A smile of his own broke free along with a chuckle. "Ryan. I like it." He stroked a knuckle along his new son's baby-soft cheek. "Ryan Davis it is."
They sat wrapped in each other's arms and the moment, until Gray realized the room had been cleared and the doctor leaned against the wall flipping through a chart. A nurse poked her head in the door, "Colonel Clark, are you ready for the rest of your family?"
Family. What an awesome word. "Sure. Send them in."
The nurse stepped away, and Magda, Maggie as she now preferred, stood in the door with a brother on either side. His parents hovered in the doorway, giving the children time to meet their new brother.
Maggie's hair, longer these days, was gathered in a ponytail trailing over her shoulder like her mother. Barbies a thing of the past, Maggie now focused on basketball and boys.
She plowed forward, dragging her little brothers along. "Wow! Mom, he's so cool! He looks like Travis, don'cha think, Dad?"
"Hey!" Travis furrowed a serious little brow just like his mama's. "I don't got a funny face or a pointy head."
"Pwetty baby!" John Grayson catapulted forward, Gray catching his middle son before he tripped over his shoelaces. This one kept them on their toes, all motion, smiles and a song on his lips before he spoke his first words.
Gray reached to pull Maggie into the circle, the child who'd brought them all together, and waved his parents in. Sometimes he thought life just couldn't get any better. And then, the next day, he found out it most certainly could.
Lori's honey-warm eyes met his as their family gathered around them, and he couldn't believe he'd ever doubted.
She gave a contented-mother's sigh. "You know that bit about never stargazing again?"
Gray gave her his best bad-boy grin. "You didn't mean a word of it."
Lori laughed that great husky laugh that still rolled right into him, dive bombing his senses.
"Not for a minute, flyboy!"
>Late-night shadows couldn't hide the determined thrust of his jaw or the ring of resolution in his voice. He wasn't going to leave her if she didn't plant perfect pansies.
Her stubborn man had decided what he wanted, and he wanted her. Forever. And she looked forward to every single day. "Where are those stars again?"
He draped an arm over her shoulder to point, his breath playing through her hair. "Right there. Cassiopeia. Just to the left of the moon."
"And we'll see those same stars in Washington?"
"We?"
She allowed her fingers the pleasure of caressing his bristly jaw, a delight and right that would be hers for the rest of her life. "Yes."
"Yes? Yes, what?"
"Yes, I'll go to Washington with you. Yes, I'll marry you and give you all the babies you want. And yes, we'll be Magda's parents. Grow old together. All of it." She arched onto her toes, breathed her answer across his mouth. "Yes."
He took her answer and her lips in the same possessive sweep, giving, receiving, loving her. Her arms looped around his neck, surely the safest place to be as her limbs hummed with the musicality of his kiss. No doubt the man was a stylist with that mouth of his.
Gray scooped her into his arms, kissing her as he walked the length of the balcony to the porch doors leading to Lori's room.
Tossing him her best wicked smile, she twisted the doorknob. "Wanna play wounded Allied pilot and saucy French nurse? I'll let you be the pilot this time."
Gray nudged Lori's bedroom door open with his foot, his beautiful smile free of shadows, full of constancy and playful promise. "And I'll show you how to see those stars with your eyes closed."
Epilogue
"I can't believe you talked me into this!" Lori puffed through the next contraction. "I'm never going stargazing with you again!"
"Push, Lori! Push!" Gray straddled the chair at the foot of the birthing bed, hands poised and ready to guide their child into the world. He wasn't Lori's OR, but the presiding doctor stood by the IV. Nerve-wracking as hell, incredible beyond belief, Gray wouldn't have it any other way. He had "caught" their other two babies, a miracle he would repeat in seconds. "Just one more push and we'll have our baby."
"We? We?" Lori barked between puffing breaths. "I don't see us birthing a Buick!"