The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'I've been thinking.'
'About what?'
'Well, Little Jack is seven. Sally is ten. I want another one.'
'Another what?' Jack set his glass down.
'Another baby, you dope!'
'Why?' her husband asked.
'Because I can, and because I want one. I'm sorry,' she went on with a soft
smile, 'if that bothers you. The exercise, I mean.'
'I think I can handle that.'
'I have to get up at four-thirty,' Cathy said next. 'My first procedure is
before seven.'
'So?'
'So.' She rose and walked over to her husband. Cathy bent down to kiss him on
the cheek. 'See me upstairs.'
Ryan sat still for a minute or two, gunning down the rest of his drink,
switching off the TV, and smiling to himself. He checked to make sure the house
was locked and the security system armed. He stopped off in the bathroom to
brush his teeth. A surreptitious check on her vanity drawer revealed a
thermometer and a little index card with dates and temperatures on it. So. She
wasn't kidding. She'd been thinking about this and, typically, keeping it to
herself. Well, that was okay, wasn't it? Yeah.
Jack entered the bedroom and paused to hang up his clothes, donning a bathrobe
before joining his wife at the bedside. She rose to wrap her arms around his
neck, and he kissed her.
'You sure about this, babe?'
'Does it bother you?'
'Cathy, to please you – anything you want that I can get or give, honey.
Anything.'
I wish you'd cut back on the drinking, Cathy didn't say. It wasn't the time. She
felt his hands through the peignoir: Jack had strong but gentle hands that now
traced her figure through the outfit. It was cheap and tarty, but every woman
was entitled to look cheap and tarty once in a while, even an associate
professor of ophthalmic surgery at the Witmer Eye Institute of the Johns Hopkins
Hospital. Jack's mouth tasted like toothpaste and cheap white wine, but the rest
of him smelled like a man, the man who'd made her life into a dream – mostly a
dream. He was working too hard, drinking too much, not sleeping enough. But
underneath all that was her man. And they didn't come any better, weaknesses,
absences, and all.
Cathy made the proper noises when Jack's hands found the buttons. He got the
message, but his fingers were clumsy. Annoying, the buttons were small and in
those damned little fabric loops, but behind the buttons and the fabric were her
breasts,' and that fact ensured that he would not stop. Cathy took in a deep
breath and smelled her favorite dusting powder. She didn't like perfume. A woman
generated all the smells a man needed, she thought. There. Now his hands found
her bare, smooth and still young skin. Thirty-six was not old, not too old for
one more child. One more was all she craved, one more time to feel a new life
growing within her. She'd accept the stomach upsets, the compressed bladder, the