Midway Between You and Me (Harlequin Super Romance)
Page 23
“Mom, hand me the camcorder,” Bowie asked.
“No wait!” Tam screeched.
He gave her a wounded look, and had to wait through a contraction for an explanation.
“Don’t tape over the wedding video,” she panted.
He scrambled for another tape. “Better?” he asked.
She nodded, then screamed louder than anything he’d ever heard before.
His instructions changed from “Breathe” to “Don’t push, don’t push.”
“Tell him to shut up!” Tam pointed at the chaplain. “I’m not getting married in the back of a car while I am in labor!”
Bowie tried to explain that they didn’t have a license, anyway, so it really didn’t count, but secretly he was saying his “I do’s.”
“Don’t you want to be a married woman before your baby is born?” Lan asked.
“No, I don’t! I don’t ever want to get married to a man who would do this to me!”
Both mothers said, “She doesn’t mean it.”
Somehow they got to the hospital where they’d taken their Lamaze classes. They hadn’t gone to the Navy hospital, because Tam wasn’t his wife.
Breathe, Bowie. Breathe!
They spilled from the car. He half carried, half dragged Tam to the nearest wheelchair attendant. And then they were off. Their preregistered paperwork wasn’t in the computer so he had to stop by the office and fill out forms all over again.
Then it was up to the maternity ward where his mother handed him the camcorder. A nurse threw a gown at him and then pushed him into the birthing room.
Tam already had her feet in stirrups. A doctor stood at one end of the gurney, a nurse was at the other. Bowie arrived just in time to see the head crowning.
He remembered to focus the camcorder on the coming attraction and his son was born, screaming at the top of his healthy little lungs.
He had a newborn son.
Tam cried, then laughed as she held their baby. He felt like crying and laughing, too. He just couldn’t decide which to do first.
“Do you want to hold your son?” she asked.
“And my wife,” he said, looking deep into her eyes to see what might be missing.
She winked at him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. They’d be okay. They traded. He got the baby and she got the video camera.
Bowie stroked Bay’s downy black head. He looked like his mother. Then he yawned and opened his eyes. “Hey, I think his eyes are blue, like your dad’s.”
“All baby’s eyes are blue. I was kind of hoping they’d turn out to be green.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1694-5
MIDWAY BETWEEN YOU AND ME
Copyright © 2002 by Rogenna Brewer.
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