by Caro Carson
“None, thanks.”
Stop staring at Tana like a stalker.
He leaned against the bench by the door while he waited, but he didn’t sit. If he sat, he wouldn’t be able to see Tana.
I’m not staring at her. I’m glancing her way. Often.
She handed a booklet across the table to the teenager, a college catalog, or something similar in the university’s colors. She was a coach. It didn’t take much to figure out she was recruiting a prospective student.
It shouldn’t be hard. Her swim team had killed it at the national championships. It had been in the paper, way in the back of the sports section. Swimming didn’t get the attention of football or baseball. It ought to, though. As sports events went, the swim meet had been more exciting in person than he’d expected.
Then Tana had fainted, hitting the ground so hard, he’d been frightened for her and her pregnancy.
He glanced her way for the hundredth time. Something in her eyes told him she was concentrating on something going on internally, not on what was being said across the table. It couldn’t be too bad, though. She was able to keep her smile fixed in place.
Real contractions were more serious, at least the ones he’d responded to as a paramedic. Those women had called 911 when they were too far gone to drive themselves to the hospital, unable to speak during the contractions, soaked in sweat. A few had screamed in pain as his team had whisked them off to the hospital, racing against Mother Nature. Those women couldn’t have begun to sit in a booth at a diner and conduct any kind of student interview.
Tana wasn’t in labor.
The paramedic training made him do it, anyway: he opened the calendar on his phone. Accuracy mattered in medicine. He’d only estimated her due date before. He flipped back to January and the Saturday of the swim meet. Week twenty-six. He started counting.
Tana laughed. He glanced up from his phone. She wasn’t in pain, and he was a little too obsessed with her.
He finished counting, anyway, to today’s date. Week thirty-seven. Still early to go into labor. There were probably plenty of other things that caused women a minute of discomfort in the ninth month. Once, he’d watched Abigail push on one side of her own belly with both of her hands to make the baby move, because she’d said he was kicking her right in the bladder.
TMI, dear sister-in-law.
But there went Tana, off toward the ladies’ room, so her baby had probably been doing the same type of thing. Caden put away his phone as he watched her walking away. She was so much bigger than she’d been in January, it was stunning. How did women do it?
“Here you go, hon. Coffee, black, and a turkey-provolone. Have a good evening.”
Perfect. He could leave while Tana was in the bathroom. She’d never know he’d been creeping on her. He’d gotten what he wanted, reassurance that she was well. She was still the successful, confident woman she’d always been. Good for her. Really.
He picked up the white paper bag. “How about a slice of apple pie, too? If you’re not too busy.”
“You got the money, honey, I’ve got the time.”
Tana didn’t return until Caden had paid for the apple pie and a second paper bag had been brought to the register. She hesitated, halfway between the restroom and her booth, and put one hand on her side. When she got to her booth, hands were shaken, words exchanged. The father and son passed Caden on their way out. The kid was too young to shave, but he was as tall as Caden, and he had that same lanky build as the swimmers on the pool deck in January. Definitely, Tana was recruiting, still working, three weeks before her due date.
Heck, the nationals had just been last week, and they’d been held across the country. It seemed like a lot of traveling for a pregnant woman, but what did he know? When Abigail had gone into labor with little Abby, she’d gone out to the barn and fed her horses before she’d let Edward drive her to the hospital. His brother still hadn’t gotten over that.
Tana sat alone. Caden didn’t bother trying to talk himself out of it. He picked up his paper bags and walked over. “There you are.”
She did a double take and stared at him.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Hi. No. Go right ahead.”
He sat and pushed the father’s plate off to the side. “Long time, no see.” I stayed away as long as I could.
“Yes. It’s nice to see you again.”
“You, too.”
She seemed a little embarrassed to be talking to him, as she’d been at the pub over Thanksgiving. Sometimes former patients were that way when they saw him later. A broken arm never seemed to make anyone shy, but some other ailments might. Leaking amniotic fluid, for example—which she hadn’t been doing. Thank God, again. He’d been so damned scared for her. He doubted he’d been able to hide it the way an emergency provider should.
He knew why it had been so difficult to stay professional. It was because the patient had been her, someone he felt too much for.
She spun her water glass slowly. “Can I say something serious?”
“Shoot.”
“I apologize for my attitude at the swim meet.”
“What attitude?”
“After I fainted, I was so mad. I told you to stop asking me questions, when you were just trying to help. I yelled at you to ‘stop looking at me that way,’ out in the parking lot, do you remember?”
Caden didn’t know what he’d expected when he’d sat down, but it wasn’t this. “I remember, but you weren’t yelling.”
“I wasn’t?”
“Not even close.”
“I was so afraid I was going to cry. I couldn’t, not in front of my team and my staff, so I couldn’t let you give me any sympathy. It would make me feel weak when I was supposed to be leading a team. I hope you’ll forgive me, because we started off friends, you know, back at the CPR class, but I’ve been so...really, everything’s been so... I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I just didn’t want to cry in public.”
“Tana, are you crying now?”
She was. An actual tear spilled from the corner of her eye.
He felt terrible for her. “There’s nothing to cry about. You didn’t yell at me. We’re good, okay? Everything’s good.”
“Right when I’m trying to say that things don’t have to get so super-emotional every time we meet, I cry.” She wiped away the tear with one hand. “I cry at the drop of a hat now. It’s the weirdest thing.”
“You said a different pregnancy thing was weird at Thanksgiving.” He wanted to remind her of more friendly conversations. They’d laughed, before.
She laughed now. “Oh, the bra budget is astronomical at this point. Frankly, every single thing about pregnancy is weird.”
“Except the end result.”
“A baby is a good thing. It meant a lot to me when you said that.”
“Just stating a fact. I’ve got a niece and a nephew that are cuter than anybody has a right to be.”
It felt good to be with her, so much better than trying not to see her, not to talk to her. She was a nice person. He should have let their friendship develop instead of being so damned scared that he’d fall in love with her. He’d thought so during that first waltz, thought he could be friends with the original while he prayed for her clone to come into his life.
If it felt a little too good to see her, he didn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t stay long, just a few minutes before he had to head to the station. What harm could this little talk do to his heart?
She wiped away fresh tears. “See? Even laughing makes me cry. It’s weird, I’m telling you.” She barely finished you as she sucked in a sudden breath.
Caden knew pain when he saw it.
She looked at the saltshaker, or in the vicinity of the saltshaker. She looked a little unfocused. Her grip on her water glass was so tight, her knuckles were white.<
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He set his hand on her wrist, trying not to be too obvious about checking her pulse.
She released her breath. Blinked. Relaxed her grip.
“What was that about?” Caden asked.
“Are you taking my pulse?”
“Busted. Compulsive pulse-taking is kind of an occupational hazard. Are you having contractions?”
“No.” She seemed confident, but he’d seen what he’d seen.
“You sure about that?”
“I just saw the doctor on April first. He said these were Braxton-Hicks contractions. Practice contractions. The baby’s playing his little April Fools’ trick on me. Or she is.”
Caden relaxed a little. She’d seen her doctor two days ago about this. “He or she? You were serious when you said you didn’t want to find out the gender on the sonogram?”
She hissed in another breath. She grabbed his wrist instead of the water glass this time. This grip, he recognized. A woman who’d been screaming with every contraction had grabbed him like that once. He’d been so relieved to pull into the ER and hand her off to the hospital. He’d heard she hadn’t had the baby for another three hours after that. He couldn’t imagine anyone being in pain like that for three hours. Abigail said it had been twelve for her. How did women do it?
Tana relaxed her grip. “The doctor said Braxton-Hicks can come and go like this from now until my due date.”
She was supposed to go through this for three more weeks? That didn’t seem possible. “But you’re only at thirty-seven weeks.”
She looked at him sharply. “Yes. How do you know that?”
Busted. “Just doing a little math from January.”
“The baby might not come for two weeks after my due date. I might have a May baby. Five more weeks of this. Oh!” She sucked in another breath.
Caden let her cut off the pulse in his wrist as he casually looked at the watch on his other wrist. He knew what Braxton-Hicks contractions were. False alarms were a big part of emergency medicine. One caller had informed them after they arrived that she’d had a single contraction—an hour prior. They’d sent her to the hospital, anyway. He and his team were firemen, EMTs or paramedics, but they were not ob-gyns. If a woman thought she was in labor, he wasn’t going to tell her she wasn’t and then leave.
Caden wasn’t going to leave Tana, either. He’d be late to work, but he could stay a while longer. They had their own station rules, a pirate code among themselves, and one was that a firefighter could be late by up to an hour for his shift if something urgent came up, but he had to buy a six-pack for whichever firefighter on the outgoing shift got stuck working that extra hour. More than an hour, though, and Caden would not only be screwing over a teammate, he would also be required to give the chief a damned good reason for being a no-show. No-shows got fired.
“The doctor said they’re unpredictable. I had some this morning that were one right after another, but that stopped. So far, I think the longest I’ve gotten is maybe a twenty-minute break between them. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in—”
“Three days? You’ve been having contractions every twenty minutes for three days?” For the first time, Caden felt a frisson of fear. “You need to call your doctor’s office.”
“I was just there. April Fools’, remember? Oh!”
Caden looked at his watch. The contraction lasted less than thirty seconds, but still...
“There’s no such thing as a three-day-long April Fools’ joke. Call your doctor.”
She didn’t look too pleased with his advice. “I thought there was always a choice in medical care. The glucose stick, remember?”
“There’s also a right answer. Call your doctor. I’ll wait.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tana felt better, now that she’d walked out of the diner.
Caden had been insistent, so she’d called her doctor while standing in the parking lot. It was seven in the evening, so an answering service had taken her number. She’d paced in front of the diner, waiting for the doctor to call her back. Caden had paced with her. They’d both stopped when her phone had rung a couple of minutes later.
“What did the doctor say?” Caden asked when she hung up.
The call had been pretty useless. “He said it was unusual to have so many in a day, but not concerning. He asked if I tried changing positions to make them go away. You probably heard my answer.”
Caden must have heard it. He’d kept a respectful distance, but Tana had said I’ve been sitting, standing, driving, going to work and trying to sleep. Do you think I’ve been sitting in a chair in the same position FOR THREE DAYS?
“It was a good answer,” Caden said.
That made her feel a little better. “He said if it hasn’t been worse than it was two days ago, then it’s not likely to change tonight, either, but he’ll check me tomorrow when the office opens at eight. If I want to get checked now, I could try going to an emergency room.”
“Go to the—” He stopped himself in mid-command. “I think you should go to the ER.”
“All they do is check to see if you’re dilating. If, you know, things inside are...dilating.”
This was the most mortifying conversation with Caden yet. At her appointment, the doctor had gloved up to reach inside her and poke at her cervix. It had hurt. He’d said she’d be dilated ten centimeters when she gave birth, but she was currently at a total zero.
If a fingertip pressing on a zero-dilated cervix hurt that much, she couldn’t imagine how painful a baby’s head pushing through a ten-centimeter cervix would be. She didn’t want to find out. She had an appointment on Thursday at the hospital to preregister for the delivery, including the optional epidural. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t optional.
She started pacing again, just so she didn’t have to stand still and look a male acquaintance in the face and discuss checking. “I think I’ll just go home. I haven’t had a Braxton-Hicks since we walked out here.”
Caden checked his watch. “That’s only five minutes, so far. Do you live alone?”
Alone sounded so pitifully lonely. “I have my own place. I’ve got one of the faculty apartments on campus.” She had paced the perimeter of her living room last night for hours, by herself and in pain. She wished they gave epidurals for Braxton-Hicks contractions.
“Would you like to have someone spend the night?”
She stopped. “You want to sleep with me?”
He blinked at that.
“Never mind,” she said to the gravel at her feet. He was trying to be friendly with an acquaintance as she waddled around a parking lot, yet she’d reacted as if he’d propositioned her at a bar, acting offended—and a little flattered.
He was nice enough to ignore her goof. “Could your mother come? How about Ruby?” He paused. “The baby’s father?”
The damned tears started again, and she dashed them away with her sleeve. “Let me guess. This is one of those things you’d do for your ex-girlfriend. You’d sleep on her couch for three weeks before her due date, just in case she goes into labor when she’s home alone. Seriously?”
As soon as she asked it, she realized it was exactly what he’d do. Lieutenant Caden Sterling would have been the most wonderful ex-boyfriend in the world, but he wasn’t her ex-boyfriend. He wasn’t even her friend. She’d finally gotten the chance to apologize to him, but acquaintances didn’t become friends in fifteen minutes.
She wished she’d run into him sooner, like in January. They’d be better friends by now, and she wouldn’t keep putting her foot in her mouth—or at least they’d be able to laugh when she did.
Neither of them was laughing now. Her throat felt tight and her nose felt clogged, because, for once, the tears weren’t some hormonal anomaly. She genuinely felt sad, because she didn’t have him, or anyone. “I told you there is no father. I’ve told you
and told you. Please quit asking me that.”
“I thought... Okay, but who came and got you at the ER back in January? Could he stay with you?”
She sniffed in as hard as she could, so that she wouldn’t cry, and her nose wouldn’t run. “That was my old coach. He’s in Colorado. How do you know about that?”
“I called to check on you that day. See if you needed a ride home. I was glad to hear you were right, and I was wrong.”
That did it. A huge sob escaped, then another, and she had to slap her hand over her nose and mouth. “I need a tissue.”
Caden pulled a napkin out of his to-go bag and tried to get her to smile. “Ta-da. A friend in time of need is a friend...”
“Indeed.” She scrubbed the napkin under her nose.
She felt weird. Antsy. She wanted to be moving. Walking. Anything.
She headed to her car. “I’m going home. I’ll call 911 if anything changes.”
Caden matched her strides easily. She wouldn’t win any speed-walking prizes with a ninth-month baby bump.
“Do you know what will happen when you call 911?” he asked conversationally. “I’ll show up at your door with two other firemen, because we usually beat the ambulance, and we’ll have this exact conversation again. Javier and Keith will not be thrilled.”
“You’re working tonight?” She gestured toward his plaid Western shirt, the cowboy kind with the pearlized snaps up the front. “You look like you’re going to a ranch.”
“I’m coming from one. I stopped here on my way to the station.”
“I didn’t realize firefighters did the...” She started to wave her hand toward the crotch of her black leggings, then thought better of it. “You check to see how many centimeters...if, uh...?”
“I don’t. I provide transport to the hospital, where they do. Let’s save ourselves all the hassle and go to the ER now. I’ll drive.”
The contraction hit her then, right as she was walking. It was big, a force that was pressing down so hard it was a struggle to stay standing. Caden caught her close with his arm around her, a crazy waltz position, right here in the diner’s parking lot. She clung to his strong shoulder as the pressure tried to send her to her knees. It was so intense, relentless—and then it stopped.