Bill Pierce cleared the table Sunday morning while still wearing the robe over his underwear. He went to join Carolyn in the bedroom where she was already dressing.

"I think," Carolyn said, "that I show in this dress." Well, her pregnancy showed more, and more delightfully, when she was wearing nothing at all. Still, knowing it was there, he could see it easily.

"Ihm hmm." He bent to kiss the tiny bulge that held the fruit of their love. From her frown, that was the wrong answer. They weren't telling anyone, yet. He hadn't told a single soul. Carolyn had written her mother, and -- of course -- somewhere there was a doctor's office full of people who knew. But they were going to church where nobody at all knew. And, he had to admit, that keeping this secret sometimes made him a little smug.

Well, Carolyn wore that dress to church, anyway. He drove there, watched her descend to the choir robing room, and went to sit in a pew until the others came in. He used to enjoy talking with Dan in the back of the church -- they both got there early so their wives could warm up with the rest of the choir. These days, however, Dan couldn't talk of anything but Watergate. Never had so many talked about so little.

The choir sounded beautiful, as it always did when Carolyn was singing. Jake preached on the Old Testament -- something he'd once confessed he did when he couldn't find a different take on the Gospel than the take he'd preached on three years before. The rest of the service was okay. After the service, he waited with the other non-singing spouses of choir members. He and Carolyn shared a kiss in the car before he started it.

"I think our secret's out," Carolyn said then.

"Well, you couldn't expect it to last until you delivered. You are a slender girl, and it shows -- shows delightfully." He'd enjoyed keeping the secret, knowing that his entire life had changed while his friends remained blithely ignorant of the change, but he'd enjoy sharing the news, too.

"What's the next step?" he asked. Did they send out announcements? Wasn't that only at birth? He'd learned of pregnancies -- babies attracted him -- but he'd never got an announcement of one. Did he tell his friends while she told hers?

"I suppose I need to buy some maternity clothes." That made sense.

"Well, I like to see you without any clothes, but I suppose you have to go out in public some times. That's another item that we didn't put in the budget, but we've actually got some savings, now. You didn't use much of your last TA earnings." The budget wasn't a problem, which was his contribution to the shopping. Carolyn, thank God, wasn't one of those women who liked to drag their husbands along.

"Well, we'll go through that awfully fast." And, they would when the baby came, of course. But maternity clothes weren't going to make all that much difference when they'd go on credit.

After dinner Monday night, Carolyn modeled her new dress for him. It was lovely, accentuating her melons and flowing around the rest of her body. He would have thought that concealing the bulge would detract from her appearance, but this dress didn't.

Waiting for the choir the next Sunday, Dan was razzing him. Instead of Watergate, he concentrated on Agnew. Did he think no Democrat had ever taken a bribe? They lived in the metro area of Chicago for God's sake.

"You can say he took bribes," he pointed out. "All he was convicted of was tax evasion."

"That's all Capone was convicted of, too." Well, yes, but it was hard to convict Capone of anything. Witnesses died suddenly. He felt Carolyn's presence behind him. Dan looked a question to someone coming up the stair. Carolyn? Gladys, who might well be with her?

"Well, Bill," Dan asked, "tired of borrowing babies? Decided to grow your own?" He must have seen the dress and drawn the intended conclusion.

"Well, Carolyn has promised that I can hold him on days other than Sundays."

Dan congratulated Carolyn, and Gladys, who had been with her, added her own to both of them. They were still in the friendly mode the next week. Dan, waiting with him again, abandoned politics to discuss the dreary, rainy weather and parenting. His opinion of the latter could be summed up as 'difficult but worth it.' When the choir members came up together, Dan latched on to Carolyn and drew her away. He started to follow, but Gladys held his arm. She drew him away from the crowd.

"Look Bill, this is none of my business, but, really, Carolyn needs a lot more than one maternity dress."

"Tell her. I don't pretend to know anything about women's fashions." Indeed, pretty as that dress was, he preferred Carolyn out of it.

"She tells me that the budget doesn't cover that."

"Look, Gladys. It isn't me. She has a checkbook and two credit cards -- well four." Not that she was going to buy a dress from Amoco. "I'll try to deal with it, but I didn't put her on an inadequate allowance -- or, for that matter, any allowance."

"Well..." Gladys went to the door. "It looks like it's letting up," she called. "Want to get the car now, Dan." He buttoned up his raincoat and opened his umbrella. When Dan got there, they went out together to get their separate cars.

As he drove home, he planned how he could persuade Carolyn to spend more on clothes. Persuading Carolyn wasn't one of his greatest skills. She, when she wasn't angrily opposed to anything he suggested, listened and made up her own mind.

He and Carolyn agreed about few things, but they both thought that the mid-day meal on Sunday was 'dinner.' Carolyn served wonderful ones. Although he never objected to left-overs of her cooking, and although they were in church, going to and from, or preparing for it for hours before hand, Sunday dinner was always something fresh cooked. Dinner was ham with sweet potatoes and peas. Dessert was a cake, store-bought, but tasty. While they were eating it, he laid the foundation for his arguments.

"You know, the budget we planned out at the beginning has lasted longer than I really expected. Even so, the baby is going to sink it. Up to then, we said your teaching salary -- TA salary is what it turned out to be -- would cover any clothes you needed. Well, when we said that, we hadn't planned on your pregnancy. Is it still enough? do you need more? Does it have to be both this semester's and last semester's salaries to cover this semester's expenditures? Something else? I can't see how it could be something else." He had, after all, already included 'more.' Money was never different, it was only more or less. "But it might."

"Well, Bill, the salary was supposed to cover the extra clothes of being a TA. That didn't include this dress, which I don't plan to wear to class." Sure. They hadn't considered the cost of pregnancy back when they were making the budget, but -- when they'd agreed to the pregnancy, or to try for the pregnancy -- they'd agreed that there would be extra expenses.

"Okay. Does that mean that the extra cost of having a baby starts now? That's okay. We have some savings, and we have tons of credit. I don't want to use the credit for things we'll keep needing, but it's going to be extra for the baby. If it's going to be extra for the pregnancy, too, so be it."

"You don't know how much maternity clothes cost. And it's so much for things you'll only wear for a short period."

"As a matter of fact, I won't wear them at all." Carolyn was not amused. "But, that isn't what's critical. Look, last year you were a graduate student who taught a course. This year, you're a faculty member. Why are you teaching?"

"Remember? I told you that Kindle won't recommend me for a teaching position until I do some teaching he can see." Sure he remembered. He was reminding her of the reasons. Some days the girl was charming; some days her assumption that he was an idiot grated.

"And that means that his recommendation of you as a faculty member is based on what he observes you doing as a junior faculty member," he pointed out. "So the wardrobe is part of the investment. It's annoying as hell that this investment will be expended for clothes that can't be worn the next year, but that can't be changed. So -- and this is horrible budgeting, but so be it -- first you buy the clothes you need now. While you're at it figure out how much more you'll need, and price them. Then, sometime next week, we'll add that to the budget. I still don't think we'll have any budget left on the day of the delivery. We'll have to start over. Fine. As I said, we have tons of credit. And the Andalusia top execs will look with favor on that sort of borrowing. Being a spendthrift is one thing; being a parent is another." Which was really his main worry. If he went bankrupt and kept his job, it would be a minor setback. If he was hounded by bill collectors so that the men deciding his future found out, they might well decide that he wasn't competent to manage.

"You're saying buy maternity clothes?" Bingo!

"I don't see the alternative. Do you?" And then he did. "Really, you know, I could keep you in the apartment barefoot and pregnant, and in this apartment more than your feet could be bare. I don't think, though, that that would really match your career objectives."

"All right. I'll go shopping Monday." And she did. Or, at least, she had new clothes to show him Friday night when he got home. They went out to dinner, and her beauty lit up the place. Her shopping hadn't extended to a new coat, but the one she'd got for last Christmas still -- just -- fit. When he rose to help her on with it, he had to speak.

"I must say, Mrs. P, that you look stunning."

"You want to be stunned, wait for the bills." That wasn't a thought he wanted her to keep. It was a little unfair, anyway, to put the onus of her penny-pinching on him.

"I bet it cost less than half what this suit did."

Back in their apartment, Carolyn hid herself in her office. She was probably smoking in there, but she was also working hard. Between shopping for clothes and housework, she'd probably put in less than a 40-hour week on her dissertation. He had to admit, though, that the girl worked hard at something almost all the time. Having won at least part of his point, he finally figured out what he should have said. Well, maybe he could use it. If not, it wasn't as though his actual words had been a complete failure.

Meanwhile, he puttered and then watched television. It had been a stressful week, and he went to bed early. He left the bedside lamp on, and read Crain's Chicago Business for a while, but that was not the most exciting bedside reading. He was asleep, if not deeply asleep, when Carolyn came in. He woke when her side of the bed sank under her weight.

She'd brushed her teeth, and he could hardly taste the cigarettes when they kissed. She might have spent hours on her dissertation, but she'd left it in the office and brought all of herself to the kiss. When his tongue withdrew from her mouth, hers chased it. Finally, he could kiss the rest of her. He began with the pregnancy.

From there, he kissed up to her nearer melon while stroking down to her thighs. When she spread these in welcome he took her entire sweet snatch in his hand. It was so warm, so much her, and so furry.

"I love you," he told her. And he did; he loved all of her, not just her snatch and her sexy melons.

"Oh, Bill."

He explored her snatch, finding it juicy and even warmer inside than out. Meanwhile, he kissed up her melon. He managed to reach her nub and the tip of the melon at the same moment. Carolyn, always responsive, responded with a hissing indrawn breath. He stroked some of her lubrication up to the nub, and stroked across it until she went over. He kept with her until she'd gone over completely and sunk back against the mattress. Then he leaned over to the other melon. He kissed down from the tip.

Soon, he was moving to get into position for a more intimate kiss, keeping his hand on her snatch for the whole time. When he was between her legs, he gave the pregnancy another kiss. Then he moved back to lick and kiss her inner thighs. From this position, he could smell her arousing aroma, but he teased himself by delaying the taste as long as he could.

When he could no longer resist, he parted her outer lips with his fingers and her inner ones with his tongue. There must have been a direct connection between his taste buds and his dick, for when he first licked her lips, his dick stiffened to the point of trembling. She responded to the touch of his tongue on her nub by rising from eh bed, and he had to rest his lips and nose on her mound to continue through her constant undulations.

When she crossed over, he sucked lightly on her nub. Then he rose above her and crept upward in the bed. He kissed her melons, but only in passing. He paused with his cock at the entrance of her snatch to get his arms in position to support him. Then he sank into her welcoming warmth.

"Yeah," she said as her snatch embraced his cock. It was so smooth, so warm. She rose upward to meet him until his weight pressed her down. Conscious of the danger of crushing their child, he reached his left hand back to raise her knee. Then he placed it where her near melon would fall onto it when they rolled to their sides. He shifted his weight and pushed with his right arm until they were lying partly on their sides. He grasped her bun with his right hand.

Lying like that, he drove into her and pulled her against him. Then he relaxed and moved back out. Taking the slowest strokes he could bear, he felt her slickness, her warmth, slide along his length and over the sensitive head of his dick. She slid a foot over his calf and her heel behind his knee. She pulled with it as she pushed her mound back against his thrusts. As he buried his dick in her snatch, it pushed to engulf him more. He was gritting his teeth to hold himself back when she went over.

"Oh, God," he exclaimed as she clasped around him. He could no longer resist. He was already erupting as he thrust into her more strongly than before and squeezed her bun. Her snatch milked his softening cock of whatever was left.

Conscious of the baby growing beneath him, if not directly beneath him, he rolled back before lying there gasping for breath. When he had recovered, he rolled far enough to turn off the bedside lamp. They got into position and spooned. He remembered the argument for maternity clothes which had come to him much too late. Well, why not now?

"Y'know, you're still a grad student, but you're also my wife. You're used to dressing like a starving grad student, but there is nothing wrong with dressing like the wife of an executive." It had seemed clearer when he was thinking it out than it had sounded.

"Hm?" She seemed too want an explanation. Certainly, she would permit one.

"Seems to me that the dress shops have more maternity clothes for the wives of executives than for starving grad students. Sensible of them, don't you think? So go with it. Dress like you're actually married to me. After all, the pregnancy would be a scandal if you weren't."

She gave no response to that but to snuggle a bit more against him. Well, whether he'd persuaded her or not, that was something he could agree with. He patted her pregnancy and then slid his hand up to clasp a melon as he went back to sleep.