New Year's Baby (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Jodi O'Donnell

  “Maybe...” Cade reflected aloud “...maybe that’s how we should go at this whole delivery thing—get through one contraction at a time and try not to worry too much about what’ll come after till it comes. Let go of what’s past, let what’s to be, be. And put all our efforts in the here and now.”

  “Th-that sounds good to me,” she whispered, eyes closed. It was probably pretty apparent to her, however, that such a strategy was more to ease his mind than hers.

  Although she was the one giving birth...she was the one who had come out of the storm, without the anchor of a past or the prospect of a future—except for the pure, blind faith that a man named Cade McGivern would be able to make things right with her world.

  And truth be told, that was what scared the life out of him.

  “Darlin’,” she said.

  Cade started. “Beg pardon?”

  “You can call me...darlin’.” She said it how he had, drawled and dropping the G. “If that comes more naturally to you. You know, because of your mama cows.”

  She swallowed, eyes still closed, and put her hand over his as it rested on her shoulder.

  Outside, the storm raged on, fierce and ferocious as a bull tearing full bore through a pasture. Inside, the air in the room hung heavy with both possibilities and portent. Yet a slow warmth stole through Cade. For sure, they were both all the other had right now.

  Amazing, how quickly a life could change and get caught up in another’s.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  Chapter Two

  “TALK TO ME,” Sara pleaded.

  She saw Cade’s Adam’s apple bob. He didn’t answer.

  The labor wasn’t going well. Even knowing nothing of her past, she knew this. She’d hit a period of strong, close contractions, but now they’d been in a pushing phase for the past hour. She’d sweated through the shirt and the sheets as she shifted from one uncomfortable position to another, seeking relief and never seeming to find it.

  But keeping, just barely, the fear at bay.

  Finally, she’d settled for sitting propped up by a load of pillows, knees drawn up. Cade, trying to be helpful, had suggested she come forward on her knees, or maybe squat and let gravity do more of the work, and she’d nearly bit his head off.

  For which she was immediately and profoundly sorry. Even now, half an hour later, remembering the moment made her throat constrict with unshed tears. For some reason, she found it vital she keep them in check. Keep her temper in check. Keep the fear in check.

  The problem was, she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to do all three and give birth to this baby—this baby she had no memory of conceiving or carrying, whose father she had no memory of. No memory of her own identity as its mother.

  The realization struck her anew. It seemed a failure, an abandonment of her child and where it had come from.

  A failure if she was to be unable to see it safely born.

  She couldn’t think about that. If she did, she’d lose more than her memory. She’d lose her mind.

  At least she had Cade. Through a fog of pain and confusion, he was the only sure thing in her world, even more than this unborn child was. Even more than the thin gold band on the chain around her neck.

  She’d noticed it when she changed clothes. Still on its slender chain, she’d slipped it onto her left ring finger. It had fit perfectly.

  The fact that it had infused her with caution, and she’d decided to keep it hidden for now. She had sensed that Cade wanted nothing less than to be trapped here in this situation she’d literally thrust upon him. The thought that he wouldn’t want to be, or that the instinct that had brought her to him might have been wrong, gave rise to that clawing fear in her again. But she couldn’t do this alone! She couldn’t lose this baby. She’d do anything, anything not to.

  “Cade,” Sara said, bringing his gaze back from brooding out the darkened window. He had brown eyes. They were liquid and golden. Just looking into them, she found herself calmed. Reassured, as if she feared she’d forget him, too, should she lose for too long the connection between them. It was still so tenuous. “Please. Talk to me.”

  His features gentled and, for the hundredth time, he brushed her hair from her temple, sticky with perspiration. Sweat beaded on his forehead, too, dampened his thick auburn hair. He was worried for her.

  “About what?” he asked.

  “I don’t care.” She shifted, vainly trying to relieve the pressure on her back. “The sound of your voice...helps me keep my mind off of...things. Tell me about yourself.”

  Obviously uncomfortable with the subject, he nevertheless cleared his throat. “Well, uh, I’m a rancher, as you’ve already confirmed. Been doin’ it so long I don’t guess I could do much else. Not that there’s much else I fancy doin’,” he added hastily.

  Even from the edge of total fatigue, Sara caught his uneasiness. “Who’s this...Virgil you mentioned?” she asked.

  Relief eased across his brow at the change of subject. “Virg is my ranch hand. Been around here forever, since when my granddaddy ran the operation.”

  Again, he offered no further comment. The connection between them waned.

  Mustering her energy, Sara persisted. “Your grandfather—and your parents. Are they still around, too?”

  “’Fraid not. Granddaddy passed on some years ago. Daddy and Mother, we lost them when I wasn’t more’n ten.”

  Strangely, she found herself buoyed by his admission—as if it somehow confirmed that instinct she’d had to find him. He was alone, too.

  Still, she apologized, “I didn’t mean to bring up sad memories.”

  Cade only shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  “So you must have been in charge of the ranch when you were quite young.” She had noted the rugged yet youthful lines of his face. “You don’t look much past thirty.”

  He blinked in surprise. “I hit thirty-one my next birthday.”

  “And you’ve no other family?” Her mouth worked around the next question, trying to suppress it and failing. “Or a special... friend?”

  “Nope,” Cade replied, returning to his characteristic terseness. “Just a brother. In New Mexico.”

  The words sparked recognition in the back of her mind. “New Mexico?”

  “That would be the state just west of Texas.”

  She couldn’t keep from treating him to a cross look. “I know what New Mexico is. I haven’t lost all sense of the world.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, but how’m I supposed to know that?” Cade said mildly.

  “I remembered I hadn’t passed through a town named Sagebrush,” she reminded him.

  Her comment apparently struck a chord with him, too. “That means you weren’t coming from west. What was the last big city you went through?”

  It was the last subject Sara wanted to pursue right now. To do so brought all the emotions she needed to keep control of from taking over. Yet she’d hazarded into this territory of her own accord in her attempt to engage him.

  She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. Where had she come from? The awareness grew, hovering on the edges of her perception and making her anxious, but this time she tried to go toward it. “I think it was...somewhere in Oklahoma.”

  “Oklahoma?” Cade frowned. “That’s in the opposite direction. Was there something about New Mexico that seemed familiar?”

  What was it that had caused a ripple in the vast, undisturbed surface of her memory? Massaging her forehead, she tried to think back, push the edges of what memory she had, but the effort seemed more than she could stand right now. “I don’t know.”

  “Were you heading to New Mexico?”

  She shook her head, which only made it throb even more. “I don’t know! I don’t know.”

&n
bsp; Why couldn’t she remember?

  Pain bit into her, shaking her in its jaws.

  “Oh!” Sara’s chin snapped forward and she pressed her palms to her belly.

  The contraction was a doozy, rolling through her in shock wave after shock wave. All sense seemed to leave her when they hit, chased by that stark, utter terror that was gaining ground on her by the second.

  She clung to Cade’s hand, and he hung with her until the contraction passed, leaving her gasping and exhausted.

  With infinite gentleness, he stroked the washcloth across her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t’ve pushed you for information, especially when I told you I wouldn’t.”

  But it had drawn him out of his remote, brusque manner, bringing the tenderness back to his warm brown eyes. Sara didn’t want to see it leave again, didn’t think she could stand it if it did. But she realized it came with a price to herself.

  Because when the next contraction came, just as strong, a few minutes after that, then the next and the next after that, she knew it meant she was going into hard labor. Her baby was on its way. Yet still something held it back, something in her held back, for there was little progress.

  She was reaching the edge of her endurance. The edge of her reason.

  “Oh, Cade.” Sara clutched his hands with both of hers as yet another contraction came and went, and still no baby. “I don’t know...if I can do this.”

  “Sure you can, darlin’,” he countered with quiet firmness as he sat beside her on the bed. “Sure you can.”

  No, I can’t. She could barely hold her head up, much less hold at bay the doubts and fears boiling up in her. Why didn’t the baby come? What was wrong with it? What was wrong with her? This was her own flesh and blood, for pity’s sake! If she hadn’t the strength within her to bring her own child into the world, then what did she have the strength to withstand?

  “No,” Sara said, shaking her head. “No, you don’t understand.”

  “You’re right, I can’t understand,” Cade agreed placatingly. “No one can who hasn’t birthed a child.”

  “That’s just it! Who knows if I have before?”

  Even she could hear the hysteria that rose in her voice. She couldn’t breathe. The pain, the confusion, the lack of any mooring in this storm in her head—each was taking its toll.

  “C’mon, darlin’.” Cade’s voice was steady, his gaze unwavering, keeping the connection. But even that was barely getting through to her. Panic prowled nearby, stalking her in her weakened state. “Remember our pact? Just focus on what’s directly in front of you. Focus on that baby of yours, ready to come into the world.”

  “I know...I am...but oh, Cade, I don’t even know where he came from, where I came from!” she cried, giving in to her fears at last. It was simply too much to contain.

  Yet it only cleared the way for her next fear, which clambered up from the depths of her being, fighting her for expression. “I don’t even know who we belong to...and why he’s not here!”

  Another contraction socked her, pitching her forward, her spine rounding and body shaking with effort. The pain seemed unbearable, the contraction intense, as if every muscle in her body was converging to push out this child.

  But it wouldn’t come! It wouldn’t come, and she didn’t know why.

  Sara fell back, drained. It seemed impossible she’d find the strength and energy to endure the following wave.

  “Sara.” The name came to her as if across a canyon, wide and deep. “Stay with me now. Stay with me.”

  She found Cade’s words unexpectedly humorous. He was the one she was trying to keep engaged in the moment, wasn’t he? she thought as laughter bubbled up from her chest. What emerged was a sob, then another. Sara turned her head away as she worked to contain them.

  “I’m sorry, Cade,” she whispered.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For...drawing you into this.” She squeezed her eyes shut, but still the tears streamed from their corners. She couldn’t hold them back, another failure. “You don’t know me...and whoever sent me to you...why they sent me to you...it wasn’t right. I don’t belong...here.”

  He said nothing for a few minutes. Then his weight next to her on the bed stirred as he released her hand.

  Arctic cold, as icy as the wind outside whistling under the eaves, swept through Sara.

  Then she felt his palm on her cheek, urging her to turn her head. Weakly, she resisted.

  “Hey. Look at me.”

  Reluctantly, Sara opened her eyes, afraid of what she’d find. Cade’s face swam before her, and she blinked away tears to see him gazing at her—no, connecting with her, as she so needed.

  “You’re right,” he said, “I can’t begin to know what it’s like havin’ a baby—or what it must feel like to be without the anchor of a name I knew was mine, or a place to belong. But I do have some experience with goin’ without the tie of loved ones. Without someone to belong to.”

  His gaze faltered briefly, but then came back home to hers. “And I won’t have you feel so alone as that.”

  Like dawn breaking over the horizon, she saw in Cade’s brown eyes so many things she’d hoped for, without even realizing it: reassurance, encouragement, confidence—and maybe a little bit of love.

  Or was it her exhaustion, the pain, the utter despair she had been fighting that made her think she saw all those things?

  Then Cade said, “I’m here to tell you, though, that wherever both of you came from, you and your baby, you’re here now—in my house, right where you need to be.”

  He wove the fingers of one of his large, capable hands in hers. “For now, you belong here, with me. And I won’t let you down.”

  It seemed unreal, but at his words Sara felt the pain, the fatigue, her every doubt and fear for her child, dwindle and wane like an echo across both space and time. They were all still there, most certainly, but manageable now.

  Some part of her, though, still doubted. She had to be sure. “Just...don’t leave me, Cade.”

  “I won’t,” he vowed, low. “Not for anything.”

  Her eyes spilled over with new tears, for she knew then in her heart that she had had the right instinct in finding this man. Or perhaps it hadn’t been her doing at all, and she’d been guided to him, not by some mysterious note writer, but by a force much larger than them all.

  It was a gift, she realized, this trust in a force—call it whatever—that she somehow had lost faith in, in that slumbering memory of hers.

  Tremulously, Sara smiled at the man who had given her such a gift. Cade’s gaze came around to hers. What she saw there overwhelmed her anew.

  It was that connection, to be sure, but stronger than ever. The power of it reached out to her, and she couldn’t help but respond with an answering yearning that rose up from deep inside her, almost from another life, another time completely—

  The next contraction hit.

  Cade helped her pull herself forward, her shoulders hunched and her chin lowered as she bore down hard, a guttural moan of effort rising from her chest. His fingers laced with hers, and her nails dug into his palm. He didn’t bat an eyelash.

  “I can see the head crowning,” he told her, not without some excitement. She slumped back as the contraction subsided. “Next one, give a big ol’ push, and I bet we’ll have him.”

  “Really?” she panted, not daring to believe it.

  “You bet.” He massaged her calves, seeming to know without a word from her that they were seconds from cramping. “When the baby does start to come out, though, I’m gonna have to concentrate on it, you know. So I won’t be able to hold your hand. You okay with that?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “Good. I already told you, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

>   And he didn’t, even as her agony increased twofold with the next contraction. Yet they were making progress.

  “C’mon, darlin’, you’re doin’ great,” Cade urged, both hands now ready and waiting to receive precious cargo. “Big push now. You can do it, darlin’. You can.”

  Sara pushed with all her might, putting everything into it, holding back nothing, for now she knew someone would be there to see her through to completion.

  “There you go,” Cade exhorted her. “I’ve got his head, just give me the rest of him—”

  “Him?” she puffed, straining to see. “Is it a boy?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Cade said, full upon his knees by now, every muscle in him seeming to strain with her in empathy. “Just one more push. One more, just for me...”

  She couldn’t let him down. Where she found the strength, she didn’t know, but it came to her, and one last time, Sara bore down. The last of her apprehension disappeared as she watched the miracle unfold as he received her child into his large hands.

  First off, he checked its parts. “Hoo-haw! It is a boy! You got yourself a son.”

  “We do?” she breathed. “Oh, let me see him!”

  “In a sec, darlin’.” With barely a pause, he snatched up an eyedropper and suctioned the infant’s mouth and nose.

  From her position, the babe looked a good weight, easing some of her apprehension that he was early. But why was he so still?

  “Is he...is he all right?” she asked, fear creeping into her voice despite herself. “What did the doctor say to do if the baby’s not responding?”

  He didn’t answer. “Cade, what did he say!”

  “He didn’t...we didn’t get that far in the conversation,” he said curtly, still suctioning feebly.

  “But why...?” Then it dawned on her. “The phone—it did go out, didn’t it?”

  Again, Cade refused to answer, his wide shoulders hunched over the tiny form, his face a study in fierce determination. His silence, however, was all the confirmation she needed.