Chapter Fifteen

With the annulment papers reduced to wisps of smoke, his grandmother's wedding band on Angela's finger, and Angela's lips melting into his like butter on a baked potato, it was hard for Tony to think coherently. Nevertheless, his nosy side trumped his amorous side and he managed to tear his mouth away from the kiss. "I know what you're doing, and while I normally wouldn't object to you trying to seduce me—"

"I wasn't trying," Angela protested, looking a little winded. "You're just easy. Not that I'm complaining. After four years, we have a lot of catching up to do."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "You're good, Mrs. Micelli. You're very good. But you're not going to distract me any longer. I wanna know what this deep, allegedly-not-dark family secret you and Mona have been keeping from me is." Whatever it was, it had reduced her to tears at breakfast this morning, and that wasn't like her. Nobody, but nobody, makes my wife cry! Tony ranted inwardly. Not if they wanna live to see another day.

"All right," Angela conceded uneasily. "With the day we've had, I would have preferred to wait and talk about this when things are a little calmer, but I guess that's a pipedream. You've never been the type to stay calm when there's a secret in the house."

"Look who's talking!" Tony scoffed. "The woman who was repeatedly caught listening at keyholes on her last birthday."

Angela sighed, giving him a wan half-smile. "You're right. I'm as bad as you are. We deserve each other." She took him by both hands and led him to the couch. "Sit down, Tony."

Yikes, she wanted him to sit down? "Is it really that bad?"

"Humor me. I fainted when I found out, and if you do the same, I want you to land somewhere soft."

"You fainted?" Tony pulled her down to sit beside him, wrapping a protective arm around her. "Honey, I'm getting worried. You shouldn't still be this sick."

She shook her head. "It's normal under the circumstances, Tony."

"Like hell!" It had been over a month now, and this was starting to get ridiculous. "You're not some wilting flower who swoons every time she sees a spider. Next time you go see the doctor, I'm coming with you, and we're not leaving that egghead's office till we get some answers!"

"Tony, please calm down. I'm trying to have an important conversation with you."

"This is important to me!" Tony retorted. "Something's obviously going on here, and we shouldn't be ignoring it." It was his job to look out for her, like they'd talked about on their wedding day, and he wasn't going to risk losing another wife.

She took his face in her hands. "Tony, I want you to think very carefully about what's been wrong with me lately. What, besides alcohol poisoning, can cause fainting, nausea, dizziness and fatigue?"

"You have a tapeworm?" Tony snapped his fingers. "It all makes sense now! That's why you're having trouble gaining back the weight you've lost, and why you're taking B vitamins all of a sudden! The same thing happened to my old neighbor, Mr. Buscafusco. None of the usual anti-parasitic drugs did the trick on him, and he ended up having to eat an entire head of raw garlic…"

Angela put a hand over her mouth, looking a little green around the gills. "Tony, I'm begging you, stop talking about tapeworms and raw garlic! I'm trying to tell you I'm pregnant!"

Tony frowned. "No, you're not."

Angela wasn't sure how to respond to that. "What's that supposed to mean? Of the two of us, I think I would know best."

"Angela, we talked about this. You take your pill every day…" Angela could see the exact millisecond when her husband's brain short-circuited. He froze in place, not moving or even breathing, his eyes going out of focus. "And then threw it up every day for a straight week."

"Exactly," Angela replied with a wry smile. She couldn't blame him for being shocked. He was still conscious, so he was one-up on her. "If we hadn't been semi-comatose with dehydration, we probably would have figured it out sooner." He was still frozen in place. She took his hand and patted the back of it, trying to get his attention. "Tony, breathe."

Tony sucked in what sounded like the last strangled gasp of a dying man. "I'm okay, I just need a minute."

"Good. And don't forget to breathe out," she reminded him.

"Right." Tony let the air out of his lungs in a rush and sucked in a couple more labored breaths before his respirations evened out again.

"That's it. In through the nose and out through the mouth," she encouraged him. "Are you okay?"

That seemed to snap Tony out of his borderline catatonia, and he blinked his eyes back into focus, staring at her incredulously. "Am I okay? You're the one with a human being inside you!" He scooped her into his arms.

She sank into the embrace gratefully. "But we're still sharing the blame for that, right?" she reminded him.

"Damn straight." He pulled back and began raining a maelstrom of kisses all over her face.

"So you're okay with this?" she had to verify before she could fully relax. "I mean, it's not like we ever had a chance to talk about growing our family."

Tony paused his attack on her face. "Actually, we did. Remember the day we said goodbye to our little buddy Clint? You said you wanted another baby, and I promised to teach you how it was done." His chin rose, and his smile morphed into an arrogant smirk. "Guess I kept my word on that one. How do you like that, huh? First shot out of the gate!"

Angela shook her head ruefully. "You know, the more I think back on our relationship, the dumber I feel. We talked about having another baby, and I still didn't realize you were interested in me."

"Don't forget all the times we made out, slow-danced, and confessed our love while semi-conscious," Tony reminded her mischievously.

"Oh, shut up." She addressed her belly. "Promise me you won't be a smart aleck like your daddy, sweetheart?"

"Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll be a smart-aleck like his grandma instead," Tony warned her, his eyes dancing.

"'He?'"

"Or she." Tony shrugged. "Either's fine. Either's great. We've already got a boy and a girl, remember?"

"Right." She was glad to hear he felt the same way she did, that Jonathan and Samantha belonged to both of them.

"Right. And I'm teaching our baby to play baseball and throw a punch whether it's a boy, a girl, or a squirrel monkey." Tony leaned back to give her some breathing room, but left an arm around her waist. "When did you find out?"

"Just yesterday," she replied defensively. "I tried to tell you when I got home—"

"But I was jealous and hammered." His jaw dropped as he went over their conversation in his head. "Jeez, I just realized what you thought I was saying," he groaned. "No wonder you slapped me."

"Sorry about that, by the way," she apologized sincerely. "A wife shouldn't beat up on her husband any more than a husband should beat up on his wife. I don't know what came over me."

"Plenty," said Tony. "It's been a rough month for both of us. And the next eight are only gonna get rougher."

"Not to mention the next eighteen years after that," Angela reminded him.

"Yeah. We'll have to do better about getting things out in the open before they turn into weird misunderstandings ending in violence. I'll try to stay sober. That'll probably help," Tony offered guiltily.

"Tony you're entitled to an occasional drink. Just try not to do it when you're upset. That never ends well." She laughed. "Remember when we guzzled that huge bottle of wine watching Rosemary's Baby, and by the end of the movie, you were convinced that there were witches hiding in the attic who wanted to kidnap Jonathan and Samantha?"

"Jonathan and Samantha!" Tony's eyes widened. "I just realized, we still need to tell them!"

"Which part?" Angela certainly hoped he wasn't planning to spring the whole truth on the family at once. The kids had left for school as the only children of two completely unattached single parents. They would be coming home to a new stepparent, stepsibling, and a little brother or sister on its way. How in the world were they going to understand that? She barely understood how it had happened, herself.

From the thousand-yard stare Tony was sporting, she could tell the same thoughts were running through his own head. "It has really been a day, hasn't it?"

It had certainly been the most bizarre day of her life, but also one of the best. "Yeah.

"We could always tell them we sent them a wedding invitation and it must have gotten lost in the mail," Tony proposed half-seriously.

Angela didn't laugh. "You're joking, and it obviously won't work on the family, but I was actually thinking of something along those lines for our various friends and neighbors."

"Hm. Might be worth considering." Tony considered it. "My plan wasn't anywhere near as good. I was just going to tell people we didn't invite them because we don't like them."

"Tony!" Angela groaned.

"Hey, you're the brains in this marriage. I'm just the eye candy." He struck a sultry pose.

Was she ever going to be able to have a serious conversation with this man again? "Tony, please, this is no time for jokes."

"I don't know, I think it's the perfect time for an icebreaker. I mean, I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I'm pretty sure you are, too, from the way you're fidgeting." He placed a hand over hers, stilling her fingers, which she had not noticed until now she was drumming anxiously on her knee. "Come on, time to follow your own advice. Take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out." He breathed along with her. "That's my girl. You know, with all this practice, when you and me hit Lamaze class, we're gonna be straight-A students."

Angela shuddered. "Tony, please tell me you're not seriously expecting me to deliver this baby without drugs?"

Tony looked exasperated. "It was a joke."

"Well, pardon me, but I don't find jokes based on the willful withholding of anesthesia very funny!" She realized she was making far too much out of his offhanded remark, but she couldn't help it. When she had given birth to Jonathan, the nurse who had administered her epidural had missed her spinal cord, and by the time the doctor realized what had happened, it had been too late to administer another. The thought of enduring another delivery like that voluntarily was the stuff of nightmares.

Tony, finally picking up on her terror, slipped his arms around her and rubbed soothing circles along her back. "Okay, I ain't exactly sure what's going on here, but no more Lamaze jokes.

"Thank you." She clung to his shoulders like a rock in the middle of a stormy sea.

"And if it's a serious answer you're after, I guess all we can do is take it one big announcement at a time. Start with the wedding, and then spring the baby on the kids later."

Angela nodded. "It's usually best not to tell people this soon, anyway. Pregnancies in the first trimester are never a sure thing, and at my age…"

Tony pulled back to look her in the eye, his thick, dark eyebrows knitted in a frown. "Ay-oh, I don't want to hear that kind of talk! You're as young as you were the first time I kissed you, and this kid's not going anywhere. I mean, given who its parents are, it's bound to be a real fighter."

That was true enough. "And it clearly has a pretty strong will to live, given that it decided to join our family at the first possible opportunity we gave it."

"Ain't that just our luck, though?" His smile made it clear that he was referring to good luck, not bad. It also left her with no choice. She had to kiss him.

The kiss intensified to a blazing-hot fire as quickly as the dry paper of their annulment. Angela ran her hands greedily up his arms, growing frustrated when the thick lining of his heavy winter coat impeded her geographic survey of his biceps. She pushed the down jacket off his shoulders without breaking the kiss, eagerly pressing herself to his firm chest. Ow! She had forgotten her breasts were still sore. She accidentally bit down on Tony's lip, but he just moaned, seeming to be under the impression that it had been intentional. He dragged his lips across her cheek, stopping to nibble on her earlobe for a moment before moving lower to suck at a pulse point on the side of her throat.

The little antique cuckoo clock hung on the wall of the office began to chirp as Angela's hands went to work on his belt buckle. "Oh, damn it!"

Angela pulled back, looking a little self-conscious. "Sorry. Do my nails need a trim again?"

No. Next time we do this, I intend to show off the claw marks instead of hiding them under long sleeves and turtlenecks, Tony wanted to reply. But that would do little to quell their growing passion, and…"The kids are going to be home in half an hour."

Angela took his wrist in her hand to examine his watch. "Half an hour should be plenty of time."

Tony tried to disguise his sharp intake of breath as a cough, but judging by the knowing look in her eyes, she wasn't buying it. "I don't think so, missy. We're gonna do things properly this time. I promised you once that you were gonna remember losing me as a friend, and I've already failed to deliver once."

"Tony, I remember our wedding night. It took a while, but it's clear as day now." She bit her lip nervously. "Don't you? I thought, since you remember the wedding, and getting the marriage license, and carrying me around the hotel…"

"Are you kidding? Our pursuit of academic excellence that night was actually the first thing that came back to me," Tony admitted.

Angela buried her blushing face against his shoulder. "Oh my gosh, no wonder the other guests were so mad at us the next day!"

"Eh, don't mind 'em. They were just jealous." Tony smirked at the memory.

"It would be nice to have a real honeymoon, though. Maybe something tropical. Ooh, or we could go back to Mexico!"

"Are you going to make me carry you out the door again?" Tony asked her, his voice tinged with amusement.

Angela shot him a dirty look. "I still can't believe you did that!"

Tony was getting confused. "How is it that carrying you in the door a minute ago was cute, and carrying you out the door two years ago was infuriating?"

"One was motivated by tradition and romance, the other was motivated by…" Angela glanced thoughtfully from him to the door. "What the heck were you thinking at the time, anyway?"

He wasn't sure whether she would love or hate his answer, but the truth was the truth. "That I wasn't about to miss the chance to see you in a bikini."

Angela's answering smile glowed for a moment, then dimmed just as quickly. "If that's your angle, then we'd better get any potential honeymoon out of the way quickly. I'm not going to be much to look at once this little one starts growing."

Tony pondered his next words very, very carefully. He'd forgotten how sensitive Angela was about her weight, and with the mood swings she'd been having, he knew he was treading on thin ice. Over a pool of starving sharks. Carrying a grand piano on his shoulders. "Putting on some weight wouldn't hurt either of us right now. We're still skin and bones from when we were sick, and now you've got our little tapeworm to nourish." He patted her belly.

Angela wrinkled her nose. "Tony, that's a disgusting nickname. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to veto that one."

His strategy to change the subject had been a shining success. "Okay. If I'm filet mignon and you're a baked potato, we still need a vegetable. Maybe the kids could be our three little green beans."

Success again. That got her laughing. "What about Mother?"

"She's the gravy holding this plate together, of course." Tony grew thoughtful, and fell silent.

"What's wrong?"

"I just remembered, I still need to get dinner started. In all the excitement, I forgot to take the steaks out to thaw."

Angela gave him a worried look. "Tony, in case you haven't already realized this, you're fired."

Tony considered this news. He hadn't even stopped to think about his job in all of this. Probably because it had stopped being a job to him a long, long time ago. This had been inevitable, he supposed. Well, working as a housekeeper had certainly never been his dream, though it had led him to more than one dream come true. A wife he loved in a way he'd never thought to feel again in this lifetime. A loving mother for Samantha, the son he'd never had in Jonathan, a friend for life in Mona. A new baby on the way. An education. A place to call home. A future. Overall, it was a very generous severance package. Nevertheless, a man had to have his pride. "You can't fire me. I'm quitting in order to spend more time with my gorgeous new wife and our growing family."

Angela heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, good. I'd worried about how that was going to go over."

"Don't worry. I'll find a new job ASAP," he promised her. "I ain't gonna be dead weight. I'll contribute."

Rather than being reassured, Angela looked scared. "Tony, you can't do that! I need you here!"

"Relax, I'll still pitch in around here." What kind of husband and father would I be if I let my family eat your cooking, babe? Tony barely restrained himself from saying the last part out loud. "Working moms all over the world do it."

"But you're going to school, and we're going to have a new baby in the house." Angela looked like she might faint or throw up again.

Tony shrugged. "I'll make it work. Maybe I can go part-time at Ridgemont for a couple of semesters. But it's important to me that I stay employed. I need to set a good example for the kids. Mooching off my wife while she's pregnant and working until eleven at night is a bad look. I don't want Jonathan and Samantha to grow up thinking that's how a man should treat his wife."

"Tony Micelli, I'm not going to let you neglect your education!" Angela insisted.

Tony stared at her. She hadn't barked an order at him like that since the time he'd had her Jaguar painted red. "Ay-oh, oh-ay, you can't tell me what to do! You ain't my boss anymore! You fired me, remember?"

"Nuh-uh! You quit!" Angela retorted.

This was ridiculous. "Whatever! This is my family, and I'll sacrifice for it if I damn well want to!" Then Angela gave him a response he couldn't possibly argue against. She started to cry. "Aw no." Tony put an arm around her, patting her back awkwardly. "Honey, come on, stop that. I'm sorry I yelled at you."

But when she looked up at him, he saw that she was smiling weakly through her tears. "I'm not upset. Not exactly. I mean, I'm very upset that you're planning to neglect your education, but at the same time, it's sweet that you think our family is more important."

"It's not just the family, either," Tony persisted. "A gap in employment looks really bad on a resume. I'm already going to be fighting an uphill battle when I hit the job market. I mean, my last employer has the same name as me." He rolled his eyes self-consciously. "I need to have documented proof that I'm staying busy."

"Maybe I could take some time off." Angela seemed to be thinking out loud. "Now that I've got Jack on my payroll, I can be sure the place will still be standing if I were to step back. Maybe just for the first year after the baby is born…."

Tony groaned. "Angela, I know you. You ain't happy when you ain't working. You'd be climbing the walls after a month."

"Well, I guess maybe a year would be a bit much," Angela conceded. "But I do intend to take some time off to heal up and enjoy my baby, this time around. With Jonathan, I worked up until the day I gave birth, took two weeks' vacation, then got back to the office before my sutures had even been removed." She flinched in remembered discomfort. "I definitely don't want to do that again. Maybe I'll aim for six months."

"Six months is good." She could probably maintain her sanity for that long. Tony's pulse, which had been racing with panicked rage, began to even out again. "The baby will be due in July, right? If you take six months off after the birth, that'll give me two more semesters, plus two summer terms, before we'll need to worry about childcare. I'll be halfway to my degree by then," Tony realized. "Maybe I could work part-time for now, so I can build a work history but still have time to focus on my schooling and helping out at home."

"That's a relief," Angela breathed. "I'm sorry I bit your head off. I just don't want to hold you back."

Tony couldn't help but laugh. "Angela, I'm sorry, I know you're serious, but I just don't see where you'd get a crazy idea like that. In case you've forgotten, you're the one who gave me the bright idea to go back to school in the first place. Without you, I'd still be driving a fish truck around the slums of Brooklyn, never imagining I could do more."

"It's only fair," Angela replied. "Without you, I'd still be toiling away at Wallace and McQuade without ever realizing I could do more."

"We do make a great team, don't we?" He addressed her belly with a cocky grin. "You know, you're one lucky little green bean. You're gonna be in great hands with us."

"Tony," said Angela slowly. "Did we just survive our first married fight?"

Tony reflected on the tumultuous conversation they had just weathered. "Yeah, I think we did." He jumped up from the couch with a radiant smile. "Don't move, baby! I'm gonna go get the camera!" He ran for the hall closet.

She grabbed his arm. "No, Tony, it's not in there. I left it in my office after I took it to Jonathan's school play last week."

Tony fought against her grip. "Yeah, but remember, I lent it to Sam for her photo essay the other day."

Angela stubbornly hauled him toward her office. "Yes, but she left it on the coffee table, and I was worried it might get kicked, with the way Mother's always putting her feet up there, so I took it to my office and put it on my desk for safekeeping."

"You're wrong, Angela! I found it while I was vacuuming and I put it back where it goes!" Tony's voice was starting to rise.

"No, I just put it in there day before yesterday, and you vacuum on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and stop yelling at me! I'm just trying to help!"

"Then stop bossing me around! I changed up vacuuming days this week because I had to help with the Parents' Association's canned food drive and the teacher appreciation gift wrapping party!"

Angela started to cry again, and Tony's righteous indignation deserted him. "Aw, honey, don't cry. I didn't mean to snap at you," he soothed, taking her in his arms.

"It's not that!" she wailed. "We're having our second fight, so now we can never get a picture of the first one."

Tony's face fell. He knew it was the mood swings talking, but…"Come to think of it, that is a little sad." He sniffled. "Well, want to take a picture of the smoldering ashes of the annulment instead?" Since they hadn't had the presence of mind to get wedding photos, it was probably the closest they were going to get.

She followed him to their office, where he found the camera on her desk, right where she had promised him it would be. Sheepishly, he bent over to pick it up. "So help me, if I hear you laugh once…"

But Angela didn't look amused. She was staring at him intently. "Tony, now that we've cleared the air, I need to ask you a very important question that's been festering in the back of my mind ever since we woke up in Niagara Falls together."

That didn't sound good. Had she remembered something he hadn't yet? Had he gotten himself in trouble? He sat the camera back down, wiped his suddenly-moist palms on his jeans, and took her hands. "What's that?"

"Why do you have an ad for laundry detergent tattooed on your hip?"

Of all the things for her to be thinking about after seeing him naked! He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or deeply offended. "It's not an ad!"

She raised her eyebrows. "It's the logo for Tide."

"Yes, but it's not an ad! And it's not my fault!" he added defensively. "After my first game with the Tides, which we lost badly, me and some of my buddies from the team went to a bar to drown our sorrows. There happened to be a tattoo parlor next to it. So we all decided to go out and get matching team tattoos. You know, to prove we were still proud of who we were, and that we weren't going to let losing keep us down." He noticed the look she was giving him. "We were drunk!"

She bit her lip, fighting laughter. "It's definitely not the best decision you've ever made while intoxicated, sweetheart."

Tony couldn't argue with that, nor could he fight the smile threatening to split his face in two. "Well, I decided to get mine on my hip, because Marie had been really ticked off at me when I'd gotten my first tattoo, back in high school."

"Oh, she didn't like it?"

"No. She told me I'd graffiti-tagged her once-beautiful boyfriend and didn't speak to me for three days." That got Angela laughing again. "I was hoping she'd be less annoyed if I got the next one in a place that wasn't too visible. But, like I said, I was a little bit sloshed, so I just asked the tattoo artist to do the Tides logo, and figured he'd know what I meant. You know, the badass green seahorse wielding a trident." Tony scowled menacingly and waved an imaginary polearm in imitation. "But he must not have been a baseball fan, because instead, he brands me with an ugly yellow and orange detergent logo."

Angela slipped her arms around him. "If it's any consolation, you wear it well. I've been picturing you every time I smell clean clothes."

"So that's why you've been blushing every time you walk into the laundry room!" So much of her behavior over the past few weeks was starting to make sense, now that he knew how she felt about him.

She sniffed the collar of his shirt. "Speaking of which, shut that door and kiss me."

And there was only one thing a good husband could say to that. "Yes, dear!"