try and strike a balance.

He’d already decided that he couldn’t continue to watch CNN day and night. They had to have a life. He was desperate to reclaim the things they’d lost. They had an entire year to make up for and he’d been fool enough to almost blow it. He shuddered hard, thinking how easily all of this could have been taken away.

“What’s wrong?” Gabi asked.

“You stopped my kissing you to ask me that?”A smile lit up her face and lust lit up her eyes.

“Everything okay?” she asked again, this time lowering her hand and wrapping it around him.

“It was,” he answered, drawing her back into his embrace, ignoring her smirk. “Now if you think I’m clean enough-”

Gabi stood on tiptoe to sniff her husband, taking her time going down his body as though she were an inspector. “All clear,” she announced at last. She laughed as he lifted her into his arms.

“We’re wet.”

“So what? We’re going to get wet anyway. Besides they’re just sheets. I’ll throw them in the washer when we’re done if you want. But I don’t want to waste another moment, do you?”

Eric kicked himself mentally for the hell he’d put them both through in the past weeks. Gabi was right about one thing. For him the war was over, or it should be. He was going to have to do a better job of putting it behind him. After all, Gabi had been his focal point the entire time he was gone, his reason for coming home.

Eric thought of all the reasons for his coming home and he buried himself in his wife’s flesh. With every shudder he wondered how he’d made them wait. He knew what to do to satisfy them both, to feel her heat with nothing between them. He could have hit himself for having not thought of this sooner. Gabi’s body tensed and she screamed his name, giving her orgasm control. With her last shudder Eric, too, allowed his orgasm free rein, but not before he pulled out.

Chapter Five

Three test strips laid out in a row mocked her. Of course Gabi wasn’t pregnant, and she was aware of that but still she was trying to get there. A little more help from her husband in that department would make getting pregnant a lot easier. She was trying to be patient; their loving had improved but it remained unpredictable at best.

The nerve of him pulling out. Did he really think she was too stupid to notice?

Gabi remained determined to keep her promise to her husband. She allowed her unasked questions to remain just that, unasked. If what Eric needed was for her to help him forget, then she would give that to him.

She tossed the negative test strips into the trash, trying to thank God for allowing her husband to come home alive. She’d heard the news reports, same as Eric. He had said nothing about it and neither had she, but the knowledge that every day his friends and fellow soldiers were dying was still driving a wedge between them. With every news report, every killing, they took two steps back, all their progress gone. It was maddening to continually have to start over.

She understood that her words gave him little comfort and she regretted having asked him to get over it. She was aware that he couldn’t. At the same time she knew if he didn’t at least try she didn’t know what would happen to them. He had another year in the marines and she was praying for the months to fly by. She wished he had a regular job that he could quit, just walk out on.

Enough of being patriotic. Gabrielle wanted her husband back. Selfish or not, those were her feelings. She suspected it was the feelings of a lot of people but everyone was too afraid to say anything. She’d never tell him how she truly felt. But the one thing she refused to do was censure her thoughts.

Gabi had been too caught up in her thoughts to notice that Eric was in the room. He was staring at her, a worried look on his face.

“What’s that you’re doing,” he asked.

Her eyes slid to the wastebasket and she hesitated. “Nothing,” she said finally, knowing he would come over and peer inside.

“I was just checking,” she sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not pregnant.”

“Aren’t you still taking the pills?”

For a moment she started to tell him the truth, that no, she wasn’t taking them, and no, she had no plans on taking them.

Gabi thought of the long dry month and dread filled her. She didn’t want her husband to stop making love to her; she didn’t think she could handle it. Then she thought of his pulling out of her each and every time and felt justified. If he thought he could control their having a baby, then what was wrong with her doing the same?

“I’m still taking them,” she lied.

“Let me see them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Let me see the pills, I want to see them.”

“Go to hell, Eric,” Gabi snapped, racing for her purse and walking from the room. Who did he think he was? she wondered. No way was he going to intimidate her into being frisked or searched by him. She was not the enemy insurgent, she was his wife.

***

The moment she arrived at work Gabi made her way to the medication sample room. She threw her things carelessly on the countertop and rummaged in the cabinets she’d recently filled. Finding what she needed, she took three of the sample packs of pills that she doled out to the patients.

That was one side benefit from working in the office; they were able to have many of their scripts comped. She opened one of the pill containers and popped out half of the pills, throwing them in the sink and flushing them with water. When she was done, she looked up into Tracie’s face. A flush of shame stole over Gabi and she cringed.

Her actions were obvious, the look on Tracie’s face told her that. Gabi couldn’t force words of explanation past the lie that was sticking in her throat.

It was obvious to anyone what she was up to. She was fooling her husband into thinking she was taking birth control pills while she was deliberately trying to get pregnant. A despicable underhanded trick. Gabi cringed. She wanted a baby. Eric had promised and she was determined that he would keep his promise.

For the remainder of the afternoon Gabi avoided Tracie. She couldn’t force herself to say the words out loud. What she was doing was wrong; deceiving her husband was rotten. There was no other way to put it. Just because he was deceiving her didn’t make it right. Tit for tat, she thought, but the sound of the words in her head produced the taste of bile in her throat. Who were they? In the past months she and Eric had changed into people she no longer knew or liked.

***

Nurses were too damn nosey. Eric glared at the woman taking his blood pressure, trying to remain somewhat civil, but there was no way in the world he was divulging his reason for coming to see the urologist. His own wife didn’t know and he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell this strange woman with the sour look.

“Are you done yet,” Eric asked. Seeing the nurse frown, he asked again. Hell, he was used to ordering men about. A nurse was not about to intimidate him.

“I’m done.”

“Then tell the doctor I’m ready.” He reached for a magazine from the wall rack. There was no need to be rude but he wanted the woman gone. The moment the door closed he allowed his body to give in to the shudder he’d held in check from the moment he’d entered the door. There was something wrong with his plumbing and he needed to take care of it. In the beginning when he’d first started depriving both himself and Gabi of satisfaction, it had been his choice not to make love to her. Lately he’d found that his body was taking longer to respond.

“Lieutenant Jackson, I’m Dr. Samson. My nurse is a bit irritated with you. Seems as if you wouldn’t give her much information.”

“Can she prescribe medication?”

“No.”

“Then I didn’t see a need to tell her all of my personal business.” Eric waited for the doctor to protest but he didn’t.

“Lieutenant, can you tell me a little about yourself? Are you stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base?”

For a split second Eric started not to answer. What did where he was stationed have to do with anything? “Yes,” he finally admitted and waited.

“I heard on the news that lots of marines from
Indiana
and
Great Lakes
and the reserve facility in
Chicago
had been deployed to
Iraq
. Were you?”

Eric glared and his jaw clenched as he waited to be accused of being a killer. He’d heard it enough from the protesters.

“Were you in
Iraq
?” the doctor repeated.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Thank you.
This Eric hadn’t expected. “What are you thanking me for?”

“For protecting our country.”

“I don’t know that I was.” Eric looked away for a moment. He’d never once said out loud that he had doubts, that he wondered what the hell
America
was doing in
Iraq
.  Yes, he wanted freedom for the Iraqi people but he didn’t know if that was the real reason they were there. He wondered who the hell would come to
America
and fight for blacks. They weren’t yet free.

“No one is ever sure of the cause in a war,” the doctor continued.

Eric didn’t answer, just sat there while the doctor wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm and proceeded to retake his pressure.

“Your nurse just did that.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you doing it again?”

“”I’m just giving you a chance to make up your mind to tell me why you’re here.”

A small smile eased across Eric’s face. “Are you a urologist or a shrink?”

“I’m a urologist, but my wife just happens to be a psychologist and she’s rubbed off on me. Besides, in the last year and a half I’ve treated a lot of soldiers home from the war. I’m in my fifties but I remember how it was when I came home.”

“Which war?”

“
Vietnam
, what else?”

“Were you married when you went over?” Eric couldn’t help asking.

“Yeah.”

Eric scooted back on the table, aware of the paper crinkling beneath him. This was the most unusual doctor appointment he’d ever been to. And the doctor was the most unusual doctor he’d ever known. His heart was pounding in his chest. He wondered if Mike had talked to the man. He studied him. Eric had not told Mike what problems he was having, just that he thought he needed to see someone before he and Gabi started trying for a baby. Mike had suggested a urologist, which made a lot of sense. When he’d given Eric the name of one in
Indiana
, along with a look of pity, Eric had looked away but had taken the number. Neither man had spoken of Eric’s reasons for going since.

“A friend of mine recommended you, Mike, another marine from
Great Lakes
,” Eric said slowly, baiting a trap just in case. Have you had a lot of luck with soldiers?”

“I’ve seen a lot of soldiers, marine, air force, navy and army, but I can’t discuss any patient’s complaints or treatments with you. That wouldn’t be ethical.”

Good
, Eric thought, the doctor had passed the first hurdle. Let’s see how he does with the next one, he thought, going in for the kill. “Mind if I ask you a personal question about your return to the States?”

Eric was watching the man’s eyes, looking for a change. But his eyes remained open and friendly as he folded his arms across his chest, pushed back in the chair as though he had all day to talk and wasn’t worried about any other patient.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant, ask away.”

“When you returned home did you have problems making love to your wife?”

“No, but I also didn’t have any problems making love to hookers and every other woman who would let me.”

“You said your wife’s a psychologist. She forgave you?”

“No, she divorced me. She should have but it wasn’t like we were soul mates or anything. I got her pregnant while we were in high school and married her. I’ve been married twice since then. My last marriage was the magical number. We’ve been married almost fifteen years.”

This couldn’t be happening. He’d come to the doctor for a quick fix.  Eric couldn’t believe the man was just opening up, sharing his life with a stranger.

“Why are you looking at me like that? You think I’m nuts, right, Lieutenant? You’re still a soldier. It’s been a long time since I was one. Having been married to a psychologist, I keep nothing inside, especially when I figure my talking can help my patient.”

“You think there’s nothing physically wrong with me?” Eric asked suspiciously. “You haven’t even examined me.”

“Don’t worry, I’m going to.”

While he did his exam Eric noticed the man couldn’t stop talking.

“Any problem getting an arousal around your wife?” he asked.

“No,” Eric muttered between clenched teeth. “My wife is beautiful.”

“I’m not prying.”

“It felt like it.”

“You wanted an exam.”

“That’s a question.”

“Part of examining is asking questions. Have you been able to make love to your wife since you returned home?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” Eric sighed, “and definitely not as much as she’d like.”

“So you’re not having a problem achieving an erection?”

“No.”

“How about maintaining it during the act?”

“I’m maintaining it.” Eric swallowed, not wanting to admit to his difficulties. “Sometimes I find myself putting more thought into making sure I maintain it. I’ve never had to worry about that before.”