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‘How did you remember it was Dawn’s birthday?’
Andy shook his head, denying it had been hard. ‘Forget the day you and Dawn came into my life?’ Andy looked across at her baby, dozing now on her mother’s lap. ‘Forget the magic on the mountain on New Year’s Day?’ he said softly, and his words brought back the serenity of that morning.
Then he leant across and kissed her cheek, and she could see he really did remember that day with emotion. ‘You were amazing.’
She found herself leaning towards him, and his long fingers stroked her jaw and drew her nearer. Just the feel of his warm strength splayed across her cheek and the caress of his thumb sent sensations tumbling into her stomach and chest, and she couldn’t help but close her eyes. She didn’t see his mouth coming, but she’d known it would happen. Wanted it to happen.
Fiona McArthur brings you a fabulous new trilogy…
LYREBIRD LAKE MATERNITY
Every day brings a miracle…
It’s time for these midwives
to become mothers themselves!
This month meet single mum Montana Browne in…
THE MIDWIFE’S LITTLE MIRACLE
Montana’s found a new home in Lyrebird Lake, and just maybe the perfect father for her baby!
Look out for Misty and Mia’s stories,
coming soon in Medical™ Romance
A mother to five sons, Fiona McArthur is an Australian midwife who loves to write. Medical™ Romance gives Fiona the scope to write about all the wonderful aspects of adventure, romance, medicine and midwifery that she feels so passionate about—as well as an excuse to travel! So now that the boys are older, her husband Ian and youngest son Rory are off with Fiona to meet new people, see new places, and have wonderful adventures. Fiona’s website is at www.fionamcarthur.com
Recent titles by the same author:
THE MIDWIFE’S BABY
THEIR SPECIAL-CARE BABY
THE SURGEON’S SPECIAL GIFT
THE DOCTOR’S SURPRISE BRIDE
THE MIDWIFE’S LITTLE MIRACLE
BY
FIONA McARTHUR
Dedicated to Flora May Simpson.
The best mother-in-law,
who just laughs at the mess in my house.
CHAPTER ONE
NEW YEAR’s morning began with the faintest hint of grey shimmer on the horizon and Montana gently stroked her fingers across her swollen stomach.
This had been the first New Year’s morning without her husband and the last she would spend at the mountain house before the new owners moved in.
The sea was a long way off, somewhere below the white fluffy quilt thrown over the mountains, shrouded like the future she couldn’t see but did have faith in.
Eagle’s Nest Retreat sat so high and wild that it overlooked everything and Douglas had loved it when he’d painted here.
The sky had lightened only enough to illuminate the deep drifts of mist in all the lower valleys across from the house, and she sat symbolically alone, and accepted it would always be so.
The first contraction squeezed gently, like the tendrils of dewed spider webs that stretched the tops of the stumpy grass, and she nodded when she felt the mysterious child within herald her intentions.
Montana had agreed with her two best friends that, for her child’s sake not her own, it would be safer to avoid the mountains for the last two weeks of her pregnancy.
So it wasn’t Montana’s fault her baby had decided to come earlier.
She closed the house and gathered her shawl and water bottle and, grasping the rail on the stairs, made her way slowly down to her vehicle. To actually climb into the four-wheel drive proved much more difficult than she’d expected and she chewed her lip as she started the engine.
The chug from the diesel engine scared a flock of lorikeets into flight, a little like the flutter of apprehension she fought down while she waited for the engine to warm up. Two more waves of pain came and went in that time.
As the contractions grew closer and fiercer a tiny frown puckered her forehead. It might not be as easy as she’d thought to drive the truck for two hours in early labour.
After thirty minutes of careful navigation down the misty mountain sweat beaded her forehead and Montana’s breath fogged the windscreen with the force of the pain. Though still focussed on what lay around the next corner she found it more difficult to divide her thoughts between road and birth.
The dirt track twisted and turned like the journey her baby would make within her and on an outflung clearing overlooking the mist-covered valley she had to pull over to rest and shore up her reserves.
A pale grey wallaby and her pint-sized joey stood at the edge of the clearing and their dark pointy faces twitched with fascination at her arrival.
Montana’s labour gathered force and she glanced with despair at the distance to the valley floor. It was impossible to descend the mountain safely when she couldn’t concentrate on the road and suddenly the tension drained from her shoulders as she slumped back.
So be it.
When the pain eased she slid from the truck and spread a rug on the damp grass and tucked her shawl and water beside her. She eased herself down and sat with her arms behind her to watch the deepening of the horizon from coral to pink to cerise as the sun threatened to rise through the cloud below.
When the next surge had dissolved she sighed and gazed skywards. Maybe he was looking down.
‘You should be here, Douglas.’ A single tear held her loss that still pierced so keenly.
She felt the whisper of cool breeze brush the dampness on her cheek and suddenly she was not alone and she didn’t care if she imagined him because the next pain was upon her and she needed his strength with her own to stay pliant on the waves of the contractions.
I am here, the wind whispered. You are safe.
I love you, she heard, and then she listened to the nuances of her body and in her mind she watched the descent of her baby and squeezed her husband’s hand and the waves changed in tempo and direction and strength and suddenly the urge was upon her to ease her baby out into the world.
The sun cascaded through like the gush of water, her baby’s head glistening round and hard and hot in her hands, and then the next pain was upon her. Her baby’s head rotated towards her leg and the released shoulder slid down and through to follow.
In long, slow seconds, her baby’s body eased into the world until, in a waterfall rush, legs and feet followed and in a tangle of cord and water and fresh broken sunlight, her baby was born.
The unmistakable sound of a newborn’s first cry startled the birds as Montana reached down and gathered her daughter to her, forgetting the cord that joined them, and she laughed at the tug that reminded her that all umbilical cords were not long.
A daughter. Douglas’s daughter. She turned, not expecting to see him yet so grateful she had imagined him in her time of greatest need.
The clearing was empty save for the mother wallaby and her skittish joey, and like the last of the night tendrils they too disappeared silently as the fog rolled away.
She