Rock-a-Bye Bride

by Tracy Madison

  Devin stepped closer to her and gave her a calming smile. “None taken. Believe me, I get it. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  Tricia shifted in the wheelchair. “Nothing. Someone is overreacting.”

  “She slipped on a patch of ice about an hour ago and hurt her ankle.” The man with her overrode her objections. “I’m not sure it’s broken but she needs an X-ray.”

  At first she thought he might be Tricia’s husband, but on closer inspection, she recognized him, only because she’d seen him around town here and there over the past few years.

  Cole Barrett, Tricia’s older brother, was a rather hard man to overlook—six feet two inches of gorgeousness, with vivid blue eyes, sinfully long eyelashes and sun-streaked brown hair usually hidden by a cowboy hat.

  He had been wild back in the day, if she remembered correctly, and still hadn’t lost that edgy, bad-boy outlaw vibe.

  In a small community like Haven Point, most people knew each other—or at least knew of each other. She hadn’t met the man, but she knew he lived in the mountains above town and that he had inherited a sprawling, successful ranch from his grandparents.

  If memory served, he had once been some kind of hotshot rodeo cowboy.

  With that afternoon shadow and his wavy brown hair a little disordered, he looked as if he had just climbed either off a horse or out of some lucky woman’s bed. Not that it was any of her business. Disreputable cowboys were definitely not her type.

  Devin dismissed the man from her mind and focused instead on her patient, where her attention should have been in the first place.

  “Have you been able to put weight on your ankle?”

  “No, but I haven’t really tried. This is all so silly,” Tricia insisted. “I’m sure it’s not broken.”

  She winced suddenly, her face losing another shade or two of color, and pressed a hand to her abdomen.

  Devin didn’t miss the gesture, and her attention sharpened. “How long have you been having contractions?”

  “I’m sure they’re only Braxton Hicks.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “Thirty-four weeks. With twins, if you couldn’t tell by the basketball here.”

  Her brother frowned. “You’re having contractions? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because you’re already freaking out over a stupid sprained ankle. I didn’t want to send you into total panic mode.”

  “What’s happening?” the girl said. “What are contractions?”

  “It’s something a woman’s body does when she’s almost ready to have a baby,” Tricia explained.

  “Are you having the babies tonight?” she asked, big blue eyes wide. “I thought they weren’t supposed to be here until after Christmas.”

  “I hope not,” Tricia answered. “Sometimes I guess you have practice contractions. I’m sure that’s what these are.”

  For the first time, she started to look uneasy, and Devin knew she needed to take control of the situation.

  “I don’t want to send you up to Obstetrics until we take a look at the ankle. We can hook up all the fetal monitoring equipment down here in the emergency department to see what’s going on and put your minds at ease.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure everything’s fine. I’m going to be embarrassed for worrying everyone.”

  “Never worry about that,” Devin assured her.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to get some information so we can enter it into the computer and make an ID band.” Brittney Calloway, the receptionist, stepped forward, clipboard in hand.

  “My insurance information is in my purse,” Tricia said. “Cole, can you find it and give her what she needs?”

  He looked as if he didn’t want to leave his sister’s side, but the little boy was already looking bored.

  Whose were they? The girl looked to be about eight, blonde and ethereal like Tricia but with Cole’s blue eyes, and the boy was a few years younger with darker coloring and big brown eyes.

  She hadn’t heard the man had kids—in fact, as far as she knew, he had lived alone at Evergreen Springs the past year since his grandmother died.

  “You can come back to the examination room after you’re done out here, or you can stay out in the waiting room.”

  He looked at the children and then back at his sister, obviously torn. “We’ll wait out here, if you think you’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I’m sorry to be such a pain.”

  He gave his sister a soft, affectionate smile that would have made Devin’s knees go weak, if she weren’t made of sterner stuff. “You’re not a pain. You’re just stubborn,” he said gruffly. “You should have called me the minute you fell instead of waiting until I came back to the house, and you definitely should have said something about the contractions.”

  “We’ll take care of her and try to keep you posted.”

  “Thanks.” He nodded and shepherded the two children to the small waiting room, with his sister’s purse in hand.

  Devin forced herself to put him out of her mind and focus on her patient.

  Normally, the nurses and aides would take a patient into a room and start a chart, but since she knew Tricia and the night was slow, Devin didn’t mind coming into her care from the beginning.

  “You’re thirty-three weeks?” she asked as she pushed her into the largest exam room in the department.

  “Almost thirty-four. Tuesday.”

  “With twins. Congratulations. Are they fraternal or identical?”

  “Fraternal. A boy and a girl. The girl is measuring bigger, according to my ob-gyn back in California.”

  “Did your OB clear you for travel this close to your due date?”

  “Yes. Everything has been uncomplicated. A textbook pregnancy, Dr. Adams said.”

  “When was your last appointment?”

  “I saw my regular doctor the morning before Thanksgiving. She knew I was flying out to spend the holiday with Cole and the kids. I was supposed to be back the next Sunday, but, well, I decided to stay.”

  She paused and her chin started to quiver. “Everything is such a mess and I can’t go home and now I’ve sprained my ankle. How am I going to get around on crutches when I’m as big as a barn?”

  Something else was going on here, something that had nothing to do with sprained ankles. Why couldn’t she go home? Devin squeezed her hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “No. You’re right.” Tricia drew a breath. When she spoke her voice wobbled only a little. “I have an appointment Monday for a checkup with a local doctor. Randall or Crandall or something like that. I can’t remember. I just know my records have been transferred there.”

  “Randall. Jim Randall.”

  He was one of her favorite colleagues in the area, compassionate and kind and more than competent. Whenever she had a complicated obstetrics patient in her family medicine practice, she sent her to Jim.

  As Devin guided Tricia from the wheelchair to the narrow bed in the room, the pregnant woman paused on the edge, her hand curved around her abdomen and her face contorted with pain. She drew in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Ow. That was a big one.”

  And not far apart from the first contraction she’d had a few minutes earlier, Devin thought in concern, her priorities shifting as Callie came in. “Here we are. This is Callie. She’s an amazing nurse, and right now she’s going to gather some basic information and help you into a gown. I’ll be back when she’s done to take a look at things.”

  Tricia grabbed her hand. “You’ll be back?”

  “In just a moment, I promise. I’m going to write orders for the X-ray and the fetal heartbeat monitoring and put a call in to Dr. Randall. I’ll also order some basic urine and blood tests,
too. Then I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Tricia gave a wobbly smile. “Thanks. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

  * * *

  HE TRULY DETESTED HOSPITALS.

  Cole shifted in the uncomfortable chair, his gaze on the little Christmas tree in the corner with its colorful lights and garland made out of rolled bandages.

  Given the setting and the time of year, it was hard not to flash back to that miserable Christmas he was twelve, when his mother lay dying. That last week of her life, Stan had taken him and Tricia to the hospital just about every evening. They would sit in the waiting room near a pitiful little Christmas tree like this one and do homework or read or just gaze out the window at the falling snow in the moonlight, scared and sad and a little numb after months of their mother’s chemotherapy and radiation.

  He pushed away the memory, especially of all that came after, choosing instead to focus on the two good things that had come from hospitals: his kids, though he had been there for only Jazmyn’s birth.

  He could still remember walking through the halls and wanting to stop everybody there and share a drink with them and tell them about his beautiful new baby girl.

  Emphasis on the part about sharing a drink. He sighed. By the time Sharla went into labor with Ty, things had been so terrible between them that she hadn’t even told him the kid was on the way.

  “I’m bored,” the kid in question announced. “There’s nothing to do.”

  Cole pointed to the small flat-screen TV hanging on the wall, showing some kind of talking heads on a muted news program. “Want to watch something? I’m sure we could find the remote somewhere. I can ask at the desk.”

  “I bet there’s nothing on.” Jazmyn slumped in her seat.

  “Let’s take a look. Maybe we could find a Christmas special or something.”

  Neither kid looked particularly enthusiastic, but he headed over to the reception desk in search of a remote.

  The woman behind the desk was a cute, curvy blonde with a friendly smile. Her name badge read Brittney and she had been watching him from under her fake eyelashes since he had filled out his sister’s paperwork.

  “Hi. Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Hi, Brittney. I wonder if we can use the TV remote. My kids are getting a little restless.”

  “Oh. Sure. No prob.” Her smile widened with a flirtatious look in her eyes. He’d like to think he was imagining it, but he’d seen that look too many times from buckle bunnies on the rodeo circuit to mistake it for anything else.

  He shifted, feeling self-conscious. A handful of years ago, he would have taken her up on the unspoken invitation in those big blue eyes. He would have done his best to tease out her phone number or would have made arrangements with her to meet up for a drink when her shift was over.

  He might even have found a way to slip away with her on her next break to make out in a stairwell somewhere.

  Though he had been a long, long time without a woman, he did his best to ignore the look. He hated the man he used to be and anything that reminded him of it.

  “Thanks,” he said stiffly when she handed over the remote. He took it from her and headed back to the kids.

  “Here we go. Let’s see what we can find.”

  He didn’t have high hopes of finding a kids’ show on at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night, but he was pleasantly surprised when the next click of the remote landed them on what looked like a stop-action animated holiday show featuring an elf, a snowman and a reindeer wearing a cowboy hat.

  “How’s this?” he asked.

  “Okay,” Ty said, agreeable as always.

  “Looks like a little kids’ show,” Jazmyn said with a sniff, but he noticed that after about two seconds, she was as interested in the action as her younger brother.

  Jaz was quite a character, bossy and opinionated and domineering to her little brother and everyone else. How could he blame her for those sometimes annoying traits, which she had likely developed from being forced into little-mother mode for her brother most of the time and even for their mother if Sharla was going through a rough patch?

  He leaned back in the chair and wished he had a cowboy hat like the reindeer so he could yank it down over his face, stretch out his boots and take a rest for five freaking minutes.

  Between the ranch and the kids and now Tricia, he felt stretched to the breaking point.

  Tricia. What was he supposed to do with her? A few weeks ago, he thought she was coming for only Thanksgiving. The kids, still lost and grieving and trying to settle into their new routine with him, showed unusual excitement at the idea of seeing their aunt from California, the one who showered them with presents and cards.

  She had assured him her doctor said she was fine to travel. Over their Skype conversation, she had given him a bright smile and told him she wanted to come out while she still could. Her husband was on a business trip, she told him, and she didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving on her own.

  How the hell was he supposed to have figured out she was running away?

  He sighed. His life had seemed so much less complicated two months ago.

  He couldn’t say it had ever been uncomplicated, but he had found a groove the past few years. His world consisted of the ranch, his child support payments, regular check-ins with his parole officer and the biweekly phone calls and occasional visits to wherever Sharla in her wanderlust called home that week so he could stay in touch with his kids.

  He had tried to keep his head down and throw everything he had into making Evergreen Springs and his horse-training operation a success, to create as much order as he could out of the chaos his selfish and stupid mistakes had caused.

  Two months ago, everything had changed. First had come a call from his ex-wife. She and her current boyfriend were heading to Reno for a week to get married—her second since their stormy marriage ended just months after Ty’s birth—and Sharla wanted him to meet her in Boise so he could pick up the kids.

  Forget that both kids had school or that Cole was supposed to be at a horse show in Denver that weekend.

  He had dropped everything, relishing the rare chance to be with his kids without more of Sharla’s drama. He had wished his ex-wife well, shook hands with the new guy—who actually had seemed like a decent sort, for a change—and sent them on their way.

  Only a few days later, he received a second phone call, one that would alter his life forever.

  He almost hadn’t been able to understand Sharla’s mother, Trixie, when she called. In between all the sobbing and wailing and carrying on, he figured out the tragic and stunning news that the newlyweds had been killed after their car slid out of control during an early snowstorm while crossing the Sierra Nevada.

  In a moment, everything changed. For years, Cole had been fighting for primary custody, trying to convince judge after judge that their mother’s flighty, unstable lifestyle and periodic substance abuse provided a terrible environment for the children.

  The only trouble was, Cole had plenty of baggage of his own. An ex-con former alcoholic didn’t exactly have the sturdiest leg to stand on when it came to being granted custody of two young children, no matter how much he had tried to rebuild his life and keep his nose out of trouble in recent years.

  Sharla’s tragic death changed everything, and Cole now had full custody of his children as the surviving parent.

  It hadn’t been an easy transition for any of them, complicated by the fact that he’d gone through two housekeepers in as many months.

  Now he had his sister to take care of. Whether her ankle was broken or sprained, the result would be more domestic chaos.

  He would figure it out. He always did, right? What other choice did he have?

  He pi
cked up a National Geographic and tried to find something to read to keep himself awake. He was deep in his third article and the kids onto their second Christmas special before the lovely doctor returned.

  She was every bit as young as he had thought at first, pretty and petite with midlength auburn hair, green eyes that were slightly almond shaped and porcelain skin. She even had a little smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Surely she was too young to be in such a responsible position.

  He rose, worry for his sister crowding out everything else.

  “How is she? Is her ankle broken? How are the babies?”

  “You were right to bring her in. I’m sorry things have been taking so long. It must be almost the children’s bedtime.”

  “They’re doing okay for now. How is Tricia?”

  Dr. Shaw gestured to the chair and sat beside him after he sank back down. That was never a good sign, when the doctor took enough time to sit down, too.

  “For the record, she gave me permission to share information with you. I can tell you that she has a severe sprain from the fall. I’ve called our orthopedics specialist on call and he’s taking a look at her now to figure out a treatment plan. With the proper brace, her ankle should heal in a month or so. She’ll have to stay off it for a few weeks, which means a wheelchair.”

  His mind raced through the possible implications of that. He needed to find a housekeeper immediately. He had three new green broke horses coming in the next few days for training, and he was going to be stretched thin over the next few weeks—lousy timing over the holidays, but he couldn’t turn down the work when he was trying so hard to establish Evergreen Springs as a powerhouse training facility.

  How would he do everything on his own? Why couldn’t things ever be easy?

  “The guest room and bathroom are both on the main level,” he said. “That will help. Can we pick up the wheelchair here or do I have to go somewhere else to find one?”

  The doctor was silent for a few beats too long and he gave her a careful look.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

  She released a breath. “Your sister also appears to be in the beginning stages of labor.”