The Second Time Around

by Marie Ferrarella

  At the last minute, just before picking Laurel up in his arms, Ryan looked to Jason for approval. “If it’s all right with you?”

  It would have been the more manly thing to decline the offer, to say something to the effect that he could take care of his own wife, and then pick her up himself. But Jason knew that he would struggle beneath Laurel’s weight and that would only make her more uncomfortable. Ryan looked as if he could bench-press tractors in his spare time as a recreational outlet.

  Laurel’s welfare came above all else, including his own ego. Jason nodded. “Sure.”

  She didn’t want some strange man carrying her. But before she could lodge a protest, Laurel felt herself becoming airborne. The restaurant owner’s chauffeur had just picked her up as if she weighed next to nothing.

  Any comment about his strength faded as another wave of pain washed over her, growing progressively more powerful. Laurel tried very hard not to dig her nails into Ryan’s shoulders.

  This is bad, Laurel thought. Someone had scrambled up and was opening the outer door ahead of them. The last time she’d felt pain this intense and this often, she was just minutes away from pushing Christopher out.

  The hospital seemed like an entire state away.

  “Am I hurting you?” Ryan asked. He was moving as gently as he could while still trying to hurry. Jason was bringing up the rear.

  She didn’t answer the driver’s question. There had always been something extremely competitive about her, something that forbade her from admitting how weak she felt and how much pain she was in. All she could do was blurt out, “Hurry.”

  Laurel was barely aware of being deposited onto the spacious back seat of the stretch limo. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was desperately trying to fight the urge to push with all her might.

  As she clenched her hands into fists at her sides, Jason was climbing into the limousine. He took the seat beside her as the driver’s-side door slammed shut. The next second, the limousine took off. Laurel released a ragged breath.

  “We’ll be there soon, Laurel,” Jason promised, taking her hand in his. “Just hang on, honey.”

  Laurel pressed her lips together. If there was anything she’d learned with her other pregnancies, it was that babies came when they wanted to. “I don’t know…if I…can…Jason. She wants…to…come out.”

  “Breathe, honey, breathe.” He was shaking his head, negating her words, even as he issued instructions. “You remember. You can’t pant and push at the same time. C’mon, honey, do it. It’s just a few more minutes to the hospital.” Then, feeling that she might want to have him keep her company, he began to pant, illustrating what he’d just told her to do. “Like this.”

  As he continued to pant, Jason saw the lights out of the corner of his eye. Red lights. A whole slew of them. Taillights glowing like fireflies on a holiday in the dead of night. The next moment, he felt the limousine slowing down.

  “What’s the matter?” he called out to the driver.

  There was barely suppressed annoyance in the man’s deep voice. “Traffic jam.”

  “There can’t be,” Jason cried. But it was Friday night on Pacific Coast Highway. Not to expect a traffic jam fell into the realm of fairy tales.

  “Hold on,” Ryan advised.

  The next moment, they felt the car tilting slightly. Just before they took off.

  The red lights remained where they were. They did not.

  The passage was bumpy. Jason realized that Aldo’s chauffeur had angled the limousine slightly so that they were now driving on the shoulder of the road. Since it was so narrow, two of the car’s wheels were running along Pacific coast Highway’s hilly terrain.

  Each time they hit a bump, Laurel sucked in her breath.

  Jason’s heart stood still as he monitored her every movement. “Out,” he coached, “not in. Out!” Again, he demonstrated.

  Laurel was holding onto his hand for all she was worth. She knew she was squeezing too hard, but she couldn’t make herself stop. It was as if holding her husband’s hand, not the panting, was helping her cope with the pain and keep the baby back.

  “The…doctor,” Laurel cried.

  “She’ll be there.”

  But she shook her head. He didn’t understand. How could Dr. Kilpatrick be there if the doctor didn’t know she’d gone into labor? “Call…her!”

  He’d forgotten about that. Jason felt around for his cell phone. Locating it in his inside pocket, he pulled it out and hit the number that Laurel had preprogrammed into his cell only the week before.

  He got the doctor’s answering service.

  “No, I want Dr. Kilpatrick. A message?” he echoed the question the woman on the other end of the line asked. “Yes, I want to leave a message. This is Jason Mitchell. My wife Laurel’s in labor and we’re on our way to the hospital. We’ll be there in five minutes. The baby might be there in six. Yes, six. Tell her to hurry.”

  Jason flipped the phone closed. Taking a look at Laurel’s face, he wasn’t sure they actually had six minutes left.

  CHAPTER 38

  When Laurel looked back on it later, all the events of the evening leading up to her daughter’s debut seemed to blur, rushing together at the speed of light.

  However, at the time the big moment seemed to transpire at a painfully plodding pace. Even the wild ride to the hospital. Ryan made it there in under ten minutes. The moment he brought the limousine to a screeching halt in the parking area reserved for emergency room vehicles only, the driver came barreling out of the vehicle and ran through Blair Memorial’s electronic doors. The doors barely had enough time to part far enough apart to allow him entrance.

  Watching him, Jason had the impression that the man could have smashed right through them without so much as pausing for a second to recover.

  Ryan was back almost in the next heartbeat, followed by a nurse and a short, thin orderly. They were maneuvering a gurney between them.

  If it weren’t for the driver, Jason thought, they’d still be stuck in traffic. And Laurel would be giving birth on Pacific Coast Highway. With only him in attendance.

  God, they had dodged a bullet with that one.

  “If we were having a boy, we’d name him after you,” he told Ryan, gratitude pulsing in every syllable. Beside him, the medical team gently lifted Laurel onto the gurney.

  In response, the chauffeur grinned broadly. “Ryan could work for a girl.” He put his two fingers to his cap and took several steps back, getting out of their way as the orderly and nurse turned the gurney back toward the E.R. entrance.

  “Tell Aldo we said thanks,” Jason called back to him as he hurried to keep up with the gurney and, more importantly, with his wife.

  “You Mr. Mitchell?” the slender blond nurse asked.

  “We’re the Mitchells,” Jason answered, instinctively knowing how much providing a united front meant to Laurel, especially at a time like this.

  The nurse nodded. They crossed the threshold and kept on going. “Dr. Kilpatrick called,” she informed him. “She’s on her way.” The nurse looked down at Laurel. “Hang in there, honey. The doctor left instructions to take you directly to the delivery room.”

  Aware of the precise way that the wheels of any enterprise turned, regardless of how dire the situation, Jason glanced back over his shoulder toward the reception desk. They’d hurriedly bypassed it on their way to the elevators.

  “Don’t I need to fill out forms?”

  It was Laurel rather than the nurse who answered his question. “I…already…pre…registered a…week…ago.”

  He shook his head. The woman never ceased to amaze him. Despite everything that was going on, she was always efficient. He’d been taking that for granted the past few years. He shouldn’t have, he thought. And there was no better time than now to tell her. Because now was all they ever had.

  “You are a wonder, Laurie.” Jason felt his smile freeze as Laurel started to squeeze his hand so hard he was positive she was
breaking blood vessels in the process. “Bad?”

  “On a scale…of…one to ten…it’s…a…twelve,” she panted.

  She was soaked, he thought. With his free hand, he took out a handkerchief and wiped her brow. Checking the numbers, he watched the floors pass slowly and longed for a way to speed up the car.

  Laurel gurgled, swallowing a scream. “Why doesn’t this go faster?” Jason demanded.

  “Be happy it’s not getting stuck between floors,” the orderly told him.

  The very thought made Jason’s heart freeze.

  But then the next moment the elevator doors were dragging themselves open. Jason breathed a sigh of relief. As soon as the doors were apart, the orderly and nurse pushed Laurel’s gurney out onto the maternity floor.

  Hurrying alongside of the gurney, Jason took Laurel’s hand and squeezed it. “It won’t be long now,” he promised.

  “Not…long.” He didn’t realize that she was contradicting him and not just echoing his words until she screamed out, “Now!”

  It felt like forces greater than she were acting on her body. Laurel found herself helpless to do anything but push.

  The nurse was horrified to see Laurel tense her body. “Wait!”

  But it was beyond her power to comply. “Can’t!”

  The delivery rooms were located all the way down the hall. At this point, it might as well have been in the next county, Laurel thought. Thinking quickly, the nurse steered the gurney into the first open room she saw. For a change, the maternity floor was relatively inactive and there were more empty rooms than occupied ones.

  “Get the doctor!” the nurse shouted to the orderly. But by the time the young man had raced out and down the hallway, Laurel could feel the baby pushing her way out, ready or not.

  “Jason! Jason…she’s…heeerrre!” Laurel cried, grasping for her husband’s hand again.

  “Right here, Laurie, I’m right here.” Remembering what he’d learned in class, rather than take her hand, he got behind Laurel and propped her up so that she could be in a better position to push.

  “Wait for me,” the nurse told them, quickly moving to the opposite end of the gurney. There wasn’t even time to transfer Laurel to a regular bed. “You two can’t have all the fun.”

  The nurse barely took her place and stripped away Laurel’s underwear. The baby appeared immediately behind the cotton material, eager to take her place in the world.

  “I’m here!” Dr. Kilpatrick declared, still slipping on her blue operating-room livery. “And so, apparently, is your junior miss,” she noted, looking down at the baby the nurse was holding in her hands. She grinned, looking back at the exhausted mother. “You do-it-yourselfers are going to put me out of business.” Picking up the surgical scissors, Dr. Kilpatrick held them out to Jason. “Would you like to cut the cord?”

  But Jason shook his head. “I’d rather be on this end, with Laurel.” Very gently, he removed his hands from beneath her shoulders and laid her back down on the gurney. “You did good, honey.”

  Her heart was racing so fast it was difficult for her to catch her breath. She was only marginally aware that Jason had taken out his handkerchief and was wiping her brow. She felt as if she’d been turned into a giant puddle.

  “I can’t believe it’s over.” The baby made a noise. Eager to see her child, Laurel attempted to prop herself up on her elbows.

  “It’s over,” Jason assured her. Holding Laurel up, he looked over at his new daughter. “And she’s beautiful.”

  Yes, she was, Laurel thought as she watched the nurse clean her up. “You know, Ryan’s not such a bad name for a girl. What do you think of Lily Ryan?”

  “It’s different,” Jason agreed. Overcome with emotion, with the harrowing thought that if there had been any complications, he might have lost her if not for the efforts of a man he didn’t know, it took Jason a moment to get control over himself. “You can call her anything you want, Laurie.”

  “Lily Ryan Debra,” Laurel whispered, nodding her head. “Lily Ryan Mitchell.” It had a nice ring to it. “We need to call the family,” she suddenly realized.

  He nodded as the nurse, having wrapped a receiving blanket around the baby, tucked the infant into his arms. Emotions he couldn’t begin to identify erupted all through him as he looked down upon the brand-new life he was holding.

  “In a minute,” he whispered. Jason raised his eyes to look at his wife. “Right now, I’d like to just enjoy this moment, this child, with you. Alone.”

  It occurred to Laurel, as she watched her husband with their daughter, that that was one of the nicest things Jason had ever said to her.

  Lying back, she opened her arms. “Don’t hog her,” she told him.

  “Sorry, it’s just that she’s so tiny. So perfect.” His eyes met Laurel’s. “So much like you.”

  Very carefully, he transferred the baby into her arms. And it was at precisely that moment Laurel realized that what the doctor had told her was true. Some things were even better when experienced the second time around.

  THE SECOND TIME AROUND

  copyright © 2007 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6837-5

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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