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He nodded as if conceding the point while not really thinking much of it.
“If that does happen, I’ll hold your hair back so you won’t get it dirty while you’re purging your stomach,” he told her pragmatically.
She looked at Bowie. Most men wouldn’t take something like that in stride; they’d do their best to get away from it. She looked at him more closely. “You’re serious,” she said in surprise.
“People usually know when I’m kidding,” he assured her. “I have this telltale smile that gives me away. Go ahead,” he urged, nodding at the bowl of soup sitting in front of her. “Take a spoonful.” He saw the leery look that came over her face as she stared at the steaming bowl. “It’s soup, Marlowe, not poison,” Bowie reminded her.
Hoping for the best even as she feared the worst, Marlowe dipped her spoon into the steaming liquid and brought it up to her lips.
To make her feel more confident, Bowie did the same, taking in a spoonful of soup at the same time that she did. He watched her the entire time, probably holding his breath and mentally crossing his fingers—not for himself but for her. In his opinion, Marlowe really needed to get something more solid into her stomach than just the crackers she’d had earlier.
When she realized in surprise that she seemed to be able to hold down the first spoonful, she attempted a second one. And then a third. Her stomach remained in a dormant state.
“Everything okay?” Bowie asked, peering closely at her face.
The smile on her lips bloomed very slowly, hesitantly, then went on to coax out just the tiniest bit of a relief. She looked almost afraid to say anything because if she did, she felt that she might just wind up jinxing everything.
He saw the small battle that was going on within her. “Marlowe, are you okay?” he pressed, concerned.
“I am...very...okay,” she told him, sounding out each word and really happy to relate that message. “The soup seems to be...not wanting to come back up,” she declared in surprise.
Looking pleased to hear that she wasn’t experiencing yet another bout of nausea, Bowie nodded.
“That’s really good to hear,” he told her. “But don’t overdo it,” he advised. “Your stomach is probably still wondering what all that warm liquid coming in is. From what I’ve gathered, you and food haven’t exactly been on the friendliest of terms, so let yourself get accustomed to this by degrees. That way you won’t lose the ground you’ve gained.”
“You don’t have to baby me,” she told him, feeling he was talking down to her.
“I’m not,” he protested. “I’m just in training so that when this little person finally gets here, I’ll be ready for her or him.”
She frowned. “I didn’t think you wanted to hang around for that. You made it clear that commitment wasn’t your thing,” she reminded him.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe it is. I’m taking this one step at a time, seeing where it goes,” Bowie told her. “But I was serious about being there for you and the baby,” he insisted. “I have no intention of running out on you, Marlowe. And,” he went on, “I want you to believe that. I might not have a clue how to be a great dad—I was shortchanged when it came to the role model department.”
An ironic smile curved his mouth. “My own father was hardly a good model. But the one thing I do know is that I really wanted my father to be there for me, to be around when I wanted him to watch me compete in a sport or beam with pride when I walked across the stage to collect my college diploma. That much I can do for my kid. I figure I can wing it when it comes to the rest of it. The thing I know for certain is that I never want my kid—”
“Our kid,” she deliberately corrected. Her heart warmed at Bowie’s words, though.
“Our kid,” Bowie continued without missing a beat, “to feel that his father doesn’t care.” And then he raised his eyes to hers as another thought hit him. “I don’t want you to think that I’m crowding you, or dictating terms regarding this baby, but—”
“Stop talking,” Marlowe told him.
That came out of nowhere, and she had managed to completely catch him off guard. He stared at her now. “What?”
Marlowe was on her feet and rounding the table to get closer to him. Everything he had done and said tonight had abruptly knocked down all the walls she had so very carefully constructed around her heart in her effort to keep from getting hurt. Everything he had said had made her heart soften to the point that she had allowed herself to feel what she had been trying so hard not to feel: an exceedingly strong affection for this man, which she had allowed to sneak into her heart without truly realizing it.
Now, as she came up to where he was seated, she slipped her fingers into his hair and around both sides of his face. She tilted his head just a little, and brought her mouth down to his, kissing him with all the energy, all the unbridled emotion she could feel pulsating through her veins.
When Marlowe finally drew her lips away from his, Bowie looked at her, making no effort to hide the fact that he was stunned. He looked like it took him a second to regain the use of his brain and another second to remember how to form words. She could feel that heart continuing to beat fast enough to take off on its own.
“Was it something I said?” he asked her.
The breath she released was shaky. “It was everything you said,” she told him.
There wasn’t a drop of alcohol in her system, and yet it felt as if her head was spinning madly like a runaway top.
Lord, she had missed this, she thought. Missed the feeling of being utterly intoxicated, not on alcohol, but on the man who had already made her throw all caution to the winds once and was now making her want to do that all over again.
She desperately wanted to feel that way again. To feel as if the very world was at her fingertips just waiting for her to do something. To feel as if she could soar above the clouds.
