graded like eggs the minute they were born.
“You’re a peanut, but you’re a real perky little peanut,” he said softly, rubbing the tiny thing’s back through the towel. Then he looked at the skinny, scrappy woman who’d just produced the now-quieter infant squirming in her arms, and something inside just melted, like when your muscles get all tense but you don’t even realize it until someone tells you to relax. “You done good, Mama. Shoot, you didn’t even work up a good sweat.”
Silver eyes, full of delight and mischief, briefly tangled with his. “Widest pelvis in the lower forty-eight,” she said, her grin eclipsing the entire lower half of her face.
And the thought came, This is no ordinary woman.
A moment later, in a flutter of skirts and long salt-and-pepper hair, Ivy Gardner burst into the room, took one look at the situation and said, “Figured you’d get the fun part, leave the cleanin’ up to me!” Except then the two-hundred-pound woman, her hair barely caught up in a couple of silver clips, swept over to the bed. “I’m Ivy, honey,” she said to Maddie, her expression softening at the sight of the baby. “Oh…wouldja look at this cutie-pie?” She let out a loud cackle. “Boy or girl?”
“A girl. Amy Rose.”
Ivy grinned. “Amy. Beloved.”
“That’s right.”
But Ivy had already turned her attention to other matters, massaging Maddie’s abdomen to facilitate the expulsion of the placenta, all the while cooing to the new baby and praising her mama.
Ryan left them to it. Ivy Gardner had delivered more than five hundred babies in the last twenty-five years, had never lost a one. Or a mother, either. And right now, he figured his patient could use some mothering herself.
His heart did a slow, painful turn in his chest as he peeled off his gloves, staring out the window. The rain had stopped, he realized, the sky pinking up some in the east.
And Ryan found himself beset with the strangest feeling that his life had just changed somehow.
He glanced over at the two children, stirring from sleep on the chair. It plumb tore him up, seeing those three—now four—in the condition they were in. What had brought Maddie here, with two small children and as pregnant as she was? She didn’t look like she was much more than a kid herself, although he supposed she was at least twenty or so. Except for the mud on the bottoms of their jeans, the kids’ clothes had been clean enough, but they were worn, probably secondhand, the little girl wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs, he guessed.
His gaze drifted back to Maddie. Scraps of light brown hair, the color unremarkable, grazed her cheeks and neck, the shoulders of her faded nightgown. Paper-thin, freckled skin stretched across prominent cheekbones, a high forehead, a straight nose. When she spoke or laughed, her voice was rusty. When she gave a person one of her direct looks, it was like staring into a bank of storm clouds.
And those storm-cloud eyes clearly said, “I’m more than life has ever given me a chance to be.”
Right now, those eyes were fastened on her newborn child, the harsh angles of her too-thin face aglow with the rush of new-mother love. Born too soon, the infant wasn’t quite “done” yet, but he was sure Maddie didn’t see the wrinkled, ruddy skin, the bit of hair plastered to the head with vernix, the little face all smushed up like a dried apple. The infant yawned, and Maddie giggled.
“You’re a funny-looking little thing,” she whispered, and Ryan almost laughed out loud.
“Mama?”
Ryan turned in time to catch another sleepy yawn. Noah’s hair had pretty much dried by now, sticking up all over his head in a mass of little horns. Ryan could relate.
“Hey, grasshopper,” he said, scooping the child off the chair, blanket and all. “Come meet your new sister.”
For an instant, the child cuddled against his chest. Too sleepy to protest, probably. He smelled sweet. Clean. Whatever was going on in Maddie Kincaid’s life, she’d given her children baths last night. An effort which had probably brought on the premature labor.
Ryan set the child, still huddled under his blanket, on the bed at Maddie’s knees. The boy rubbed his eyes, yawned again. Then frowned. “Another girl?”
“Oh, now, hush up,” Maddie said over a weary, but relieved, laugh, as Ryan deposited an owl-eyed, silent Katie next to her brother. “There’s nothing wrong with girls, silly billy—”
“Good Lord!” Ivy peeled the back of the blanket from the boy’s shoulder. “What on earth do you have on?”
“Their clothes were all wet,” Ryan said, “so I stuck ’em in the dryer. Figured they’d be okay in my shirts for a little bit.” Ivy lifted eyebrows at him. Ryan shook his head—don’t ask.
But Noah was busy angling his head at his sister, his brow beetled. “You positive she’s a girl? ’Cause she sure don’t look like one.”
Maddie reached up and ruffled his hair. “Yes, baby, I’m sure. If you don’t believe me, you just go on ahead and ask the doctor.”
“You think maybe Daddy might’ve liked her better’n Katie Grace an’ me?”
The room went so silent, you could hear the muted thumping of the dryer, clear out in the pantry. Standing at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, Ryan didn’t move, not reacting when Ivy’s gaze shot to his. But he saw the flush leap into Maddie’s translucent, speckled cheeks, and anger suddenly knifed through him as he remembered the scars he’d seen on the child’s back. They’d been old, healed up for some months, but they hadn’t been the result of any accident.
Maddie blinked several times, then swallowed, obviously trying to figure out what to say. With her free hand, she reached up, drew her firstborn down onto her chest to place a fierce kiss in all those spikes. “Doesn’t matter now, baby. Only thing you have to remember now is how much I like you and Katie. And I love all three of you with all my heart, forever and ever and ever. You hear me?”
Ryan’s eyes burned. How many times had his own mother, gone now nearly twenty years, said the same thing to one or the other of her three sons? Except then Noah, as kids will, switched the conversation to more practical matters by announcing he was hungry.
Ivy beamed. Feedin’ and birthin’—the woman was in her element now. “Well, I just bet you are, sweetie. And Mama, too.” She turned questioning brown eyes on Ryan. “I didn’t figure you’d have anything decent in that kitchen of yours to make breakfast, so I brought my own fixin’s, if that’s all right.”
He feigned a hurt expression. “I’m not a barbarian, Ivy. There’s eggs. I think. And coffee.”
“Oh, well, then,” Ivy said on a huff. “As if you could give a nursing mother coffee, for goodness’ sake. Not to mention children.” Elbows pumping, full skirt flapping around her calves—this one had mirrors and embroidery all over the bottom tier—Ivy sailed toward the bedroom door, turning back when she hit the doorframe.
“Noah and…Katie, right?” The kids turned to her with synchronized nods. Ivy held out her hand. “Let’s go see if your clothes are dry yet before you trip in those T-shirts. Then you can help me make pancakes.”
Two pairs of questioning eyes turned to their mother. Katie’s thumb popped into her mouth.
“It’s okay,” Maddie said with a smile. “You go on, now.”
They went. Maddie at once sank back into the pillows, letting out a sigh as her eyes drifted shut. Worn out from the strain of pretending, would be his guess. As if reading his mind, she said quietly, “It’s been a long time since they’ve had pancakes.” She opened her eyes, but didn’t move. “I’m very grateful to you. And Ivy. But we best be on our way as soon as I can move, before they get spoiled.”
Ryan grabbed the footboard, a scowl digging into his forehead. “Giving