Читать книгу Baby's Watch - Justine Davis - Страница 7

Ana knew she was in trouble. Jewel had taken the Hopechest children into town for a treat, a movie and then ice cream at Miss Sue’s. Although Jewel had asked her to accompany them, Ana’s back had been aching fiercely all day. She had seized the chance for some quiet in the empty house; with Macy Ward, the recreational therapist at Hopechest, away on her honeymoon with the sheriff’s brother, Fisher Yates, Hope chest was completely deserted—and peaceful—tonight.

She had dozed fitfully through the ache and awakened after an hour to the empty house. She had panicked, knowing now the reason her back had been aching so.

The baby.

When the first contraction ripped through her it caught her off guard and she screamed. The sound echoed off the walls of the deserted house, and she bit her lip in the effort to stop another cry.

As the pain ebbed, for a brief moment she allowed herself to hope it was only a false alarm. Surely she would not be so unlucky as to give birth at the worst possible moment, when she had no one here to help?

And why would this surprise you? she asked herself sternly. Your judgment in life has been so sterling thus far.

Slowly, she sat up, relieved when she was able to do so. Her water had broken, she couldn’t deny that, but perhaps the baby would wait at least until Jewel returned. She thought about calling the Bar None, but she was certain Jewel had mentioned that Clay Colton was out with his ex-wife.

It seemed like an odd thing to her; she could no more imagine going back to Alberto Cardenas than she could imagine stopping this baby from coming. Not now that she knew he was as bad as her father. But she knew not everyone was as unlucky—or unwise—as she was.

On that thought, a second contraction hit, shocking another cry out of her. This time she had the presence of mind to look at the clock; timing was important, was it not?

Tears brimmed in her eyes and she told herself it was the pain. She would not cower and whine, she simply would not. Determined, she tried to stand. If she could walk, perhaps she could stave this off until help arrived.

Her first steps convinced her of the folly of that notion. She made it to the chest of drawers a few feet away before another pain struck, sending her to her knees; she barely managed to cling to the heavy piece of furniture and keep from falling.

In the process she pulled over the small statue of a roadrunner Jewel had so kindly given her when she had arrived here. She had seen it in the library and exclaimed that it reminded her of home. Thinking that Ana was homesick, Jewel had offered the piece. Ana had accepted it, temporarily, thinking it would serve as a good reminder of all the reasons why she had left.

The statue shattered on the tile floor, having just missed the colorful rug in front of the chest. Ana barely had time to regret the miscue before another pain hit. She did not have to look at the clock to know it was too soon; the pains were too close together to pretend.

Her baby was coming.

She was alone.

She was going to have to do this herself. Somehow.

And she would, she told herself fiercely. She’d gotten her baby into this, it was up to her to handle it. She—

Her self-lecture broke off at a sound from the porch. For an instant she felt relieved until she realized she had not heard the ranch van pulling up the driveway, or heard the door open to the garage, which was next to her room.

It was not Jewel.

It was not anyone who had arrived openly by car. And while it was possible, even a frequent occurrence, that a visitor would arrive on horseback, she had not heard that either. And at this hour of night, that did not seem likely.

No answer she could come up with was good.

A tall shadow shot across the tile floor, hiding the gleam of the broken pieces of the statue. Ana choked back the scream that rose to her throat. She grabbed the largest, sharpest shard of the shattered roadrunner. It was not much, but it was all she had to protect herself and her baby.

As the shadow moved closer and she found herself staring up into the eyes of a tall, dark, menacing stranger, she thought she was going to have to defend the two of them.

Trouble, he’d expected.

A very pregnant woman, he hadn’t.

He’d done his homework on this place, this Hopechest Ranch. He’d been a little taken aback when he’d learned that the Hopechest Foundation that funded it was the pet project of Meredith Colton, who was his aunt. And potential first lady.

But he hadn’t heard even a rumor that the place helped illegals. He considered the woman’s obviously Hispanic appearance and wondered if she had run away from home. Everything he’d read had indicated the place was a home for troubled teens, not pregnant ones. Although maybe the two sometimes went hand in hand.

It occurred to him momentarily that he might well have been considered one of those teens not long ago. But he’d never thought of himself as “troubled,” just determined to have fun. There’d been too little fun in his life, and he’d been set on making up for that.

And then it hit him. Was he perhaps closer than he’d realized to his goal? Had he inadvertently stumbled onto yet another aspect of the investigation, something they didn’t even know?

Was this pregnant woman here not just to have her baby, but to get rid of it? Was it already bought and paid? She didn’t look or act the type, but what did he know about that? Perhaps her protective posture was to save her investment, not her child.

The woman on her knees doubled over, and he heard the moan she tried to hold back. She was dressed in some flowing cotton gown in a pure white that gleamed in the moonlight. She was clutching something in her hand, something that looked like a piece of broken pottery. Suddenly she straightened slightly and waved it at him with an unsteady hand.

“¡Salir de aqui!” she said, her voice slightly steadier than her hand.

As she told him to get out of here, he realized she had some idea of using that little shard as a weapon. He nearly laughed aloud, but she was so clearly frightened he quashed the urge.

“No tengas miedo,” he said, although he doubted that simply telling her not to be afraid would alleviate the problem. After all, from her point of view he’d turned up out of the dark, she was clearly alone, and in pain…

In labor.

Belatedly it hit him.

My God, she was having that baby now.

Even as he thought it she cried out again, hunching protectively over her swollen belly.

“Damn,” he muttered. “You’re going to have that thing right now, aren’t you?”

“That thing is a baby!” she snapped in perfect English.

He held up his hands at the sudden fierceness of her tone. “Sorry,” he said. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

“It is coming, yes,” she said, and suddenly the fierceness vanished, replaced by an almost tangible fear. Ryder realized how young she was, even younger than he was. Twenty, maybe twenty-two?

“Now?”

He was more than a little scared himself. He didn’t know a thing about this process, and at the moment wished he had stayed where he belonged, out there on that fruitless, useless stakeout.

“Right now,” she said grimly, doubling over once more.

“Damn,” he said again.

He bent to try to help her get up, but she pulled away from him. Instead she grabbed the edge of the heavy, carved chest beside her, and tried to pull herself to her feet. She fell back to her knees as another pain apparently hit.

Close together, those pains, he thought. That meant it really was imminent, didn’t it? He’d seen movies, read stories…

But this was real life, about to happen right in front of him, and he was the only one here. No empathetic woman to take over. He should have paid more attention to his sister, but the very idea made him nervous and he’d avoided the subject entirely.

What if he called Georgie? Would she even talk to him? As far as his family knew, he was still in prison, he guessed. By now even Georgie, his sometimes partner in mischief as children, had probably washed her hands of him. She’d somehow turned very serious when she’d had a child to think about. Children really did change everything.

The woman moaned, shifting on the floor as if trying to escape the pain. The movement took her into the shaft of moonlight that came through the front window of the room. And he realized with a sudden jolt that she was lovely. Her long, dark hair fell in thick waves well past her shoulders. Her eyes were just as dark and caught the light enough to show him they were wide with pain and brimming with moisture.

She moaned again, and the helpless sound of it galvanized him. He didn’t know if it was some instinctive male gene that drove him toward protecting a woman in her most helpless yet miraculous time. Or maybe something more personal. He only knew he couldn’t just leave her like this. She needed help, and he was the only one around.

Unluckily for you, chica, he thought to himself.

He scooped her up off the floor. It was clumsy, because of her bulk and the effort not to hurt her any more, but once he had her he was a little surprised; he’d thought she would be heavier, what with the baby. It hit him that he was carrying one person back to the bed, but before long there would be two. The idea rocked him. He’d never been this close to a birth before.

“You must have done something to get ready for this,” he said.

“There are…blankets and things…in the trunk.” She made a gesture toward the heavy trunk at the foot of the bed. He went to it quickly, lifted the lid, found the things she’d mentioned. He got out the pile of soft cotton cloths, spotted a pair of scissors in a sealed package and grabbed those, too.

Cord, he thought. You had to cut the cord, right?

God, he was way out of his depth.

“There’s no one to call?” he asked her, wanting to be absolutely certain before he committed to this.

“No one…could be here…in time.”

She was panting now, and he wondered if she’d taken some class in special breathing—didn’t they always say stuff about that?—or if it just happened naturally.

He laid her gently down on the bed. She cried out as another pain seized her. He reached over and turned on a bedside lamp, turned back and forgot to breathe for a moment.

She was more than pretty, she was beautiful. Her wide, dark eyes were huge, gleaming in the light. Her skin was a light, luscious olive tone—smooth, flawless, glowing. Her lips were full, soft, and slightly parted as she tried hard not to moan; he could see the ferocious effort she was making. It jogged him back to reality, and the urgent matter at hand.

“I don’t know anything about this,” he told her. “You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“And you think…I know?” Her laugh wasn’t bitter, but it wasn’t amused, either. And for the first time he wondered how she’d gotten into this situation. He couldn’t quite believe she’d done it intentionally, getting pregnant to sell the baby. It was feasible. But something in her dark, exotic eyes, and the way she looked up at him, made that impossible for him to believe, at least right now.

And it didn’t really matter right now. Whether she was involved in the smuggling ring or not didn’t change what was about to happen. Working on some combination of stories heard and movies seen, he did what seemed reasonable, starting with rolling up his sleeves and washing his hands in the bathroom just down the hall.

“How old are you?” he asked when he came back.

She looked startled, then wary.

“I’m only asking because my sister got pregnant four years ago. She was only eighteen.”

The woman smothered another moan, then answered. “I am twenty-two.”

Better, he guessed. But not much. “She fell for a smooth-talking city boy. He deserted her.”

It wasn’t a question, nor was there any emotion in the flat assertion.

“Is that what happened to you?” he asked softly. “He deserted you, when he found out you were pregnant?”

He found himself hoping she’d say yes, that she was here because she simply had no choice, not because she had the soul of a mercenary.

“No,” she said, her tone still flat. “It was I…who ran.”

Ryder blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

A sharp cry broke from her, and he realized the pains were coming closer together, and even he knew what that meant. No more time to try and find out who this woman was or why she was here, what her motives were.

“Hot water,” he muttered. They always talked about that, too, didn’t they?

“No…time.”

He realized she meant that literally.

“The baby…is coming.”

Now. She meant right now.

Ryder stifled the urge to run. Her hands flailed wildly, as if seeking purchase. He grabbed them, startled at the strength in them as she cried out yet again.

“It’s all right,” he said, squeezing her hands. “We’ll get through it.” Somehow, he added silently to himself.

He had no plan; he worked strictly on instinct. He kept up a stream of encouraging words, trying to distract her—and perhaps himself—from the embarrassingly intimate position they found themselves in. He wasn’t sure it helped, but when he paused she asked him to keep talking.

Until it started to actually happen.

He’d had no idea birth was such a messy thing. He’d always had some image that the kid slid out and got wrapped in a blanket and handed over. But this was wet, bloody and shockingly brutal. He didn’t know who to marvel at more—the woman going through it, or the child for surviving it.

If, of course, it did.

It was when he first spotted the baby’s head emerging that his gut truly knotted. Dark hair, nearly as dark as his own. He was a little startled. He thought babies were born bald.

The woman screamed then. It was a rending sound, and he touched her gently, trying to soothe her.

“It’s coming,” he said, even though he realized that no one knew that better just now than she did. “It’ll be over soon.”

She seemed to take heart from that, and sucked in a breath.

“Can you push?” he asked diffidently, wondering if that was just a stupid cliché, too.

She grunted then, a primal, earthy sound. Then again, and again.

Women, he thought. You heard about what they went through in childbirth, but until you saw it, you didn’t really realize how tough they were.

To Ryder, it seemed to happen fast then, although he suspected it wouldn’t be wise to say so to the straining woman. He should be paying more attention to the baby, and shifted just in time to see a tiny pair of shoulders emerge.

It did happen fast then. He reached to support the tiny thing she was expelling.

The moment he touched it, the “thing” became real to him. He stared down at the baby who barely filled his two hands. So tiny, so helpless…but it was a life, another human being, a fellow inhabitant of this glorious planet, and he’d helped it arrive.

This was big, he thought.

Huge.

How could something so incredibly small, so fragile and delicate, make him feel like this?

“It’s a girl,” he whispered. “A little girl.”

The woman made a sound he couldn’t begin to describe. She sounded exhausted, but there was something else in her voice when she instructed, “You must cut the cord.”

He winced, even though he knew that. He followed her brisk instructions, glad she was able to walk him through it. She might be young, but she’d clearly done her homework on this.

Or maybe women were just born knowing, he thought, despite her earlier claim to ignorance.

“I just leave it like that?” he asked, looking doubtfully at the stub of the cord still attached to the baby who appeared to be, to his amazement, looking around. Her eyes were brown, he thought, a little numbly. Dark, rich, espresso brown, like her mother’s. Her head looked a little funny, misshapen, but he guessed that was normal.

“It will fall off of its own accord later,” the woman said. “You must clean her. Her mouth, nose, so that she breathes easily.”

He did his best, aware that he was shaking slightly. And when the tiny child in his hands let out a protesting wail, he found himself grinning; things were working fine, it seemed.

“She’s got lungs,” he said, feeling a bit loopy, as if he’d downed one tequila too many. To his surprise the new mother laughed, as if she hadn’t just been through hell.

When she was clean and dry, he wrapped the baby awkwardly, but with a need for gentleness unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He took a last look down into the tiny face.

“Give her to me.”

The new mother’s voice was shaky, and when he looked from daughter to mother he saw fear in her eyes. She reached out, as if she were afraid he would refuse to hand over the baby. Ryder wondered suddenly if she knew what was going on around here, and had the sudden thought that she might suspect him of being connected to the baby-smuggling ring.

Well, she’s right, isn’t she? he told himself.

Then he put the baby into her mother’s outstretched arms. The look that mother gave him nearly stopped his heart cold.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

For the first time in his life with a woman, Ryder was speechless. All he could do was look at her, and at the tiny bit of humanity he’d just helped bring into the world. He didn’t know how he felt, only that whatever it was, it was more intense than he’d ever experienced before.

And on some level, somewhere deep inside him, he knew he would never be the same again.