The Sergeant's Baby. Bonnie Gardner

craving for one of their spinach salads.”

      The colonel laughed as Allison collected her purse from her desk drawer. “No wonder you haven’t gained very much weight. Most people have cravings for fattening things like chocolate marshmallow ice cream. By the time I was six months pregnant, I was as big as the side of a barn.”

      “Oh, I crave chocolate,” Allison confessed. “I just eat it when nobody’s looking. It doesn’t count then,” she added, wishing fervently that were true.

      “They make great chocolate cheesecake at Romano’s,” Kathryn said, wagging her eyebrows suggestively as Allison followed her into the corridor.

      “Let’s just change the subject. Have you seen the latest Reese Witherspoon movie?”

      “No. Is it good?” Kathie asked as they stepped outside into the blustery, fall air.

      “It’s gotten some good reviews. Want to go with?”

      “Maybe. I’ll have to see what Robbie has to do this weekend.” Kathryn’s husband, Robert, had been killed in Operation Desert Storm, and Kathie had pulled herself together and gone back into the Air Force to support her children and be an example to her daughters. Robbie, the youngest, was the only one still at home. Allison admired the way Kathie had picked up the pieces and carried on. Colonel Kathryn Palmore was certainly a role model any young woman could admire.

      And Allison wanted to be a similar example to her own child. She didn’t need a man to cling to. She was quite capable of taking care of herself. And her baby. Thank goodness, attitudes had changed and she would face few ramifications for being single and pregnant. Of course, she would have preferred to do it the right way. But only with the right man.

      Danny Murphey’s antiquated beliefs had made it clear he wasn’t.

      She had willed herself not to think about the man who had fathered her child—not an easy task since that moment Danny had strode into her classroom this morning. Until then, he had simply been the sperm donor. She had told herself that he did not figure in her and her baby’s lives at all. Yet somewhere in the deepest recesses of her heart, she wished he did.

      THE AROMAS coming from the kitchen were tempting. Danny’s mouth watered as he waited in the chow line. His mood ranged from irate to curious to confused, and he welcomed to opportunity to puzzle it all out. One minute he wanted to know who had fathered Ally’s child so soon after that wonderful, awful night they’d had. The next minute, he was furious.

      And Danny wasn’t the least bit certain whether he was angry that Ally had had the audacity to find another man so soon after she’d been with him, or that she hadn’t deemed him good enough to father her child.

      Then again, he wasn’t so certain that he wasn’t the father. The timing was about right, according to his calculations. She could have visited a sperm bank. However, Danny didn’t think so. Ambitious and independent or not, she wouldn’t want to go that route just to have a child.

      Danny couldn’t imagine her casually drifting from one man to another. And he knew the importance she’d always placed on marriage and family. To the right man.

      It just hadn’t been him.

      They had used protection the last night they had been together, but that condom had been in his wallet for a long time….

      He drew in a deep, exasperated breath. Sisters or no, he’d never really understood women, particularly educated, ambitious ones. Why in the hell had he had to fall in love with this one?

      “Hey, Murph. You in there?”

      Danny blinked himself out of his thoughts as Jake Magnussen waved his hand in front of his face. “Huh? What did you say?”

      “You’re holding up the line,” a chief master sergeant, standing a couple of people back, growled.

      Danny snapped to. He was standing at the silverware bin and the line in front of him had moved all the way to the dessert section.

      “Sorry,” he muttered, then grabbed the necessary utensils and quickly moved on, not bothering to look at what he was selecting.

      “What’s with you, man?” Jake challenged. “You were so fired up about taking this class and being shipped out to where the real action is, and now you’re all moody about it. You change your mind?”

      “No, I have not changed my mind,” Danny snapped as he picked up a cup and filled it with high-test, full-caffeine coffee. They’d loaded on a C-130 transport at Hurlburt at zero-dark-thirty this morning so he could accept this last-minute opening, and he needed the jump start. Maybe if his mind was clear, he’d be able to wrap his brain around this wholeAllison thing.

      Maybe.

      Yeah, sure.

      “Well, what’s got you breathing fire, then?” Magnussen was nothing if not persistent.

      Danny had a good mind to tell Jake to shove it where the sun don’t shine as he followed him to a vacant table. But he didn’t. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” he finally said, taking a seat. Hell, he knew that was a lame excuse.

      Jake started to say something, then wisely shut his mouth. Danny shrugged, sat down and started to eat. He didn’t speak until he was through. Only then did he realize that he didn’t even know what he’d eaten.

      He had been thinking—a dangerous thing, some people might say—and he’d made up his mind. He no more believed that Allison Carter would casually have somebody’s baby than he believed in the man in the moon—unless you counted Neil Armstrong.

      He picked up his tray and headed for the door, not even waiting for Jake. He had to get a game plan in place, and he didn’t need Jake sticking his pointed, Norwegian nose into it.

      Ally was the woman he’d always dreamed of, the woman he loved. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to make Allison “I want to be independent” Carter agree to let him be the father to her baby. His baby, he was almost positive.

      And he was going to marry her. Even if he had to kidnap her and carry her to the nearest justice of the peace.

      Chapter Two

      At least Captain Haddad was teaching the afternoon session, Allison thought with relief as she rested her chin wearily on the palm of her hand, elbow propped on her cluttered desk. She wouldn’t have to face Danny again today. His accusing glares during the morning session had been bad enough, and the scene right before lunch had thoroughly unnerved her.

      She’d had some time to think this afternoon, though she should have been preparing for tomorrow morning’s session. She had been unfair to Danny, she realized as she began to gather her things together to take home. She hadn’t really planned to…steal his “donation” that night—they had used protection—but when she’d discovered she was pregnant it had been the answer to many prayers.

      She had wanted to be a mother for so long. When she and Danny were together, she’d wanted a baby, but the stupid man had ruined it all with his pig-headed, old-fashioned attitude. She’d erroneously assumed that men working side by side with women in uniform would have transcended that approach. However, as far as Danny was concerned, there could be no compromise.

      At the time Ally had been nearing thirty. Since her chances of finding the right man would diminish as she got older—if published statistics were accurate—she’d reluctantly said goodbye, in the hope of finding someone else to make a life and have a child with, but on her terms. Later, with no man in the picture, she had even considered artificial insemination to conceive the child she wanted.

      As it happened, she didn’t have to.

      To kill her last evening in town after attending a conference at Hurlburt Field, Florida, where Danny was stationed, she’d accepted a ticket to a Charity Bachelor Auction given to her by a sweet elderly lady in a red hat and a purple dress, who’d said that