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Apparently for both of them.
Chapter 10
Bowie watched as Marlowe moved around the kitchen, cleaning up and in general being what to him seemed very domestic. If anyone had asked him, he would have had to admit that he hadn’t thought Marlowe had it in her. Maybe once, as a lark, but definitely not twice.
But there she was, cleaning up again, not just after lunch, but after dinner, as well. A dinner she hadn’t really bothered to eat because she still wasn’t able to keep much down.
When Marlowe caught him watching her, she guessed what was on his mind. “I don’t like sitting still, and I don’t like leaving a mess.”
“Well, it’s not like it’s exactly your mess,” Bowie pointed out. “Seeing as how you didn’t really have anything to eat so far, except for a couple of pieces of dry toast.”
“And tea,” she reminded him as she rinsed off a plate. “Don’t forget the tea.” Trying to find a way to help her soothe her stomach, Bowie had managed to scrounge up half a box of herbal tea bags from the pantry. He boiled water in a pot and then made her a large mug. “I had no idea you had all these hidden talents.”
Joining her at the sink, he took the towel from her and began to dry the dishes she had finished washing. “Dunking a tea bag into a mug of boiled water isn’t exactly a hidden talent,” he said with a dismissive snort. “It’s more of a wrist exercise.” He held out his hand to demonstrate. “A very slow wrist exercise,” Bowie emphasized before continuing to dry the dishes.
“Still, I do appreciate the effort,” Marlowe said.
Bowie laughed. Finished with drying the dishes, he retired the dish towel on the side of the sink. “Yes, now I’ll have to rest my wrist for the rest of the evening.” His expression turned serious. “Sorry you didn’t have any of the steak.”
She shrugged his apology off. “I’m not. No reflection on your culinary skills, but the very smell of that steak sizzling tonight was almost enough to send me back communing with the porcelain bowl.”
He couldn’t picture having to live that way. “I hope for your sake this morning sickness of yours doesn’t last too long.”
“That makes two of us,” she replied, “although I’ve heard of women feeling like this for the first five months.”
Five months of throwing up and the woman would waste away to nothing, Bowie thought. She was thin to begin with.
“Competitive though you are, that doesn’t necessarily have to be you,” he told her.
Marlowe gave him a look.
“That’s not exactly something I’m aspiring to, either,” Marlowe replied.
* * *
Several times during that day Bowie had found himself observing Marlowe. Whenever he did, he forced himself to look away, trying his best not to watch her. Trying to get his mind on something else.
Anything else.
He had never been even mildly interested in marriage or in having a family. The idea of having a baby actually unnerved him, and he had always liked to think of himself as fearless. Until this child had suddenly come into the picture, he would have said nothing scared him—although having someone out there trying to kill him had come pretty close.
As far as his resistance to having a family went, part of the problem was that he had no model to emulate, nothing to even remotely give him a home base. His own father had hardly ever been home, and even when he was home, he really wasn’t. His mind was always elsewhere, calculating and refiguring things that had already been done.
Franklin Robertson was the epitome of a workaholic. Bowie knew that their relationship was tense, and Bowie wanted nothing more than to prove to the demanding man that he had it in him to take over the company when that day came.
A baby didn’t figure into any of that. Especially not a baby whose lineage was half Robertson and half Colton. He was certain that his father would go absolutely ballistic once he found out that little tidbit.
While he wanted Marlowe to know that the baby’s future would always be secure, Bowie didn’t want her thinking that what the two of them had between them would ever develop into something more than what was there already.
They were outside the cabin at the moment, looking at the peaceful sky and just enjoying, as much as they could, the night air.
But because the stillness was getting to be too much, and he didn’t want to risk saying something that might lead them to far more dangerous territory—like the bedroom—Bowie reiterated what he’d already said to her before.
“You know, I meant what I said earlier, about my being there for you and the baby.”
“I know, because your word is your bond. Did I get that right?” she asked with a touch of cynicism, parroting what he had told her the day before.
“Yes,” he answered, pretending not to notice the shift in her tone. But he really didn’t want to take a chance on misleading her. That wouldn’t be fair to Marlowe. He needed to be clearer, he decided, so there would be no mistakes made. “Maybe I should also mention that I’ve always been sort of a lone wolf.”
