by Anne Stuart
“I hear the last month is the worst.” Helen had seen enough pregnant women, including her sisters-in-law, to know that Mary was a lot farther along than seven months, unless she was preparing to give birth to triplets.
Mary’s eyes met hers. “It is,” she said.
“Are Rafferty and Billy good friends? They don’t seem like they’d have much in common,” Helen asked in her most offhanded voice as she began to shred the lettuce.
“They go back a long ways,” Mary said nervously.
“It can’t be that long. How old is Billy, twenty-three? Twenty-four?”
“Twenty-five.”
“And Rafferty must be about ten years older. Did they work together?”
“I…I don’t really know,” Mary said, her voice sounding strained.
Momentary guilt swamped Helen. Mary Moretti had too big a load to carry, literally as well as figuratively, to be plagued by questions she either couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. But those questions were looming larger and larger in Helen’s mind, and she knew she wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of Jamey Rafferty.
“Tell me, how did Billy and Rafferty meet?” she asked in what she hoped was a nonthreatening voice as she reached for the bag of carrots.
There was no answer. She turned back, expecting Mary’s nervousness about Rafferty to have silenced her, only to find her hostess leaning against the wall, her face dead white, her hands clutched to her swollen belly. “Oh dear,” she said faintly.
“Oh, dear?” Helen echoed, not liking the sound of this.
“I guess they weren’t false labor cramps after all. I think…” She took a shuddering, gasping breath. “I think my water’s broken.”
“Hell and damnation,” Helen said, immediately putting her arms around Mary. “Let me get you to the sofa. Billy!” she called out, struggling under the pregnant woman’s weight. “Rafferty, damn it, get out here!”
The door to the bedroom slammed open, and Billy came at a run, catching Mary as she sank onto the sofa. Rafferty was behind him, dressed in a pair of slacks, pulling a fresh white shirt around him. “She’s in labor,” Helen said. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”
“It’s too early!” Billy protested. “She’s only seven months along.”
“Seven months…” Helen started to protest, but Mary’s hand reached up and caught hers, gripping it tightly. She looked down, into Mary’s wide, beseeching eyes, and immediately swallowed her protest. “Seven months is just fine,” she said instead. “Besides, it looks like it’ll be a big baby.”
“Call the hospital,” Rafferty said. “I’ll drive you in Helen’s car.”
“I’ll drive,” Helen shot back. “We want them to get there in one piece.”
“If you drive, counselor,” he said, pulling another dark jacket around his opened shirt, “we won’t get there till Arbor Day. You want to be the one to deliver this baby?”
For a moment she was transfixed, distracted by the smooth, muscular column of his chest. She jerked her eyes upward to his face. “You drive,” she said. “But be careful.” She knelt down beside Mary, taking her cold hand. “You’ll be all right,” she murmured.
“It’s Billy’s baby, miss,” Mary whispered, as Billy’s nervous voice could be heard from the kitchen, talking into the telephone. “He’s kind of old-fashioned, and we only…I mean, it was just once before we got married, and he’d hate to think his first baby was conceived out of wedlock. It was just a little lie….”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rafferty said evenly, his voice cool and matter-of-fact. “Billy probably doesn’t know enough to realize the baby should be smaller. He comes from a place where men weren’t that up on women’s biological functions.”
Helen glanced from Mary’s blushing face to Rafferty’s ironic one. “And just what sort of place is that?” she asked. “Is that where you came from?”
“I told you, Helen. Pluto.”
Billy tripped on his way back into the living room. “They’re waiting for us. They say we have to time the pains. I’ve got a watch somewhere…”
“Take mine.” Rafferty stripped off his watch, but Billy just stared at it stupidly.
“Give it to me,” Helen said, taking it away from him. “Let’s get Mary out to the car. I don’t think we have much time.”
Billy was a slight young man, with skinny arms and chest, just about average height. When he tried to scoop his wife’s heavy body into his arms he staggered backward.
With a sigh Rafferty stepped forward, taking Mary from him, and Helen listened to the woman’s shriek of terror with abstracted curiosity. “He’s not going to hurt you, Mary,” she said. “He’s just going to help get you to the hospital. Now calm down and tell me when the next pain starts so I can time it.”
It started halfway down the wide front steps. Helen glanced at the watch, peering at the old-fashioned dial as the gold second hand began its sweep. A moment later she was in the cramped back seat of the car, with Mary’s head in her lap.
It was just as well she was too busy timing Mary’s contractions to notice the way Rafferty was driving. When she did glance up they were taking a corner on two wheels, as pedestrians scattered before them in terror. “Rafferty,” she warned.
At one point she glanced out the back, into the dark city night. A light snow had begun to fall, and the wind was whipping through the streets. The traffic was heavy, with one dark sedan driving uncomfortably close to the back of Helen’s car.
There was something oddly familiar about that car, and she wasn’t sure why. She squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the shape of the driver, when Mary’s moan pulled her attention back to matters at hand.
“Ms. Emerson,” Mary moaned.
“For God’s sake, call me Helen.”
“Ask Rafferty to hurry.”
He overheard her plaintive voice. “Like a bat out of hell, Mary,” he called back over his shoulder.
“Shut up, Rafferty,” Billy snapped. “I’m not in the mood for your sense of humor.”
“Did I miss something?” Helen asked, failing to see the joke.
“I’ll tell you when I know you better,” Rafferty said, cutting the wheel sharply.
Helen opened her mouth to shriek a protest when she realized they’d stopped, just inside a hospital portico. “Thank God,” she breathed, scrambling out of the car to make way for the emergency room staff as they bundled Mary out of the cramped back seat.
Rafferty caught her as she stumbled in her too-high heels. “Thank God because Mary got here in time?” he inquired. “Or thank God the drive is over?”
“A little of both,” she said. His hand was resting lightly on her arm, and even through the heavy down of her coat she could feel the warmth of his skin. She should move away, she knew it. But she didn’t.
At some point during their race from the apartment he’d managed to finish dressing. His shirt was buttoned, covering his chest, and he’d reknotted another dark tie around his neck. She stared at it for a moment. “Do you always wear a tie?” she asked, abstracted.
He smiled wryly. “Don’t you like it?”
“It’s pretty formal.”
“Do you want me to take it off?”
She stared up at him. His hand was still on her arm, lightly, possessively. In the background Mary was being wheeled into the emergency room, and the orange and blue lights of an ambulance still flashed lazily over the waiting cars, but the two of them seemed locked in a cocoon of quiet, removed from the hubbub of the hospital. “You might be more comfortable,” she suggested, half shocked at herself.
“Why don’t you take it off me?”
She ran the tip of her tongue across her lips in an instinctive, nervous gesture. “I don’t know how.”
“You have brothers, don’t you? You must have tied their ties for them. You just do the same thing. Only backward.” His voice was low and seductive. “What’s the matter, counselor? You chicken?”
She
reached up and caught his tie. “You know, Rafferty,” she said, yanking on it slightly, just enough for him to feel it, “You’d tempt a saint.”
“I’m trying, Helen. I’m trying.”
Her hands were clumsy with the perfect Windsor knot. He made no effort to help her, just stood there patiently, staring down at her, as she loosened his tie. “You might undo the top button as well,” he suggested evenly.
His skin was warm beneath her hands. She could smell the tang of shaving soap and shampoo, and for a brief moment she wondered what his skin would taste like.
The notion shocked her enough to make her step backward, away from him. “There,” she said briskly. “You look a lot more approachable.”
“Do you want to approach me?”
“Give it a rest, Rafferty. I was thinking of Mary. I don’t think she needs you frightening her any more than necessary, but Billy will need you around for moral support. You might at least try to look human for a change, instead of like some damned sphinx.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said humbly. “Are you going to stay?”
The question startled her. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. Unless I’m not wanted.”
He looked down at her. “Oh, you’re wanted, Helen. You’re most definitely wanted.”
She started to protest, then gave up as he took her arm and ushered her into the emergency room. Flirting seemed to be a second nature to him—he probably had no more romantic interest in her than he had in Mary Moretti. She glanced behind her, briefly, and for a moment she thought she saw the same dark sedan that had seemed to dog their path from the Moretti’s apartment. But the car was parked, there was no driver in sight, and most dark American sedans looked the same to Helen.
Billy was holding Mary’s hand as they wheeled her down the corridor. He cast a last, beseeching glance at Rafferty, who nodded mysteriously. “I’ll take care of things,” he called after Billy. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“Everything like what?” Helen demanded.
“Paperwork,” Rafferty said. “Obligations. That sort of thing.”
“What obligations do you have?”
“Any number of them. God, I’d kill for a cup of coffee. Even some as awful as the stuff you made me.”
Helen managed a smile. “It was pretty awful, wasn’t it? I bet whatever they have in the vending machines around here couldn’t be any worse.”
“They have coffee vending machines? What will they think of next?”
She stared up at him. There were times when she could almost believe he did come from another planet. “Trust me, Rafferty, coffee vending machines are no great boon to civilization. Wait till you try some.”
She left him with the paperwork and went in search of a coffee machine. As she suspected, it actually managed to taste worse than the cup she’d nuked him at her apartment, but he drank it down almost absently, barely noticing, while he dealt with the officious admitting nurse.
“They don’t have any insurance,” Rafferty was saying patiently. “I thought I explained that.”
“And I thought I explained that someone will need to guarantee payment,” the junior-size Valkyrie replied. “Where’s the father?”
“In the delivery room,” Helen said, pushing forward. “I’m sure he’ll come out and sign the necessary papers as soon as he can—”
“What do you need?” Rafferty interrupted her in midspate.
“A major credit card, at the very least,” the woman sniffed.
“I don’t carry credit cards.”
Both Helen and the admitting nurse stared at him in shock. “Then a personal check,” the woman said. “As a deposit against the bills.”
“I don’t have a checking account,” Rafferty said calmly.
“Then just what do you have?” the woman demanded in a frosty tone of voice, obviously jumping to the conclusion that Rafferty was a deadbeat.
Helen decided to keep her mouth shut. Rafferty was more than capable of putting the woman in her place, and she found she was almost looking forward to it.
“Cash,” he said.
“Cash?” the woman echoed, astonished.
“Folding money. Long green. You’ve heard of it, surely?” Rafferty said, pulling out his wallet. “How much do you want before you’ll leave the Morettis alone?”
“We’ll need a deposit of at least a thousand dollars. Even a normal delivery costs upwards of five thousand, and…” Her voice trailed off as Rafferty pulled out a neat stack of brand-new thousand-dollar bills. He dropped five of them on the counter in front of the nurse, then added an extra.
“That should take care of things.”
“Is that real?” the woman asked in an awed voice.
“There isn’t much future in counterfeit.” He put his wallet away, turned to Helen and offered her his arm in that old-fashioned, mockingly polite way he had. “Let’s see how Billy is doing.”
Helen waited until they were out of earshot. “I’ve never seen a thousand-dollar bill before,” she said, still bemused.
A sardonic smile curved Rafferty’s mouth. “Haven’t you? Then you’ve obviously been traveling in the wrong crowd.”
“Where did you get it?”
He glanced down at her. “None of your business, counselor.”
“Is it drugs? Are you a dealer?” She tried to pull away. There was only one reason for anyone to carry that much cash around, and her sense that Rafferty was a man living on the very edge only increased her fears. She’d been a fool to trust him, blinded by her insensible infatuation with the man.
He stopped in the middle of the busy corridor, and people had to thread their way around them. He looked angry, and Helen told herself she should be frightened. Instead all she felt was relief. “Let’s get one thing straight, lady,” he said in a tight, furious voice. “I may not have always followed the law exactly, and I may have done some things I shouldn’t have. But I don’t mess with the drug trade, I never have, and I never will. You got that straight?”
“Yes,” she said in a quiet little voice.
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she said.
He continued to stare down at her for a long, measured moment. And then he nodded, satisfied. “Let’s go find Billy and see if we can help him pace.”
“I don’t think he’ll be pacing. He’ll probably be coaching Mary.”
“Coaching her? Coaching her to do what? She’s having a baby, not playing football.”
“Rafferty, what kind of vacuum have you been living in? Husbands assist their wives when they give birth, they hold their hands, they help them breathe, they don’t pace the waiting room smoking cigarettes.”
“He’ll be in there? Watching?” Rafferty echoed, aghast.
“I expect so.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Let me tell you, Helen, Chicago is one weird place nowadays. I guess I’ll have to do the pacing for him. Unless we’re supposed to go in, too?” Clearly the idea appalled him.
“No, Rafferty. Only the father. Don’t worry,” she added mischievously. “You can always hold my hand.”
It was the third mistake of the evening. He put his long fingers under her chin, tilting her head up. “I’d rather work on helping you breathe,” he said. “Maybe a little faster. A little deeper. With a little catch in your voice, and…”
“Cut it out, Rafferty,” she said, backing away nervously. The man’s effect on her was astonishing. “We have more important things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like getting a baby born.”
He looked at her for a moment. “That won’t take too long. We’ll talk about your heavy breathing later.”
Chapter Six
It was a long night. Rafferty did his best to uphold traditional family values, but the hospital refused to cooperate. Apparently no one, not even expectant fathers and expectant godfathers, were allowed to smoke on the hospital premises, and there wasn’t even room to pace. He had to cont
ent himself sitting in a plastic chair, nursing cup after cup of horrible coffee, and looking at Helen Emerson. All in all, he’d spent far worse nights in his misbegotten life.
Damn, she was pretty. He didn’t know why he hadn’t realized it right away. She had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, warm brown with just a trace of defiance. He kept thinking about her mouth, too. Whether she’d kiss him back when he finally kissed her. Whether she’d use her tongue.
He wanted to thread his fingers through her thick brown hair, tilt her face up to his and find out. He knew now that she had breasts, and legs, and hips—that luscious little dress had cleared up any of his previous misconceptions. He loved watching her in it. He was looking forward to watching her get out of it even more.
Billy staggered into the waiting room at half past eleven, pale, sweating and faintly green as he collapsed into a chair. “I don’t know about this, Rafferty,” he muttered. “I think I like it the old-fashioned way, where the women do all the work.”
Helen’s laugh was unsympathetic. “Sorry, mister. You were there in the beginning, you need to see it through. At least it doesn’t hurt you.”
“But it does,” Billy said earnestly. “Every time one of those pains hit Mary I can feel it in my own gut.”
“Trust me, it hurts her more than it hurts you,” Helen said.
“How many babies have you had?” Rafferty asked her.
He even liked the faint color that mounted her cheeks. “Lots of nieces and nephews,” she replied, meeting his gaze levelly.
“Got to get back there,” Billy muttered, surging to his feet again and heading toward the swinging doors of the delivery ward. “Keep the coffee hot.”
Rafferty watched him leave. “It might taste better cold,” he murmured.
“It couldn’t taste worse,” she murmured, aiming for a casual tone. “How did you and Billy happen to meet?”
He stretched his legs out in front of him, surveying her coolly. “Ms. Emerson, I’ve been pumped for information by the best of them, and your technique doesn’t cut it.”
