He only wished he could take her pain for himself. The pregnancy hadn’t been easy. She’d carried the twins to full term and had spent the last month in bed. She had made a kind of peace with her father and stepmother. While she would never be close to them, she’d tried to include them in her life.
Her forehead broke into a sweat and she glared at him. “You did this to me.”
“I did,” he acknowledged, showing no outward pity. He needed to be strong for her, but his stomach felt as though he’d just hit zero g in one of Jack’s chopper maneuvers. Was having children supposed to take this long? Cause so much pain? For twenty-four hours she’d labored, but the doctor had insisted she was doing fine.
With a cool cloth, Ryker wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Perhaps you should let the doctor give you the epidural.”
“No.”
Stubbornly beautiful and opinionated as always, she panted through the next contractions. She didn’t want drugs, preferring to let nature take its course.
“Ryker, you owe me.”
“Whatever you want,” he agreed. He would agree to anything for her ordeal to end, for her to finally rest.
Finally the doctor gave her permission. “On the next contraction push.”
Ryker slid behind Daria’s shoulders until she rested against him in a half sitting, half reclining position. “You can do this. Almost there.”
He murmured encouragement in her ear, talking, coaxing, pleading and telling her that she was so brave. So strong. He had no idea what he said.
“The head’s crowning. Push,” the doctor ordered.
She scowled at everyone. “I…am…pushing.”
She sat up a little more, bore down with a grunt of determination. Ryker could feel her body tensing, her muscles contracting.
“The baby’s coming. I’ve got the head. The shoulders. It’s a girl. She looks good.”
Daria flopped back into his lap. But she had only seconds to rest.
Ryker’s attention focused on Daria. “One more time. You’re almost done.”
Within the next sixty seconds she gave him a son. Two babies. Two perfect babies, one at seven pounds two ounces, the other at seven pounds even.
While the medical people did their work, he held Daria in his arms, stroking her, massaging her tense shoulders. When a nurse handed each of them a baby, his heart overflowed with happiness at the dual blessing.
He kissed Daria. “Thank you.”
“Oh, my. Aren’t they precious?”
He grinned. “I counted all the fingers and toes. Twenty of each. Two perfect sets.”
“I’d like to name them Fallon and Harry. Would that be all right with you?”
Mind naming his son after the man who’d saved his life? No, he wouldn’t mind at all. “I’d like that.”
Tiny Fallon opened her eyes and waved a fist in the air. Her brother yawned, then sucked on his fore-finger.
Daria, her eyes bright with joy, the pain seemingly over and behind her, smiled at their babies, then at him. “You’ve given me so much. I thought making a home was the most important thing, but home is living with you. I love you.”
The words that had once been so difficult for her to say came more easily to her lips now. And Ryker couldn’t have been more pleased that he was the one she’d married, that he was the one she’d chosen to father her babies. Winning her trust hadn’t been easy and he vowed never to let her go.
He kissed each baby on the cheek.
“Hey, where’s my kiss?” Daria demanded with a contented smile.
He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. “I love you, too. Very much.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4080-3
DEFENDING THE HEIRESS
Copyright © 2003 by Susan Hope Kearney
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* The Sutton Babies
† Hide and Seek
** The Crown Affair
†† Heroes, Inc.
Defending the Heiress Page 19