"The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love." ~Jean de la Bruyere

Five weeks later…

"I think I might be pregnant," Stephanie said one morning as we both stood in the bathroom getting ready for work.

"I thought you said it would probably take a few months," I replied, the shock of her statement hitting harder than I would have anticipated. I could hear my heart pounding my ears and took a moment to steady myself so that she didn't see my hands shake as a I reached for my toothbrush.

"I thought it might, but I'm already ten days late, and then I remembered that Mary Lou got pregnant with her youngest while she was on the Pill after just missing a couple of doses, so maybe it doesn't always take that long."

She reached into a drawer in the bathroom and pulled out a box. "I bought tests right after we decided to start trying, but I didn't want to take one right away because I didn't want to get my hopes up. It might be my body is just trying to adjust to being off the Pill."

I put all of my focus into brushing my teeth to buy myself a few seconds to process everything.

"Take it, then you'll know," I said once I'd rinsed my mouth. "You'll be distracted all day if you don't."

She wasn't the only one.

I left the bathroom and went into our bedroom to get dressed, giving myself a moment to close my eyes and do some deep breathing in private. The idea of Stephanie being pregnant this soon was disconcerting. I hadn't been letting myself think too much about the fact that we were purposely trying to get pregnant because I still wasn't excited about the idea, but wondered if I really needed to be. Maybe excitement wasn't necessary. Had I been excited to move in with Stephanie? To ask her to marry me? To actually marry her?

Yes, I had been. The best moment of my life up to that point had been marrying her. I hadn't let it show, but internally I'd been a grinning idiot since we'd made the decision to get married on New Year's Eve in Newark. I loved being married to her. We were happy and content, our lives settled and relatively calm. I was settled.

And that was what I was afraid would change with a baby.

I'd seen the stress of wanting a child weigh on Emilio and Lucy as they'd suffered numerous miscarriages before having the twins, and now I was seeing it happen to Tank and Lula in their efforts to adopt. Even if we didn't experience problems getting pregnant, I wondered how our relationship would change when it was no longer just the two of us. When we were distracted by feedings and diaper changes, which would morph into preschool and play dates, then dating and driving and college choices. By the time it was back to being just the two of us, we'd be at least two decades older and possibly very different people. Would we be the same people we always were, or so different that we didn't recognize each other without children around filtering our perspective?

"The box says it may take two minutes for the results to show up," Stephanie announced as she came back into the room, startling me out of my thoughts. She was holding the test in her hand and laid it face down on the dresser. "I'll get dressed and then we can look at it together."

I watched her hands tremble slightly as she chose a black shirt and skirt from the closet. She was nervous. Maybe my ambivalence wasn't so bad. Maybe it was just part of the normal process. When Rachel had called to tell me that she was pregnant with Julie, I'd felt like I'd been kicked in the gut. But considering the circumstances, I'd considered that a normal reaction. No one expected a one-night stand to call up and say she was having your child.

"Do you think it's been more than two minutes?" Stephanie asked once she'd pulled on her clothes.

"Probably closer to five," I said, sitting down on the bed to pull on my shoes. "I'm sure it's ready."

Stephanie grabbed the test and sat down next to me. "Okay, here we go. It'll say Pregnant or Not Pregnant."

Straightforward. I liked that.

She flipped the stick over and sucked in some air as she read the word Pregnant on the little display. I felt my pulse quicken, though I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"I'm pregnant," Stephanie said breathlessly. "We're going to have a baby."

Mechanically, I wrapped an arm around her and kissed her above the ear. "Yes, we are."

I could see that under her own mild shock was joy mixed with terror. This was what she'd wanted, even if it scared the shit out of her.

"Oh my God. I just can't believe it happened so fast," she said, still staring down at the little stick.

"We're that just good," I said, making her chuckle.

"I guess so."

A chime on my phone reminded me that I had a meeting in thirty minutes and ended the intimate moment. Normally I hated any disruption when I was with Stephanie, but I was thankful for this one.

"I guess that means it's time for us to go earn money so we can support this kid."

Stephanie put the stick in the drawer of her nightstand. "Yes, because we're so obviously broke."

I gave her a playful smack on the ass as we left the bedroom. I'd noticed in the last year or so that Stephanie had finally gotten more comfortable with the idea that my wealth was also hers. She still didn't shop extravagantly or buy things that cost more than a couple hundred dollars without running it by me, but she'd finally started using the credit cards I'd had furnished for her along with using our joint bank account instead of her own.

We were silent on our way to the office, both of us lost in our own thoughts. We usually drove to work together since Stephanie was now my new Tank. She generally went with me to accounts and client meetings unless there was a specific reason for her to not be there. I began sorting my thoughts, thinking about whether there were any aspects of the job that I needed to assign to someone else during her pregnancy. Not having had any female employees except a woman past child-bearing years meant that I hadn't put much thought into having to adjust a job for a pregnant woman, especially one that was carrying my child. Keeping myself focused on pragmatics helped to keep the emotional stuff at bay, giving me an excuse to not dwell.

"I'm pulling you from patrols," I told her as we pulled into the garage. "I can get someone else to go with me if I have to cover them."

"Ranger—," Stephanie said, her tone defensive, but I held up a hand.

"That's not negotiable. As both your boss and your husband, I'm telling you it's not safe to have you potentially running into a dangerous situation. Other than that, I don't think there will need to be any other changes to your job."

I knew I was on the business end of a dirty look, but I didn't care. She wanted this baby, so she was going to have to accept the things that went along with that, even if she didn't like them.

"I don't see why I can't keep going on patrol until I'm further along," she said, slamming the door as we climbed out of the Cayenne. "It's not like I can't run right now. I probably still have a few months until I start showing. Even the police let pregnant officers stay on duty until they feel they need to switch to something lighter."

I blocked her path at the back of the car. "You being able to run isn't what concerns me. And you don't work for the police department. You work for me. What if you're kicked in the abdomen or pushed down a flight of stairs? Or shot while wearing a vest? It may not kill you, but it's still a serious impact. Are you willing to risk losing this baby?"

"Of course not," Stephanie said, deflating a little. "But I knew you'd do this. I knew you'd get even more overprotective than you already are."

"Deal with it."

I could practically feel the eye roll and middle finger she was giving me as we walked towards the elevator. I now had another element involved in my responsibility to Stephanie as her husband. I now had to help protect her pregnancy as much as I could. The standards I set for her physical safety had to be adjusted. Not that I thought of her as fragile, but the life she was trying to make inside her body was, and it was important to her.

And you, I reminded myself. That life was going to be important to me as well. It was important to me right now because it was tied into her health and happiness, but I wanted—and needed— it be important to me because of what it represented. I n less than a year, that life would be born. It would be my child, looking to me to keep it safe and meet all of its needs. Not just physical and financial, but emotional.

I knew how to pay child support. I knew how to track down my child if it was kidnapped. I knew what the child needed, but I hadn't been there to provide all of that up to this point. I'd let another man do that for me. Basically, I was fucked.

The remainder of the day was uneventful, though I knew Stephanie and I were both distracted. She was likely wrapped up in thoughts of what was to come in her pregnancy, the physical aspect as well as the social. I doubted that anyone in the office would dare make a disparaging remark unless they were suicidal, but I knew that some of them would be thinking them. They'd be wondering what kind of liability she would be when she was in the later stages of pregnancy or if she began suffering from morning sickness. They'd dread, or even expect, horrific mood swings and avoid her. I was lost in my own uncertainty and control issues. I knew Stephanie would want to be safe, but sometimes her judgment wasn't the best. Even since she'd left bond enforcement she had managed to lose a car while visiting Lula in Newark. The increased desire to protect her felt like a contrast with my uncertainties about having a baby.

What kind of father was I going to be? My involvement with Julie had been too limited for me to be able to use that as a gauge. I knew what my own father had been like, but we had different personalities and different situations. I had no intentions of having a household full of children who would be left to be primarily cared for by my wife. If I was going to intentionally bring a life into the world, then I was going to accept more than just financial and moral responsibility for that life. Stephanie had told me after our decision to get pregnant that she intended to continue working after any children were born because she wasn't stay-at-home mother material. We'd either have her mother babysit or hire a nanny. We'd even talked about having a nanny stay with the baby up on the seventh floor during the day so that we would be close and we would have more access than if they stayed at our house. We'd also discussed whether or not buy a new house, but that conversation had been tabled until she was actually pregnant. Which was now.

I felt a headache coming on, the result of my brain working even more than it usually did. There was still more to figure out, but I told myself to ease up and let time help. My control issues were threatening to go into overdrive, and would undoubtedly cause a fight with Stephanie if I didn't keep them in check.

"We're supposed to be having dinner with my parents tonight," Stephanie reminded me as five rolled around. "We need to run home and let Bob out on the way."

Every marriage has certain situations that require a significant amount of patience and compromise to ensure that the marriage stays together. Dinners with the Plums fell into that category for me. Frank was the only person I actually enjoyed seeing, mainly because he kept to himself and usually shared my feelings on the various topics of conversation or ridiculous happenings that occurred whenever we were together. He'd also showed me his stash of Cuban cigars and had invited me to join him occasionally after dinner. I'd been sure to keep him in stock. I tolerated Helen, who badgered us at least once a month about giving her grandchildren, and Edna simply made me uncomfortable. It wasn't just the fact that she continued to try to grab my ass every chance she got, but hearing about her sex life and other inappropriate questions had gone from mildly amusing to annoying and occasionally embarrassing. Frank had once asked me how to kill her and make it look like natural causes, but I'd refused to answer him. I'd killed enough people in my life who had deserved it. I wasn't going to have the death of a woman that was my grandmother by marriage and whose greatest sin was being inappropriate on my conscious.

As we walked into the Plums' house I knew we were in for a long evening. The minute the smell of the pot roast hit us, Stephanie turned green.

"Oh God," she whispered, covering her mouth. "The smell of the pot roast is going to make me sick."

"See if you can find anything to rub under your nose to help with the smell," I told her. "Look for some chest rub or something similar."

Stephanie ran upstairs to the bathroom while I sat in the living room with her father, who was watching the news. We were all summoned to the dining room a few minutes later and ate while Edna filled us in on the Burg gossip. I could smell the menthol wafting from Stephanie, but I could tell it was helping her get through the meal. She apparently couldn't handle eating the pot roast either, as I would see her cut small pieces off and slip them into her napkin when no one was looking.

"Did you hear that Evelyn Kruzic's daughter Missy is pregnant?" Edna asked Helen as dessert was served.

"No!" Helen replied, looking scandalized. "She's only seventeen! And she's heading to Harvard in the fall."

"Yep, and that's why she putting the baby up for adoption," Edna said. "But she's wanting to do an open adoption, where she can still be in contact with the adoptive family, see pictures of the baby and even visit sometimes. Evelyn isn't happy about it. She wants her to just give up the baby and pretend it never happened. I guess Missy had gone to a party back in the fall, got drunk and ended up sleeping with several different boys that night so she doesn't know who the father is. They've kept it real quiet until now."

Frank muttered something unintelligible under his breath and Helen made the sign of the cross.

"Is she looking for someone in Trenton, or do they just need to live close enough to visit in one day?" Stephanie asked.

"You're not thinking of adopting, are you?" Helen asked, her expression making it very clear that her idea of adding grandchildren to the family did not include adopting the children of unwed teenagers.

"No, I mean for Lula and Tank,' she replied, looking at me. "They've been wanting to adopt, but keep getting turned down by agencies. They live up in Newark now, but it'd still be close enough to visit."

"You should call them," Edna said. "I know they've been trying to keep this quiet, but it's getting harder now that Missy's showing. They don't want Harvard getting wind of it because they're afraid they'll change their minds and won't let her in."

"I'll talk to Lula and Tank first, and if they are interested, I'll call the Kruzics," Stephanie said, looking down at her dessert. She was starting to look nauseous again. "I'm going to take my dessert home. I'm pretty full, and we need to get home to let Bob out."

Once we were out the door, Stephanie hurried off the porch and threw up in the bushes in front of the house.

"No beef until further notice," she said as she wiped her mouth with a tissue from her purse. "I hope that doesn't happen with anything else. Like donuts or cake."

I wrapped an arm around her waist. "You'd be better off to not eat that stuff. Our kid is going to born with a sugar addiction."

It felt weird to say that, referring to the minute being that was growing inside Stephanie. It had been over twelve hours since the test result and I was still in a bit of shock over it. I didn't regret it, but I still wasn't excited. And hardest of all was keeping that from Stephanie. In our years together, I'd worked on being more expressive with her, opening to her more than I'd ever opened up to anyone. If I withdrew too much, she'd know something was wrong, but I also couldn't bring myself to admit the truth to her. As far she knew, I was excited to be having a baby. It would hurt her to know otherwise. Hopefully I could really get excited before she discovered the truth.

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing with this adoption thing?" Stephanie asked. "I don't want to overstep, but I know how much Lula wants a baby."

"I don't think it's overstepping," I told her as I pulled into our neighborhood. "It also has the added bonus of taking some of the heat off of you when you tell her you're pregnant if she's going to be getting a baby of her own."

She bit her lip, a sheepish smile forming. "Yeah, I'd thought of that too. This is why we're so good together. We're usually on the same wavelength."

Usually.