“Sure.” Kerry carefully took the baby and cradled him with her good arm. “Oh, he’s adorable.” She grinned. “What a cute nose.”

Angie smiled. “I think so.” She glanced up at Dar. “Were they taking a scan of you, Dar? Is everything okay?”

“Mostly,” the dark haired woman answered grudgingly.

“Nothing a little bed rest and chocolate won’t cure,” Kerry amended.

“Poor Dar unfortunately had to drag me around for a while and tore two muscles in her back.”

“That’s not when it happened.”

“Uh huh. Anyway,” Kerry shifted the baby and smiled, “the doctor prescribed a couple of days of rest and some painkillers. About the same thing he suggested for me.”

“You guys should go off somewhere on a vacation,” Angie advised.

“Otherwise you’ll get all tied up in that stuff you do.”

Hmm. Kerry chewed the inside of her lip, then impulsively handed off her wriggling bundle to Dar. “Here. Say hello.”

“A…bu—” Dar brought her hands up and took the baby in an instinctive gesture, then stood there staring nervously at him. “Yeah, he’s cute. Here.” She tried to hand him back, but Kerry made a show of straightening her sling. “Kerry…”


416 Melissa Good

“Just hang on there for a minute.” The green eyes blinked innocently at her.

Dar sighed, then brought the baby closer and examined him curiously. Babies weren’t her thing, generally, though she had nothing against them. This one was a fairly good size and was kicking inside his covers, probably hungry, she figured. He had a wrinkled face, with tiny, pouty lips and a bitty nose, and his head was covered in a little white hat.

He gurgled. Dar raised an eyebrow, then tentatively touched a clutching hand with one fingertip. The baby grabbed at her with surprising strength, causing the other eyebrow to raise.

Kerry watched in amused fascination. “What did you name him, Angie?”

Her sister sighed. “I haven’t yet.”

Both Dar and Kerry looked at her in surprise.

“I know, I know. Nine months, you’d figure I’d have a name already.” Angie laughed wearily. “To tell the truth, I was really expecting another girl, so I had a bunch of names picked out that wouldn’t really suit him.” She paused. “What would you name a little boy, if you had one, Dar?”

“Andrew,” both women answered together, then chuckled.

“Yeah, you got me there.” Dar unbent a little and relaxed, playing idly with the baby’s hand. “Dad would pretend not to like that, but he would.”

“Your parents seem really nice.” Angie smiled. “Your mom really helped me out last night. I hope I get a chance to thank her.” She held out her hands as Dar returned her baby to her and she cradled him. “You hungry, little man?” The baby yawned, and smacked his lips. “I guess so, huh?”

“Well, we don’t want to hold up dinner.” Kerry smiled and rubbed her sister’s arm. “We just wanted to stop by and say hello. We’re leaving to go home tomorrow.”

“Are you?” Angie looked surprised. “Is it over?”

“For now,” Dar replied. “Hopefully for good.”

Angie glanced at Kerry, whose lips tensed. “I know that was really tough for you to do, Ker. But I’m really proud of you for doing it.” The dark haired woman gazed at her newborn son for a moment, then looked back up at her sister. “I’m sorry I went along with them at the hearing.

You didn’t deserve that.”

Kerry’s eyes dropped. “Maybe not,” she murmured. “But I’m glad everyone got out of that hospital okay. I don’t think I could have lived with myself otherwise.”

“Kerry, it wasn’t your fault.” Angie frowned.

“I know.” Her sister exhaled wearily. “I know. But it doesn’t stop me from feeling the way I do, Angie, because if this whole hearing thing hadn’t happened, you’d have been home.” She looked up. “I can’t escape knowing that.”

Dar put a hand on Kerry’s shoulder in mute comfort.


Eye of the Storm 417

“Not to mention how I would have felt if anything happened to you.” Kerry turned and met Dar’s eyes.

“Well, it didn’t,” Dar said, simply. “We’re all okay, and you’ve got a cute new nephew.”

“Right,” Angie agreed quickly. “Everything turned out fine.”

Kerry regarded them both for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I guess maybe sometimes old fashioned prayer does still work.”


Chapter

Forty-five

“DON’T MUCH SEE why a new momma needs flow’rs,” Andrew muttered to himself. “Think they’d need something more practical, like a truckload of Pampers.” He glanced around as he walked, searching for a logical place for them to have put an ex-pregnant woman. Ceci had paused downstairs, intent on picking out a bouquet, and he’d decided to do a little scouting far from the scent of daisies.

He ambled along, ducking his head into the various rooms. “Closet.

Head. Papers. Whoops.” He jerked his head back out of a waiting room, after spotting a dour figure inside. “He ain’t in no mood to be chit chatting, I don’t think.”

Andy got four or five steps further on when he heard a voice from behind him.

“Commander Roberts?”

“Lord.” The ex-SEAL gave the bulletin board a plaintive look. “And just what did I do today to deserve this?” But he turned and went to the doorway, putting one hand on the sill and peering inside. Roger Stuart was now standing, his tie slightly askew, looking back warily at him.

“Yeap?”

The two men studied each other, from worlds so vastly different, Andrew doubted they had a single common frame of reference. Stuart was perhaps ten years Andy’s senior, educated, sophisticated…

And stupider than the day was long about his damn kid. “D’jou want to cuss me out some more? ’Cause if you did, I’ve got lots better things fer me to do then listen to you vent hot air.”

“No.” The other man lifted a hand. “My people looked you up.”

Andrew grunted.

“You have quite an amazing record, Commander.”

“I just did what Uncle Sam paid me t’do, Senator,” the ex-SEAL

answered quietly.

Stuart sat down and rested his hands on his knees, not meeting Andrew’s eyes. “Well, you did the right thing yesterday. Good job.”

One of Andy’s dark eyebrows lifted. He moved into the room and took a seat next to the older man. “Wall, you did too,” he allowed, graciously. “Ah think everbody done pretty well in that there mess.”

There was an awkward silence, but Andrew didn’t see any reason to Eye of the Storm 419

break it.

“I wanted, also, to thank you for stopping and giving us a hand to get out of that room,” Roger finally said, clearly embarrassed.

A good SEAL learned to recognize an opportunity and exploit it.

Andrew had, surely, been a very good SEAL, having lived long enough to retire as one. “Hell, don’t be thanking me, Senator,” he stated.

“Kerry wasn’t leaving till she found you.” He absorbed the quick look from wary gray eyes. “And my kid wasn’t going anywhere without her, so…” He shrugged. “Ah just moved rocks.”

“Yes, well.” Roger made the words sound distasteful. “I’m sure she felt she had an obligation.”

Andrew let out a breath. “Makes me feel real comfortable knowing someone like you’s up making laws, when you don’t even know squat about your own kid.”

“Commander—” Roger replied stiffly.

“Don’t you commander me, ya twenty watt bulb.” Andrew snorted.

“What in the hell’s wrong with you, anyhow? You been wearing a necktie so damn long it cut off the flow of blood to yer brain or something?”

“All right. That’s enough, mister. Or I’ll—”

“Or you all will do what?” Andrew snorted. “Slap me around like you done to her? You will not like the results, ah can tell you that.”

“I didn’t—”

Andrew stood up. “Senator, you will not sit there and tell me you did not take hold of Kerry and put her up somewhere,” he told the other man sternly. “Because even if she were the storytelling kind, which she ain’t, mah kid surely is not and she told the same tale.” He paused. “And Dar would not lie to me.”

Roger Stuart also stood, paced to the wall and slapped it in frustration. “Goddamn it, I was just trying to make her see reason.” He turned and put his hands on his hips. “It’s my right as a father to bring my children up as I see fit and I don’t care what anyone, including you, thinks of that.”

“By locking her up?” Andrew asked, incredulously.

“By putting her somewhere people could talk to her and give her guidance and whatever help she needed to get…to get over this…this,”

the senator swallowed bile, “perversion.”

Andy’s eyebrows contracted and he put both hands on his hips.

“’Cause she’s in love with my daughter? Is that what you call that?” His voice dropped warningly.

A visible shudder went through the older man’s body. “How in the hell can you just sit there and say that and not throw up?” he asked.

“You’re married. You’re in the military. You’re not some whacked out whiney assed liberal.”

Andy sat down and crossed one ankle over his knee. “Wall,” he scratched an ear, “ah can tell you, Senator, ah ain’t never had feelings for any other male type individuals.”

Stuart snorted.


420 Melissa Good

“But being as ah spent thirty some years in the Navy, it ain’t exactly a foreign notion to me,” he continued dryly. “I got to tell you that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ notion you all came up with weren’t a bad idea. ’Cause if they all told, you all’d roll right up outta Capital Hill and bounce yer asses into the Potomac.”

Stuart just stared at him.

“Look.” Andrew sighed. “Mah family came from Alabama. Mah daddy was one of the hatingist bastards ah ever did meet and ah got two brothers who got sent to prison fer beating half to death a young feller who didn’t do nothing but be born a different color than they were.”

The senator shifted uncomfortably. “Well, certainly that was the wrong thing to do but—”

“No buts, Senator. It ain’t right to teach a child to hate. No matter what the cause.”

The gray eyes were pinned on him intently.

“Ah grew up hearing how what we was made us better than what everybody else was, and believe you me, when ah chose to marry outside what we were, it was not a pretty sight.” Andrew paused, reflecting quietly. “What her folks done and what mah folks done, hurt both of us.” He shook his head.

“I don’t,” Roger hesitated. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Ain’t it?” Andrew asked.

“The Bible says it isn’t,” he replied stiffly.

“That there book was written by folks just as mixed up as you and me, Senator.” Cool, blue eyes regarded him. “At any rate, ah looked at what damage all that hating had done to us and I figgured out with myself, that if ah ever had kids, ah would not do to them what mah folks did to me.” He took a breath. “Ah told myself, that no matter what them kids turned out like, if they was mean, or ugly, or stupid as a rock, I’d still hold ’em, and love ’em, and bring ’em up as best as I was able to.”

Stony silence.

“Wall, sir, I got lucky in the ugly and dumb departments.” Andrew lifted his head proudly. “Cause mah kid ain’t neither of those things.” He nodded slightly. “She’s real smart, and real pretty, and she was damn lucky enough to find somebody out there in the world who’ll love her the same way I love her mama.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It is not,” Andrew shot back. “It is not, Senator, and if you’d spend just an hour with the two of them and not think that, you’d know it too.”

“Never.” Stuart shook his head in disgust and waved a hand.

“Your loss.” Andrew shrugged and stood up. “’Cause your daughter is a damn fine human being, Senator, and I am glad the Lord let me live long enough to know her.” He was getting mad and that wasn’t a good thing. Punching elected officials only got a man into more trouble than it was worth.

Stuart snorted. “Until she can find a way to betray you. Have fun.”

Andrew turned and pointed. “Don’t you blame her fer that.” He Eye of the Storm 421

shook his head. “Be a man, fer once, and take the responsibility fer what you get yerself into. Kerry didn’t force you into none of that, Senator, and it’s a sign of her goodness that she’s able to see past her love fer you and do the right thing.”

And then he escaped into the hallway just in time to meet his wife getting off the elevator with a large arrangement. “Good Lord.” Andrew took it from her. “Thought you were getting flowers.”