want to be in labor any more than he wanted her to be in labor, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t.
“I think I should call 911 to try to get an ambulance out here and get you to the hospital.”
“It’s probably just false labor.”
“Have you been through this before?”
“No,” she admitted. “This is my first. But I’ve read a ton of books on pregnancy and childbirth, and I’m pretty sure what I’m experiencing are just Braxton Hicks contractions.”
He wasn’t convinced, but he also wasn’t going to waste any more time arguing with her. Not with the snow blowing around the way it was and the condition of the roads rapidly getting worse. He pulled out his phone and dialed.
“911. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
He recognized the dispatcher’s voice immediately, and his lips instinctively curved as he recalled a long-ago summer when he and the emergency operator had been, at least for a little while, more than friends. “Hey, Yolanda, it’s Luke Garrett. I was wondering if you could send an ambulance out to my place.”
“What happened?” The clinical detachment in her tone gave way to concern. “Are you hurt?”
“No, it’s not me. I’m with a young woman—”
He glanced at her, his brows raised in silent question.
“Julie Marlowe,” she told him.
“—whose car went into the ditch beside my house.”
“Is she injured?”
“She says no, but she’s pregnant, two weeks from her due date and experiencing what might be contractions.”
“Twinges,” the expectant mother reminded him through the window.
“She insists that they’re twinges,” Luke said, if only to reassure her that he was listening. “But they’re sharp enough that she gasps for breath when they come.”
“Can I talk to her?”
He tapped on the window, and Julie lowered the glass a few more inches to take the device from him. Because she was inside the car with the window still mostly closed, he could only decipher snippets of their conversation, but he got the impression that Yolanda was asking more detailed questions about the progress of her pregnancy, possible complications and if there were any other indications of labor.
A few minutes later, Julie passed the phone back to him.
“If I thought I could get an ambulance through to you, I’d be sending one,” Yolanda told Luke. “But the police have completely shut down Main Street in both directions.”
“But emergency vehicles should be able to get through.”
“If they weren’t all out on other calls,” she agreed. “And the reality is that an expectant mother with no injuries in the early stages of labor, as Julie seems to think she might be, is not an emergency.”
“What if the situation changes?”
“If the situation changes, call me back. Maybe by then the roads will be plowed and reopened and we can get her to the hospital.”
“You don’t sound too optimistic,” he noted.
“The storm dumped a lot of snow fast and there’s no sign that it’s going to stop any time soon. The roads are a mess and emergency crews are tapped.”
He bit back a sigh of frustration. “What if the baby doesn’t want to wait that long?”
“Then you’ll handle it,” she said, and quickly gave him some basic instructions. “And don’t worry—I reassured the expectant mom that Doctor Garrett has done this countless times before.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not.” There was no hint of apology in her tone. “The woman needed reassurance, and I gave it to her.”
And although her statement was technically true, she’d neglected to mention that the majority of the births he’d been involved with had been canine or feline in nature. He had absolutely no experience bringing human babies into the world.
Luke stared at Julie, who gasped as another contraction hit her. “You better get an ambulance here as soon as possible.”
* * *
Julie was still mulling over the information the dispatcher had given her when she saw her Good Samaritan—who was apparently also a doctor—tuck his phone back into the pocket of his jacket.
“Let’s get you up to the house where it’s warm and dry.”
She wished that staying in the car was a viable option. She was more than a little uneasy about going into a stranger’s home, but her feet and her hands were already numb and she had to clench her teeth together to keep them from chattering. She took some comfort from the fact that the emergency operator knew her name and location.
She rolled up the window—no point in letting the inside of the car fill up with snow—and unlocked the door.
As soon as she did, he opened it for her, then offered his other hand to help her out. He must have noticed the iciness of her fingers even through his gloves, because before she’d stepped onto the ground, he’d taken them off his hands and put them on hers. They were toasty warm inside, and she nearly whimpered with gratitude.
He walked sideways up the side of the ditch, holding on to both of her hands to help her do the same. Unfortunately the boots that she’d so happily put on her feet when she set out that morning had smooth leather soles, not exactly conducive to gaining traction on a snowy incline. She slipped a few times and no doubt would have fallen if not for his support. When she finally made it to level ground, he picked her up—scooping her off her feet as if she weighed nothing—and carried her to the passenger side of his truck. She was too startled to protest, and all too conscious of the extra twenty-nine pounds that she was carrying—and now he was carrying. But when he settled her gently on the seat, he didn’t even seem winded.
He drove up the laneway, parked beside the house. When he inserted his key into the lock, she heard a cacophony of excited barking from the other side of the door.
“You have dogs?”
“Just one.” Her rescuer shook his head as the frantic yips continued. “We just got home. I let him out of the truck at the end of the driveway when I saw your vehicle, and he raced ahead to the house to come in through the doggy door, as he always does. And every day when I put my key in the lock, he acts as if it’s been days rather than minutes since he last saw me.”
“They don’t have much of a concept of time, do they?”
“Except for dinnertime,” he noted dryly. “He never forgets that one.”
He opened the door and gestured for her to enter. But before Julie could take a step forward, there was a tri-colored whirlwind of fur and energy weaving
