now,” she said grimly, doubling over once more.
“Damn,” he said again.
He bent to try to help her get up, but she pulled away from him. Instead she grabbed the edge of the heavy, carved chest beside her, and tried to pull herself to her feet. She fell back to her knees as another pain apparently hit.
Close together, those pains, he thought. That meant it really was imminent, didn’t it? He’d seen movies, read stories…
But this was real life, about to happen right in front of him, and he was the only one here. No empathetic woman to take over. He should have paid more attention to his sister, but the very idea made him nervous and he’d avoided the subject entirely.
What if he called Georgie? Would she even talk to him? As far as his family knew, he was still in prison, he guessed. By now even Georgie, his sometimes partner in mischief as children, had probably washed her hands of him. She’d somehow turned very serious when she’d had a child to think about. Children really did change everything.
The woman moaned, shifting on the floor as if trying to escape the pain. The movement took her into the shaft of moonlight that came through the front window of the room. And he realized with a sudden jolt that she was lovely. Her long, dark hair fell in thick waves well past her shoulders. Her eyes were just as dark and caught the light enough to show him they were wide with pain and brimming with moisture.
She moaned again, and the helpless sound of it galvanized him. He didn’t know if it was some instinctive male gene that drove him toward protecting a woman in her most helpless yet miraculous time. Or maybe something more personal. He only knew he couldn’t just leave her like this. She needed help, and he was the only one around.
Unluckily for you, chica, he thought to himself.
He scooped her up off the floor. It was clumsy, because of her bulk and the effort not to hurt her any more, but once he had her he was a little surprised; he’d thought she would be heavier, what with the baby. It hit him that he was carrying one person back to the bed, but before long there would be two. The idea rocked him. He’d never been this close to a birth before.
“You must have done something to get ready for this,” he said.
“There are…blankets and things…in the trunk.” She made a gesture toward the heavy trunk at the foot of the bed. He went to it quickly, lifted the lid, found the things she’d mentioned. He got out the pile of soft cotton cloths, spotted a pair of scissors in a sealed package and grabbed those, too.
Cord, he thought. You had to cut the cord, right?
God, he was way out of his depth.
“There’s no one to call?” he asked her, wanting to be absolutely certain before he committed to this.
“No one…could be here…in time.”
She was panting now, and he wondered if she’d taken some class in special breathing—didn’t they always say stuff about that?—or if it just happened naturally.
He laid her gently down on the bed. She cried out as another pain seized her. He reached over and turned on a bedside lamp, turned back and forgot to breathe for a moment.
She was more than pretty, she was beautiful. Her wide, dark eyes were huge, gleaming in the light. Her skin was a light, luscious olive tone—smooth, flawless, glowing. Her lips were full, soft, and slightly parted as she tried hard not to moan; he could see the ferocious effort she was making. It jogged him back to reality, and the urgent matter at hand.
“I don’t know anything about this,” he told her. “You’ll have to tell me what to do.”
“And you think…I know?” Her laugh wasn’t bitter, but it wasn’t amused, either. And for the first time he wondered how she’d gotten into this situation. He couldn’t quite believe she’d done it intentionally, getting pregnant to sell the baby. It was feasible. But something in her dark, exotic eyes, and the way she looked up at him, made that impossible for him to believe, at least right now.
And it didn’t really matter right now. Whether she was involved in the smuggling ring or not didn’t change what was about to happen. Working on some combination of stories heard and movies seen, he did what seemed reasonable, starting with rolling up his sleeves and washing his hands in the bathroom just down the hall.
“How old are you?” he asked when he came back.
She looked startled, then wary.
“I’m only asking because my sister got pregnant four years ago. She was only eighteen.”
The woman smothered another moan, then answered. “I am twenty-two.”
Better, he guessed. But not much. “She fell for a smooth-talking city boy. He deserted her.”
It wasn’t a question, nor was there any emotion in the flat assertion.
“Is that what happened to you?” he asked softly. “He deserted you, when he found out you were pregnant?”
He found himself hoping she’d say yes, that she was here because she simply had no choice, not because she had the soul of a mercenary.
“No,” she said, her tone still flat. “It was I…who ran.”
Ryder blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
A sharp cry broke from her, and he realized the pains were coming closer together, and even he knew what that meant. No more time to try and find out who this woman was or why she was here, what her motives were.
“Hot water,” he muttered. They always talked about that, too, didn’t they?
“No…time.”
He realized she meant that literally.
“The baby…is coming.”
Now. She meant right now.
Ryder stifled the urge to run. Her hands flailed wildly, as if seeking purchase. He grabbed them, startled at the strength in them as she cried out yet again.
“It’s all right,” he said, squeezing her hands. “We’ll get through it.” Somehow, he added silently to himself.
He had no plan; he worked strictly on instinct. He kept up a stream of encouraging words, trying to distract her—and perhaps himself—from the embarrassingly intimate position they found themselves in. He wasn’t sure it helped, but when he paused she asked him to keep talking.
Until it started to actually happen.
He’d had no idea birth was such a messy thing. He’d always had some image that the kid slid out and got wrapped in a blanket and handed over. But this was wet, bloody and shockingly brutal. He didn’t know who to marvel at more—the woman going through it, or the child for surviving it.
If, of course, it did.
It was when he first spotted the baby’s head emerging that his gut truly knotted. Dark hair, nearly as dark as his own. He was a little startled. He thought babies were born bald.
