Colton Baby Conspiracy. Marie Ferrarella

      Marlowe stiffened, instantly knowing what he was referring to. She felt heat rising up her neck to her face, inevitably turning it to a reddish hue. She was far more comfortable talking about gunmen, hired or crazed, than she was talking about something that was so utterly personal.

      But she had been the one to initially blurt out the news to him, so she couldn’t very well just fluff Bowie off or shut him down now.

      “What about it?” she asked stiffly, her voice devoid of all emotion.

      “What do you want to do about...it?” he asked her point-blank.

      “You mean you don’t have any suggestions?” Marlowe asked sarcastically. After all, she would have thought that an opinionated man, such as he was, would try to impose his will on her, especially since the child was half his. Or at least she assumed that was the way he would think of it.

      “Oh, I have plenty of suggestions,” Bowie assured her.

      Big surprise. “I thought so,” Marlowe retorted.

      She’d pegged him right, she thought. But for some reason, she didn’t find that nearly as satisfying as she would have thought she would. As a matter of fact, as she examined her feeling, she was rather disappointed that he was like that.

      “But,” Bowie went on to say, “it’s your body. So ultimately, the decision is yours.”

      That he was capable of that sort of thinking caught Marlowe totally off guard. Was she actually wrong about him?

      “Then you don’t care what I do about this baby?” Marlowe asked, trying to get a handle on how he really felt.

      “I didn’t say that,” Bowie pointed out. The fact of the matter was that he clearly did care. Cared a great deal, Bowie thought. “But I’m not the one who has to go through this.”

      Bowie meant the pregnancy and birthing part, but Marlowe immediately jumped on a different interpretation entirely.

      “You’re damn right you don’t.” She couldn’t begin to think about everything that was involved, the huge changes that she was going to have to make in her life. Her head began to swirl. “I don’t know the first thing about being a mother—” she began in exasperation.