he’d fashioned out of a flattened cardboard box and layers of towels. Slipping his arm beneath her back, he propped her head and shoulders up on the cushion he’d ripped from Laszlo’s chair. “How’s this?”
“Better,” she said. “Thanks. This is really nice of you, Del. Laszlo and Joanne looked so upset, I’m glad you thought of…bringing me back…here…oh!”
“Maggie?”
She inhaled sharply, her face flushing red. “Uh. Here…comes…another one.”
Del caught her hand, breathing with her as she worked her way through the contraction. Where the hell was that ambulance? The pains were coming fast and hard now, three minutes apart and more than a full minute long. Beneath the thin fabric of Maggie’s maternity dress, her abdomen was clenching into the shape of a loaf. The standard SPEAR firstaid training didn’t include any obstetrics, and this situation was a far cry from the calvings Del had witnessed on his parents’ farm, but he was fairly certain the baby’s birth was imminent.
He glanced at the clock on the wall as the contraction finally eased. Longer than the last one. Damn. “The paramedics should be here any minute.”
“She’s as impatient as I am,” Maggie said.
Del rubbed his palm lightly over her taut abdomen and shifted his gaze to her face. “I think you’re right about that.”
“My baby. She must know how much I want to see her.” She exhaled shakily and smiled.
Del barely saw the way Maggie’s dark blond hair was plastered to her forehead, or how her features tightened from the agony her body was going through. Her smile was so radiant, it eclipsed everything else.
The smile turned to a bared-teeth grimace as she rode out another pain. Del did what he could to help her through the next contraction, and each one after that, encouraging her to breathe while her body worked and then using conversation to distract her during the brief respites.
Yet he didn’t have to do all that much—she was a marvel of courage. He had known seasoned agents who couldn’t handle pain as well as Maggie Rice. This woman was refusing to let anything dampen her spirit.
But that didn’t really surprise him. He’d been admiring Maggie’s spirit since the first time he’d seen her. She always had a warm smile and a pleasant word for everyone. Open, caring and genuinely kind, she was a sharp contrast to the world he inhabited.
That was why he felt so drawn to her. He’d started coming to the coffee shop because it was convenient, situated only a few blocks from the surveillance site he and Bill were working. It hadn’t taken him long to learn the details of the pregnant waitress’s predicament. She’d been seduced and abandoned by a married man. Hers was a hard luck story that could have turned any other woman bitter.
Yet there was nothing bitter about Maggie. She never failed to make a special fuss over any children who happened to come into the restaurant, and on more than one occasion Del had seen her slip an extra sandwich to a customer who looked down-and-out. The camaraderie she shared with the rest of the staff was more typical of a small town than a big city. And there had even been times when she’d brought in flowers to put in the little juice glasses to brighten up the tables.
She would have liked those daffodils. But he couldn’t give her the wrong idea. He couldn’t get close to her or get involved in her life. Because of his job…
Oh, hell. It was too late to think about that now. He was already involved up to his elbows. If the ambulance didn’t arrive in the next five minutes—
“Del!” Maggie cried, her eyes widening.
He checked the clock. The last contraction had scarcely finished and already her body was being contorted by another one. “Hang on,” he urged. “The paramedics are on their way.”
“I can…feel…something…” Her words ended in a groan.
“Maggie?”
She clutched his hand hard enough for her short nails to draw blood. “Something’s happening.”
Until now, he’d endeavored to let her preserve some modesty, but the distress in her voice told him this wasn’t the time to worry about the niceties. He pried her fingers loose from his hand and lifted the hem of her dress past her hips.
One look and he realized the birth wasn’t merely imminent, it was already in progress.
There would be no help from that other waitress, Joanne. She had turned green merely at the sight of Maggie’s water breaking. The cook was almost as bad. And Del wasn’t going to trust Maggie to some stranger in the restaurant. Ignoring the fact that he was essentially a stranger, he positioned himself between her feet.
Maggie felt as if her body were being ripped open with each successive contraction, but she kept her lips pressed tightly together to keep the scream inside. She didn’t want her scream to be the first sound her baby heard. She wanted her child to know she was loved and welcomed and cherished…but oh, God, she couldn’t endure this much longer….
“I can see the head,” Del said. “You’re right. Your baby is as impatient as you are.”
She felt Del’s hands on her thighs, gently easing her legs apart. She didn’t care that she barely knew him—it didn’t enter her mind. Modesty was irrelevant. She was running on instinct. “You can see her?” she gasped.
“Yes.”
“Oh, God. I want to see her, too.”
“Just keep on doing what you’re doing. You’ll get there.”
The urge to push was overwhelming. Maggie held her breath, giving in to the command of her body. Time shrank to a bright pinpoint. Dimly she was aware of Del’s calm encouragement, the warm touch of his hands, the strength he was giving her just by his presence…but all of her thoughts, her energy, her being, were focused on the task nature had given her.
“That’s it, Maggie,” Del murmured. “A little more, just a little more.”
She didn’t know how long it lasted. She lost track of everything outside the intimate connection between her and the man she was trusting to deliver her baby. Gradually, her body no longer seemed to be fighting her. Every muscle was working, straining, tightening, pushing…until suddenly, just when she thought she would tear in half, the pressure eased.
And the room was filled with the most glorious sound Maggie had heard in her life. It was the tiny, tremulous wail of her newborn child.
Exhausted, drenched in sweat, Maggie somehow found the strength to lift her head.
Del was kneeling between her legs, his large hands carefully cradling a beautiful, wrinkled, red-faced, squirming miracle. “It’s a girl,” he said, his voice hushed. His gaze met hers, his amber eyes unabashedly moist. “Congratulations, Maggie. You have a daughter.”
Chapter 2
“‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’” Bill Grimes intoned. With his bald head and habitually benign expression, he could have passed for an absentminded English professor, an image Bill deliberately played on with the pipe he held between his teeth and his penchant
