Angel of Desire (17 page)

Rachel felt as if she were looking straight into the fires of hell.

She knew she should be terrified. And she was. But she also had complete faith in Shade's survival instincts. Instincts he'd honed well over the years.

He drove the Mercedes through the side streets, avoiding fleeing pedestrians with a deft skill that Rachel admired. A shot hit the rear passenger window and was deflected by the bullet-proof glass. Rachel jumped and turned white. Her blood froze. But she did not scream.

The woman definitely had spunk, Shade considered. She was tough in ways that were at direct odds with her seemingly innocent vulnerability. It was no wonder he was falling in love with her. No wonder she had him thinking of a future even though he knew such thoughts were impossible.

"We're almost there," he assured her. "Just keep that gorgeous head down."

The compliment, offered so casually, almost managed to expunge her fear. Almost. But not quite. Rachel wrapped her arms around her knees, lowered her head and squeezed her eyes tightly closed. And then she prayed.

Shade suddenly pulled the car into a courtyard that was surrounded on three sides by high stone walls. "End of the road," he announced, not bothering to hide his own relief that the hair-raising race through the city streets was finally over. At least for now.

Rachel risked a glance out the window. "A tavern?" Although the wine the other night had made her head spin, at this moment she would not have refused a calming drink.

"It's owned by a friend of mine."

"What if he isn't here?" She was trying to be brave, but the idea of going back out into that shooting gallery was decidedly unpalatable.

"He isn't. Jake escaped to Montacroix, then on to Switzerland last month," Shade revealed. "But I have a key. And there's an apartment above the bar where we can spend the night."

A vision shimmered through her mind. A warm, seductive picture of a cozy room, a thick feather bed, and Shade. The idea of spending the night in his arms was every bit as enticing as it was forbidden.

As Shade watched her wide eyes cloud, their thoughts tangled. He was drawn to her in ways he couldn't remember ever being drawn to any other woman.

His hand slipped beneath her silken hair. His fingers brushed the nape of her neck with a gentle touch.

He leaned toward her slowly, allowing her time to read his intention and back away.

But she didn't. Instead, every bit as seduced as he, Rachel moistened her lips and waited.

Their mouths were a whisper apart. She placed her fingertips against his khaki shirt and felt his heart thudding in a strong, sure rhythm that matched the beat of her own.

Closer. Then closer still. She could feel the warmth of his breath.

And then, just as his lips brushed hers, a scream shattered the suspended silence.

"What the hell?" Shade jerked his head back and looked around, his body as tense as it had been earlier at the border crossing.

A child, a boy, no more than eight or nine years old, came dashing out of the door of the neighboring building and began pounding on the car window.

"It's my mother," he shouted in obvious panic. "You must help her! She's dying!"

Chapter Nine

THE BOY'S MOTHER WASN'T dying, Rachel determined after they entered an apartment barren of furniture. In the center of the room, lying on a tablecloth on the bare floor was a woman, obviously pregnant and drenched in sweat.

Rachel knelt down and began to examine the woman, who, unlike her son, spoke no English. She didn't need to. The agony and fear etched into every line of her face needed no translation. The entire time her hands moved over the swollen, undulating belly, Rachel talked in low, soothing tones.

And then she smiled, patted the woman's cheek and turned back to the nervously waiting boy.

"Your mother will be fine," she assured him. "She's simply going to have a baby."

"Now?" Shade looked nearly as panic-stricken as the boy.

"Tonight," Rachel determined.

"Can't she wait?"

"I suppose she might." Rachel rolled up her sleeves and went over to the kitchen area—little more than a sink, refrigerator and wood-burning stove against the far wall—to wash her hands. The small stack of oak and pine piled up beside the stove revealed what had happened to the furniture. "But the baby won't."

Shade swore.

Rachel turned on the tap. "At least there's hot water."

"The entire block is built on hot springs."

"Lucky." She rubbed a bar of brown soap between her hands, rinsed them and, lacking any sterile toweling, shook them dry.

"That's not exactly the word I'd use." He shot a look at the woman writhing on the floor across the room. "Hell."

"Why don't you stop cursing and make yourself useful?" Rachel asked with a calm Shade found amazing, considering the circumstances.

"Doing what?"

"Boiling some water would be a good start."

"I thought they only did that in movies."

"It's important to sterilize the knife," Rachel explained calmly over the woman's piercing scream. "And we'll need some clean towels."

For the first time since her arrival on earth, she felt inordinately self-assured. Fortunately, childbirth was one thing that hadn't changed all that much in three hundred years. Oh, admittedly some of the techniques and equipment might have become more modern, but human biology was the same as it had been in the 1600s.

"A knife? You're not going to try to perform a cesarean?" Shade wasn't up on the medical qualifications of midwives, but he knew damn well that surgery wasn't high on the list.

The woman screeched again and began cursing like a Yaznovian lumberjack. Her tortured voice reminded him of the screams that had echoed through the stone walls of the general's prison during the interminable torture sessions. Amazingly, Shade considered, Rachel seemed unmoved by the sound.

"The knife is to cut the cord." Another bloodcurdling scream that went on and on ricocheted around the apartment. "I'd better get to work." She nodded toward the stove. "And so should you."

"Gee, Miz Rachel," he drawled, "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies."

His uneasy attempt at humor was wasted on Rachel, who'd never seen Butterfly McQueen deliver her famous movie line. "You will before the night's over," she promised.

The labor, blessedly, proved relatively uneventful. Rachel was grateful that, although the woman was undernourished, she was young and strong. Her husband, they learned, had gone out that morning in search of food for his family and had not returned.

Afternoon turned to evening. Then night. Tracers lit the darkened sky, creating a strobelike effect in the little room.

Since it was too dangerous to send the boy away, Rachel put him to work, soothing his mother's sweaty brow with cool cloths dampened with locally grown lavender oil. She had Shade translate her instructions regarding the importance of relaxation and proper breathing during labor—the once-radical technique that had gotten her into such trouble three hundred years ago—and then she taught him how to coach the woman through each contraction. And how to massage the undulating belly. Although awkward and endearingly self-conscious at first, he soon caught on. As Shade relaxed, the woman did, as well, which eased her discomfort considerably.

The beautifully simple technique declared heresy in her day, only to evolve into the much-lauded Lamaze method centuries later, was a vast improvement over tying the woman's wrists to the bedpost and shoving a birthing stick between her teeth, Rachel considered.

The four strangers began to mesh, to work smoothly together as a team: Rachel, Shade, the woman and her son, all united in a single purpose.

Five hours after the boy's desperate plea for help, file woman gave one final push and the baby eased slickly out of its mother's womb into Rachel's waiting hands.

Everyone in the room held their collective breaths, waiting for the infant's cry. A cry that began as a weak, stuttering whimper and quickly escalated into a full, healthy wail.

"You have a daughter," Rachel said, smiling through her happy tears as she placed the baby girl on the woman's stomach and cut the cord that had bonded child and mother for nine months.

She did not need Shade to translate. The new mother, overcome by such joy in the midst of the horror raging outdoors, began to cry and kissed Rachel's hands. Then Shade's. Then she hugged her son and cried all the harder.

Capping off the blessed event, the absent husband chose that moment to burst through the door. He had managed to locate some precious loaves of brown bread and goat cheese and, miraculously, two bottles of wine. Viewing his triumphant wife and newborn daughter, he dropped his bundles to the floor.

There was more laughter. More happy tears. Even Shade's eyes, Rachel noticed, were suspiciously wet. Glasses were raised as toasts were made to the baby.

The new mother. The baby's older brother. To Shade. And, of course, there were several toasts to Rachel, who, the husband insisted, was an angel.

Finally, taking the blessings of the Yaznovian family with them, Shade and Rachel slipped out of the building, retrieved their luggage and food from the Mercedes and made their way through the tavern to the upstairs apartment.

Shade closed the shutters and risked lighting a candle. The apartment, like the one next door, consisted of a single room with a kitchen area against one wall and an adjoining bath. A large hand-carved bed, covered with a thick feather comforter, dominated the small space.

Shade put the suitcases on the floor and the picnic basket on the table. "You must be exhausted."

She was tired. Strange how she hadn't noticed it earlier. But of course her mind had been on other things. She rubbed the back of her neck.

"Not as exhausted as the baby's mother." She smiled with reminiscent pleasure. "Wasn't that wonderful?"

"You were wonderful." He wrapped his arms around her, lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. "I think this is where I tell you I'm very impressed."

Her lips curved beneath his. "I was just doing my job."

"I know. It's just that I…"

When his voice trailed off, she tilted her head back and met his oddly embarrassed gaze with a fond one of her own. "You didn't believe I really was a midwife."

"I guess I didn't. Not really." He ran his palm down her hair. "The idea just seemed so—"

"Old-fashioned?"

"Yeah." Shade decided not to ruin the moment by pointing out that she hadn't exactly been a model of veracity during their time together.

His wide hand continued down her back, creating warmth. And desire. Rachel loved him so much, she wanted him so much, she twined her arms around his neck. "I guess I'm just an old-fashioned woman." She wanted to melt into him.

Shade wanted her to do exactly that. "My favorite kind."

He kissed her. Deep and hard. On and on. His hand cupped her buttocks, lifting her against his swelling groin.

A fiery knot of frustration was growing inside her. Rachel wanted to feel Shade's hot naked flesh against hers. She felt as if she would die if he didn't undress her. If he didn't take her. Now.