phone from him and shaking it as if she could bring it back to life.
“I’ll help any way I can.”
She kept shaking the phone.
He took it from her and set it back into the cradle. “Shaking it won’t help. The line must have gone down.”
“The power line?” she asked.
“No,” he said with a grateful look at the lamplight, “power’s still on. I don’t know for how long, though.”
“This is not happening,” she whispered, and sank down onto the edge of the bed.
“Yeah,” John said quietly, “it is.” Though he wished to hell it wasn’t.
She shot him a quick look. “I had this planned, you know.”
“You planned this?” He took a seat beside her.
Unbelievably enough, a short laugh shot from her throat. “No, I didn’t plan this. I planned how it would be when the baby came.”
John just looked at her. “You can plan that stuff?”
She nodded, more to herself than to him. “You just have to be organized, is all.” She glanced at him and went on. “At home, I have the doctor’s number by the phone, my packed suitcase by the front door and the baby’s layette all pressed and ready.”
“That’s a plan,” he said, and told himself she’d make a halfway decent General.
She folded her hands in what was left of her lap and entwined her fingers. “This isn’t how I thought it would be. I thought I’d be in the hospital. With nurses. With doctors. With medication.”
Her voice notched up a bit higher with every word, and he felt the tension inside her escalate. He had to keep her calm. Hysteria wasn’t going to help either of them through this.
“But I’m stuck here. In a cabin. With—” she looked at him. “I don’t even know your name.”
“John,” he told her, offering his right hand. “John Paretti.”
Her bottom lip trembled a bit, and that hit him harder than he would have expected.
She took his hand and said, “Annie. Annie Foster.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah,” she said, and her mouth quirked into a mocking smile. “I’ll bet. You’re probably wishing you were out in that blizzard somewhere.”
“Nope,” he said, and surprised himself by meaning it. If he wasn’t here, she’d be alone. And he didn’t like the thought of that at all. Better that he was here. Not that he knew what the hell to do, but at least she wasn’t alone. At least he could be another heartbeat in the cabin. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be at this moment.”
“Really?” she asked, and this time she gave him a genuine smile that hit him like a hard fist to his midsection. “I can think of at least a dozen places I’d rather be.”
“Can’t say as I blame you any,” John said, “but try not to worry.”
“Don’t worry?”
“Well, okay,” he said, keeping his voice low and soft, “I guess you’ll worry, anyway. But the point is, at least you’re not alone. We’ll get through this.”
She reached up and pushed one hand through her short cap of blond curls, “We will, huh?”
John gave her another smile he hoped looked more convincing than it felt and reached for her hand. “Sure. How hard can it be? People have been having babies for centuries.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, “and I wish some of them were here right now.” He smiled, appreciating a woman who could make jokes when things looked black. “Oh, no…here’s another one….” Then she grabbed at him, curling her fingers into his forearm until each one of her nails dug through the fabric of his jacket and the shirt beneath, to bite into his skin. Man, she had a helluva grip.
Misery shimmered across her features. Her lips clamped tightly shut, she breathed quickly, deeply through her nose and closed her eyes as she rode the wave of pain gripping her.
John had never felt so helpless in his life.
Not knowing what else to do, he smoothed his free hand up and down her back in long, comforting strokes. And even through the thick, blue cable-knit sweater she wore, he felt her muscles tighten convulsively.
“Are you okay?” Dumb question, Paretti, he told himself as her fingernails slowly eased back out of his skin. She trembled, and he wanted to pick her up and carry her bodily through the snow. Find a hospital. Find a doctor who could give her something to ease the pain. A doctor who could take care of her and her baby.
And he couldn’t do it. All he could offer her was a shoulder to cry on and the promise that he wouldn’t leave her.
A long, deep breath shuddered into her lungs before she looked up at him. An invisible fist clutched at his heart, squeezing painfully. Sapphire-blue eyes stared back at him, and John saw fear and hope, and unbelievably enough, excitement shining in those vivid depths.
“That one was much stronger,” she told him. “I think the baby’s going to be here soon.”
He buried the knot of panic swelling inside him and said only, “Then let’s get ready to greet it.”
Three
The night crawled on.
She’d been wrong. The baby hadn’t been as close as she’d thought. Minutes were measured in soft moans that tore at John even as he admired the woman who refused to cry out despite the pain that kept blossoming inside her. He knew it was far worse now. He saw the advancement of the pain on her face. Her features tightened, draining her of color. Her blond hair lay damp against her forehead, and those lake-blue eyes of hers were glassy with concentration and agony.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help her.
Helplessness was not something he was used to feeling. Until tonight there’d never been a problem he couldn’t solve. A situation he couldn’t take charge of. As a man—a Marine—he’d prided himself on being able to handle whatever came his way. It was second nature to him to offer help. To fix whatever was broken.
But now, despite his training, despite wishing things were different, he was nothing more than a bystander. All he could do was watch as Mother Nature did what she did best.
And damned if he wasn’t humbled.
As the latest pain faded away, John watched her breathe easier, saw the tension leave her body and was probably more grateful than she for the respite.
“Oh, my,” she whispered and swallowed hard. “That was a hard one.”
He was suddenly aware that his hands were curled into tight fists. Deliberately he relaxed them and walked to her
