dibs

by Kristi Pelton

  “Si. Si,” he said, kissing her knuckles.

  The second horn for the cruise ship blew.

  “Shit!” Juls said, but my eyes darted up to Kats.

  “I’m not leaving her. Go! Both of you. Please. Try to see if they will hold the ship.”

  Slowly, I slid one hand into her as the young girl grimaced.

  “No man left behind, remember?” Kat stated.

  “Juls. Listen to me. Make Kat go. Now. Please tell them this is an emergency. I can feel the baby’s head. She’s going to deliver.”

  Juls quickly nodded. “OK. You know we won’t leave without you. Come on, Kat. We have a ship to stop.”

  “Sam…” her voice trailed off.

  The baby was crowning, and as I watched my two best friends take off sprinting for the ship I was supposed to be on, I offered a comforting smile to the desperate young girl in front of me.

  Chapter 12 ~ Mac

  For two hours I’d stood at the ramp watching for the girls to come back. The first horn had blown and yet there was still no sign of them. I’d be damned if I was going to go another day without getting Sam’s cell number. The agreement was to keep this…relationship…whatever it was, to the trip…but the damn woman had monopolized my every thought today.

  The entire wedding party was pissed because I was so distracted. Finally, I bailed, came back to the ship and she wasn’t there. But I liked it. I liked that she went on with her day—sort of. Part of me wanted to know that she was waiting around for me…when she wasn’t, my thoughts changed to she couldn’t wait to get back to me. So, I waited.

  When the second horn sounded, agitation crawled into every part of me. Swarms of people boarded the boat, chatting about their days. My eyes scanned faces at first and then moved to the beach. Now my eyes searched for her hair. Even in the dark, I would know it. That’s when I saw them. Kat. Juls. NO SAM! They were in an all out sprint. Terror streaked across their faces. Fuck!

  Without hesitation, I barreled my way through the hoards of people trying to get on. A fish swimming up stream. I was a damn big fish.

  “Excuse me. ‘scuse me,” I said, shoving anyone in my way, but also keeping Juls in my line of sight. She’d reached a crewmember and was giving him an earful.

  “Juls!” I yelled, and her eyes shot up to me. I pointed at her to make sure she knew I saw her and was coming that way. Kat finally reached her and rested her palms on her knees, trying to catch her breath.

  “Kat! Where is she?” I screamed. With wide eyes she pointed down the beach.

  A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach. What the fuck had happened? They wouldn’t leave each other. Something was so wrong. I was twenty feet away.

  “Where is she?” I demanded angrily. Despair clung to my words.

  “Mac,” Juls said, which definitely wasn’t good because she usually called me Thor.

  From behind me, I heard the crewmember say something about a baby.

  “There was a girl. She was having a baby. She was screaming and her boyfriend was there, but there was clearly no time. And the warning horns were sounding!”

  Kat touched my arm. “Mac. She wouldn’t come. Not until she knew this girl was ok.”

  “Where. Which way is she?” I gritted, trying to remain calm.

  Kat pointed up the beach. “Between the tiki bar and the restaurant. There’s like some bushes and…”

  That was all I needed before I was in a full on sprint. My Sperry’s weren’t the best running shoes but they worked. People certainly got the hell out of my way. There was no question I was a man on a mission. By the time I reached the general area, I heard the painful scream. My eyes darted every which way trying to determine where the cry came from. When I spotted her near the bushes, it stopped me in my tracks.

  “Please tell her to stop pushing. Just for a minute,” Sam instructed from between a woman’s legs.

  Jesus Christ. The head of the baby was filling the woman—girl . Never in my life had I seen anything like it. Two men stood on each side of her. One held her hand comforting her. The other translated for Sam. Why were they not at a hospital? Why the hell wasn’t an ambulance siren echoing in the distance?

  Sam’s hands were a bloody, slimy mix. My stomach was still unsettled from the fear of something happening to her. Now that I’d found her, now that I was with her…that changed. I could take care of her now, at least after she finished her business.

  Though I felt like a voyeur watching Sam slide her fingers inside the girl just beside the baby’s head, I couldn’t pull my eyes from what was happening in front of me. The boyfriend blew his breath over her face trying to cool her and brushed a kiss over her forehead.

  “Ok,” Sam said, and instantaneously she had the attention of all of us. “I need her to push. Push hard.”

  The translator guy spoke to the girl.

  With her hand, Sam pointed. “Get behind her and help arch her up.”

  The guy quickly scrambled around, gently lifting the girl. Sam still didn’t know I was there. I wanted to tell her to see if she needed anything more. But I was paralyzed. With fear. With astonishment. With respect. With love…

  After being instructed to push, the girl did, bearing down hard with a painful expression scrunching her entire face. Silence hung in the air until a guttural groan ripped from her throat.

  “Push!” Sam yelled.

  A feral grunt so unnatural, so unreal, scraped up the young girl’s esophagus until finally silence fell again. My eyes swiftly shot over to Sam who held a mucous covered baby in her hands. Her. Bare. Hands. Sam rested the infant on her knees while she swept through its mouth with her fingers.

  “It’s a boy,” she spoke so softly holding it in one hand and running a finger down its spine. The infant arched to the touch.

  “Bebe nino.”

  Why wasn’t the baby crying? Wasn’t she supposed to spank it? That forced it to take a breath and cry, right?

  Sam leaned forward placing the little boy on his mother’s chest—the mother was just a child herself. The cord of the baby was still attached, and Sam continued to press on the girl’s stomach and work the cord out.

  I wasn’t going to lie, watching the man next to her rest his forehead on the girls, and watching him drop kisses on her forehead and cheeks brought tears to my eyes. The entire scene that played out was overwhelmingly emotional. And yet all I could do is study Sam and watch the confidence she exuded as she pressed on the girl’s abdomen. They seemed blind to what she is doing.

  The young boy next to the mother said something in Spanish.

  “He wants to know if the baby is ok?” the guy interpreting asked.

  Sam quickly slid around to the side of the woman lifting the infant. There was still no crying. After Sam lifted the baby’s arm, she placed two fingers near it’s underarm.

  “No,” she huffed.

  “Over here!” someone shouted. “I brought a doctor.”

  A doctor? Sam was a doctor. I glanced back at the ship, which was thankfully still docked. When I turned around, Sam’s mouth was covering the infant’s nose and mouth as she blew oxygen into the tiny creature.

  This fat, Mexican man shouted something in Spanish and without thinking I prowled up from out of the shadow.

  “This is the doctor,” the other guy interpreted.

  Sam’s eyes zoomed up to his. He was wet with sweat. Dirty

  “The baby isn’t breathing,” she whispered.

  As he stepped between Sam and the mother, he took the baby knocking Sam backward. There was no way to know if it was intentional or not, but automatically, I rocketed to Sam’s side.

  Confusion scurried over her features as I helped her upright.

  “Mac,” she said so softly.

  The Mexican so-called doctor slapped the infant’s butt. Sam gasped.

  “The baby isn’t breathing. Please, let me help,” Sam said calmly.

  “Baby will be fine. Get her up,” this so called doctor demanded point
ing at the mother. The boy, who had supported and helped the mother, quickly tried pulling the mother to her feet obviously scared of the man.

  Sam reached for the infant just as another Hispanic man who wore a rusty, dime store badge stepped up. What the hell? The doctor shoved Sam’s hand away. A flash of anger shot through me but when I saw the so called police officer rest his hand on the holster near his gun, I grabbed Sam’s arm. We need no part of this.

  “We need to go,” I directed at Sam.

  “No. The baby.”

  Taking full advantage of my size, I coerced her away from the scene, navigating her toward the beach.

  “Mac,” she cried weakly fighting me to go back. “That baby needs help!”

  I grabbed her arms, shaking her just slightly to get her to understand. I was winning this argument. “No, Samantha. Things were getting out of hand. Dangerous. There is nothing more you could do. You did your job. You delivered the baby and took care of things until the other doctor got there.”

  Everything from that second on transitioned into a slow motion version of hell. Within an instant, I realized I’d just told her that I knew she was a doctor. I remembered that day at the airport as I looked for a magazine for the flight. The new mother that called out to the doctor…to Sam. Hell, I’d followed her over to the newsstand.

  Within the time it took me to blink, she stared at me, a little V of confusion between her eyes.

  “What?” I asked hoping and praying she understood.

  “What did you mean, another doctor?”

  Shit. “I meant that you’d done all you could do in that situation.”

  She lifted away from my grasp, picking up her pace to the ship. Though she was angry, at least we headed in the right direction.

  “Are they waiting for us?” she pointed at the ship.

  “I sure the hell hope so. Juls and Kat were pleading your case. I didn’t stick around to find out. I needed to find you.”

  Her chin fell to her chest. “Thank you, Mac. For coming for me.”

  Her pace resumed. My longer strides caught her quickly.

  “You’re angry?” I asked.

  “How long have you known?”

  Up ahead, Kat and Juls were yelling and waving us on. Blake and Cody were with them. My heart was pounding, and it had little to do with our pace.

  “How long? How long have you known?” Her voice rose.

  There was no way I was going to lie. Maybe this was best. Maybe she’d simply turn and walk away from me, never looking back. “Since the Reno airport.” I knew that would freak her out.

  “You were there?” she squeaked.

  I nodded. “We were on the same flight,” I admitted.

  “Oh my God. Do you know me?”

  “No. Not even a little bit.”

  She tried to speak a couple of times but it only came out as puffs of air. Finally, she said, “How did this…this…you and me…happen?”

  I just stared at her. I didn’t have a response. The only answer I had…fate. And that word scared me to say out loud.

  Chapter 13 ~ Sam

  Sweat drizzled down my temples, between my breasts and down my back. My hands reeked and were sticky with a variety of bodily fluids, so I hesitated when the Captain extended his hand to me.

  Mac accepted his hand and immediately began thanking him and explaining to him that I was a doctor and a condensed version of what had just transpired.

  My irritated face didn’t go unnoticed by Kat or Juls. Kat immediately started chewing on her cheek. Juls’ lip literally pulled into a snarl.

  RULE 31—if you’re mad at a guy, all rationale goes out the window for your friends too. They always take your side.

  A small group had gathered near the on ramp to welcome us back, wanting to know if it was a boy or a girl, in their minds assuming that all was right in a newborn’s world. Little did they know a baby was fighting for life in the first hours of its life.

  “Let’s go get you washed up,” Kat said, navigating me away from the crowd.

  “What’s wrong?” Juls whispered loudly from behind.

  “She’s angry at me,” Mac threw out there from somewhere behind me.

  “It’s not just you,” I agreed.

  “What did you do, Thor?” Juls rumbled.

  “None of your business, Juls,” Blake added.

  “Blake!” Mac growled.

  “How about we play a game of fuck off, Blake, and you go first,” Juls spit out.

  “What the fuck did I do? I was just saying that it’s their business, not ours,” Blake answered.

  Juls spun around. “That’s not how we work. And by we, I mean the three of us.”

  “Well, that’s how we work,” he said. “And by we, I mean guys!”

  Unable to take the conflict, I abruptly covered my ears and stopped walking, causing Mac to crash straight into me. His arms caught me from falling when I teetered off balance.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “Blake. Juls. Please don’t fight. Everyone just needs to calm down…” My words trailed off.

  Tears simmered in my eyes as my thoughts shifted to the infant. The medical care that would never be received. The baby clearly wasn’t full term. Six months at most.

  “Sam,” Mac said my name—his voice, etched with hurt, cut through me.

  I instantly regretted some of the things I’d said to him on the beach, causing shame to flash in his eyes. What’s sad is for someone who was simply scheming sex on a cruise, he took it like a champ.

  “Do you want me to go back? I’d do that, now that you’re safe.”

  “Go back?” I asked puzzled.

  “To check on the baby. To see if he’s ok?”

  I couldn’t answer before my bottom lip began to tremble. The unwanted tears busted through their dam as every emotion from the past year surfaced. Threats of losing Jake. Failed relationships. Being alone. Turning forty. The possibilities with Mac that would never be. A baby dying on my watch.

  Embarrassed, I stormed in the opposite direction of everyone. In my heart, I knew he’d follow. I don’t know what it was that kept him coming back for more. Free, unattached sex…I suppose.

  “Samantha. I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough,” he said in a low timber, following me into my cabin.

  At the sink, I washed my arms as if I was scrubbing in for the OR. I also washed my face and mouth out. He stood close, not pushing me, but making his presence known.

  “When I saw you on the cruise with the life jacket around your neck, trust me. I was shocked. I’d seen you at the airport. Then here you were. You were so stinkin’ adorable with that thing locked around your neck. Little did I know when I offered to help that you would strike like a rattlesnake.”

  Drying my arms and hands with the towel, I narrowed my eyes and pressed my lips together. “Do you really think you’re helping yourself with the rattlesnake comment?”

  His brow furrowed. “I don’t know how to do this Sam. I don’t know how to apologize.”

  “What difference does it make? Soon, we will be going separate ways, Mac. Does it matter if I’m angry at you?”

  Unexpectedly, his palms cupped my chin. “Yes. It matters to me. Here, let me help. Raise your arms,” he said lifting my soiled peasant blouse over my head. Then he unbuttoned my khaki shorts nudging them down my hips.

  Sincerity radiated from the blue in his eyes I’d fallen in love with. It was as if he needed this. Needed me. Shallow breaths puffed between his lips.

  “I forgive you,” I whispered. Within a short second, his mouth took possession of mine, his warm tongue madly searched for my tongue. When he found it, the kiss softened, deepened, and a low groan worked its way up his throat vibrating through me. Something was different about his kiss, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Desperation? Or maybe finality? A combination of both?

  His arm wound around my lower back, tugging me tightly against him. With his other hand, he lowered the strap of my bra,
and his mouth moved to my shoulder. What seemed to be a frantic mission just moments before had turned into a slow, methodical worshiping of my body. The tip of his tongue paved a leisurely path over my collarbone and then his lips kissed the skin before he moved down to my sternum.

  An electrical current seemed to shoot through me as my body hummed in anticipation of his touch. His nose pushed my bra back exposing my hardened nipple. At first, he brushed his nose over the top, then his tongue lightly swept over it before his mouth came down gently sucking the nipple.

  An involuntary whimper rolled over my lips. He stopped, his eyes searched my face, my body for something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re…everything. You slay me with your smile. You murder me with your wit. You slaughter me with your heart. I’ve never met anyone like you, Sam.”

  My eyes scanned his face searching for any indication that he wanted more than right now. I always had something to say, but now I had nothing.

  “Well…that all sounds pretty damn painful.”

  The sides of his mouth curled up. “I fear it’s gonna be.”

  The breath I held, waited to be released, as I tried to figure what he meant by that. But then he quickly resumed his seduction of my body, unclasping my bra and freeing my breasts. His lips swept over my cleavage.

  “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met, Samantha.” His breath rolled over my skin, causing my nipples to harden tighter.

  My scattered thoughts got lost as his massive hands gripped my ribcage in an act of worship. With his nose, he repeatedly nuzzled over my stomach—the one place I hated. Yet, he seemed to appreciate it…much more than I.

  “I need to be inside you,” he stated so matter of fact. Desperation swam in the blues of his eyes as he glanced up at me.

  With one finger, I drew a line from his temple to his chin.

  “I need you too, Mac.

  Suddenly, he reached behind him, tugging his shirt up from the back and over his head. As quickly as he discarded the shirt, his shorts joined them in the pile.

  From where he stood before me, his lustful gaze fogged over even more.