And Baby Makes Five (8 page)

Weary with both fear and pain, Lilly closed her eyes and prayed. She didn’t want to have this baby on the side of the road, but she knew they’d never make it to Ranger.

“How you doing back there?”

Cort’s question was tense, clipped. Lilly wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to say that nothing was right. That her whole life wasn’t right. But she didn’t. How could she tell a complete stranger something that she’d tried her entire life to keep suppressed deep inside herself? You couldn’t.

Renew your mind with faith.

“Not so good, but we’re hanging on.” She gritted out the words between clamped teeth. She’d be positive even if it killed her. She would force the darkness away and look to the light.

God was in control.

“God’s in control, Lilly.” Cort echoed her thoughts, slightly scaring her that he could read her so well.

His reassurance washed over her. Like words spoken straight from God, they calmed her. She smiled a thank-you into the darkness toward God and sighed with relief that He was out there. He really was, because He’d sent her three of the most awesome guardians that anyone could ever have.

A darling donkey, a delightful dog and a dashing grinch—who wasn’t such a grinch after all.

C
ort concentrated on getting Lilly to the nearest help. She grew quiet in the backseat. He knew she was fighting pain like a warrior. She had guts and then some. And she was depending on him. His mind was racing as he went over his options. He could try for Ranger.

Too far.

He didn’t know much about the baby business, but he knew they would never make seventy miles to Ranger, even if the roads weren’t ice covered.

His best bet was Mule Hollow.

Of the few women there were in Mule Hollow, most lived at Adela’s apartments. Before he’d bought the ranch he’d been surprised to discover just how few ladies resided in the little town.

With the sour view of women he’d had after his wife walked out on him, the lack of females had actually been a selling point on his choosing the town as home.

What irony. For a guy who hadn’t wanted even to see a woman for a year, now he was praying for God to open up the heavens and rain them down on him.

Loser’s tail slapped him on the neck and Cort glanced at the mutt. He stood with his paws on the seat back staring at Lilly, and he’d started whining and wiggling like a nervous father. He moved in closer when Lilly groaned, and his shaggy tail smacked Cort in the face like an out-of-control windshield wiper. Lilly moaned again and sucked in a sharp breath. This caused the dog to jump, yelp in Cort’s ear, slap his sharp paws on Cort’s shoulder and start tap-dancing. Cort could almost hear him yelling, “Do something! Anything!”

Yeah, Cort, do something!

“Lilly, breathe,” he coaxed, glancing over his shoulder. In the dim light he could see her eyes wide with alarm and pain. “You know, he-he-he. I think that’s the way they do it.”

To his immense relief he heard her copy him. “That’s it, atta girl. Keep it up. We’re coming up to the crossroads. Town is not far away. Help is there.”

“Thank you…I need…to push—”

“No!” Cort’s heart socked him in the chest. “No pushing. No way. Town is just a bit farther. Breathe. Breathe. Suck that air in, but whatever you do, don’t push!”

Panic rose like hot lava within him and he stomped the pedal as hard as he dared in the sleet. The truck fishtailed. He let off the gas, turned the wheel, then gassed it again when he felt the tires catch and hold on the road. “No pushing,” he said again. “We’re going to make it.”

Lord, I cannot deliver a baby in the middle of the road! Do not do this to me. Town is just two miles away.

Someone would know what to do. Adela Ledbetter had struck him as a very wise woman. Surely she’d been around many babies being born.

She would be able to help Lilly.

Lord, whatever You do, let Adela be the one to answer that door when we get there.

Glancing over his shoulder again, Cort’s heart nearly broke when he met Lilly’s scared eyes. They looked so frightened. She didn’t want to have her baby in a truck, either. It was bad enough knowing she was going to give birth in a house out in the middle of nowhere without any benefit of state-of-the-art medical equipment in case of emergency. The least he could do was get her to where there would be the comfort of someone who’d know what to do.

Shrugging off Loser’s clinging paws, he reached over the seat and took her hand from where she clung to her stomach. It was damp and trembling, and felt fragile within his large palm. Gently he squeezed it, feeling her fingers tighten around his—in a vise grip! The little lady had some strength.

“It’s going to be all right, Lilly,” he said. If she needed to squeeze the feeling out of his hand in order to ease her pain, then so be it. “God’s here. He’s watching over you.”

He glanced back at her, not daring to take his eyes off the road for too long. She was drenched in perspiration and in the grip of a contraction, but she managed a nod and a feeble smile that cut Cort to the core.

“My…grannies are…probably giving…Him…grief.” The words came out between clenched teeth.

They’d reached Main Street. Letting Lilly keep his hand as pain relief, Cort turned the corner with one hand on the wheel. The tires slid, then grabbed on the ice. Loser flipped onto his back, his legs churning as he slid across the seat into the door, then tumbled headfirst onto the floorboard.

“Sorry, Buddy,” Cort apologized, grinning—despite his anxiousness—at the astonished look on Loser’s doggy face. “Keep breathing, Lilly—he-he-he…” he added for good measure.

“The he-he-ing isn’t working!”

The huge old house that seemed to be the cornerstone of the old town sprang into view through the dark night. It reminded Cort of a hotel rather than a house, and he could see how easily it had been turned into apartments.

It was the prettiest sight he’d ever seen. Relief washed over him like cold water on a sizzling day.

In the darkness his headlights illuminated the front porch as he whipped into the circle drive and skidded to a stop. Thankfully there were lights in the front window. They had electricity.

His truck lights came to rest on an old pink Cadillac sitting out front, and his frenzied mind registered that it was an odd car, one he’d seen parked in town the few times he’d come in for feed.

Who would drive such a car? he wondered for a split second before he slammed the truck into Park and wrenched his door open. “We’re here. No pushing yet!”

With no time to waste, he jumped from the truck. Loser followed him to the door, as ready as Cort to exit the truck.

His whiskered eyebrows shot up when Cort slammed the door, leaving him trapped inside the cab with Lilly. She was he-he-ing and huff-huffing like the little engine that could.

Cort banged on the large carved door. After just a few moments it flew open, but it wasn’t Adela who stood in the lighted doorway. Instead it was Lacy Brown who greeted him with her wild white-blond hair, a bright orange-and-yellow T-shirt, hot-pink pajama bottoms and lime-green fuzzy slippers.

She
was not
the Florence Nightingale he’d envisioned.

“I need to push!” Lilly shrieked as Cort’s strong arms swept her through the doorway and into Adela’s home.

“We’re almost there, babe. Where’s Ms. Adela?” he asked, striding toward the room Lacy pointed out for him at the front of the house.

“She left earlier to visit her sister in New Mexico for a week and I’m house-sitting,” Lacy chirped, winking at Lilly. “And now I get to help deliver the first baby in Mule Hollow in ages and ages. Wow! Lay her right here, Cort. Lilly, this is gonna be exciting. God’s good, isn’t He?”

Cort shot her a startled look and Lilly, despite her pain, laughed. Leave it to Lacy to look at what was happening as a blessing. Lilly wanted that kind of faith…that kind of joy. Lacy had used that same joy helping in Mule Hollow’s transformation, as well as when she helped track down a band of cattle rustlers. But that was a story for another time. Lilly needed to concentrate on the baby. Her pure love of the Lord was infectious and Lilly was glad to see her. She was one more blessing that God had sent Lilly’s way. Delivering a baby would be a piece of cake for Lacy. With the Lord’s help. Lilly needed all His help she could get.

Lacy asked Cort to knock on the doors of the apartments and wake up all the ladies to help.

Cort hesitated, and Lilly realized she was gripping his hand like a vise. But when she released the pressure he continued to hold her hand as if it were a delicate flower. He looked from her to Lacy. He didn’t want to leave her. He made her feel so special. Dampness gathered at the corners of her eyes. He was the special one.

He was wonderful. His heart was huge. Though he’d tried for some reason to hide it, she knew the truth.

Lacy slapped him on the shoulder. The sound crackled through Lilly’s thoughts and jolted her from her wistful reverie.

“Hop to it, Cort. Let’s get this show on the road. I’ll call the ambulance, but the baby is coming fast. I need the other women.”

But he didn’t move.

Only when Lacy patted him on the shoulder and assured him she would take good care of Lilly did he make a move. Running a hand over her hair, he cupped her face. “You can do this, Lilly,” he encouraged her, then strode from the room.

Cort was knocking on the first door he’d come to when he heard Lilly scream. He barely registered the wild-eyed woman who answered the door. She glared at him through the crack left by the bolt chain. “Baby. B-baby’s coming.” He knew he was stammering, but all he could think about was getting back to Lilly. Did she need him? “Please, wake up the other women and come help Lacy deliver Lilly’s baby.”

“Baby?”

“Yes. Help,” he added over his shoulder, already racing back through the doorway leading into the main part of the house. Behind him he could hear the sleepy woman fumble with the chain, then pad down the hall banging on doors.

Cort took the elaborately carved stairs of the old mansion three at a time. Hot water and towels. Weren’t those things needed when delivering a baby? He’d reached the main floor when Lacy stuck her head around the door frame.

“Towels. They’re in the bathroom.” She pointed across the hall, then disappeared back into the room. In two strides he was in the bathroom yanking open doors. Bingo! He snatched a towel, then grabbed the entire stack just as he heard Lacy yell his name.

As he rushed back into the hall he registered three things: first, a mass of women stampeding down the stairs, second, Lacy rushing toward him with a huge grin plastered on her face and third, the tiny infant cradled in her arms.

The tiny, blood-covered newborn…

“Uh-oh.”

Cort woke to the freezing chill of cold water splashing across his face. He coughed, sputtered, fought the rivulets filling his nostrils and then coughed some more. Wiping the water out of his eyes, he realized he was surrounded by women.

One stood above him with a grin on her face and an empty pan in her hand. She was the one who’d thrown water on him! If she’d been a man he’d have belted him a good one. He gagged again, wiped more water out of his eyes and looked around at the women hovering over him. There was a woman patting him on the cheek and another fanning cold air on his chilled face. One woman stuffed a pillow under his aching head and another one threw a blanket over him and started tucking it in around him as if it was a straitjacket.

He felt like a drowned rat. From his supine position on the floor, Cort could see through the doorway into the room where Lilly was, and he caught sight of Loser cowering under the bed, leery of the whirlwind of activity. Cort didn’t blame him—he wanted to hide, too. Fighting off the blanket, he started to sit up, only to be pushed back by a set of determined hands.

“Not so fast, cowboy.”

Cort shot a glare at the newspaper reporter, Molly Popp, and sat up anyway. He regretted it instantly—the rudeness and the sitting up—but he didn’t let it show. The other women backed away as he pushed himself off the floor, staggered then straightened.

His world tilted again when one of the ladies opened the door wider and he spied Lilly sitting up holding her baby.

She looked exhausted, but radiantly happy. She smiled at him and held out her hand toward him.

She was beaming, sitting there holding her child.

A knot formed in Cort’s stomach. An ache welled within him and it was all he could do to move toward them through the doorway. He was mesmerized.

“Cort, you scared me to death. Are you okay?” She wiggled her fingers at him when he made no move to take the hand she held out to him.

He’d held her hand all through the contractions, but now, looking at her slender fingers, he was petrified as he reached out and closed his large fingers about hers.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice gruff. He pushed aside the feelings threatening to overwhelm him. “I don’t seem to be able to handle the sight of blood. How are you?” he asked, changing the subject, but genuinely interested in her well-being and that of the baby nestled in her arms. They made a perfect picture of peace.

They made his heart ache.

“Worn out but ready to fly,” she was saying, and he had to concentrate on her words. But his carefully constructed fortress was cracking up around him.

“Have you ever, ever in your whole life seen anything quite so beautiful?”

“Never,” he said, and knew he meant it. They were a vision, mother and child. The little boy had dark hair, and a full head of it.

His children would have had dark hair.

Shards of regret flew at him, ripping at his heart, the anguish of what he’d lost fighting to be free for all to see. He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry, as if he’d just eaten a spoonful of flour.

“Okay, ambulance is on the way,” Lacy said, entering the room in a flurry of color and movement.

She slapped him on the back, then hugged him, and he turned his attention back to reality and focused on her words, not his what ifs.

“You did a great job getting her here,” she said. “Though I’m certain you want us all to forget about the little fainting episode, I have to tell you it was really cute.”

She stepped over to Lilly and the baby and looked at him with a huge grin. “God works in weird ways sometimes. We’ve been trying to get Lilly to move to town. Trying to get her away from that lonely place way off out in the middle of nowhere. But she seems to like hiding out in the country all alone. Wouldn’t it have been horrible had you not moved in when you did? You, Cort Wells, are a gift from God.”