Bridget was stunned by the genuine look of concern that spread over her brother’s face.
“Not nearly often enough, Brita.”
Clearing her throat, she said, “Maybe I’ll look for a pair today. Just to make you happy.”
Later that morning, as Bridget drove to the Chino home, she wondered if Brady had been trying to tell her that she’d turned into a dull, uninteresting doctor. She didn’t purposely dress down or ignore her looks. She kept her hair groomed and shiny, her nails done and her skin smooth. In her line of work, she couldn’t dress like a runway model. Even so, she made it a point to wear stylish things in colors that flattered her.
But maybe Brady hadn’t been talking about her outward appearance at all, she suddenly realized. Maybe he’d been saying that she’d become so consumed with being a doctor she was forgetting how to be a woman, to dress up in high heels and go out at night with a man at her side.
Well, she could tell him that going out with a man didn’t mean anything at all. Unless it was the right man. And the right man just happened to be his best friend, Johnny.
Even though the snow had stopped sometime before daylight, the low gray clouds had hung around to shroud the mountains. As Johnny stood watching from the front porch as Bridget’s Jeep crawled its way toward the house, he wondered what the hell he thought he was doing.
Just because she’d thrown him a challenge, he’d taken it on like a teenager, determined to prove himself, no matter the consequences. Spending more time with the woman was only going to make things worse for him and for her. But he couldn’t back out of going now. She’d view that as a chink in his armor, an admission that he was afraid to be alone with her.
With a firm set to his jaw, he stepped off the porch and walked out to meet the Jeep. As soon as it braked to a stop, she rolled down the window.
“Are you ready to leave?” she asked.
He nodded. “Get your things. We’ll take my truck.”
Her brows lifted slightly. “But the Jeep is already warm.”
He shot her a pointed stare. “You asked me to take you to the cabin. Not the other way around. Get your things. The truck is already running.”
Five minutes later as they descended the mountain, Johnny silently maneuvered the four-wheel-drive truck over the frozen snow. Across from him, Bridget stared thoughtfully out the window.
Even though she was wearing worn blue jeans and a simple pink sweater, she looked lovely. Her fiery hair was pulled back from her face with a blue scarf and her lips had been painted a soft magenta color. If she was trying to make this trip hard on him, then she was doing a damned good job of it.
“I’m sorry you’re feeling forced into going to the cabin,” she said quietly.
Forced? Is that what she thought? Dear God, three-fourths of him was happy as hell to spend time with her anywhere she asked, and for whatever reason she gave him. The other part of him, the part that was trying to hang on to his sanity, was frozen with dread. And the frantic push and pull inside of him was making him more than a little crazy.
“No one forces me into doing anything,” he said a bit gruffly. “Besides, I just want to get this over with.”
Her head whipped around and her green eyes bored into the side of his face.
“You don’t have to do me any favors, Johnny Chino,” she said through clenched teeth. “Turn this truck around and take me back to my Jeep.”
This was his chance, Johnny thought, he could do her bidding and avoid a painful scene at the cabin. But turning around would make him look like a coward and, ultimately, solve nothing, he decided.
“We’re not going back,” he said firmly. “We’re going on to the cabin to settle things once and for all.”
She let out a long, tortured breath and slumped back in the seat. “You used to want to spend time with me,” she murmured.
“I still do.”
He could feel her gaze back on his face and when he glanced at her, he could see her green eyes were glazed with tears.
He said nothing after that. And neither did she.
Minutes later, Johnny turned onto a secondary road that led to Mescalero. The truck had traveled less than a hundred yards when Bridget suddenly sat up and pointed ahead of them. “Johnny, there’s a car and it looks like it’s stranded.”
“I see,” he acknowledged. Squinting against the glare of the snow cover, he stared at the vehicle which was still fifty or more yards from them. “I’m not sure what kind of fool would try to drive a car over these roads. But they probably need help.”
“Could be no one is inside,” Bridget said as they approached the older-model sedan. “They could have walked off for help or phoned for someone to pick them up.”
“Not everyone here on the res has a cell phone, Bridget. I’ll stop to see.”
Since there was little concern that other traffic might need to pass, Johnny parked in the middle of the gravel road, alongside the stranded car.
“Stay here in the warm while I check it out,” he told her, then quickly climbed out of the truck.
The motor of the car wasn’t running and Johnny expected to find the doors locked and the occupants to have already left by other means. But when he tried the driver’s door, it easily swung open to reveal a person slumped over sideways in the seat.
Shocked, he leaned his head into the vehicle to see it was a woman huddled inside a thin gray coat. A woolen scarf was tied over her head and ears, while black rubber galoshes, the kind that working men wore, were on her feet.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
Her answer was a low, pain-filled groan. “My baby,” she pleaded. “My baby.”
Immediately, Johnny looked into the backseat. There was no child, nor any sign of a child’s safety seat. Had a toddler somehow gotten out of the car and wandered away from its sick mother? Fear raced down his spine as he turned back to the woman who was now lying on her back, writhing with pain. A terribly young Apache face stared up at him, her black eyes begging for help.
“Ma’am, where is your baby? Tell me!”
Her gloveless hands reached down to her belly and then the reality of the situation hit him. She was in the throes of labor.
Incredulous, he asked, “You’re going to have a baby?”
The young woman gave a jerky nod and clutched desperately at his hands. “Yes. My car—it wouldn’t move. Now the baby is coming. Help me! Please!”
“Wait. Don’t worry. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Even though she was screaming at him not to leave, Johnny quickly shut the car door and trotted over to the passenger door of his truck and jerked it open.
“Come,” he ordered and quickly reached up to help Bridget down to the ground. “There’s a woman in labor.”
A soft gasp of alarm rushed from her. “Oh, my God! And I don’t have my medical bag with me!”
“We can’t worry about that now,” Johnny said. “Just do what you can while I call an ambulance.”
Inside the car, Bridget didn’t waste time explaining that she was a doctor and there to help. While Johnny made the emergency phone call for medical help, Bridget acquired the woman’s name and made a quick assessment of her condition. Once he’d snapped the phone shut and leaned his head inside the vehicle, Bridget looked over her shoulder at him.
“She needs to be in the backseat, Johnny, to give me more room. And can you get the motor running so that we can have some heat? She’s freezing!”
A quick glance at the car’s gas gauge told him that the woman had already used up all the fuel. No doubt in an effort to run the heater and stay warm.
“The car has run out of gas. I’ll move her to the backseat of my truck,” he told Bridget.
“What about the ambulance?” she asked.
“They’re coming. But with these roads the time of arrival is a good thirty minutes or more,” he warned.
Nodding that she understood, she said, “At least they’re coming. But the baby will
be here before then. I’ll do the best I can until the ambulance arrives.”
No dramatics or wringing her hands. She was a professional, even under these dire circumstances. With that thought, Johnny hurried to fetch the pregnant woman from the car.
In his line of work, Johnny always made it a point to carry a basic medical kit, a blanket and a few more emergency supplies in his truck. Among them, Bridget found a pair of latex gloves, along with a soft cotton T-shirt to use later to wrap the baby in. The blanket she used to make a makeshift bed on the seat.
“Leyla, when is your due date?” Bridget asked, as she donned the latex gloves, then went to work removing the woman’s clothing from the lower part of her body. “Is the baby coming early?”
A tight grimace marred the patient’s face. “Two weeks. But early this morning—before light—my water—”
“Yes. I see that you’ve lost your amniotic fluid.” Reaching up, she passed a gentle hand over the woman’s flushed forehead. “Don’t worry, Leyla, everything will be fine. Just do what I tell you whenever I tell you. Okay?”
“Yes. I’ll—try.”
“Do you have a husband? Someone we need to call?” Bridget continued to question.
With tears brimming from the corners of her eyes, Leyla shook her head. “No. No one. Please—oh—just get my baby—here.”
Bridget glanced over her shoulder at Johnny, who’d climbed into the front seat to be out of the way, but still close enough to assist if he was needed. The look of empathy on her face told him that in spite of her cool competency as a doctor, her heart was as soft as a marshmallow. The fact didn’t surprise him. It only made him love her more.
“I’m not familiar with her or her family,” he said to Bridget.
The pregnant woman grunted with pain, then shook her head back and forth against the seat. “I have—no family,” she spoke between pants of breath. “They’re—dead! All dead!”
Not wanting her patient to get any more distressed than she already was, Bridget turned back to her. “Don’t think about that now,” she said in a low, soothing voice. “Just concentrate on getting your baby here.”
Johnny had never seen a baby born. Not a human baby. He’d seen depictions of births on television and in movies, but none of them could have prepared him for the real thing. Especially this close up.
As the woman’s pains grew stronger and closer, heavy beads of sweat covered her face. With teeth gritted, she tried to swallow back her screams, but now and then the agonizing sounds managed to escape and rip through the interior of the truck.
“She needs something for pain,” he said as the fraught minutes began to wear on him. “It’s killing her!”
Bridget darted a look of impatience at him. “Nothing is killing her. This is all normal for childbearing,” she assured him. “Plenty of women have given birth without painkillers to aid them. Besides, the baby is just about here.”
Bridget’s words had hardly been spoken when Leyla let out another scream and clutched her mounded belly with both hands. After another quick examination, Bridget swiftly instructed, “Johnny, go get behind her head and hold her hands. She needs something to grip.”
Leaping into action, he left the front of the truck and opened the back door on the driver’s side. “There’s not enough room for me on the seat,” he said to Bridget. “I’ll have to leave the door open and stand on the ground.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “We’ll shut off the cold air as soon as this little guy makes his entrance.”
Johnny grabbed the pregnant woman’s hands and was instantly shocked at the sheer strength of her grip. In front of him Bridget was working feverishly to help the baby forward.
“Hang on to Johnny, Leyla,” she instructed the young woman, “and push whenever I tell you to.”
“I—can’t!”
“Yes, you can. Now! Push hard!”
For the next few moments Bridget repeated the same refrain over and over without results and Johnny was beginning to fear that something had gone terribly wrong when a baby boy suddenly slipped from its mother and straight into Bridget’s waiting hands.
After that, a flurry of action ensued as Bridget coaxed the baby into taking its first breaths. Once it was squalling healthily, Bridget asked Johnny, “Do you have a pocket knife on you?”
“Yes.”
“Clean the blade with the alcohol from the first aid kit and I’ll use it to cut the umbilical cord.”
He did as she asked and after she’d tied off the infant’s former lifeline, she wiped a bit of the waxy mucous from his face, then wrapped the tiny body in the T-shirt.
“Here,” she said with a big smile as she handed the child to Johnny. “You keep the little man warm up in the front seat while I tend to the new mother.”
He’d never held a baby before and an older child only twice in his life. As Johnny carefully cradled the baby against his chest, he was swamped with a barrage of thoughts and emotions.
The young, tiny slip of a girl who’d just given birth could have been his mother thirty-one years ago. Had she gone through that much pain to get him here? Without a husband, a man at her side? Johnny had often wondered why she’d made some of the choices she’d made in her life. Especially the choice of leaving him behind. But now, after watching Leyla expend every ounce of strength she had to give her baby life, he wondered if his mother might have actually loved him. At least for a few brief moments in time.
Oh, God, he didn’t want to think about that now. He didn’t want to think about it at all.
The baby squirmed and made a soft mewing noise. The welcome distraction to his thoughts brought Johnny’s gaze down to the baby’s face and for the first time in a long time he felt the urge to smile. “What do you think he weighs?” he asked Bridget.
“I’m guessing seven pounds. Give or take an ounce or two.”
“Are you really a doctor?” Leyla asked Bridget in a weary voice. “You’re too pretty to be a doctor.”
Bridget let out a soft laugh. “I’m really a doctor. And I’m not a bit prettier than you are, Leyla.”
Johnny glanced over the seat just in time to see the young mother’s hand close over Bridget’s.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Bridget gently smoothed the strands of long dark hair off the woman’s face. “You’re very welcome.”
After that the young woman appeared to either faint or fall instantly asleep. Alarmed, Johnny asked, “Is she going to be okay?”
Bridget looked at him and their gazes locked. “Physically, yes. The birth was normal and everything appears to be okay. Emotionally, I have no idea. I’m sure your tribe offers aid to women like her. But—she needs more than that.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “A lot more.”
He was wondering why his chest felt so full of pressure, why he suddenly felt the need to send up a silent prayer, when the sound of a vehicle caught his attention.
Glancing around, he spotted an ambulance slowly making its way toward them.
Bridget said with a measure of relief, “Here they come. I’ll go fill the paramedics in on what’s happened.” Several minutes later, Bridget and Johnny watched Leyla and her baby boy disappear into the back of the ambulance. The paramedics gave them a final wave before they shut the door and the vehicle pulled away.
Once it was out of sight, Johnny glanced at Bridget, who was standing at his side. Her face was white and pinched and he thought he could see a glaze of moisture in her eyes.
“Would you rather go back to the house?” he suggested. “It’s not that far away. We—can go to the cabin another time.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she looked up at him. “The day is just beginning. Let’s go on to the cabin.”
“You’re drained,” he insisted.
A faint smile touched her lips and in that moment Johnny very much wanted to pull her into his arms, to tell her how wonderful she was, how special she would always be to him. But he didn�
��t. He couldn’t.
“Maybe a little,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”
Jamming his hands deep into the pockets of his military jacket, he looked away from her. “If that’s the way you want it, then we’d better get going.”
Her hand was suddenly on his arm and the unexpected touch swung his head back around to hers.
She said, “You were a great help with Leyla and the baby, Johnny. Thank you.”
Why did she think she needed to make him feel special? He didn’t want to be special to anyone.
Clearing the thickness from his throat, he said, “Any man would have done the same.”
“No,” she argued. “I’ve seen plenty of men faint at the first sign of blood.”
He grimaced. “The army cures you of that. Especially when you’re fighting a war. I’ve seen men die. But I think—” He stared down the road to a bend where the ambulance had disappeared. “Seeing that little baby born was much harder to witness.”
Bewildered by his comment, she gently squeezed his arm.
“I don’t understand. Why would you feel that way?”
His gaze traveled back to hers. “Grown men can fend for themselves, make their own choice to put themselves in danger. But that baby—he’s helpless. He has no one but his mother.”
“And maybe, in some small way, he reminded you of yourself?” she softly suggested.
He let out a heavy breath. “Yeah. I guess he did.”
She reached for his hand and Johnny obliged by tightening his fingers firmly through hers.
As they walked back to the truck, he tried not to think about tomorrow. Or how it would be to finally let her go. Once and for all.
Chapter Nine
The old cabin was located on the back edge of the Donovan property and sat near the bank of the Rio Hondo. Because the roads through the mountains were limited and some impassable due to the snowdrifts, they were forced to take a long route. More than an hour passed before they finally pulled to a stop in front of the log structure.
Bridget had visited the place a year ago last summer and at that time, she’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t come back. Not without Johnny. Seeing it, walking through the tiny rooms and remembering their time there together had been too painful for her.
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