This story copyright © 2003 Mia McCroskey
The characters from The Avengers and other sources are the property of their respective owners.
[an error occurred while processing this directive] people have read this story since April 2004
Steed revisits his past
Emma begins an important project
Prologue
Emma Knight Steed dropped the booklet on the passenger seat with her handbag and slid into the driver's seat of her Lotus. She started the ignition, then looked down at the booklet and felt the happy smile that had been lingering on her lips for the last hour return full force.
Your First Pregnancy. The title was printed in white against a photograph of a mother and child. Emma briefly wondered where the father was in the image, then let her thoughts move on to her next task: thinking of the best way to tell Steed. She pulled out of her parking space and headed toward the ministry.
Her doctor thought she'd conceived sometime just after Christmas. She liked to think it had happened on their wedding night. But it was equally pleasant to think that their child had been conceived during their first days in Australia. She absolutely refused to consider the possibility that it had happened during that impulsive ten minutes in the airplane lavatory.
In any case, their child would be born an appropriate nine months after their wedding, although she was sure nobody believed that the consummation of their marriage was the first time they'd made love. In fact, she'd gone off of the pill two months before the wedding, despite her doctor's advice that it would wreak havoc with her hormones and make everything seem more stressful. Perhaps it had, but even so the wedding had gone off remarkably well -- particularly since it had taken place on Christmas Eve. She had been amazed at how many of their friends and family had attended, some traveling a great distance to be there. Many had departed the reception suggesting that they were now required to throw annual anniversary parties. Emma had not talked to Steed about it, but she rather liked the idea.
Of course, she thought as she threaded through traffic, by next Christmas their lives might be so completely different they would not be able to plan a party. Didn't babies tend to disrupt things? As she showed her identification to the guard at the ministry garage gate she felt herself making a resolution. The baby was not going to come between her and Steed, and they were not going to give up their favorite activities because of it. She smirked at herself as she found a parking space. It most certainly would come between them and eliminate their favorite activity, in a few months, and for a little while, anyway. She picked up the booklet and flipped through it, looking for a section on sexual intercourse while pregnant. She didn't find one.
She added another task to her to-do list -- shop for more helpful books on pregnancy. She tucked the booklet under the passenger seat -- it wouldn't do to leave it sitting out where others could see it -- and made her way upstairs to the ministry gymnasium.