ready to give birth, not ready at all.
Her heart raced, pumping icy perspiration out of every pore. She licked her lips. They were rough, cracked. Dry as dirt.
The doctor was waiting at the hospital. When she’d phoned a few hours ago, he’d told her that everything would be all right. And she wanted to believe him. She did believe him.
The image of kind blue eyes and a rumpled, grandfatherly smile warmed her heart. Dr. Dowling had been good to her. He understood how difficult things had been since Clyde left, and had gone out of his way to spend extra time during her appointments, time to calm, to soothe her. Peggy longed for that comfort now, for the gentle touch of proficient hands, the resonant, parental voice that made her feel safe and secure.
He was waiting for her. At the hospital. Now.
Where the hell was that cab?
A glance at the front window confirmed that morning had indeed come. Cold, wet. Gray. The fallen tree loomed enormous, its massive trunk blocking all but a bleak sliver of gloomy sky.
The thought occurred to her that there was no way for her to get out through the front door, no way for anyone else to get in. But Peggy couldn’t worry about that now, because a viselike tightness was working its way from the base of her spine to around her belly.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
The pain swelled, twisted, sliced like a dull blade. Tears sprang to her eyes. She curled forward, wanting to scream, but her lungs were in spasm.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Peggy gritted her teeth, dug her fingers into the sofa cushions and imagined a hundred innovative ways for the ex-husband who’d abandoned her to die ugly.
* * *
Travis was horrified. He pulled onto the dirt shoulder behind a clunky old sedan and fervently hoped he was at the wrong address. Even in the gray, rain-dark pall he could see that anyone left inside that crushed structure needed an ambulance, not a cab.
He exited the checkered taxi and headed toward the duplex, veering around a massive root ball jutting from soaked earth. Closer examination revealed that except for the porch, now a splintered nest of rubble under the toppled tree, the dwelling itself seemed to be relatively unscathed.
Shading his eyes, Travis squinted between blowing pine boughs and saw a snapped porch beam had crushed one of the unit’s two doors. The other door was undamaged, but completely blocked by the tree trunk, which he judged to be about four feet in diameter.
He cupped his mouth and shouted, “Conway Cab. Anyone in there?” A movement behind one of the windows caught his eye. He shifted toward the unit on the left, thought he saw a shadow inside the room. Before he could focus, the shadow seemed to collapse, melt in upon itself and was gone.
Shifting, Travis grabbed a sturdy limb and hoisted himself up onto the fallen trunk, hoping for a better look, but gray light threw his own reflection back at him, obscuring his view inside. A windblown whip of pine needles stung his face. He swatted at it, lost his grip and dropped back to the mucky ground.
The sky darkened again. Clouds swirled, boiled black. The wind whistled a warning and began to howl.
Travis swore and pulled up his jacket collar until wet denim chafed his earlobes. He longed for warmth, the arid desert heat, the soft crush of dry sawdust beneath his boots. Cheering crowds. Bellowing livestock. Rawhide rasping his palms. The pungent smell of animalistic power, of sweating victory and bloody defeat.
Ah, he missed it. Just a few more weeks and he’d be back on the circuit, back where he belonged. Travis could hardly wait.
Ducking into the wind, he gripped the brim of his hat and circled back around the giant root ball toward the rear of the old duplex. A five-foot wooden fence creaked against the wind.
“Great,” he muttered, automatically wrapping a protective arm around his taped ribs. At the moment, climbing a fence didn’t much appeal to him, but there didn’t seem to be a whole bunch of options. A quick glance around confirmed nothing but a few vacant lots backing up to a conifer forest. No help there.
Issuing a pained sigh, he hoisted himself up and over, wincing as he dropped into the yard. He straightened slowly, waiting for the pain to ease. Doc had warned him that ribs fractured that badly were slow to heal. Slow? Hell, that wasn’t the half of it. A snail could’ve crawled to Texas by the time Travis had mended enough to take a decent breath. He was better now. Not great, but better.
Travis straightened and stretched out the kinks. After a quick glance around the barren square of fenced grass, he strode to the back door of the first duplex, peered through the mullioned window and tapped on the glass.
There was no response, but Travis focused through the galley-style kitchen into the living room of the duplex. There were no lights inside, only slight illumination from a sliver of daylight breaking through the partially blocked front window. He saw the outline of a sofa, the triangular shadow of a lampshade and a table of some kind. His gaze narrowed, focusing on the floor beside the table. Something was heaped there, a crumpled silhouette that could have been a wadded blanket or a bundle of laundry.
But the bundle was moving. The crumpled silhouette was a person. A person in trouble.
Travis frantically rattled the knob. It was locked, so he took a step back and kicked the door in. In less than a heartbeat, he knelt beside a woman who was curled on her side, making strange hissing sounds through her teeth.
He laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am?”
She opened her eyes, huge pools of emerald terror in a colorless face.
Travis’s breath backed up his throat. “It’s all right,” he muttered with considerably more confidence than he felt. “You’re going to be fine, ma’am, just fine.”
Her eyes widened, then squinched shut. To his shock, she formed her lips into an O and began to pant. He blinked, wondering why she would be overly warm when the room was colder than a barn in winter. For some odd reason, he noticed the bulge of her abdomen long before the reason for it struck him. When it did, he danged near went into shock.
“Oh, no,” he murmured, utterly transfixed by the realization. “No, no, ma’am, you can’t do this…not now. Please, lady—”
Her cheeks flexed with each quick puff.
“Oh, Lordy—”
Puff, puff, puff.
“Ma’am, please stop. This just really isn’t a good time—”
A shudder jittered through her body, then she suddenly went limp as a squashed snake and her breath slid out with a long, slow hiss.
Travis sat back on his boot heels, wiped his forehead. “Yes’m, that’s better. Much obliged.”
She looked up, her eyes bright with moisture. “What are you doing here?”
“Conway Cab Company, ma’am.” He licked his lips. “You did call for a cab, didn’t you? Oh, well, sure, sure you did, but maybe, ah—” he swallowed hard “—maybe under the circumstances, an ambulance would be a better choice.”
Her
