does it mean?” he asked.
“Fighter or battle.”
He nodded. “I like it.”
She smiled down at the baby before lifting her eyes to meet his again. “Then let me formally introduce you to Caden Lukas Marlowe.”
She saw surprise flicker in his eyes, then pleasure. He offered his finger to the baby, and Caden wrapped his tiny fist around it, holding on tight. “That’s a lot of name for such a little guy,” he noted.
“You don’t mind the ‘Lukas’ part?”
“Why would I mind?”
She shrugged. “I wanted him to have a small part of the man who helped bring him into the world. I know we probably won’t ever see you again after we leave Pinehurst, but I don’t want to forget—and I don’t want Caden to forget—everything you’ve done.”
“You’re not planning to go anywhere just yet, are you?”
“Not just yet,” she assured him. “But I figured you’d want to get us out of here as soon as the roads are clear.”
Of course, she couldn’t go anywhere until her car was pulled out of the ditch and any necessary repairs were made, but she didn’t expect her Good Samaritan to put them up for the duration.
He shrugged. “As you noted, it’s a big house for one person and two pets.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what he was suggesting. Was he really offering to let them stay with him? And even if he was, she could hardly stay in the home of a man she’d just met. No matter that she already felt more comfortable with him than with the man she’d planned to marry.
Before she could ask, she heard the sound of footsteps stomping on the porch. Despite the fact that the roads were still closed, Lukas didn’t seem at all surprised to have a visitor—or that the visitor, after a brisk knock, proceeded to open the door and walk right into the house.
Einstein had been released from the laundry room and cautiously introduced to the baby. Since then, he hadn’t left Julie’s side. But he obviously heard the stomping, too, because he raced across the room and down the hall to the foyer, barking and dancing the whole way.
The sharp barks startled the baby, and Caden responded with an indignant wail of his own. Julie murmured reassuringly and snuggled him closer to her chest, and by the time the visitor had made his way down the hall to the family room, he was settled again.
“This is a friend of mine,” Lukas told her, gesturing to the tall, dark-haired man beside him. “Cameron Turcotte.” Then to Cameron he said, “This is Julie Marlowe and Caden.”
“Are the roads clear now?” Julie asked him. She assumed that they must be if he was able to get through, although she couldn’t begin to fathom why he would have chosen to visit a friend in the middle of a snowstorm.
“The plows are out in full force, but it’s going to take a while,” he told her. “Main Street is technically still shut down, but I knew the officer posted at the barricade and told him that I had to get through to deal with a medical emergency.”
“Are you a doctor, too?” Julie asked him.
Cameron’s brows lifted. “Too?”
“Yolanda wanted to reassure Julie that she was in capable hands with Doctor Garrett,” Lukas told his friend.
The other man chuckled.
“Why do I feel as if I’m missing something?” Julie asked warily.
“The only thing that matters is that you and your baby are okay,” Cameron said. “And since I was on my way home from the hospital, Luke asked if I could stop by to check on both of you. With your permission, of course.”
She looked questioningly at Lukas. “I don’t understand. You said everything was okay. Is something—”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, answering her question before she could finish asking it. “But you may have misunderstood my qualifications.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’m a DVM, not an MD,” he told her.
It only took her a few seconds to decipher the acronym, and when she did, her jaw dropped.
“My baby was delivered by a vet?”
Lukas nodded.
Julie was stunned.
And mortified.
Dr. Garrett wasn’t a qualified medical doctor—he was an animal doctor.
She drew in a deep breath and tried to accept the reality of the situation. And the truth was, neither of them had had any other choice. She’d been stranded in his house in a blizzard with no one else around to help. Her options had been simple: accept his assistance or try to deliver her baby on her own. And, in his defense, he hadn’t claimed to be a doctor—it was the 911 operator who had offered that information.
And she’d grasped at it with both hands. It wasn’t how she’d wanted to deliver her baby but knowing that she had no chance of getting to a hospital, she’d considered herself lucky that her car had gone into the ditch by a doctor’s house. Proving once again that she had a tendency to see what she wanted to see.
“I didn’t intend to deceive you,” Lukas said to her now. “But you seemed to find comfort in believing that I was a medical doctor, and I didn’t want to cause you undue stress by correcting that impression.”
And she’d willingly stripped out of her clothes because a doctor—especially an obstetrician—was accustomed to his patients doing that. Glancing at the veterinarian who had delivered her baby, she didn’t doubt that he was accustomed to women stripping for him, too, although probably not in a clinical setting.
“So.” She cleared her throat. “How many babies have you delivered?”
“One,” he admitted.
“And it looks to me like he did a pretty good job for a first-timer,” Cameron—Doctor Turcotte—commented.
“But I think we’d both feel better if Cameron checked Caden over, just to make sure I didn’t miscount his toes or something.”
She could smile at that, because she’d already counted his fingers and toes herself.
“And you might want some numbers—weight and length, for example—to put in his baby book,” Cameron said.
“I guess ‘tiny’ is somewhat vague,” she admitted, relinquishing the swaddled infant to the doctor.
He measured Caden’s length and the circumference of his head, then he used a kitchen scale to weigh the baby.
“Not as tiny as I thought,” he said, handing the infant back to his mother. “Just about seven and a half pounds and twenty inches. A pretty good size for thirty-eight weeks. You obviously took good care of yourself throughout your pregnancy.”
“I tried to exercise regularly and eat healthy,” she said, then felt compelled to confess, “but I sometimes gave in to insatiable cravings for French fries and gravy.”
“Well, I don’t think those French fries and gravy did any harm to you or your baby,” Cameron assured her.
He opened a backpack she hadn’t seen him carry in. “Newborn diapers and wipes,” he said, pulling out a bunch of sample packs. “Some receiving blankets and baby gowns.”
“Thank you,” Julie said. “I’ve got a few outfits and sleepers in the trunk of my car, just because I wandered through a baby store the other day, but I didn’t think I’d be needing diapers just yet.”
“Well, there should be enough here to hold you for a couple of days, until you can get out—or send Luke out—to stock up