Baby, Baby, Baby. Mary Mcbride

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      Why was he doing this? She wanted to rip open the shutters and wrench up the window and scream, “It’s over. It didn’t work, Sonny. Just—for God’s sake—let it go.”

      If she did that, though, he’d only yell back, “You love me, Mel. You know it.”

      Dammit. She punched the pillow again and dug herself deeper into the mattress. That was the problem. She did love him. She just couldn’t live with him.

      If only she’d known that when he’d handed her those two glasses of champagne and then shucked his disguise like some gorgeous butterfly emerging from a hairy cocoon. If only his voice with its too-much-whiskey and too-many-smokes timbre hadn’t sent a cascade of tingles down her spine when he’d called her darlin’ the first time, as in “Let’s get out of here, darlin’.”

      Melanie was far too practical, way too levelheaded to be swept off her feet, so she’d finally come to the conclusion that Sonny must have drugged her those few weeks before they’d gotten married. That first night, after they’d left the awards ceremony and after he’d showered and changed at the precinct, they’d sat in the back booth of a little jazz club, the sparks between them nearly setting the place on fire.

      No one had ever made her feel like the molten center of the universe before. No one had ever made her forget what time it was, what day it was, what century. No one had ever gotten her into bed on the very first date and then gotten her to stay there for an entire weekend.

      He had to have drugged her.

      It wasn’t just the sex. During those early weeks Sonny had made her feel like a new person, somebody completely recreated. She’d never once made a list of any kind. She’d barely even opened her planner except to make certain there was no official function that would prevent her from being with her man.

      Sonny had been with her constantly—24/7 as they said in the department—because, like now, he’d been on vacation following a shooting. He’d been sexy and funny and charming and attentive and sweet and…

      …And in her drugged, delirious condition she’d married him one afternoon at city hall in Judge Beckmann’s chambers with Sam Venneman as her maid of honor and Mike Kaczinski as his best man.

      Then Sonny’s time off work had ended and she’d hardly seen him anymore. It seemed her then-new husband’s view of the ideal marriage was one where he worked long hours, sometimes two and three days at a time, undercover on the street, then came home expecting the honeymoon to continue under the covers with his irritated bride.

      No sooner had she tidied up his messy loft than he stumbled in to fling newspapers everywhere, to put T-shirts in his sock drawer, to rip out the neatly tucked covers from the foot of the mattress to accommodate his long legs, to claim he couldn’t make plans for the future because he didn’t even know what he’d be doing next week.

      She’d made lists and Sonny had made excuses.

      After six months, during four of which she’d had a headache that felt like a cannonball inside her skull, Melanie had walked out and filed for divorce.

      For his part, Sonny went through an approximation of the Five Stages of Grief. Denial: “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage, babe.” Anger: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Bargaining: “I can change, Mel.” Depression: “Aw, hell, darlin’. Why don’t you just stick a knife in my heart and get it over with?”

      Finally, or so she’d thought when he’d stopped calling her constantly and dropping by city hall every other day, he’d reached the last stage. Acceptance.

      Obviously she’d been wrong about that. Sonny hadn’t changed a bit. He never would. He’d always be his spur-of-the-moment, let-the-devil-take-tomorrow, what-me-worry, haphazard self. And she’d always be the worrier, the list maker, the Queen of Post-It notes and the planner.

      The twain would never meet.

      And one of the twain, dammit, would have to go.

      Melanie squeezed her eyes closed, determined to wrench at least a few hours sleep from the chaos that suddenly surrounded her.

      Next door, at that precise moment, Sonny took a swig from his bottle of beer and a long drag on his cigarette, then leaned back his head and closed his eyes. He’d kept a couple candles burning to ward off any lowlife who might be looking for an unoccupied place to crash for the night. If that warning didn’t prove successful, he was still wearing his shoulder holster with his service pistol snug under his arm.

      He was almost hoping some coked-up derelict did stumble in, thus offering him a legitimate excuse to shove somebody up against a wall and work off some of the foul mood he was in.

      Cop on the Block at your service, ma’am. What was that? You say you want a baby?

      Every time he thought about what Melanie planned to do, his gut churned, tying itself into a thousand tight little knots, and his heart surged with a sort of primitive rage. It made him nuts to think of his wife getting pregnant by another man, artificially or otherwise. If otherwise, at least he’d have the pleasure of killing the guy. What could he do about the artificial deal—stomp a little vial and grind it into the floor?

      He’d found out about her cockamamie plan last week, the same afternoon he’d gone through the plate-glass window. That revelation, coupled with the one he’d had from the .44 Magnum, had finally propelled him into action. Waiting for Mel to change her mind obviously wasn’t working, and merely telling her that he’d changed wasn’t good enough or fast enough in light of this baby deal.

      The Cop on the Block notion had seemed inspired at the time. He filled out the paperwork, sat on his captain’s desk until he signed it, then personally walked it through the approval process at the Third Street Bank. If the nerdy little vice president in charge of loans filed a complaint, Sonny was fully prepared to say that he’d simply drawn his gun to make certain the safety was on.

      So far, so good. The house was his. He was sitting here, a mere twenty feet from Melanie’s place. Of course, he was sitting in the dark and his toilet was outside and Mel was barricaded behind locked doors, but—by God—he was here. Now he just had to convince her that he was capable of change.

      As for Mel, she didn’t have to change even so much as a hair for him. He’d probably fallen for her the first time he’d seen her up on the stage at that awards ceremony exerting nearly superhuman effort to keep her knees together in that tiny little gray skirt while two hundred pairs of eyes were zeroing in on them and two hundred good but lecherous souls were silently pleading for just one little peek.

      Okay. Maybe at first it was just the challenge of those lovely, super-glued knees. But after an hour of being with her that night, Sonny had quickly forgotten about the knees in order to focus on her quick, bright, and almost comically organized mind. And though he might have teased her about the lists and date books she produced from her handbag like a succession of clowns from a midget car, a part of him—an important, bone-deep part—truly envied the order and apparent certainty in her life.

      Until Mel, the women he’d been with had lives as erratic as his own. Sheila, the flight attendant. Tammy, the traveling sales rep. Barb and Cathy and the other Cathy, all cops, all the time. Maybe the haphazard attitude was a habit with him, acquired from too many moves as a kid from one foster home to another. Maybe it was a defense. If he didn’t make plans, they couldn’t go wrong. Who knew?

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