by Amy Andrews
‘I don’t think that was Braxton-Hicks’,’ Beth said, her voice wobbling.
Rilla felt Beth’s arms trembling and did some calculations in her head. The walk to the waterhole had taken thirty minutes. The return trip would take longer if they had to keep stopping for contractions. Her heart slammed madly like an open shutter in the middle of a force ten gale.
‘Tell me it’s going to be OK, Rilla,’ Beth gasped, her hold on Rilla tightening.
Rilla could hear the tremble in her sister’s voice. Beth who was always cool, calm and collected was looking to her for assurance. Beth, who, prior to her maternity leave, had run the operating theatres at the General like a sergeant major for years.
‘Of course it is,’ she said confidently. ‘First baby labours take for ever.’ That was one piece of information she did remember in a brain that seemed to be suddenly frozen.
‘But it’s not my first baby.’ Beth grimaced as she clutched at her stomach.
Of course—it wasn’t. ‘It may as well be,’ Rilla said reassuringly. ‘Twenty-three years is a long time. We wipe the slate clean after a while. How long was your labour with David?’
‘Four hours,’ Beth said through gritted teeth.
Rilla tried not to look too alarmed when she glanced sharply at her older sister. ‘Let’s hustle,’ she said, kicking up the pace.
But the going was still slow. The contractions increased in frequency and length over the next twenty minutes, necessitating the need for numerous stops and Rilla was becoming more worried that they weren’t going to make it to the General.
The track remained deserted and their mobile phones still had no signal. All they could do was trudge on and hope the premature baby didn’t decide to make an appearance.
Rilla judged they were about twenty minutes from the car when Beth let out a cry and gripped hard to the arm that was supporting her.
‘What?’ Rilla demanded.
‘Oh, God,’ Beth panted. ‘I need to push.’
‘No. No, no, no,’ Rilla said, shaking her head wildly. ‘No pushing. It’s not far now.’
‘Ril,’ Beth said, leaning forward. ‘I think the baby’s right there.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ Beth said looking her younger sister straight in the eye. ‘It is. This baby is coming. Now.’
Rilla believed her. Oh, no! It was time to go to plan B. ‘OK.’ Don’t panic. Just do what has to be done. ‘I’ll get the picnic blanket out of the backpack. I think we need to take a look.’
Rilla’s pulse thundered as she spread the blanket on the track and helped Beth to the ground. This was Beth. Her sister. And her niece. The stakes couldn’t be higher and she was scared out of her brain.
‘Hurry,’ Beth bellowed loudly.
The loud groan broke into Rilla’s escalating fear. ‘OK, Beth, let’s take a look,’ Rilla said, forced to focus as the sound of her sister’s agony echoed through the bush.
Luca Romano was taking a walk down memory lane when he heard the cry of distress nearby. He responded immediately, pistoning his strong legs and arms hard to reach the source. Someone was obviously in trouble. The cry had been full of pain and panic. The bush grew eerily quiet as he headed towards the sound, as if it too could detect the urgency of the situation.
He burst from a side track onto the main pathway, locating the problem with a quick swivel of his neck to the right. He cursed under his breath. Two women were huddled on the track. What the hell had happened?
‘Everything all right here?’ he asked as he approached.
Rilla’s head snapped up. She may have had her back to the approaching man but she’d have known that sexily accented voice anywhere. It still haunted her dreams and stoked her fantasies. She turned. Of all the men in the entire world, their knight in shining armour had to be him?
‘Luca?’
Beth also looked up. ‘Luca?’
Luca stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Rilla? Beth?’
For a few moments no one did or said anything. The entire bush seemed to be holding its breath.
‘Rilla,’ Beth cried. ‘It’s coming!’
Rilla turned her attention back to Beth, breaking out of the twilight zone they’d entered. She looked down in dismay to find that Beth was right. The head was right there. Great!
She turned to look at Luca. There were seven years of silence and a jumbo load of baggage between them, but Rilla knew that they were in the worst possible place if the baby or Beth needed any emergency care. And estranged husband or not, Luca was an emergency medicine consultant—she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She could ponder the fickle finger of fate later.
She swallowed. ‘Luca, get down here. I need you.’
Luca knew she hadn’t meant need him need him, but it didn’t stop the quick flare of heat he thought had been extinguished long ago. He took a beat to mentally douse the flame before he responded to the obvious urgency of the situation. He moved closer, crouching down on the rug.
‘Is she full term?’ he asked. His gaze assessed the situation as his medical training came to the fore.
Rilla shook her head. ‘Thirty-six weeks.’
Luca nodded. Only just premature. And Beth’s belly certainly looked a decent size.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked. He knew Rilla was perfectly capable of delivering a baby hell bent on getting out and didn’t see any need to take over. Beth was in good hands.
‘Just be here.’ Things were out of their control and Rilla knew it. Babies that came as fast as Beth’s determined little one practically delivered themselves. All she had to do was catch. ‘Just in case.’
She could feel his presence looming beside her and felt strangely claustrophobic in the middle of the wide open bush.
On second thoughts… ‘Actually, go down the other end and give Beth something to lean against. Reassure her.’
Luca nodded. Good idea. As far away from Rilla as possible. He shifted around behind Beth, settling her back against his stomach in a supported semi-upright position. Her elbows dug into his thighs for leverage.
Luca looked down into Beth’s sweaty face purposely evading Rilla’s gaze. A fine film of grime had settled into the furrows of her brow as her face grew red from the effort of suppressing the urge to push.
‘You’re doing well, Beth,’ he said, and gave her a gentle smile. ‘Let’s just keep this bit slow and easy.’ He picked up her hand and gave it a squeeze.
‘Easy for you to say,’ Beth said, gritting her teeth, and Luca laughed.
‘She’s nearly crowned,’ Rilla said to Beth.
He glanced up, despite telling himself he wouldn’t, and caught Rilla’s gaze. She was on her knees, her left hand against the baby’s head to slow the delivery so Beth wouldn’t tear. And she was just as he remembered. Exactly as she was in his dreams.
Her hair was just as thick. As dark and rich as expensive chocolate, and the weight of it in his palms was still almost tangible seven years later. Her long fringe was plastered to her puckered forehead and a hundred memories of sweeping it back while they made love swamped him.
Her eyes were the colour of amber—tawny in some lights, like liquid gold in others. The large freckle that adorned the corner of her mouth like an old fashioned beauty spot, the only blemish on her flawless olive skin, drew his gaze like a moth to flame. Before he knew it he was staring at her mouth, remembering its softness, its secrets.
Luca bit down on a frustrated oath. How the hell had he ended up helping to deliver a baby with his estranged wife in the middle of nowhere? His analytical mind spun at the odds of stumbling across this particular set of sisters on an out-of-the-way bush track. He’d only been back in Brisbane for two days. What kind of sick cosmic joke was this?
But how much more ironic, more cruel was it that a baby was being born as well? The very thing that had been the catalyst that had driven them away from each other seven years ago was the very thing that had now brought them back together
for the first time since.
Beth groaned and brought him back to the present. ‘You’re doing well, Beth,’ he soothed quietly, returning his attention to Beth. ‘You’re so close—isn’t she, Rilla?’ he added as Beth started to protest.
Rilla swallowed at the familiar way he purred her name, his accent rolling it across his tongue, branding it with his own special stamp of possession. ‘Y-yes,’ she said huskily.
A couple of voices from behind split the air at that moment and Luca was relieved to see a young couple approaching.
‘Have either of you got a mobile phone?’ he called, his voice firm and commanding, gaining their attention immediately.
The couple nodded, looking at him uncertainly. ‘Yes, but there’s no reception,’ the woman said.
Luca nodded. ‘We know. I need you to run back to the car park and ring for an ambulance. Tell them we’ve got an imminent delivery of a four-week-premature baby.’
The couple stared for a moment, not moving. ‘Now, damn it! Hurry!’ Luca demanded. And then Beth cried out again and the couple needed no further encouragement, rushing away.
Beth quietened and Luca searched for some distracting conversation. ‘I didn’t know you were pregnant, Beth.’
Rilla suppressed a snort. ‘Well, you wouldn’t. Would you?’
He heard the accusation in her tone and their gazes locked, hers flashing rich gold embers. Had she cared? He’d left the country with the distinct impression she never wanted to see him ever again. He noticed her ring finger was minus the gold band he’d given her, and he wondered how long she’d waited before removing it.
Beth moaned, interrupting the sudden tension. The moan turned into a full-throated roar as her birth canal stretched unbearably to accommodate the baby’s head. Rilla talked calmly over the top of her.
‘OK, Bethy, just pant now. The head’s crowning. Pant through it,’ Rilla instructed.
‘I…can’t,’ Beth yelled.
Rilla knew that the urge to expel the baby was now a biological imperative and that all women got to a point where they felt defeated.
‘Yes, you can,’ Rilla and Luca chorused, then glanced at each other, startled by their synchronicity.
‘Like this.’ Luca demonstrated through the ruckus Beth was kicking up. He panted like a shaggy dog in a heat wave.
Rilla felt a spike of insane jealousy as Luca coaxed Beth through the last gruelling part of the birth. This was the Luca she knew. The Luca she’d loved. The consummate professional whose rapport with people was legendary.
Was this how he would have been had she carried their baby to term? Would he have held her hand and panted with her and looked at her like she was performing the most amazing miracle on earth?
The irony of the situation smacked her in the face. Kneeling on the ground, witnessing the wonder of new life, had brought all their old problems into sharp focus. Her sister was giving birth. The thing she hadn’t managed to do and in not doing so had driven a wedge so deeply between them they hadn’t been able to find a way back to each other.
Beth cried out and Rilla murmured words of encouragement. She looked at Luca’s downcast head. This could have been her, here with Luca.
The constant emptiness that gnawed away at her womb returned with ferocious intent. She’d give anything to be in Beth’s position now, an attentive Luca by her side, about to hold his baby in her arms.
She’d felt the loss of their baby so acutely the past couple of years, more so during her sister’s pregnancy. And being here with Beth, sharing this experience with Luca, was so bitter-sweet she wanted to cry.
‘OK, here she comes,’ Rilla announced, keeping her hand against the baby’s head as it inexorably eased out. ‘Nearly there, Beth,’ she encouraged. ‘Keep panting.’
‘This is it,’ Luca agreed, dropping a kiss on Beth’s brow and rubbing his hands up and down her arms.
The action distracted Rilla and her gaze was drawn to his wedding band still firmly in place. She blinked. He still wore it? After all this time? She’d have bet money on him removing it as soon as he’d left the country. Maybe she wasn’t the only sentimental fool?
Beth cried out and Rilla returned her attention to the situation. Seconds later her niece’s head slowly emerged into Rilla’s waiting hands.
‘You did it, you did it.’ Rilla beamed as she automatically inserted her fingers to check for the cord, her skills more innate than she’d realised.
‘Oh God, is it over?’ Beth panted, collapsing hard against Luca.
‘Just the shoulders now,’ Rilla assured her as her fingers found the one thing she didn’t want to—thick, slippery rope wrapped around the baby’s neck.
‘Oh, no,’ she whispered, lifting her gaze to Luca’s.
Luca saw the streak of fear flash like lightning through the tawny embers of her eyes. ‘What?’
Rilla’s pulse slowed and then stopped before stuttering to life in a frantic rhythm. ‘The cord…’ Every scrap of medical knowledge she’d ever learned seeped from her brain as blind panic took hold. Her niece had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.
Wrapped around her neck. Around her neck.
A thousand worst-case scenarios stomped through her mind like a pack of rampaging rhinos. Luckily Beth was completely oblivious, still caught up in post-head delivery euphoria. She looked at Luca, her mind chaotic.
‘It’s OK, Rilla.’ Luca smiled at her, his gaze brimming with confidence. ‘Just pull it over the head. You’ll be fine.’
Rilla stared at him, his calm gaze slicing through the escalating horror. He nodded at her and she pulled herself back from the tight grasp of panic and nodded back.
‘What’s happening?’ Beth asked. ‘Why do I still have half a baby stuck in me?’
Rilla’s hand trembled as she methodically pulled the cord over her niece’s head. Luckily it was only wrapped around once. ‘Nothing,’ she said, and smiled gratefully, mouthing, ‘Thank you,’ to Luca.
Luca inclined his head slightly and smiled back. ‘Give another push now, Beth, and the baby will be out,’ he encouraged.
Rilla felt goose-bumps wash over her and marvelled at how a few calm words from Luca had pulled her back from the edge. As shocking as it was to see him here today, she thanked the fates for sending him. Would she have coped if he hadn’t been here, hadn’t believed in her?
Beth nodded. ‘I hope so,’ she panted, as she braced herself to bear down again.
Rilla caught the body as it slipped out and the little girl didn’t even wait a second to let out an indignant cry, her fists waving in the air. Rilla laughed, relieved after her earlier fright to be holding the annoyed newborn. She passed the baby to an eager Beth.
‘Congratulations.’ Luca smiled, giving the baby a quick surreptitious once-over, performing a mental APGAR score, satisfied after the cord problem to see she was pink, with a very healthy set of lungs. ‘You’ve given birth to a very angry young lady.’
Beth laughed and then burst into tears as her precious, naked, bawling daughter was placed in her arms. ‘Look, Ril, look,’ she cried. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’
Rilla nodded, a lump in her throat the size of an iceberg as she hugged Beth and gazed down into the red, scrunched-up, angry face of her niece. ‘She is.’
Luca saw the tears in Rilla’s eyes and was irresistibly drawn to her. Her face was sweaty and her hair was messy and she had a smudge of dirt on her cheek but she was looking at her niece like she was the most precious thing in the entire world and he couldn’t remember a time when she’d looked more beautiful.
It certainly hadn’t been the way he’d imagined he’d meet her again. Of the thousand scenarios that had formed in his head, this hadn’t been one of them. He’d hoped for a much more controlled setting. Somewhere removed from their memories, from their shared past. Hopefully in the politically correct surroundings of work.
This was…wild. Primitive. Full of raw human emotion and as such it w
as impossible to not feel connected to her and all they had been. He looked down at the still bawling newborn. Beth and Rilla were huddled together, laughing and talking at her. Rilla was stroking the infant’s head.
No. He hadn’t been prepared for this touching, emotionally charged situation.
He’d spent the last seven years buried in his work, trying to forget the mess he’d made with Rilla. Two years back in Italy, licking his wounds, and the next five in London, working his butt off. Losing their baby and their marriage falling apart had hurt so much he’d sworn he was never going to put himself through it again. He wouldn’t allow a vision of Rilla and her niece to derail his purpose after less than an hour.
A distant siren broke his train of thought and he was thankful for the reprieve from memory lane. He hadn’t come back here for her. He’d come back for closure. To prove to himself he was over her. So he could sign the papers and get on with his life.
‘Right. Come on, ladies, let’s get this show on the road.’ The baby seemed perfectly healthy but he knew the hospital would want to check her out very closely due to her prematurity and rather unorthodox arrival. He took his shirt off and held it out so they could wrap the baby in it.
He stood. ‘Rilla, take the baby.’ He didn’t look at her, just waited for Beth to pass the baby over. Then he picked Beth up, bringing the rug with him and effectively cocooning her. ‘Your ambulance awaits,’ he said, grinning down at Beth.
‘You can’t carry me, Luca,’ Beth protested as she hung on to his neck.
‘Of course I can,’ he said cheerfully as he headed towards the ever-louder siren. ‘Hold on. It’s not far now.’
Rilla was given no choice but to follow as her niece was still connected to her mother via the umbilical cord. Luca’s strong naked back and powerful stride bobbed before her with each footfall. His physique was as magnificent as she remembered, and if she hadn’t had to watch her step with her precious cargo, the ripple of the muscles in his broad shoulders would have been completely entrancing.
Her niece squirmed in her arms, demanding attention as if she knew her aunt was distracted. The baby seemed tiny, swallowed up in the folds of Luca’s big shirt, and his fragrance wafted temptingly towards her. Myriad memories involving Luca wearing nothing but his cologne almost caused her to stumble.
