sure he was covered.
As swiftly as possible, he got rid of her underwear, pushed back the oversized blouse that was covering her swollen belly and took a closer look at what he was up against.
“Good news, you’re crowning,” he told her.
Her eyes felt wet and there was a ringing noise in her ears. She tried to concentrate on what he was telling her.
“What’s...that?”
He looked up and tried to smile encouragingly at her. “It means that you’re going to be a mama soon,” Dugan said.
That wasn’t good enough. This pain was ripping her in half. “HOW... SOOON?”
“Very soon,” he assured her. “As a matter of fact, it won’t be long now,” he said, feeling almost as amazed as he figured she probably was right about now. Hope you were right, Aunt Maeve. “Okay, Scarlet, when I tell you to push, I want you to push. Push!” he ordered.
The woman grabbed on to part of the steering wheel with one hand and the back of the headrest with the other. Breathing hard, she arched and pushed down hard for all she was worth.
Mentally, Dugan counted up to five.
“Okay, stop. Stop!” he ordered her again when she didn’t. “Scarlet, I know this is hard, but you have to stop when I tell you to stop,” Dugan told the frazzled woman.
The look she gave him said a lot more than she was able to at this point. It didn’t take him much to fill in the blanks.
“Yes, I know, it’s your body, you’re in pain and I’m just the jerk issuing orders. But if you push too hard, you’re going to wind up tearing things I can’t repair here,” he warned her. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Her eyes were on him and then she finally nodded.
“Okay, ready?” he asked. She looked at him with wide eyes and he told her, “Push!”
“I...am!” she cried, squeezing her eyes closed as she pushed down for all she was worth.
She fully expected this to be it—but it wasn’t.
She fell back against the seat cushion, breathing hard and ready to give up.
As if sensing what was going on through her head, Dugan told her, “You can do this, Scarlet. You know you can. C’mon, just one more time.”
“I...don’t...believe...you,” she whimpered, panting and trying very hard to catch her breath.
Her head was spinning, making her feel as if she was going to go on like this forever, in pain and pushing until she died.
“C’mon, Scarlet, you’re made of better stuff than this. Just one more time,” Dugan urged her, repeating the words he’d already used.
“I...hate...you!”
“I can live with that,” he told her. “Now push!” he ordered.
She had no choice. It was as if the baby had taken control of her instead of the other way around. The baby was pushing its way out.
“It’s...coming!”
“It sure is,” Dugan agreed, excited. “One more push,” he told her. “Just one more—that’s it,” he encouraged. “That’s it!”
And then, just like that, he found himself holding a baby in his hands. For a second, Dugan was in complete, mind-numbing awe.
Despite everything he’d told her, he had never been in this position before. He’d never actually had to put his training—which was far from recent—to use like this before.
And then Dugan came to life.
“Here,” he told the brand-new mother, placing the baby on her stomach. “Hold her and don’t move,” he ordered.
“It’s a girl?” the woman asked him, relief highlighted in her face.
“Oh, yeah,” he answered, realizing that he hadn’t said that before. “It’s a girl.”
The next moment, he was taking out a knife from his pocket. It had been a gift from his mother for his fourteenth birthday, the last gift she had ever given him and he was never without it.
“Do you have a paperclip?” he asked the new mother.
She was holding the baby in her arms, totally stunned and totally in love with the baby girl she was holding. She blinked as she looked up at him.
“A what?”
“A paperclip,” he repeated. “I’m going to need something to temporarily stem any blood that might start flowing from the cut.” Dugan was already several steps ahead in his mind.
“What blood?” she asked, looking at the baby, panicking. “Is there blood?”
“No, but there will be when I cut the cord,” he told her.
“Oh.” She thought for a moment, then asked, “Will a hairclip do?”
He put his hand out. “It might. Let me see it.”
“It’s in my hair,” the woman told him. She was still having trouble catching her breath. “You’re going to have to get it out,” she told him, almost apologizing. “My hands are full.”
He grinned at her. “Right.”
Leaning over the baby and looking closely at the new mother’s head, he saw the hairclip. She’d had it loosely holding back her dark-blond hair. He took it out as best he could, trying not to pull. He failed.
“Sorry,” he apologized for the umpteenth time. “Got it,” he told her. “Okay, now for the last part.”
She eyed the knife, her apprehension growing again. “Is this going to hurt her?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Dugan said it in such a way that she felt she could believe him. “Okay,” she said tentatively.
Taking the knife back in his hand, he quickly cut the cord, then swiftly placed the hairclip just at the baby’s end of it. Once he was sure the clip would hold—he watched it for a minute—he stripped off his hoodie.
“Now what are you doing?” the woman asked him, not sure what to think.
He had delivered her baby, but she knew nothing about this man, other than he’d said he was a cop. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. But even if he was one, that still wasn’t enough to convince her that everything else was all right.
She looked up at him now, wondering if she could get away with her baby if she had to.
“It’s chilly,” Dugan told her. “The baby’s going to need something wrapped around her while we wait for the ambulance,”
