by Tanya Hanson
Carefully, he swerved the car around. “Do you mind waiting on Freckles?”
“No, of course not. But…what’s wrong with Bonnet?”
Pike covered her hand with his, feeling the sparkles in his toes. “I don’t think anything. But Amy feels there is, and that’s important. Until I examine Bonnet, I won’t know for sure.”
Daisy squeezed his fingers, and he tingled. “It’s gotta be hard. The last baby born dead, her parents far away right now.”
Pike nodded. “That’s another reason I want to go.” He looked Daisy straight on. “Being needed is important to me.”
8
Deeply wrapped in the heavenly darkness with Pike at her side, Daisy’s heart thumped out of control. Even with her nerves jumping at what might lay ahead, a through-and-through peace touched her soul. No one else around to chide or judge. No matter they were on their way to what might be a veterinary emergency. She wanted to be at Pike’s side, regardless. Plain and simple.
“You did good back there,” he said with another squeeze of his hand over hers. Her breath caught at his tenderness, satisfaction at his compliment warming her through. “Where’d you learn so much about donkeys?”
“In junior high, I raised them for a 4-H project.” Happy memories washed over her along with the delicious shivers from Pike’s touch. “Pops wrangled at the Silver Spur then, and the foreman gave me a little corral and foaling box stall all my own. Pops still has my Merrylegs.”
Pike chuckled. “Matter of fact, I know that little long-ear very well. And Bonnet’s sure special around here, too. She’s always a big part of the living nativity pageant at church at Christmastime.”
Despite Pike’s confidence, though, when they arrived, Bonnet was clearly in distress. Daisy’s throat clamped tight at Amy’s anguish, and she took the teen into her arms. Mama straining hard for a half hour, no foal, no feet appearing yet. Clearly signs of malpresentation.
“She’s gonna be fine, just needs a little help,” Pike comforted as he washed up with soap and water in a stationary tub by the stall. After adding rubber gloves, he oiled his hand and inserted it as Amy buried her face in Daisy’s shoulder. Daisy mumbled comforting words about Pike needing to differentiate between the front and back legs of the foal inside the womb. If front weren’t first, he’d have to push the foal either to one side or back to get the head and legs into the right position for birth.
Bonnet strained but still no baby. Pike glanced at Daisy, and she nodded, dropping a kiss on the top of Amy’s head.
“Sweetie, we’re almost done here, but I think you’d be more comfortable in the house. I’ll come get you.”
Amy’s face streamed tears. “Oh, thanks. I just couldn’t stand it. Not another time. If you want, Bonnet would like you to sing to her. Lullabies are best.” Pale and shaken, she left the barn, and Daisy rummaged through Pike’s supplies for a clean OB rope.
“Here.”
“OK. I’ve got both front feet. We’re in pretty good position here. I just,” Pike said as he reached in to tie the rope to the little legs, “didn’t want Amy around if things don’t end up…like we want.”
Stillbirth.
Daisy longed to pet and cuddle the donkey, but didn’t know her well enough to try. Such actions might annoy or frighten rather than comfort. But she began to sing, softly, little songs she’d only had chance to sing a few times to her little nephew before…before she’d thrown so much away. Her heart pounded.
Pike pulled hard, and forelegs and neck were born. As the little head began to move, Pike let out a relieved sigh. Still singing, for mommy wasn’t done, Daisy quickly tore the membrane and wiped the nostrils clear of mucous to help the baby breathe.
The nostrils of the little foal flared as it took its first breath, and within seconds, entered the world in one healthy piece. Hot tears ran down Daisy’s cheeks.
“Good thinking there,” Pike said leaning against the stall and breathing hard from the effort. “You do know the ropes. Pun intended.” His grin was crooked. “Many foals die of asphyxiation if those tough fetal membranes aren’t torn away.”
“I know,” Daisy breathed in awe at the miracle of birth, her tears running hard at the foal’s perseverance in getting to its feet. “I couldn’t imagine all that work for nothing.” She sniffed. “Oh, he is absolutely beautiful!”
“She,” Pike chuckled. “Good size and strong.”
As Bonnet struggled to her feet, Daisy ran into the cool night air to get Amy. When they got back to the barn, Bonnet was busy licking her spindly little foal, Pike dipping the navel with iodine to prevent infection.
“Looks like mamma is imprinting fine with her little one,” Pike said with satisfaction. Daisy nodded. Licking the foal dry helped stimulate the mothering instinct as well as milk production, and kept the baby warm.
Both Daisy and Amy were crying, and Pike said, indulgently as he washed up, “Surrounded by females. What else can I expect?”
“So it’s a baby girl? Oh, Doc Martin, thank you, Thank you. I don’t think Mom and Dad ever imagined she’d come early. They’d never have left us. And she’s OK, right?”
“Both doing great. The afterbirth should be expelled within the next thirty minutes. But if it doesn’t happen by dawn, you must call me, all right?”
Amy’s eyes filled with tears. “Doc, this is her first. I mean, not counting Peanut who…who didn’t live last year. D’ya think Bonnet’ll she know how to feed her baby?”
Pike gave Amy a brisk hug. “Yes, of course. I’ll stay for a while until it happens.”
“I’m sure she will. That first milk is rich in antibodies vital to the foal’s health,” Daisy said, then bit her tongue. She sure didn’t want Pike to think she was stealing his thunder or sticking her nose in.
“But what if she doesn’t…” Amy’s voice and face bore worry, and Pike nodded at Daisy, seemingly with approval.
“Then,” Daisy instructed, “you might have to hold or tie Mommy while helping Baby get the hang of it, the first few times.”
The smile Pike gave her lit up the barn. Daisy could barely tear her gaze from his, but this was a business call, after all.
As eager as Amy was to embrace mother and child, she rightly held back, her face glowing.
“You might already know this,” Pike told the girl. “Donkey foals are not very hardy. I know it’s weird. They’re so sturdy and hard-working. So uncomplaining. Please make sure she stays dry and cozy for the next four weeks. If it rains, make sure she stays inside. Bronchitis and pneumonia can be fatal.”
“You got it,” said the happy girl. “I almost feel like letting her sleep in my room.”
Daisy laughed as she helped Pike pack up his gear.
“I’ll be back in the morning to check things out. Watch that she passes her…” He cleared his throat, his cheeks reddening. “Her first meconium within the first twelve to twenty-four hours.”
Amy’s face crunched.
“Her first manure,” Daisy explained promptly.
“All right.” The girl’s face shone, then she joked, “That mate of hers, Blue. We share a fence with the Ochoas, and he’s been hanging out flirting with their jennies all day. No matter his wife’s been through a bad time getting his offspring into the world.”
“Well, more’s the pity,” Pike said. “When it happens to me I intend to be at my wife’s side through it all.”
Daisy’s heart skipped a beat. On the ride back, she regretted the safety of the seat belt even as she knew how important it was, how important Pike thought it was, because she couldn’t scrunch close enough to him.
“I liked it,” he said suddenly, slowing as the eyes of a deer sparkled on the side of the road.
“What?” Daisy asked, not knowing what he meant anyway but longing to hear his smooth deep voice.
“You helping me. You knowing what to do. Knowing what I needed to do. Knowing what Amy needed. What to say, to sing.”
“Aw, shucks.” She tried to make light of it, but
his words warmed her through. “Seems I’m a woman of many talents.”
“That you are, woman. That you are.”
****
Silence and comfort wrapped around Pike in a way he hadn’t thought possible with Daisy Densmore in the picture. He braked the car near her barn, and she opened her car door. Interior lights came on to split the darkness, and he saw it in her eyes, on her face.
It was something Tim had told him. Kenn too. It might have happened fast, but it had happened real, and he knew she knew it, too.
Watching her tonight bowing her head in prayer, taking Tim’s snub with grace, offering to help those in need, had lifted him over the moon. Comforting Amy on the phone and in person, watching her at work at his side, bringing the little foal into the world. It all created a funny trickling thought in his mind that she just might make a good vet’s wife.
“You make me a better man, Daisy.” The words came out just as he thought them, something rare for a man who always watched what he said.
“What?” She blushed shy in the light. “I’ve been nothing but a bag of trouble and frustration.”
“Who’s taught me patience. How to work on putting myself in somebody else’s shoes.” He winked and ran to her side of the car to help her out and pull her close. “Come here, woman.”
She whimpered just once as he touched his lips to hers, and he trembled as much as she did when her arms rose to his neck to clasp him close. Her mouth brought to mind both summer strawberries and winter cocoa, and his breath came quick. It wasn’t his first kiss, or hers, but it was their first, and the last first kiss he ever intended to have.
“So what happens next,” she whispered into the cool night air against his mouth.
“The usual,” he breathed back and recalled Tim Lewis’s silly childhood rhyme, leaving off the sitting in the tree part. “K-i-s-s-i-n-g. Then comes love, then comes marriage.”
“Then comes Daisy with the baby carriage. Oh Pike, if this is a dream, please don’t wake me up. And please, please don’t let it be a joke.…”
“No joke. I mean every word. I couldn’t have imagined anything like this earlier today, but…” The thought of her standing with him in front of Pastor Hale after a reasonable, learning courtship, and then later giving him a child, did such wild things to his heart that the tachycardia weakened his knees. He quivered deep down in his belly. “But it’s come on me. Fast, but real. I’m in love with you.”
“Oh, Pike.”
“I think I may have started to fall that night at the hoedown. When you fell into my arms.” He gave her an honest smile, so she knew, they both knew, those circumstances hadn’t been for naught. “But tonight,” he continued, “I know it’s happened all the way. For good. For real.”
“I know it’s real, Pike. I felt it, too. I will always remember the moment when…” She paused then gazed at him with her heart shining in her eyes. “…when I fell in love with you.”
“What?” He held on tighter. “The hoedown? Bringing a foal into the world?”
“No. Tonight. Back at Bible study. When you…when you told Tim you’d get to the party late because…you’d be helping me.”
“Aw, it’s been some night.” Pike hugged her tighter yet. Then he remembered. “But you want to leave here.”
“No.” Daisy shook her head. “You were right. I wanted to run away. Now I have every reason to want to stay. In Mountain Cove. With you.”
After one more luscious kiss, he reluctantly broke them apart even though she already seemed part of him. “Hey, I think we ought to go check on Freckles.”
“Elway too, while you’re here,” she said softly, significantly, and he fell head over heels forever.
As they entered the barn hand in hand, he heard footfalls shuffling in the shadows. Maybe Elway? Daisy reached for a light switch.
“My, my, wasn’t that sweet?” A sardonic voice rasped through the warm inside air and animal sounds.
“Tony!” Stumbling in obvious shock, Daisy dropped Pike’s hand and tripped headlong into her ex-husband’s arms.
****
“What are you doing here, Tony?” Tony O’Neal, the worse thing ever to happen to her—the worst thing she’d ever done—pulled her close, then he moved her to lounge on his chest as he leaned against a stall. He shook his head and tossed her one of his know-it-all smiles.
Pike’s dismay, make that shock, hung in the air thick as the fragrance of hay and horse, but he started to lunge forward. Daisy held him off. Pleased as she was at Pike’s protective nature, she needed to do this all by herself.
Once and for all.
Pike stood close, a murderous look on his face, but still he complied with her wishes.
“I asked what you’re doing here,” she repeated, breathless and fighting for firmness. With something like desperation, she took every ounce of her strength and tried pulled herself back from Tony.
With a deep ugly chortle, he tossed his head at Pike. “I might ask the same question.”
“Please let me alone, Tony. And please go. You’re not welcome here.”
Pike kept his hands at his side but snarled, and to her amazement, Tony let her go. In disbelief, she stepped back to stare at him. Did he still have the power to wound her? He was still handsome in the slicked back charm she’d mistaken for love. The faux charm that had gotten her to forget herself, her faith, her family.
Honesty crept into her heart, and she shook her head as the truth hit her. He didn’t mean a thing to her. Not anymore. The past was finally over. She looked at Tony and felt nothing—not so with Pike. Pike’s down-home allure and goodness bespoke permanence, respect, forgiveness, and understanding. Tossing her aside was something she knew Pike would never do. They were in it for the long haul.
Forever.
She moved toward Pike and clasped his hand. He could get furious at her and get her furious back at him, and that would likely happen a million times throughout their lives together, but they obviously could work things out, openly and quickly. No secrets, no conniving. Everything she needed and wanted to heal her wreck of a life now stood at her side. At least she’d made progress today fixing things. Fixing her future.
Falling in love.
“You need to leave now, Tony.” Her voice sounded through the barn, calm now, and strong. Pike’s fingers tightened. “I don’t know why you’re here. Pike and I, well, I’m with him now.”
“What’re you doing with this yahoo?” Her former husband snorted in a sound she knew brooked trouble. “I’ve got a new job in Reno, Daze. I came to tell you I know I messed up. With us. With you.”
“Too late, Tony.” Memories surged with such pain she could barely hear her own voice. She realized she could still feel something in his regard because the misery he’d caused clamped hard around her heart.
But Tony must have heard. He shrugged, shoulders tight in a way that let her think he actually meant it. “But we had something once. Don’t deny it. If you dump this cowboy, we could make it work. You know we can.” He pounced a bit like he was reaching for her, and she pulled back into the protection of Pike’s encircling arms.
“I’d rather not leave you alone with him, Daisy,” Pike said, “but if you need to talk things out…” He hesitated, his fingers loosening slightly.
“No, no,” she assured him. “You’re right where I want you to be.”
Tony grunted a cuss and tried again. “I’ll be bringing in more than a one hundred K, Daisy-doo.”
“Like money would make it all better?” She shook her head against Pike’s chest.
Tony ignored her remark. “You wouldn’t need to work. You could have a kid.”
A kid? His kid? The thought repelled her where moments ago bearing Pike’s baby would be the highlight of her life.
“We’re divorced, Tony. Signed, sealed, and delivered,” she reminded him, overcoming her anger, her bitter memories. All because Pike held her. “You left me, remember?”
“Everybody deserves a
second chance,” he said, his bravura turning to a whine. She wondered what his real motive was, but she didn’t care enough to find out.
“You’re right about that, O’Neal,” Pike said, bending his head to kiss Daisy soundly. “You’re definitely right about that. Now, you heard the lady. There’s the door.”
In the ray of the barn light, a Harley they hadn’t noticed parked along the corral, came into view.
“So you said before.” Tony glared at Daisy. “You’re gonna regret this, Daisy-doo. You’re going to miss me more than you know.” Tossing them an obscene gesture, Tony swaggered off to mount his bike and roar off, shattering the loveliness of the night.
“What do you think that was about?” Daisy asked, breathless again, not from Tony’s unwanted, unexpected appearance, but because she could hear Pike’s heartbeat, breathe in his fragrance, run her fingers through the blond hair that hugged his collar. “He hasn’t…wanted me for a very long time.”
“Then I reckon it’s finally hit him.”
“What’s that?” Daisy asked just as Pike’s lips brushed hers light and sweet, and powerful all the same.
“Just how much he lost,” Pike said against her mouth.
“Seeing me with you, hearing what we said, well…”
“Made it hit him big-time.” Pike’s big hands held her head as he tilted it up for another kiss. Then his arms wrapped her close against him.
Her mom hurtled through the backdoor of the tidy one-story ranch house. “What on earth was that racket?” she called out.
Daisy understood then Tony must have walked his bike up the drive so he could lie in wait.
“I wonder what he would have done if I’d arrived home all alone?” Daisy shivered. Tony had proved to be a man of surprises, and he might have more in store. “I don’t put anything past him.”
“Past who?” Mom asked. “What’s going on?”
Daisy grabbed Pike’s hand proudly and held up the two clasped fists for her mom to see, then brought his hand to her mouth where she kissed it. Her mother’s face shone.
“Nobody, Mom. Nobody at all.” She gave a little curtsy and pointed to Pike. “Mom, I’d like to introduce my date for next Saturday night.”