Tana felt better, now that she’d walked out of the diner.
Caden had been insistent, so she’d called her doctor while standing in the parking lot. It was seven in the evening, so an answering service had taken her number. She’d paced in front of the diner, waiting for the doctor to call her back. Caden had paced with her. They’d both stopped when her phone had rung a couple of minutes later.
“What did the doctor say?” Caden asked when she hung up.
The call had been pretty useless. “He said it was unusual to have so many in a day, but not concerning. He asked if I tried changing positions to make them go away. You probably heard my answer.”
Caden must have heard it. He’d kept a respectful distance, but Tana had said I’ve been sitting, standing, driving, going to work and trying to sleep. Do you think I’ve been sitting in a chair in the same position FOR THREE DAYS?
“It was a good answer,” Caden said.
That made her feel a little better. “He said if it hasn’t been worse than it was two days ago, then it’s not likely to change tonight, either, but he’ll check me tomorrow when the office opens at eight. If I want to get checked now, I could try going to an emergency room.”
“Go to the—” He stopped himself in mid-command. “I think you should go to the ER.”
“All they do is check to see if you’re dilating. If, you know, things inside are…dilating.”
This was the most mortifying conversation with Caden yet. At her appointment, the doctor had gloved up to reach inside her and poke at her cervix. It had hurt. He’d said she’d be dilated ten centimeters when she gave birth, but she was currently at a total zero.
If a fingertip pressing on a zero-dilated cervix hurt that much, she couldn’t imagine how painful a baby’s head pushing through a ten-centimeter cervix would be. She didn’t want to find out. She had an appointment on Thursday at the hospital to preregister for the delivery, including the optional epidural. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t optional.
She started pacing again, just so she didn’t have to stand still and look a male acquaintance in the face and discuss checking. “I think I’ll just go home. I haven’t had a Braxton-Hicks since we walked out here.”
Caden checked his watch. “That’s only five minutes, so far. Do you live alone?”
Alone sounded so pitifully lonely. “I have my own place. I’ve got one of the faculty apartments on campus.” She had paced the perimeter of her living room last night for hours, by herself and in pain. She wished they gave epidurals for Braxton-Hicks contractions.
“Would you like to have someone spend the night?”
She stopped. “You want to sleep with me?”
He blinked at that.
“Never mind,” she said to the gravel at her feet. He was trying to be friendly with an acquaintance as she waddled around a parking lot, yet she’d reacted as if he’d propositioned her at a bar, acting offended—and a little flattered.
He was nice enough to ignore her goof. “Could your mother come? How about Ruby?” He paused. “The baby’s father?”
The damned tears started again, and she dashed them away with her sleeve. “Let me guess. This is one of those things you’d do for your ex-girlfriend. You’d sleep on her couch for three weeks before her due date, just in case she goes into labor when she’s home alone. Seriously?”
As soon as she asked it, she realized it was exactly what he’d do. Lieutenant Caden Sterling would have been the most wonderful ex-boyfriend in the world, but he wasn’t her ex-boyfriend. He wasn’t even her friend. She’d finally gotten the chance to apologize to him, but acquaintances didn’t become friends in fifteen minutes.
She wished she’d run into him sooner, like in January. They’d be better friends by now, and she wouldn’t keep putting her foot in her mouth—or at least they’d be able to laugh when she did.
Neither of them was laughing now. Her throat felt tight and her nose felt clogged, because, for once, the tears weren’t some hormonal anomaly. She genuinely felt sad, because she didn’t have him, or anyone. “I told you there is no father. I’ve told you and told you. Please quit asking me that.”
“I thought… Okay, but who came and got you at the ER back in January? Could he stay with you?”
She sniffed in as hard as she could, so that she wouldn’t cry, and her nose wouldn’t run. “That was my old coach. He’s in Colorado. How do you know about that?”
“I called to check on you that day. See if you needed a ride home. I was glad to hear you were right, and I was wrong.”
That did it. A huge sob escaped, then another, and she had to slap her hand over her nose and mouth. “I need a tissue.”
Caden pulled a napkin out of his to-go bag and tried to get her to smile. “Ta-da. A friend in time of need is a friend…”
“Indeed.” She scrubbed the napkin under her nose.
She felt weird. Antsy. She wanted to be moving. Walking. Anything.
She headed to her car. “I’m going home. I’ll call 911 if anything changes.”
Caden matched her strides easily. She wouldn’t win any speed-walking prizes with a ninth-month baby bump.
“Do you know what will happen when you call 911?” he asked conversationally. “I’ll show up at your door with two other firemen, because we usually beat the ambulance, and we’ll have this exact conversation again. Javier and Keith will not be thrilled.”
“You’re working tonight?” She gestured toward his plaid Western shirt, the cowboy kind with the pearlized snaps up the front. “You look like you’re going to a ranch.”
“I’m coming from one. I stopped here on my way to the station.”
“I didn’t realize firefighters did the…” She started to wave her hand toward the crotch of her black leggings, then thought better of it. “You check to see how many centimeters…if, uh…?”
“I don’t. I provide transport to the hospital, where they do. Let’s save ourselves all the hassle and go to the ER now. I’ll drive.”
The contraction hit her then, right as she was walking. It was big, a force that was pressing down so hard it was a struggle to stay standing. Caden caught her close with his arm around her, a crazy waltz position, right here in the diner’s parking lot. She clung to his strong shoulder as the pressure tried to send her to her knees. It was so intense, relentless—and then it stopped.
She gasped for breath.
“This time, you don’t have a choice,” Caden said.
She nodded. “The right answer is yes.”
* * *
As he drove, Caden looked at the endless stretch of empty road ahead, at the clock on his truck’s dashboard, at Tana as she sat beside him. She looked serious, but she wasn’t in pain at the moment. It had been four minutes since the last contraction.
Caden kept one hand on the steering wheel, but he held out his other, just in case she wanted to hold it. He wished his pickup truck had lights and sirens. He wished the hospital wasn’t halfway to Austin. He wished County Road 89 didn’t wind through empty cattle country.
Don’t panic. She had just one big contraction, almost five minutes ago. You have plenty of time. Hours and hours.
Tana took his hand. “The baby can’t come today. I’m only at thirty-seven weeks. It’s not ready yet. It can’t come for twenty more days.”
“It’s okay if he does. Or she does. Thirty-seven weeks is far enough along. Everything is good.” Caden remembered that from his training. The survival rate for babies born after thirty-six weeks was very high.
The survival rate. His heart squeezed in his chest.
Tana squeezed his hand and braced her other hand on the window, palm flat, as if the contraction was trying to knock her sideways in her seat. Caden counted silently until she relaxed. Fifty-five seconds. Four minutes apart.
“I think this is real labor,” she said. “I’m scared.”
You and me, both. “Why don’t we call your Lamaze coach? It might be less scary if you could talk to them. They should start heading for the hospital now, too.”
“I don’t have one yet.” But the next contraction was already building, so she rushed the rest of her words, pain sending her pitch higher and higher. “I’m doing the all-in-one-day Lamaze class on Saturday.”
I doubt that.
“I don’t know who to ask. My mom lives too many hours away, and Ruby’s not into babies—” By the time she got to Ruby, her voice was a squeak. “I should have asked Shirley. She’s had babies, but I didn’t want to bother her, because she’s got babies that need her and oh, my God, this is—”
When the contraction ended, she wiped at her eyes with the napkins from his apple pie, and she began to cry in earnest.
His heart broke for her.
“I don’t have anyone. I’m scared.”
“You have me. Do you hear me? You have me. Everything’s good.”
He paid attention to the road, but he could feel the way she was staring at him.
“You’re not dropping me off?” she asked, sounding surprised. “You’re staying this time?”
This time. Caden hadn’t meant to let her down in January, but there’d been no way to go with her.
“Please stay. I want you to stay.”
His heart gobbled up those softly spoken words, greedy to hear that she wanted him by her side, if only as her friend. Right now, being her friend felt more important than anything else.
“I’m staying. We’ll tell everyone I’m your Lamaze coach, so they won’t ask me to leave. I won’t leave you, even if they do.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“I can’t imagine how a Lamaze class could possibly prepare you for this. This—oh!—is—so—intense.” She squeezed his hand. This time, she gave a short shout with the contraction, not a scream, but the sound of exertion, like an athlete hurling a javelin, a volleyball champ spiking the ball. “Haa.”
She gulped some air as the contraction ended. “How much farther? I want an epidural.”
I would, too. He couldn’t be the first man to both admire a woman’s fortitude and simultaneously think Thank God, I don’t have to go through that.
“We’re halfway there. We have lots of time. Your water would break before you could actually push the baby out.” When responding to an intrapartum call, they were to put sterile absorbent pads on the gurney before seating the patient.
Tana was silent for an eternal minute. He took his eyes off the road for a quick glance at her face.
As another contraction built, she spoke in bursts of quick words, taking little breaths between them. “Maybe it did. At the diner. In the bathroom. I didn’t know. I thought—it was a lot—a lot of—pee. Just pee—just weird. More weirdness. Sorry.”
Caden drove on, forcing the fear down. They had time. If not, he had some experience. He’d gotten to a caller’s house minutes after a baby had been born. Once. The baby had been breathing and crying. The mother had been talkative and happy, the father had been in a daze, but Caden hadn’t been there during the delivery.
They had time.
Tana braced her hand on the ceiling and gave a javelin-throwing haa.
Or not.
“Are we going to make it to the hospital?” he asked her, a respectful request for information. It was time for him to focus.
She shook her head wildly. “No. I think it’s coming out. It can’t. It can’t—haa.”
“Okay. Good. Everything’s good.”
Caden pulled off the road. He got out of the truck, so that he could yank his go-bag from behind the bench seat. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, in a good way. He felt focused, able to think. Don’t drop the baby. That was the most important principle they’d been taught, years ago. The baby would be slippery. They were to instruct the woman to lie on the floor, so there was no way the baby could fall and jerk the umbilical cord, tearing placenta free.
He wasn’t going to have Tana lie in the dirt on the side of the road, that was for sure. He’d catch that baby before it could slip off his truck’s leather bench seat, as if his life depended on it.
It did. If Tana’s life and her baby’s life depended on it, then his did.
“I can’t have a baby in a truck,” Tana said breathlessly. “I have an appointment next week for the hospital preregistration. It’s not real labor.”
“Okay, baby, but can you turn sideways for me? Put your feet right here where I was sitting.” He didn’t know why he was calling Tana baby when she was having a baby, but he wanted to get her away from the edge of the seat.
“It’s coming,” she cried. She sat sideways on the bench with her back against the door, one hand braced against the dashboard. She only had one hand free to tug on the elastic waistband of her stretchy pants. “Help me.”
“Okay, baby. There you go.”
Ironically, he had baby wipes in his go-bag, because they were good for decontaminating the skin after fighting a fire. Every fire released toxic particles, so their policy was to wipe off their skin before they drove back to the station to shower more thoroughly.
He opened the wipes and cleaned his hands. They were shaking, but he felt pretty calm, considering he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and neither did Tana.
“Haa. The head, oh, my God, I feel the head.”
Damn, this was it. He wanted to wipe off the seat first. It couldn’t be clean enough for a new baby, but the wipes left the leather more wet. More slippery. “Wait! I have a blanket.”
“Wait?” Tana glared at him while panting. “Wait?”
He dug behind his seat for the blanket he kept in case the truck broke down in winter weather. Firefighters tended to be overprepared like that. The baby wouldn’t go sliding across a blanket, he hoped. “Lift your hips a little, baby. There you go.”
Tana was silent now. With her eyes closed, she concentrated as she pushed. Caden stood on the running board and leaned into the cab. He wrapped his hand around her ankle, just to hold her, not to take her pulse. He didn’t need to; she was as alive as a human could be. He watched her face and felt humble.
“The head,” she breathed.
Then he had a baby’s head in his hands, warm from its mother’s body, a surreal feeling.
Tana was silent, so he spoke softly. “Keep pushing, baby. Let’s find out if it’s a girl or a boy.”
In a rush, the whole baby slipped out, right into his hands, the most incredible thing that had ever happened in the universe.
“The baby.” Tana no longer sounded frightened. She was incredulous. “Look. There’s the baby. The whole baby. It’s out.”
The baby looked so peaceful. Caden hated to wake it, but newborns were supposed to cry, and he was supposed to help. He held the baby chest-down in his palm and rubbed its back briskly.
The baby took its first breath and cried its first cry, and Caden knew that if his own life ended at this second, he would feel he’d lived long enough.
The baby sounded so indignant. Caden laughed in relief, laughed in gratitude that the birth had gone like it was supposed to—except they were in his truck.
He relished his role as the announcer: “It’s a boy.”
“He’s so beautiful. He’s perfect. Oh, let me have him.”
“He’s slippery. Here.” It was an awkward reach to place the baby on Tana’s chest, because Caden was only halfway in the cab, but she settled her baby onto herself as she told Caden to look at his eyes, look at his face, look at him, look at him. It was unbearably sweet, that litany of motherly love.
Caden hated to interrupt, but he had to. “We need to dry him off. He’ll get cold.”
Baby wipes wouldn’t do the trick, and Tana was sitting on the only blanket. Caden backed out of the cab, unsnapped his plaid shirt with a quick yank, and shucked it off his shoulders. “Here we go.”
“Get in. Shut the door.” Tana struggled to sit up and move her feet off his seat.
Caden stopped her with a hand on her ankle again. “You stay put. Stay just the way you are.”
He was aware the umbilical cord was still attached. There was something about keeping the baby and mother above or below or beside each other, but that clear sense of focus had fled, and he was lucky he could think of his own name right now. Tana and the baby seemed to be as comfortable as possible in the situation. He didn’t want to move them.
“I want you to be in here,” Tana said, and he was amazed she could sound so normal and speak so clearly after performing a miracle. Even more amazing, she was thinking about him. “Don’t stand out there and shut me in here. I can move so you have room.”
“Stay as you are. I’ll come around to your side.”
That was how Caden found himself with Tana in his arms once more. He sat with the hard door against his back, so Tana could rest her back on his bare chest. The baby rested on her chest. The plaid shirt was tucked all around the baby to keep him warm. Caden finished his call to 911 and dropped the phone onto the floor, so he could wrap his arms around them both, woman and baby, keeping them warm, keeping them safe.
They were his. At this moment in time, they were his to have and to hold, in the cab of a truck on the side of a road. He didn’t want the ambulance to come.
“Are you okay?” Tana whispered.
“Everything’s good.”
“It really is.”
They were quiet for a moment, and then Caden ducked his chin to see her, and she turned her face to see him, and the moment their eyes met, they started laughing, really laughing, big, genuine laughs. Caden wasn’t sure why, but they laughed like they were little kids who’d gotten away with some crazy candy caper. They’d fooled all the adults and pulled off some wacky stunt.
“We did it,” Tana said. “Can you believe this? We did it.”
“Yeah. Let’s not do it this way again, though.”
She rested her head back on his chest, so she could keep looking at her baby, but she talked to Caden. “You didn’t fool me, you know. You kept saying everything’s good when everything was out of control. What a funny thing to say.”
He rested his cheek on top of her head. “Everything was good, though, or we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. It wasn’t as funny as you telling me it was a baby, like you hadn’t expected a baby to come out. ‘A whole baby,’ you said.”
“I still can’t believe it. He’s here. He’s a real baby. Look at him. Look at his little ear. Look at the tiny nose…”
Caden listened and fell completely, deeply in love. She was the woman of his dreams, and he’d known it from the first. He wasn’t going to wait for a woman like her to come into his life, because that would never happen. There was no other Montana McKenna.
She’d insisted she didn’t need a man during her pregnancy. She’d started that pregnancy without a relationship, deciding she wanted a baby without a man at all. She didn’t want romance.
But she’d wanted to be friends with him, apologizing over nothing so he might like her better. Friendship was what she needed, for now. He loved her, so he would be that friend for her.
But someday soon, Caden was going to try to win her heart.
“Oh, look, Caden. Look at his little mouth. It looks like he’s smiling.”
She already had his.