Chapter Ten

Ford felt like hammered shit. Hungover, hammered shit. Hard-up, hungover, hammered shit, to take things down to the gritty details, because instead of getting laid last night, per his plan, he’d ended up sitting in the hotel bar with Mad—who had been in an uncharacteristically contemplative mood—chugging whiskey like a rank amateur while Mad went on and on about how he’d grown tired of casual, meaningless sex. All of which had prevented him from pursuing any of the casual, meaningless sex he’d flown all the way to Juneau with the express intention of engaging in.

Shoving his F350 into gear, he reversed out of the Captivity Air parking lot, tires spitting gravel as he made the turn onto Coveside Drive while the desultory afternoon rain tapped a lazy rhythm on his windshield and roof. Fine by him. The weather suited his dreary mood, though as much as he wanted to attribute it to the hangover and the wasted trip to Juneau, he couldn’t. He appreciated a mutually entertaining one-night stand as much as the next guy—maybe more, judging by Mad’s current view on the subject—but he’d made it thirty-one years without being inside one woman’s body while another woman occupied his mind. He wouldn’t be able to say that this morning if he’d stuck with his original plan, and he was probably better off keeping that one shred of integrity intact. But the plain fact remained. Lilah was in his head.

He let out a breath and rolled his shoulders. In his head was okay. He could live with that. Had been living with it for the better part of his two years in Captivity. From the first time he’d met her, shortly after buying The Goose, he’d felt something shift inside him. A change in energy. Fate had tossed a pebble in his still waters, sending out quiet ripples of awareness and recognition of Lilah’s own still waters and the depths at which they ran. He’d taken a special interest, like many others, in a bright, beautiful person in their settled midst, so achingly full of potential her serene surface couldn’t conceal it. Interest had slowly built to alternating compulsions to protect her quiet serenity and encourage her boundless potential to run fast and free. Then those ripples had shifted on him again, carrying him into dangerous waters he’d never meant to enter with her but couldn’t seem to fight his way out of. He continued battling against the current, every damn day, but it took a lot of strength and discipline.

“But you’ll do it,” he vowed out loud. He’d do it because Lilah still needed protection and encouragement, now more than ever, and for reasons that ran deep beneath his own still surface, he needed to be the guy to provide it. Assuming she’d trust him after what he’d done last night. Winning back her trust was job number one. She’d stay in his head, probably for the rest of his life, because he honestly didn’t have the strength or discipline to change that, but she was off-limits to his body.

He drew his truck to the curb in front of the bar and checked his watch. Two o’clock. The lull between the lunch rush and happy hour seemed like as good a time as any to try and fix this clusterfuck he’d created. Still, to give himself extra time to mentally prepare, he bypassed the sidewalk entrance to The Goose and strode into the lobby of the inn, thinking he’d beg a couple industrial-strength ibuprofen from the bottle Rose kept behind the reception desk. He wasn’t too keen on tangling with Rose, given his pounding headache and relentless guilt over putting his hands on her pregnant daughter, but the Gods were on his side, for once, because when he approached, he saw one of the recently hired summer employees manned reception. After requesting the painkillers and downing them with a complimentary bottle of water, he looked around the expansive, lodge-like lobby. Guests loitered here and there, some coming, some going, some relaxing in the dark leather club chairs arranged in cozy groupings. No sign of the proprietress, though. Curiosity got the better of him. He turned to the clean-cut clerk. “Where’s Rose?”

“In Anchorage.” The young guy offered a small smirk as he said it. “She’ll be back tomorrow.”

Ford felt his brows lift. Was every business owner in town taking a sudden high-season getaway? “What’s she doing in Anchorage?”

The clerk shrugged, but the smirk remained. “Don’t know. She went with the pilot.”

“Which pilot?” Trace? Bridget?

“Uh, I don’t know his name. He doesn’t stay here when he’s in town. Tall, wiry guy. Dark hair. Forty-ish?”

Neither Shanahan, then. He was about to let it go, figuring the kid had his facts wrong, when all the little puzzle pieces fell into place. “Ray Sandoval?”

“Yeah.” The clerk smiled and nodded. “Ray. That’s the one.”

Right, because Ray, a bush pilot out of Anchorage, owned a small, shingle-covered saltbox cottage down by the cove and usually stayed there on overnighters, especially during the spring and summer months. All of which begged the question of why a pilot who rarely spent time at the Captivity Inn would, out of the blue, be flying Rose to Anchorage.

Maybe for the same reason he’d flown to Juneau? Fuck it, maybe Ray was making a play for Rose now that her nest was empty. They were around the same age, single, and perhaps ready to mingle. Very possible, as well as very none of his business. Though if that was the case, seemed like old Jorg would remain ogift. Just like him. He sure as hell wouldn’t be flying all the way to fucking Juneau to sit around drinking with Mad and not getting laid. He could do that right here in Captivity. And if the tedium of ogift-ity got to him, well, he had his knitting. He’d make it work.

After thanking the clerk, he rolled his shoulders, worked the kinks out of his neck, and headed to the bar. He entered from the lobby. A couple groups of late-lunchers occupied tables, and a few people getting a jump on happy hour sat at the bar. Tall, rangy, affable Owen nodded a greeting while he took an order from a table of tourists. Silent Mike lifted a hand from behind the bar.

No sign of Lilah.

He continued past the pool table, around the bar, and into the kitchen. Aside from Louis, the scrawny, pierced, and tattoo-covered local kid he’d hired to bus tables, haul out empties, and wash dishes, the room was unoccupied. The job was a condition of Lou’s parole after completing court-ordered rehab. Last summer the kid had worked on an older friend’s fishing boat, but after weeks in the Straight, instead of coming home with a full bank account, he’d washed ashore with a meth habit that had quickly gotten his ass into trouble on land. For all the drama leading to Louis’ employment at The Goose, he’d given Ford no reason to regret hiring him. The teen showed up on time, did the grunt work without complaint, and kept clean. He was about to ask Lou if he’d seen Lilah when she slammed through the back door that opened to the alley.

As far as break locations went, the alley ranked bottom of the list. On a nice day one could follow the narrow band of asphalt back to the inn’s dog run and check out the growlers, but on a breezy day it became a wind tunnel, and on a day like today, only a stingy little awning above the door shielded a body from the rain. Mostly, it was a charmless, sunless gap between the buildings meant to provide Captivity Sanitation with access to the dumpsters for the inn and The Goose.

He watched as Lilah closed the door, rested against it a moment before pushing away to cross the kitchen. Then she saw him and halted. One arm came to rest over her stomach, so plainly obvious to him now, even in a roomy blue-and-white tunic and blue leggings. The outfit made her look like she’d just returned from a cruise of the Greek islands rather than a dingy alley.

Except no vacation tan. Her pale face turned her eyes to huge green pools churning with worry, or worse, fear.

Your doing, his conscience accused. He took a step toward her, then remembered they weren’t alone. “Could I talk to you in my office for a minute?”

Lilah slowly shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t. Not now.”

He closed the distance between them, the high-traction soles of his all-weather boots squeaking on the white tile floor as he abruptly stopped himself just outside her personal bubble. “This won’t take long. It’s important.”

A deep flush swept into cheeks, like a sudden fever. She closed her eyes and let out a slow, slightly ragged breath. “I’m sure, but Ford, I’m having a baby.”

“I know. Believe me, Lilah, I completely understand your priority. It’s my priority, too.” He sent a sidelong look at Lou, unloading lunch dishes from the dishwasher, seemingly paying them no mind. “I just want to make sure there’s no, ah, misunderstanding about that.”

She let out another long, almost relieved breath, and her color normalized. Good. This was going better than he’d hoped. Then she inhaled quickly and grabbed his hand. Hard. Like, bone-grindingly hard. “No,” she huffed, chin lowered to her chest, “you don’t understand. I think I’m having a baby now.”

“Now?” Now. Now? The word would not compute. “But you’re not due yet.”

“Close enough.” She made a strangled sound, cupped her hands under her belly, and looked down at herself. He looked, too, and saw a dark stain spreading along the inside seam of her legging.

“Oh, dude. I think she’s right.”

This from Lou, who might qualify as the expert in the room, considering he was the oldest of seven siblings. Feeling unaccountably guilty, like Lou and he had both spied on her during a personal moment, he jerked his gaze back to her face. Their eyes met. Hers were still huge, but she told him, “I need to call Dr. Devan,” with an eerie calm.

“My office,” he said, lifted her into his arms, ignored her, “I can walk!” and carried her there as quickly as possible, careful not to bonk any part of her on a corner or a wall. His right elbow didn’t fare as well, but he barely felt the tingling pain radiate down his arm when he smacked it on the edge of the narrow doorframe on the way into his office. The office itself was little more than a cramped closet, with an old metal desk currently cluttered with his laptop and a bunch of paperwork. Behind the desk sat a cheap black swivel chair he’d ordered from Amazon late last year for fifty bucks. One of the old wooden chairs from the dining room was positioned in front of the desk, passing for a guest chair.

After a half second of consideration, he lowered her to the swivel chair, then retreated to the other side of the desk, turned away—in case she needed privacy to…labor—and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He’d added the doc to his contacts but still managed to burn through precious time because he fumbled keying her name into the search bar. What was probably more like ten seconds felt like ten hours, and another ten passed while the phone rang…and rang…and rang. Sitting on the edge of the desk, he snuck a glance back at Lilah, only to find the chair where he’d put her empty. Mildly frantic, he twisted around and saw her standing by the wall a couple feet away, rubbing her lower back with one hand, resting the other atop her stomach, taking slow, deep breaths. He pointed at the chair. She shook her head. “I can talk to her.”

“You just sit down and try not to panic. I can handle—” The click of the call connecting forced him to let it go for the moment.

“Dr. Devan speaking.”

She was definitely on her cell and possibly on the road. He heard background sounds he feared indicated a moving vehicle. “Hey, it’s Ford. I think Lilah’s in labor. I mean, she thinks she’s in labor.”

“Okay. What’s driving that conclusion?”

Why the hell did everyone sound so fucking calm? “What’s driving that conclusion? Uh, her being pregnant and telling me the baby’s coming now.”

A sigh drifted over the line. “How far apart are the contractions?”

“Uh…”

“Has her water broken?”

“I think maybe—”

“Was the fluid clear and watery, or—?”

He pulled the phone away from his ear. “Uh…” He glanced at Lilah, then held the phone out. “She needs to talk to you.”

When she took it, he backed away, returned to sitting on the edge of his desk, contemplating the dark striations designed to mimic marble in the vinyl floor tiles and trying not to listen in on Lilah’s side of the conversation.

“Um, about ten minutes apart.”

Ten minutes? Was that fast? His heart stuttered. Should they boil water?

“Yes. It broke just now,” she said, and then, “No. Not a lot.”

He turned to look at her, but she had her back to him. How could she stand there so composed? Hell, how could she stand at all? Parts of him that were never going to birth a baby strongly protested the very concept, to the point his own legs felt unsteady. She suddenly looked over her shoulder and caught him watching her. “I don’t know,” she said into the phone. “I’d have to check.” With that, she bit her lip and stared at him.

An awkward silence stretched, and then it hit him. “Oh. I’ll just…step out.” He moved to the door, then hesitated over leaving her alone in her condition. “I’ll be right outside the door. Just holler if you need me.”

She nodded but fluttered her hand in a go motion. He went, pulling the door shut behind him. And waited. And waited. After an interminable five minutes, he raised his hand to knock on the door when it swung open.

Lilah looked up at him, a little flushed but otherwise reassuringly not seeming as if a small life was slowly attempting to push its way out of her body. While he took that in, his mouth proceeded on autopilot with a brisk, “What’s up?”

What’s up? Jesus Christ, you’ve lost your mind.

Incredibly, she laughed, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that between the seasoned, Special Forces op trained to deal with do-or-die situations and the sheltered, twenty-one-year-old student and part-time waitress, she was the cooler under pressure. “You seem really nervous for someone whose been through this before.”

Been through this before? How had he been through this before? Oh. Mia. “Are you kidding? I didn’t even get called to the hospital until hours after Mia was born. This”—he gestured vaguely to her stomach—“is all new. So, what’s the plan?”

“Dr. Devan wants me to go over to the clinic.” While she spoke, Lilah handed him his phone. “She’s calling Beverly in to open up.”

“They’re not open?” He pocketed the phone and took a step back, turned right, then left—nowhere to go—and faced front again. “Why Beverly? Where’s the doc?” Stress sent his voice up in volume as he battered her with questions. Beverly Owatch manned the clinic’s front office, took vitals, administered vaccines to unenthusiastic kids, and could probably administer basic first aid. She was not an obstetrician.

Lilah raised a hand, palm up. “It’s Sunday.”

Right. Right. Of course, it would be. But Bev was around to open the clinic, so that problem was solvable. His mind circled back to the more nerve-wracking question. “Where’s Dr. Devan?”

“She’s…um…” Lilah bit her lip again. “Don’t freak out, all right?”

“I don’t freak out.”

“Ford.” Her lips curved into a smile containing a hint of exasperation. She tipped her head to the side in a way that said, Look at yourself.

He took stock. Okay, so he stood there filling the doorway, with white-knuckled grips on either side of the doorframe, leaning in as if he could somehow contain this situation with his body. Which he could not. Releasing a deep breath, he let go of the doorframe and stepped back. “I’m not going to freak out.”

“Your eyes are kind of…” She darted her pretty green ones up, down, left, and right. Then she reached up and rested a cool palm against his cheek. “Just relax. I’m not going to explode. Yet.”

Should have shaved, was the first unhinged thought to leap into his head. Had he known she’d be touching his face today he’d have smoothed it up for her. The next, more crucial thought was that he had to pull himself together. He willed his heart rate slower, rolled his shoulders to loosen them, and met her gaze with one he purposefully held steady. “And I’m not going to freak out. Yet.”

“Good.” She dropped her hand to his chest, and he wondered if she was checking his heart rate. “Dr. Devan took a day trip to Glacier Bay. She’s heading back now.”

“Glacier Bay?” His voice echoed loudly in the short hallway. “Holy shit.” This was bad. Bad, he silently reiterated as he dragged a hand through his hair rather than follow his first impulse to pound the wall. Gustavus, the closest town to the park entrance, was only about sixty miles away as the crow flew but had no road access. She’d either flown there or hopped on the ferry. Depending upon where she was in the park, it could take hours to return to Captivity. Did they have hours? “ETA?”

“Three hours. Maybe four. She’s pretty deep in the park. She took the earliest ferry to get there, but she’s going to call Captivity Air on the way back to Gustavus and see if she can arrange for a pickup.”

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“You said you wouldn’t freak out,” came a quiet voice from behind him. Somehow, he’d turned himself around. The hand in his hair was now a fist, yanking hard enough to make his scalp sting.

He swung back to face her. “You’re right. No reason to freak out. Just ’cause you’re in early labor, the doc is God knows where, and”—another sharp little factoid stabbed into his mind—“women are supposed to fly to the hospital in Juneau to have babies. The clinic isn’t a birthing center.”

“It is today. She’s delivered plenty of babies. They don’t normally do it at the clinic because of insurance reasons, but she wants me to stay put since my water has already broken. Things could move kind of fast, and— Oh…”

Now she grabbed the doorframe and held tight. With her chin to her chest, she sipped in quick, shallow inhales.

Before he knew what the hell he was saying or doing, he had his hands clasped around her shoulders, muttering, “Oh god, Lilah, baby, please don’t…” Push? Hurt? Have a baby? These things were all inevitable, he acknowledged even while he stood there trying to pour strength into her with the contact and absorb her pain. Wasted effort, the semi-functional logic center in his brain told him.

After forever she sighed, let go of the doorframe, and blinked at him. “Dang it. I’m supposed to time the length of the contractions. Do you think that was about a minute?”

“I think that was about a thousand years,” he replied, meaning it. “Here.” He undid his watch and handed it to her. “Use this. Let’s go.” Sliding an arm around her shoulders, he prepared to pick her up, but she stepped away.

“Uh-uh. Ford, I can walk.” She went on before he could argue. “According to Dr. Devan, walking is good. I’m just going to grab my purse from behind the bar, and then I’ll drive over to the clinic and wait for Beverly. I’m sorry to leave you short-handed like this—”

“I’m driving you.”

For some reason, she colored at his statement and shook her head. “Uh-uh. I can walk on my own, and I can drive to the clinic on my own. I don’t need you to take charge.”

He just stared, not a hundred percent sure he’d heard her right, but the little chin he’d always found adorable pushed forward, and she crossed her arms. Where was this resistant streak coming from? What had happened to polite, biddable Lilah? “This is non-negotiable. I’m driving.” He wrapped a hand around her arm. “You’re timing the contractions. It’s called teamwork. Come on.”

With that, he turned to get moving, but she dug in her heels. Okay, he could be stubborn, too, and he had a significant height and weight advantage. He towed her down the short hall, feeling like a bully. When they reached the kitchen, he’d had enough. He let go and turned to her. “Give me a little bit of a break, here, Lilah. Please. I’m trying to help.”

Blushing furiously, she folded her arms across her chest and stared at the floor, then at something over his shoulder. “Can you drive me in my car?”

Fine. Done. Whatever. “I’ll drive you in any vehicle you want. Your Jeep. My truck. I’ll hotwire the Captivity Inn courtesy van if it makes you happy. Just say the word.”

“The Jeep,” she said softly but bestowed a quick, grateful smile on him. “The keys are in my bag.”

Awesome. They collected her bag. Silent Mike, Owen, and Louis assured him they’d hold things down at the bar. Thankfully, The Goose closed early on Sundays. It wasn’t until he was helping her into the passenger side of her truck and caught a glimpse of the wet stain on her leggings that he realized why she’d insisted on taking it. Not trusting himself to speak immediately, he went around and got behind the wheel, started the engine, and waited until she’d buckled her seat belt. Then he looked over at her. “Are we taking your car because you didn’t want to make a mess in mine?”

Her cheeks flamed, but she nodded. “Yours is so new.”

Jesus. This girl. He signaled and eased away from the curb. “What am I going to do with you?”

She looked his way, unwittingly, gut-wrenchingly beautiful with her long, light brown waves flowing back from her guileless face, showing off her high cheekbones, proud, straight little nose, and full, perfect lips. They curved into what struck him as a sad smile, and then she asked, “What would you like to do with me?”

Such a loaded question.

Nothing.

Everything.

Too many things he shouldn’t even try to articulate. He settled for, “Take you to the clinic. Hang around and pester you ’til the doc arrives.”

If she arrives.

Her eyes clouded. “Do you think you could stay for a while? Even after?”

The uncertainty in her voice broke him. She was anxious. Of course she was. Hell, he was terrified, and he had absolutely no critical role in this. She should have Shay by her side, or her mother. Unfortunately, due to bad luck and bad timing, neither of those people were going to be there for her. But he was.

He swallowed and squared his shoulders. “I’ll be at your side as long as you need me. Always.”