by Anna Adams
“Yeah? What are you saying?” Ian asked when she didn’t go on.
“They’ve been together fifty-five years, and yet she left him, and you had to force her to go home.”
“You have to be blunt with me, Sophie.”
“What’s ever certain, Ian?” She looked toward the kitchen as he came to the door. “What’s safe when it comes to a thirty-year-or-more commitment?”
“Safe? I don’t understand.” He came into the room, his gaze hard. “It’s too late to back out now.”
She planted her feet on the cool wood floor. “I don’t want to back out.” She just wanted certainty. The promise of a whole life with the same man. And the kind of love Ian had never mentioned.
“When you talk about Greta and commitment, you make me nervous. You’re too much like her, and she’s had her marriage all her own way. What do you want?”
Another contraction started with a pull that made the others innocuous. She looked at the clock. “For one thing, I want to be having false labor.”
“What?”
“I think it’s real, though.”
“Soph?” He crossed the room, ending up in front of her on his knees. “Why didn’t you tell me? How long has this been—you’re a doctor.”
“But I’ve never been in labor before. It rarely goes this swiftly in theory. The contractions seem to be about four and a half minutes apart.”
“Call Dr. Sims, and let’s go to the hospital.”
“In this weather?” She breathed again as the pain finally eased. “I don’t think we have time, Ian.”
He closed his hands on her thighs. “We don’t have time?” He squeezed so hard she tried to lever his fingers open. “Sorry.” He stood, grabbing the coat he’d thrown across the sofa earlier. She had a wild thought that he might be leaving. To her relief, he dug his cell phone out of the pocket.
“Call an ambulance and my gran and the doctor.”
He’d clearly memorized Dr. Sims’s number because, after a few moments, he all but yelled into the phone. “My wife’s in labor. Call us.” And he hung up.
“I don’t think he knows your voice, Ian.”
“God.” He hit redial and left complete information. “The man doesn’t even have an answering service. This place needs the clinic to drag the twenty-first century up the ridge.”
“911.”
“I am.” His hands shook so hard it took three tries to dial the three-digit number.
Another contraction clutched her. She hadn’t bothered with birthing classes. How on earth could she need them? Or so she’d thought. But she forgot what she told her patients and she fought the pain that had mounted far too quickly.
“Hurry.” She bleated the word between gasped breaths. “And call Gran. Then get clean towels and some twine. Old, but clean bedding.”
“Can Greta get here before the baby?” He turned to the phone. “My wife’s in labor. Ian Ridley, up at The Mom’s Place?” He waited a moment, scowling fiercely. “What are you talking about? Get a helicopter. Do something.”
“What?” Sophie tried to stand, but he came to her and eased her back onto the sofa. Just as well. Walking tended to speed up labor, the last thing she needed.
“They can’t send anyone. Both ambulances are with vehicle accidents on washed-out roads. Can’t someone from The Mom’s Place come?”
“I’m the medical person on call. You can try for the duty nurse, but I doubt she’ll have an easier time getting here than anyone else.
He called anyway, but his brow knotted as he spoke, and when he hung up he looked helpless. “She agrees with you. The roads are bad, but she’s going to try to come.”
Sophie didn’t panic. She kind of knew already, because she might not be an expert at labor from this side of the doctor’s office, but the symptoms were clear. She’d caught a few rapid deliveries in her career. They were going to have to do this on their own.
“Try Gran.” Another contraction had her gritting her teeth. “She’ll come if she has to climb the ridge in her bare feet.”
He dropped the phone and yanked her into his arms, but his wretched expression frightened her. “This is perfect,” he said. “You couldn’t be happier. You’re in charge. You know what to do, and you’re going to instruct me step-by-step. Just the way you started our marriage.”
Considering she’d like to tear something apart to take her mind off the creature struggling to be free of her body, she wasn’t that happy. But he was right about one thing. She liked calling the shots, and maybe she couldn’t change. All this time when he’d tried to take care of her, when he’d collected her family—building what she’d called his little club in their house—when he’d tossed her grandmother out, she hadn’t actually minded that he was being high-handed with her family. She’d hated him thinking he had the right to decide what she needed. She didn’t want any other human being to have control in her life.
She couldn’t defend it and she wouldn’t waste the strength arguing now. “Call Gran.” As he dialed, she sank against the couch. A sudden burst of water between her legs spilled to the floor. Ian didn’t seem to care that he was getting wet.
“How long have you been in labor, Sophie? I can’t believe you didn’t feel I had a right to know.”
“We don’t have time to chat. Can’t you tell it’s going fast? I think the backache I’ve had for two days was early labor.”
He swore and they both heard a voice through the phone. She couldn’t tell what Gran was saying as he clamped the phone to his ear, but Ian clearly didn’t have to explain.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll get everything.” He flipped the phone shut. “She knew.”
“She knows the roads are bad, and I’m only a week from my due date.” She grabbed at the phone. “Call back and tell her I’m going to deliver before she gets here.”
He looked as if he’d like to escape, but then he steeled himself and dialed back. “Seth, it’s me. Tell Greta Sophie’s going to deliver before you can get here.”
“I don’t want Grandpa to see me like this.” She pushed sweat off her forehead with her palm. “This isn’t a spectator event.”
“Yeah,” Ian said to her. To her grandfather, he added, “Hurry.”
He shut the phone again, and he was already on his feet. “Should I get Greta back so she can talk me through it? Are you going to be able to speak?”
“You’ve read all the books I had for nervous parents.” Panic depleted her ability to be tactful. “You know what’s going to happen.”
“I know what happened to the people in those books. I’ve forgotten everything, now that I’m about to do the delivery myself.”
Fear suddenly squeezed her throat. Things could go wrong. Her baby… She refused to consider what might happen. “If I start to bleed or I pass out, you need to find someone else, but everyone we need is coming.”
He didn’t bother to answer before he ran up the stairs. Seconds later he flew back down with clean sheets and clean clothing for her. From the pile against his chest, he drew out a plastic-covered ball of twine. “I don’t even know why I had this, but I never could find a place to put it after I unpacked it.”
“We’re not going to cut the cord, but—” She broke off to breathe through the worst pain yet. Suddenly he was calm, but she felt scared. “Aren’t you concerned?”
“About a lot of things.” He dropped the bedding on the end of the couch and helped her to her feet. “Why don’t you change out of those wet pajamas?”
“What are you worried about?”
He met her eyes. His looked defensive. “That you’ve lied to me. You kept everything you really felt inside. You wanted me to commit, but you didn’t. You don’t give anyone else a right to really know who you are, Sophie.”
“I’m the girl who ruined my parents’ marriage. I’m the woman who takes after my grandmother when it comes to sharing. I give my all to a job, but I measure parts of myself into relationships. And I don’t ever want someone
else to be the one with the final say, the one who either saves my life or loses it, when a crisis—” she spread her legs, indicating her wet lap and the floor “—like this comes.” She gritted her teeth. The truth hurt more than the worst contraction. “I might be too much trouble to be worth it.”
“You might be out of your mind.” Before today, he would have smiled to make the accusation a joke, but he meant it. “Until you trust someone to want to stay, you’re never going to be happy.”
The next contraction nearly doubled her over. Ian caught her and held on until the pain subsided, and then he helped her to the bathroom.
“Sit.” He dropped the toilet lid and eased her onto it and then handed her the clean pajamas.
“A gown would be better. Or one of your shirts.” Maybe he wouldn’t want her ruining his shirt.
“I should have thought. Don’t get up. Shout if you need me. I’m going to get everything ready, and then I’ll come back for you.”
“I can walk.”
“Sophie.” He paused at the door. “You have to listen to me now. I’m angry. You’ve run me like your own personal family drama all these months. You didn’t even bother to tell me you were on the verge of giving birth to our child. Our child.” He caught himself, clearly feeling a brawl right now would be insensitive. “Just shut up and let me handle this one thing. Tell me what to do, but don’t risk falling and hurting yourself or my son because you aren’t safe if you aren’t in control.”
“I’m getting sick of the snap diagnoses, Dr. Ian.” She gasped as another pain hit.
Ian left her, but his footsteps pounding up the stairs to their room comforted her. And they comforted her again as he made his way back at lightning speed. He opened the door to hand her one of his T-shirts and a pair of socks.
“I read that your body goes through temperature changes.”
She was hot as hell right now. He shut the door behind himself as he went back to the living room and she managed to work her pajamas off. She’d barely pulled Ian’s shirt over her head when he opened the door again.
He looked away, as if he wasn’t supposed to see her naked, and she realized he was serious about his resentment. This wasn’t going to be a tiff they could resolve with a chat.
The next contraction included a painful pulling sensation that ended with an urge to push. “Ian!”
He helped her to stand.
“We don’t have much time,” she said.
He hoisted her off her feet, undoubtedly drowning in adrenaline. Seconds later, the bumpy couch met her back. She lifted her knees, and Ian got between them.
“Can you see her head?”
“I see something dark. Hair?”
She nodded, barely able to speak. “Any blood? Anything dark in the fluid?”
“A little blood. Nothing in the fluid.”
“You just have to catch her. If her hands are over her face or caught, ease her out as gently as—” She groaned in agony. Good God. She should be the one catching the baby. What kind of life was it when a woman had to depend on someone else at a time like this? “And make sure you don’t hurt her.”
“Sophie, concentrate on your part of the process.”
“Process?” She ended with a bone-shaking groan as she braced her feet against his thighs and pushed. She prayed the baby was still positioned normally. If she got stuck pushing here for hours on end, they could be in trouble, but she didn’t dare tell Ian.
She sagged for a moment. He stroked her legs. He didn’t speak, but his touch calmed her. She’d whipped all the way through transition in record time. The next contraction began, and she pushed with all her might. Five more burning, tortuous attempts, and she found the most exquisite relief as the baby’s head and shoulders passed out of her body.
“Sophie.” Ian’s voice held no more anger. He simply leaned down and lifted their blue, wet, beautiful child. “She’s not crying. What do I—”
Before he could finish, their infant daughter let out a war whoop that probably rang down the Great Smoky Mountains. Sophie looked at Ian, laughing through tears. He wiped the baby and then wrapped her in a clean white towel and passed her to Sophie.
Sophie eased the towel open for a quick examination. Her baby girl was perfect. Furiously screaming, tiny hands and feet already changing to pink, quivering with rage.
“Is she okay?” Ian asked.
“Absolutely. Look at her eyes. I think she can see.” Between screams the baby seemed to be taking a survey of her clearly unsatisfactory surroundings.
“You know she can’t. You’re the doctor.” But he sounded pleased.
Sophie cuddled her daughter close, trying to give her back the warmth she’d just lost.
“Are you all right?” Ian asked.
Sophie looked at him, distracted but touched by his soft tone. “Fine. I still have to deliver the placenta, and that’s going to be messy, but from the cramps I’m having, it’s coming. Are you all right with blood?”
It was the wrong question. Anger came back into his eyes. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked from the baby, slowly moving her mouth in a pantomime of hunger, to him. Her whole life felt different than it had just an hour ago. This child who already had Sophie’s heart in her hands, belonged to Ian, too. “Thank you.”
His expression changed, but Sophie couldn’t read it. He looked like a stranger. How could he turn into a stranger now? “You were right.” He cupped their baby’s head. “She’s a girl.”
“She has your dark hair.” Sophie already loved the strands that stood up half an inch on all sides of her daughter’s skull.
“She does.” He smiled, but his eyes looked hollow.
Sophie wished she were different. She wished she could have kept her secret fears to herself just a little longer. “Are you okay?”
He lifted both brows as if he could hardly believe she had the guts to ask. “We’ll have to talk, but I don’t want to now.”
Emptiness in his eyes predicted her worst fears had come true. She’d managed to push him away from her. She didn’t want the details. She hugged her baby as close as she could get her. “You’ll want to tie the cord when it stops pulsing.” She caught his hand. “And could you call the nurse back? We can wait for Gran now, and I’d rather someone stayed on duty at the baby farm.”
“Relax,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
She had a feeling he said it to prove a point, but he looked at their daughter with such love, Sophie didn’t care what else he might be thinking.
GRETA STILL HADN’T shown up by the time Ian had Sophie and the baby clean enough for company. On the one hand, he’d just as soon she lost her way. He wanted his family to himself, maybe for the first and last time ever.
Yet, no matter how normally Sophie kept assuring him everything had gone, he needed Greta to second her opinion. Funny, but he’d realized how deeply he loved his wife at almost the exact moment he realized that she liked control better than a husband, that she trusted herself and her decisions more than she trusted the future they’d promised each other.
Impatient with her and with himself, Ian had enough of sitting on the edge of the bed. If this was the last night he’d lie with Sophie, he’d have these hours.
Without asking what she thought, he curved himself around her and the baby, soaking up the sweet aroma of his wife’s hair, the tender softness of his child’s skin. He slid his hand beneath Sophie’s on the baby’s backside.
“We never thought of names,” Sophie said.
“I liked Stephen.”
“I like Chloe.”
He scrutinized their baby’s face, falling in love. “It suits her.”
“If only everything between us was that easy. Ian, you’re not going anywhere, are you?”
At the naked plea in her eyes, he was tempted to resign himself to what she could give. Not much.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“But?”
“I can’t pretend I don’t care.” He cared more. He couldn’t live with her, love her and be her puppet. “I want the promises we both made. I was serious, and I thought you were, too.” He laughed, totally unamused. “You got yourself the perfect revenge for that wedding mistake I made.”
“I didn’t want revenge.”
“Shh.” He kissed her hair on the pretext of quieting her. His body ached with loss already. “Greta and Seth will be here soon.”
“I wish tonight could just go on.”
It couldn’t. It wouldn’t be enough, though it had brought him almost everything he wanted most. He leaned over Sophie to kiss his daughter, now clearly rooting for her mother’s breast. He admired Chloe’s demanding blue eyes. No Calvert green for his girl.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SOPHIE AND CHLOE SPENT a night in the hospital to make sure both were okay. The next morning, Sophie’d lost all sense of dignity and begged Ian not to leave her, but he moved down to Aunt Eliza’s B and B the day she and Chloe came home from the hospital. He needed distance. If he was acting out his own vendetta this time, it worked. A dad should help bring his child home, and the house felt empty without him.
“This place sure is quiet,” Gran said as Ethan carried in their things. “I’m used to seeing half the family over here.”
Inside, Sophie also saw empty spaces where Ian always dropped his keys on the console table behind the couch, on the mantel where he left whatever book he was reading. He often abandoned a coffee cup in the living room.
“I still can’t believe Ian didn’t want to see Chloe home on her first day.” Surprised disapproval colored Ethan’s tone.
Sophie stiffened. Ian most likely had wanted to be with Chloe. She was the one who’d put him off. “I don’t know how anyone could have seen her home on her first day more than he did.” Though she felt guilty for not even understanding how much trust and commitment she’d withheld from him, temper made her gripe. “Although I thought family mattered to him.”
