on the side of the road. And next week it probably will be in the paper,” Maya muttered.
“It’s not that bad. I’m sure there are at least a few people who don’t know what happened,” Valerie said with a wink. “Oh, I almost forgot. These are for you.” She reached over to the bedside table and tugged forward a plastic pitcher filled with an eclectic mix of brightly colored wildflowers. “I caught Sawyer bringing these to you when I was on my way up to see you. He didn’t want to wake you, so I offered to deliver them for him. Sorry about using your water pitcher but it was all I could find.”
“Sawyer? Brought these?” Maya almost couldn’t believe her ears. Sawyer Morente had brought her flowers? The most drop-dead gorgeous guy in town, every girl’s idea of the perfect romance hero, had picked wildflowers for the hippie girl no one ever wanted to be seen with? Don’t make more of it than it is. “I suppose it isn’t every day he delivers a baby by himself in a thunderstorm,” she murmured as much to herself as Val.
“No, but it figures it was Sawyer. Paul calls him Zorro because he always seems to be the one riding to the rescue whenever someone’s in trouble around here. Although…” Val turned thoughtful. “Paul said delivering Joey seemed to really affect Sawyer. Maybe it’s because he understands what it’s like.”
“You lost me,” Maya said.
Shrugging, Val didn’t quite meet Maya’s eyes. “I guess you don’t remember hearing the gossip, but Sawyer’s father abandoned him and his brother when Sawyer was about seven. He completely cut those two boys out of his life. He never acknowledged they existed ever again, even though he still lives less than fifteen miles from them.”
An odd ache touched Maya, hurting her heart and burning her eyes with unshed tears. Whether for Sawyer’s loss or her and Joey’s, she didn’t know, but she felt like crying, giving in to the sadness that had shadowed her since Joey’s birth.
To distract herself Maya brushed a finger over a daisy, breathed in the fresh scents of lavender and sage. “I guess he thought wildflowers would suit me better than roses,” she mused, still wondering at his gesture. “They do remind me of home.”
“You are home now,” Valerie said firmly. “And you’re not alone, no matter how much it might feel that way sometimes.”
Tears rushed to Maya’s eyes. “Thanks Val,” she said, reaching for her friend’s hand. “I know we’re going to be fine. I just need to get out of here and get settled at Mom and Dad’s for a while.”
“If you can call staying at your parents’ place ‘settled.’ They haven’t changed much.”
“Changed from tie-dye to spandex and back again, but finding the next Grateful Dead concert is still their top priority.” Maya sighed. “Maybe it’s better they’ve taken off again. If they were here, I’d have three kids to keep up with.”
“Well, don’t you worry, Paul and I are here to help. And then there’s Sawyer…”
“Oh, no—” Maya held up her hands “—don’t even go there. He was only concerned about Joey. Like you said, he can sympathize. End of story.”
“Oh, right, that’s why he brought Joey flowers. I’m sure at three days old he’ll really appreciate them. Yikes, look at the time. I hate to run mi amiga, but Paul’s shift starts soon and I need to get home to the kids before he goes.”
“Thanks so much for coming,” Maya said, returning Valerie’s quick hug. “I can’t tell you what it means to me.”
“Then don’t, just invite me over when you break out of this place.”
“You’re on.”
“Catch you soon.” With a wave Val left.
The room felt cold and empty without her friend. Despite Val’s comforting words, Maya had trouble shaking a sense of utter loneliness, although she guessed that would pass once she and Joey were out of the hospital and the drama of the last few days was a distant memory.
She reached out and touched the soft petals of a daisy once more and suddenly her whole being ached to be with her new baby. Moving carefully, she swung her legs out of her bed, grabbed a robe and headed down the hallway to the nursery.
Sawyer slammed the door of his truck and strode across the parking lot of Firehouse No. 1. The bee sting on his hand was annoying him. He turned his wrist over to look at the red swell. “Morente, you’re a freakin’ fool,” he muttered under his breath.
What had he been thinking? Picking wildflowers for that girl—woman and mother now, he reminded himself. Maya Rainbow wasn’t a scrawny kid anymore. Even bruised and disheveled and swollen with child, Sawyer had thought she was beautiful, so different from the pale girl with eyes too big for her face he remembered.
After three days he hadn’t been able to shake the image of her struggling to hide her pain and fear, determined to bring her son safely into the world and to care for him alone. Those big green eyes seemed to hide lifetimes in them.
It was those eyes and the way she’d looked at him the other night when she’d told him Joey had no father, coupled with the miracle of her little boy, that had messed with his mind so much, he’d wound up in the middle of some field on the side of the road, picking wildflowers and getting stung by that damned bee.
As he yanked open the door to the station, he thanked the guardian angel of masculine pride that one of his buddies inside hadn’t driven by and seen him with a handful of daisies.
Sawyer strode straight to the coffeepot and poured himself a mug, wishing it were a double espresso instead of Paul Ortiz’s “lite” coffee. He needed to clear his head and he needed a jolt of caffeine to wake him up. He’d hardly slept since Maya’s accident; the whole night kept turning over and over in his mind like a movie stuck on replay. Why that night, that accident, that birth should be any different from any of the others he’d dealt with over the years, he couldn’t figure.
Lost in thought, he didn’t hear Paul come into the kitchen until a slap on his shoulder nearly caused him to drop his coffee mug.
“Wildflowers, Sawyer? Wildflowers?”
Cursing under his breath, Sawyer refilled his mug to avoid Paul’s smirk. “If Valerie wasn’t your wife, I’d put a muzzle on that woman.”
“Don’t worry, your little secret is safe with me,” Paul said, laughing. A few inches shorter and broader than Sawyer, his dark eyes seemed always to reflect a smile. “A little above and beyond the call of duty, though, wouldn’t you say?”
“The kid could have died,” Sawyer said, wondering why he bothered trying to explain himself. “They both could have. I— I just thought she needed a boost, you know, something to remind her it’ll get better.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet of you. I never figured you for the sensitive type.”
“Go jump,” Sawyer muttered. Taking his coffee, he headed for his office with the idea of locking himself in. Unfortunately Paul followed. Paul was a great guy, the kind of guy you’d want watching your back when it counted. But he was also the type of guy who didn’t know when a joke was old.
“I’ll bet the next time you visit her, she’ll have the flowers in her hair,”
