A Winter Wedding. Marguerite Kaye

ow, ow, ow!” She sobbed out a couple of curse words. Rand broke out in a sweat. This was the sort of outburst he was used to from seeing his sisters in labor, but it seemed more alarming coming from Susan, maybe because she’d been so stoic up to this point.

      He was the only one in the room with her. He grabbed her hand. “Squeeze hard and count backward from twenty-five.”

      “What?”

      “Do it.”

      She scrunched her eyes shut and squeezed his hand. “Twenty-five, twenty-four…” Suddenly she relaxed, loosening her grip.

      “Bad one, huh?” He smoothed a loose strand of hair from her pale face, realizing too late how much like a caress his gesture was.

      “Mmm.” She nodded.

      Arnette, a plump Polynesian woman with a reassuring smile, came back into the room. “How’re you doing, sweetheart?”

      Susan was still trying to catch her breath. “Feels like it’s not a baby inside me, it’s a buzz saw with a dull blade.”

      “We can get you some medicine, you know,” Arnette said.

      “No, I want to do it natural.”

      “Then I’m just going to check your dilation.”

      That was Rand’s cue to leave. He grabbed the clipboard with the completed forms, then wandered downstairs, thinking he might locate some coffee. Instead he found himself in the business office, talking with the same clerk. He handed her the clipboard. She smiled her thanks, but the smile died on her lips as she glanced at the form.

      “No insurance?”

      “Um, no.”

      “She should be at the county hospital, not here,” the woman said frostily. “We don’t accept indigents.”

      “She’s not—” Hell, he didn’t feel like arguing. To his utter amazement, he whipped out his credit card. “Put Ms. Kilgore’s charges on here.”

      In for a penny, in for a pound.

      THE NEXT FEW HOURS went by in a haze of anticipation, pain and cold fear for Susan. Arnette was there, reassuring Susan in her lilting accent that everything was progressing nicely. Clark and Alicia took turns telling her jokes. But nothing comforted her—nothing except Rand’s presence.

      She wasn’t sure why she felt safer with him there. Maybe because he was a doctor, although it wasn’t like she was suffering from prickly heat. She just knew that when she felt most afraid, sure something was wrong, positive the labor would go on for eternity, she would catch him from the corner of her eye and instantly feel calmer.

      He even did all those things she’d fantasized about. He held her hand. He blotted the perspiration from her forehead. He fed her ice chips. During those increasingly long and frequent contractions, she felt his attention on her in a visceral way, almost like he was willing her pain away.

      In her less sane moments, she fantasized he was her husband, the father of her child, and that when the baby was born they would be a family. She knew it was a juvenile rescue fantasy, but she allowed herself to savor it. Anything to get through her labor, which really sucked, in her opinion.

      At one minute to midnight, Penelope Kilgore made her appearance. Susan hadn’t thought much about names, but when Rand declared the newborn was bright and shiny as a new penny, the name sort of stuck. Penelope—Penny for short.

      She was tiny—barely over five pounds—but she was perfect in every way, or so Susan thought when they put the baby into her arms. She was a miracle. How could Gary not fall in love with this precious scrap of life they had created, even if it was accidental?

      Then a dose of reality hit her. This was real. She was a mother, now, and she had this child to feed, nurture and protect.

      She looked up at Rand and forcefully dislodged the fantasy that had gotten her through labor. No beating around the bush, now. “I have to find Gary.”