She clung to the wall while another ache rolled past, then aimed for the office telephone. Who should she call first? Emergency services? She couldn’t afford the ambulance bill, but she knew Selene had a meeting this afternoon. Axell? She hated to rely on him. He’d already gone far beyond the call of duty and was paying the price. But even if Teresa picked Matty up after school, the teenager couldn’t take care of him for long. Someone would have to take him in tonight. She’d better call Axell.
She hadn’t planned this very well. She’d never been real good at planning. Her life was just a series of happenings she couldn’t stay ahead of. She’d packed her suitcase for the hospital, but it was back at the apartment, probably buried in an unopened box. Selene had promised to find a sitter for Matty when the time arrived, but she should have remembered Selene wasn’t always available.
Things would work out. She just had to take them one at a time. She picked up the telephone and started dialing 911 before she realized the phone wasn’t making any noise.
Maya stared at the dead receiver in disbelief.
This just couldn’t be happening. Was her name Job? Was God trying to tell her something? Or had Mercury gone retrograde and she hadn’t noticed?
Grimacing, she waddled over to the window and looked out. What did one look for when phones went dead? Hanging wires? And what difference did it make? It wasn’t as if she could call someone and tell them it was dead.
Summoning curse words she didn’t even know she knew, Maya cuddled a quilt around her and paced up and down the front office. Walking was supposed to be good for laboring mothers, she remembered. Maybe walking would clear her head. Or ease the ache. She winced and grabbed her belly as a muscle in her lower abdomen squeezed hard. Well, so much for the backache theory. That was definitely a contraction.
She picked up the phone again. Maybe it had just been a fluke the first time.
Still no dial tone.
Would Selene have left her cell phone?
She rummaged through the desk and found nothing. She glared at the computer. No phone: no e-mail, no fax.
All right, think, Maya. She could walk. How far was the nearest house? Or the shopping center they were building over the hill. Would any of the crew still be there? Would they have telephones?
She glanced out the window at the pouring rain. It looked like California during an El Niño winter. Rivers of red mud poured down the gravel drive. The lovely babbling brook through the side yard had turned into an ocean, swamping the azalea garden with a muddy, leaf-strewn pond that seemed to rise as she watched. She couldn’t cut across that way.
All right, was it safer to wait in the warmth and safety of the dry house, praying the telephone would come back on and that the baby would wait, or should she risk the weather and mud and floods to seek help?
Instinct said wait. Instinct didn’t like getting wet.
At least the electricity worked. She could fix a cup of tea. Selene had hooked her CD player to the intercom. She could find a few good songs and think.
***
Soaked to the bone, his expensive Johnston & Murphy loafers caked in mud past his ankles, his dry-clean-only linen shirt plastered to transparency against his back, Axell stumbled out of the downpour and onto the wide front porch of the school, panting from the exertion of fighting mud and water and his own anxiety.
He could see lights in all the windows, and relief poured through him. She was here. She was fine. He was the jerk. That was okay. He’d survive.
Throwing open the door, Axell walked into a blast of Aretha Franklin screaming “Respect!” with the thundering power of a class five tornado. They must have wired the entire school with an amplifying system.
Holding on to the door frame, Axell peeled off his shoes and socks. He’d like to peel off the rest of his sopping clothes too, but striding through the house naked didn’t strike him as particularly polite.
Figuring there wasn’t much point shouting for Maya over the noise, he padded through the hall and toward the kitchen. Maybe they kept coffee pots there. Surely Selene didn’t drink that damned tea.
Axell stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed the doorsill for support at the sight in front of him.
Maya sat wrapped in a quilt, sipping tea from one of her precious cups, and rocking in a chair he remembered had once adorned the schoolroom. Her auburn curls spilled in abandon over shoulders that appeared distinctly naked above the cover of the quilt.
At sight of him, she looked up and her pale face beamed with a tremulous smile that cleaved his heart clear in two.
“Virgo to the rescue!” she breathed happily. “Did you bring your forceps?”
***
November, 1945
She made a spectacle of herself in front of the whole church, nearly cost me my job when she ripped Dolly’s hat off and threw it in my face. I explained it all away to the old man, but when I went to tell her this had to stop, I ended up in her bed again.
She makes me laugh. She makes me think there ought to be more to life than twelve hour days over the mill books. She’s the devil in woman’s disguise. I want her every minute of every day.
I sent her my mother’s teapot today. It doesn’t match her mother’s teacups, but she’ll understand.
Fourteen
Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.
“The baby is coming?” Axell shouted.
“I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I think we’d better start for the hospital.” She unwrapped her feet from the quilt and stood up. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted copper brown.
Axell gaped at her shapely feet rather than staring at her shoulders or anywhere between. “Hospital. Right.” Stunned, his brain ceased functioning.
The baby was coming. His car was in three feet of water a mile down the road. Maya was naked.
“Axell?” she asked patiently. “Is everything all right?”
He summoned his courage and looked up. She didn’t eat enough. Still, her thin face glowed with expectation and her eyes were blue-green lanterns of excitement beneath her mound of auburn hair. Something odd inside him stirred. He figured it was terror.
“Have you called for an ambulance?” he demanded.
“The phone’s out,” she said. “That’s why I’ve been sitting here waiting for someone to show up. You’re my lifeline. I knew God couldn’t be so cruel as to not offer me a way out of this. Let me see if my dress has dried yet.”
Shakily, Axell reached in his sopping back pocket and retrieved his wet cell phone. “God works in mysterious ways,” he reminded her with a sarcasm she didn’t deserve as he punched the buttons. “My car died a mile down the road. And the road is washed out.”
Her smile froze on her face as she anxiously watched him dial.
The line crackled but he could hear the phone ringing on the other end. Clinging to desperate hope, Axell glanced away as Maya’s face stretched taut with pain, and she eased back into the rocker. Fingers gripped into fists, he waited for the emergency operator.
He barked the problem and the directions into the phone as soon as he had the operator on the line. He reminded them the road was washed out. He repeated everything. Twice. The operator seemed enormously slow at grasping the immensity of the problem. Taking a deep breath, Axell fought for calm. Maya bent over in agony and he nearly lost it.
“Hurry, will you?” he shouted into the phone. “She’s going to have the baby on the kitchen floor if you don’t get here soon!”
Frantically listening to the curt voice on the other end of the line, Axell nodded, then waited until Maya straightened. “Is there a bed in this place?” he demanded.
She grimaced and nodded toward a small room on the right. “The infirmary. I’ve already made it ready, just in case. Can’t they get here?”
Axell clutched the phone as he would a life raft in a raging river, but Maya looked so scared, he lied. “They can always send a helicopter.” Grimly, he turned back to the voi
ce on the line. If he was all she had, he’d damned well better do this right.
He’d never done anything right in his life that involved a woman.
“Look, I’m on a cell phone. The lines are down out here. I’ve got to preserve this battery. Give me basic instructions and get someone here as soon as you can.”
He scribbled as fast as he could across a first-grader’s alphabet pad. Panic wouldn’t help. Screaming at Maya for her boneheadedness might relieve his frustration, but it wouldn’t get the baby delivered. If he didn’t think about what he had to do, maybe he could get through this. Maybe he could pretend he was talking to a mechanic telling him how to replace a faulty carburetor.
Maya studied him soberly as Axell flung down the pen and closed the phone. “We’re stranded, right?”
He took a deep breath. “Pretty much. The water goes down quickly once the rain stops. There might be time. How far apart are the pains?”
“Maybe four minutes.” She grimaced at his reaction. “My water broke hours ago. I decided it was safer to deliver the baby myself than try to make it through the flood. I’m sorry. I never meant to get you involved.”
“You’re nuts. You’re completely certifiable. What if the baby is breech? What if you’re not big enough? Did you ever think of that?” Axell paced, trying to work off some of his terror. Under his father’s tutelage, he’d learned dozens of ways of controlling temper and panic. He hadn’t given into excess emotion in decades. Even when his son had died, he’d managed a stoic calm, probably because he’d already been frozen in shock at the loss of his wife. He had no such buffer this time.
Mechanic. Make like a mechanic. Get the chassis on the ramp.
“All right, let’s check out the infirmary. I suppose that means you’ve got Band-Aids and Tylenol.” He strode purposefully toward the room she’d indicated and threw on the overhead light. It had probably been a generous pantry at one time. It was little more than a closet now. The narrow cot filled the interior. She’d piled it high with pillows and stuffed animals.
“Ace bandages, stuff for poison ivy, bacteria preventive, whatnot,” she agreed. “I can boil water,” she added helpfully, before gasping in pain and bending double.
“On the bed,” Axell ordered, throwing open the cabinet door and searching for the alcohol. Sterilize everything, they’d said.
“I’m not ready for this,” she stalled, glancing in the direction of the front door. “The baby isn’t due for weeks. Couldn’t we try...”.
“Into bed!” Axell roared as another contraction chopped her sentence short.
“Pisces swim,” she choked out, bent double but not obeying orders. “Maybe it would be better to find your car.”
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t deliver a damned baby. He couldn’t even get the friggin’ airheaded mother to lie down. “In the bed or I’ll carry you there!” he shouted in frustration.
Straightening, Maya glanced at the narrow cot as if it were a spaceship prepared for takeoff.
“Aries,” she murmured. “The baby will be an Aries. I’ll never survive.”
“What?” Terrified by her last words, Axell nearly dropped the alcohol bottle.
She adjusted her bulk onto the cot, settled against the stack of pillows, and cried out as the next contraction caught her by surprise.
Cautiously, Axell set the alcohol bottle down before he crushed it.
Biting back her cries, Maya struggled through the pain. Then wiping the damp curl of purple hair from her eyes, she continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “Aries can have explosive tempers. And self-centered, you wouldn’t believe. His father is an Aries. I don’t suppose one can divorce children?”
She must be hysterical. Breathing again, Axell washed his hands. Discovering a box of antiseptic gloves, Axell nodded. All good bartenders could handle small talk. “Or trade them in for a different model? I’ve thought about it. Is the baby going to be a boy?”
She grunted and breathed in short quick bursts before shaking her head. “Don’t know. Damn, this h-u-ur-r-ts.” The last word emerged as a scream.
Faulty carburetors didn’t scream.
“I’m supposed to look for the head,” he warned. The contractions were coming much too swiftly.
Following instructions helped. If he concentrated on one step at a time and didn’t think about what he was doing...
He barely had room to bend over. The sight of the woman lying in the bed, adjusting the quilt to hang over her bent knees, terrified the shit out of him. Lifting the quilt terrified the shit out of him, he amended. This was too up close and personal, and he didn’t do personal.
“Tell me if you see red hair,” she whispered between pants.
Axell managed a sour grin even as his stomach contracted into knots. Okay, he could handle red hair. Maybe they could talk each other through this. He had no difficulty talking to Maya. She didn’t seem to care what he said. “Have you reached the baby’s father yet?” he asked as he lifted the quilt with his elbow to keep his hands clean.
“His new girlfriend said he’s recording in Nashville. She promised to give him word, but I won’t hold my breath.”
“Nice job of not holding your breath,” he said dryly a few minutes later as she screamed the plaster into crumbling. But they were making progress. “I can see his hair!” he called excitedly, caught up in the astonishment of discovery. “He’s got a full head of it.”
Maya followed his announcement with a screaming curse Axell blithely assumed was for the missing father. Given a chance, he’d issue a few of his own, but his teeth were chattering and he didn’t risk speaking. He wasn’t a damned doctor. He was a bartender, for chrissake. “Make this one a martini,” he could handle, not “deliver red-haired baby.”
He checked the notes he’d jotted, wondered how he would dial the phone without contaminating his gloves, and nearly threw up as Maya arched her back, screamed, and soaked the bed pad with a gush of blood and water.
“My God!” Dropping his notes, the quilt, and any semblance of calm, Axell gasped as the infant’s head popped out and tiny shoulders slithered into view. This was happening too damned fast. He didn’t have time to prepare...
He didn’t need instructions to grab the tiny head and shoulders as they slid from Maya’s body. Awed, hands shaking, every nerve on edge as Maya moaned and heaved and cursed again, Axell caught the slippery infant and eased him into the world.
Her. Eased her into the world.
“A girl, Maya,” he whispered in amazement, not having any idea if she could hear him or not as the tiny creature fell into his hands. “Does she have a name?”
There were things he was supposed to do. Umbilical cord. Afterbirth. Cry. No, the baby was supposed to cry, not him. Hot tears burned his eyes and his hands trembled. Fighting emotions he didn’t know he possessed, he cleared the infant’s throat, patted her gently to start her breathing, and heard the first faint gasp of air, followed by a weak cry.
She lived. And breathed. Relief so overwhelmed him, Axell nearly collapsed on the bed beside Maya. He’d delivered a living baby. He’d arrived in time to save them. He hadn’t lost them this time.
Not stopping to examine that thought, he rubbed his face with his shoulder to wipe away the moisture, and mechanically followed the instructions now clearly imprinted on his brain.
The moments after his son had been pronounced dead haunted the back of his mind: the doctor’s expression as he’d told him, the wails from Angela’s mother, the scream of an ambulance siren... He hadn’t been in time, hadn’t even been able to hold her hand...
Ambulance siren.
“Let me hold her,” Maya whispered, jerking him back to the moment. “I want to hold her before they take her away from me.”
Take her away? Over his dead body. The tiny wriggling human form in Axell’s hands protested with weak cries and flailing fists as he cautiously wrapped her in a pillowcase. Maybe he should have used one of the Ace bandages. She was small, bu
t her face screwed up pugnaciously as she readied herself for another holler, and her wet hair had a decidedly reddish cast. Axell smiled as he lowered her into Maya’s arms.
“Definitely Aries,” he said facetiously.
The smile she granted him in return was worth every minute of terror. The knot in his stomach slowly unraveled.
“God, I love you,” she murmured, closing her eyes and holding the baby.
And she did. Love filled her heart and overflowed to encompass anyone and everyone: God, her daughter, Axell...
Axell. Holding her daughter tightly, Maya imprinted on her memory the image of his taut face streaked with tears. Those big, capable hands had delivered her daughter — her daughter — held her as if she were more precious than gold. The stony gray of his eyes had melted to molten silver for a moment, and she’d seen right through him. Her icy Nordic god had love frozen inside him somewhere. Someone just needed to reach in and lay warm hands on his frostbitten heart.
Constance could. Maybe any child could. She owed him one.
“Alexa,” she murmured as the siren screamed louder.
“What?”
She felt Axell leaning over her, and she opened her eyes to smile at him. He really was the handsomest man she’d ever known, even though that square jaw of his scared her half to death. With his hair soaked and the linen shirt plastered to his chest, he looked more like a vengeful sea god than Thor. He definitely looked dangerous — and protective. She wanted to pat his cheek in reassurance, but she had her hands full of beautiful infant. “Alexa,” she breathed. “Like Axell, I guess. Close, anyway.”
No matter what the future might bring, she would always love this stern-faced man, and as far as she was concerned, this child was his. He’d saved their lives. She dropped into a doze of exhaustion.
Axell stared down at mother and child in confusion.
Alexa.
She was naming the baby Alexa. He heard the paramedics racing through the house with a stretcher, but Axell observed their arrival from a distant plateau. There for a moment, he’d been part of Maya’s world, warm and touching and grounded. Now, suddenly, he was on the outside again, with that chilly distance between them.
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