ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (2 page)

“I have to take your pants off,” I said, trying to mask the fear and the disbelief I was feeling in that moment. It’d been more than three years since I last disrobed a woman, and she definitely wasn’t screaming like this. However, I knew I had to see what was happening, as much as I hated having to expose this woman, whose name I didn’t even know, to the world.

I grasped the edges of her jeans and tugged as she sat up again, pain twisting her beautiful features. There was more fear than indignity in her eyes, so I knew that she understood what I was doing. But it didn’t make it easier.

The jeans were wet, so it was harder than it should have been to get them down her thighs. The same with her panties, but I had a pocketknife and I was able to cut them away. And it was just in time, too, because I could see a bulge pressing against her vaginal lips, making them stretch outward in an unnatural way.

I’d seen a video of a live birth. One of the guys in my unit had a kid while we were deployed and, for some awful reason, his wife had a friend record the whole thing and she emailed it to him. He showed it to everyone, even people like me who weren’t even the least bit interested in seeing his wife’s vagina torn apart that way.

I ran every time I saw him coming my direction, but then he finally cornered me coming out of the showers one morning and I had no choice. Now I was kind of glad I’d seen it. At least I understood what I was seeing.

The baby was coming.

“You’re in labor,” I said.

“It hurts,” she said, tears running down her face. “I can’t do this.”

“You don’t really have a choice right now. I can see the head.”

She shook her head, ready to protest again, but another wave of pain overtook her and she screamed, her hands pressed to her belly as if she thought she could push it out from there.

I dug my Bluetooth out of my pocket and hooked it over my ear, speaking the first name that came to mind. Emily Warren. She was a Los Angeles Police Department detective who was a liaison with Gray Wolf on more cases than I could count. And she was a friend. If anyone could talk me through this, it was probably Emily.

“I’m on my way home, Ash,” she said the moment she picked up. “So unless someone’s dying—”

The girl picked that instant to scream again.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a girl. She’s in labor and the baby’s coming. I need you to tell me what to do.”

“Where are you?”

“On the side of the road somewhere.” The bulge grew, the dark patch right in the center oozing blood. It needed to come out, but I didn’t know what the hell to do. “Tell me what to do, Emily.”

“Can you see the head?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Tell her to push. Make her concentrate on you, stop that screaming, and to bear down like she’s having a massive bowel movement.”

“Bowel movement?”

“A shit, Ash. Tell her to push like she’s constipated.”

I leaned forward and took the girl’s hands.

“Hey,” I said, “look at me.”

Her eyes were wild, but she managed to focus on me.

“I’m Ash. What’s your name?”

She seemed confused for an instant, but then she said, “Wilhelmina.”

“Yeah?”

“Everyone usually calls me Mina.”

“Mina. Okay. Look at me and listen.”

She nodded, but I could see the panic beginning to build in her eyes again. Another contraction was coming.

“When the pain comes, you have to push.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t do this here!”

“You have no choice. This baby’s coming whether you’re ready or not.”

She shook her head again, but then the pain overtook her and she screamed, reaching for me as she did. She grabbed my wrist and buried her nails, the pain excruciating, but I couldn’t imagine it was anywhere near as bad as what she was feeling.

I looked down and that bulge seemed to be even bigger. This baby was definitely coming whether she did what she was supposed to do or not. But then Emily was in my ear again.

“She needs to push. The longer the baby’s stuck in the birth canal, the longer it’s cut off from oxygen. She needs to push that baby out.”

“Mina,” I said, touching her face to get her attention, “I know it hurts. I know you’re scared. But you need to do this.”

She focused on me, the fear still dancing in her eyes. But there was something else there, a trust I’d done nothing to earn. She nodded, gripping both my arms as the next pain came. She pulled up, her knees bent, another scream slipping out, but a scream that had effort behind her. As I watched, fluid burst out of her body along with the back of the baby’s head. I didn’t understand at first, but there was this purple, pulsing thing around the baby’s neck, and I knew that wasn’t normal.

“Wait!”

I pulled away from her, scooping the baby’s head into my hands and carefully moving the cord away from its neck. The moment the baby was free, the shoulders wiggled free, and he came sliding out on another gush of fluid.

A boy. It was a beautiful baby boy.

“Is it there?”

“Yes.”

“You need to check the airway, make sure it’s clear.”

“How do I do that?”

“Just put your finger in his mouth and feel for obstructions.”

I did, and the baby stared up at me, his eyes wide, as though he were startled. And then he let out a strong yelp, like a puppy separated from its mother at feeding time.

“That sounds good,” Emily said.

“He’s gorgeous.” I looked up at Mina, ready to hand the child to her. But she was unconscious, her hands flopping over her slightly deflated baby bump. Blood dripped from the SUV’s bench seat onto the dark carpet, flowing from her body in a stronger current than I imagined was normal.

“I think she’s bleeding out.”

“Where are you? I can have an ambulance there in less than five minutes.”

“It’d be quicker if I drive.”

I slammed the door and rushed back around to the driver’s side, the baby still in my arms. I stripped off my t-shirt and wrapped it around him, holding him close to my chest as I climbed behind the wheel. The little guy began to scream as I drove, perhaps sensing my sudden urgency. I hadn’t even bothered to cover Mina up, just left her lying in a pool of her own blood, her legs still open. She flopped around a little as I sped around corners, hitting her head once on the armrest as I drove too fast, too erratically, to be safe.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said to the baby as he screamed. “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

The hospital—thank God!—appeared around another corner. I slammed on the brakes as we sped under the canopy outside the emergency room doors, forcing the transmission into park as I jumped out. A physician’s assistant who’d been taking a smoke break when I drove up paused to put out the cigarette before running over.

“She’s bleeding!”

I ran around, ignoring him as he tried to take the baby. I threw open the backseat and the physician’s assistant cursed under his breath.

“I’m going to get a gurney.”

He ran back inside and was out in less than a minute with a doctor and several nurses. They lifted Mina out of the SUV and set her on the bed, rushing her inside without bothering to tie up the straps. I followed, the baby calm now that we were moving and we were out of the cool, early summer air. The emergency room was fairly empty, an unusual occurrence in my experience, giving them room to concentrate just on Mina.

“What happened?” the doctor yelled at me, as he did something between her legs.

“She just had the baby.”

“Did you force the baby out? Did she push?”

“She pushed. I never touched the baby till he was out.”

“What about the placenta? Did you attempt to remove the placenta?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I shrugged as a nurse approached me.

“Let me take the baby. We’ll get him cleaned up and bring him back to you.”

I nodded, looking down at the baby one last time as I handed him off. His eyes looked blue in this light. He was going to have his mother’s eyes.

Someone else pushed me out into the hallway.

Emily arrived a few minutes later, a low whistle coming from between her lips as she approached.

“Looking hot, Ash.”

I glanced down. My jeans were stiff with blood, and there was a smear across my bare abs. And my hands…I was a mess. But the bare chest…I supposed that explained the odd looks I was getting from the nurses.

“Who is this girl, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I was leaving a bar, and she just kind of attached herself to me.”

“ID?”

I shook my head.

The doctor came out of the room, his arms crossed over his chest.

“She’s going to be okay. The placenta didn’t separate from the uterine wall properly, that’s what caused the bleeding. But we’ve got it under control. We’ll want to admit her for observation, and probably a course of antibiotics considering the circumstances of the birth, but she should be able to go home in a day or two.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

He nodded, looking me over for a long second before glancing at Emily, then walking away.

“You did good,” she said, patting my shoulder. “You should go home, get some rest.”

“I think I’ll stick around. Make sure she has a place to go.”

Emily studied my face for a second, then she turned. “I’ll go move your car. Maybe she’s got some ID in her jeans?”

I watched her go, then stepped back into the room. Only a nurse was with Mina now, checking the IV that was dripping through a tube into her arm. Mina was awake, though weak. She smiled when she saw me.

“Hi.”

I stepped up beside the bed and took her hand. “You did it. You delivered a beautiful baby boy.”

“They told me.”

“She needs some rest,” the nurse said, touching my arm lightly. “You can see her again when they get her settled in a room upstairs.”

I nodded, though I was reluctant to leave her for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain to myself. I brushed the hair out of her face, and she smiled.

“I’ll be around.”

She grabbed my hand before I could leave.

“Thank you.”

Mina

I ached when I woke. My body was sore, but it was in one of those just kind of achy all over sort of ways. I had stitches, and I could feel those. The doctor told me it could have been worse, considering the fact that I’d just given birth in the back of an SUV. I wasn’t sure how. They also said I lost a lot of blood when it was all over, but I didn’t remember that part. One second, Ash was holding up this pink and gray thing and the next I was in the hospital, strangers standing all around me. They said the baby was okay. Did I want to see him?

I didn’t, because I knew when I looked at him, all I’d see was his father. But I couldn’t tell them that. So I agreed. And when the nurse handed him to me, the funniest thing happened. I didn’t see that homicidal bastard. I saw Ash.

If only things had gone differently in my life. If only I’d made different choices. I wouldn’t be in this situation, alone with a new baby. I had no idea where I was going to go, who would protect me.

There was no one to protect me.

I didn’t even have clothes. I saw the nurses looking at me when they told me my clothes had been ruined and I’d need to arrange for others. I had no others. I’d left with just what I had on my back. They brought me these tacky scrubs, but where was I going to go?

I was curled in a chair by the window, thinking how nice it would be to have a view like this outside a nice, safe apartment. The kind of apartment I’d dreamed of having when I came to Los Angeles. But that apartment never materialized. I worked hard, waited tables during the day and stripped at night. I was making good money, too. But then I trusted the wrong people and one thing led to another…here I was, ink still on my fingers from the cop who thought I might have a record somewhere. That was one of many things I didn’t have.

I’d heard the cop whispering to someone outside my hospital room.

No record. No ID. We have no idea who this girl is. She could be a drug dealer, or she could simply be some kid down on her luck.

I wasn’t a kid, but I was certainly down on my luck.

They were going to take my kid. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

There was a tap on the door, and Ash stuck his head in.

“Do you mind if I come in?”

I shook my head. “Of course not.”

“How is he?” he asked, pausing by the clear plastic basinet where the baby slept.

“He sleeps well. They said that’s a sign that he’s content.”

“Have you picked a name yet?”

I blushed. “Would you mind if I named him after you? If not for you, he probably wouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t know about that. He was pretty determined to come into the world.”

“They told me that the cord was around his neck and you were able to get it off.”

“Yeah. That’s what they tell me, too. But it was all such a blur, I hardly remember most of it.”

“That might not be a bad thing.”

He smiled, coming over to sit on the edge of the windowsill. “How are you?”

I didn’t know what to say. I ran my fingers through my hair, my eyes falling on the world below us, a world full of people who seemed to be perfectly normal, perfectly untouched by reality.

“My friend, Emily Warren? She said they can’t seem to find any identification on you.”

“They wouldn’t. I lost my driver’s license and I’ve never been arrested.”

“Do you have somewhere to go?”

An image of my mother burst to the front of my mind and the suddenness brought tears to my eyes. But she’d been gone five months now. And my father…he wouldn’t want me to show up on his doorstep, especially with a kid in tow.

There was nowhere else.

I think he could see that because he glanced over at the baby again, then he studied me for a long moment.

“I have a place. It’s not really cozy, but it’s home. I could put you up for a couple weeks, until you figure out your next step.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I feel a little responsible for the two of you now.”

I looked at him and knew my instincts about him had been right. He wasn’t the monster Dimitri said he was. He was a good man, a man with morals. He was the exact opposite of Dimitri.

But I knew what was coming for him. Did I really want to get myself mixed up in all that? But, again, Dimitri would come after me when he figured out I’d left. Where else would I be safe? Where else could I heal and allow the baby to grow strong before I went on the run?

“Like I said, it’s not a cozy place. But it’s clean.”

I sat up a little straighter. “Okay.”

He smiled, the expression changing the lines of his face until he became something beyond handsome. I mean, he was good looking, even a blind woman could see that. But when he smiled, his face just took on this whole new dimension. I wanted to stare at him for the rest of the day and just revel in that glow. Then again, it was that kind of thinking that got me into this predicament in the first place.

Maybe my daddy was right. I needed to stop acting on impulse.

“I’m Ash Grayson, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand. “I don’t think we were ever properly introduced.”

“Wilhelmina Kaufman.”

“Well, Wilhelmina, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

***

The hospital forced Ash to go buy a car seat before they’d let him drive us home. He was cute about it, cursing under his breath when he tried to get it into the car and couldn’t quite get the bar on the bottom of the seat into the connectors on the base. But he finally got it, shooting me a triumphant glance as the nurses clapped behind him.

The drive wasn’t long. He took us to the outskirts of Santa Monica and along a private road that ran parallel to a benign-looking wrought iron fence. He turned into a narrow drive guarded by a wide gate that opened when he pushed a button on a device that looked like a garage door opener. The house was a little way down the drive, a beautiful log-cabin-styled house with long windows along the front.

Ash pulled the SUV to a stop in the drive and came around to help me out. He took my hand, and I saw the scratches on his wrist, scratches I vaguely remembered putting there when I was in labor.

“I didn’t ruin your upholstery, did I?”

“I had it cleaned. Good as new.”

He carefully pulled me out of the car, conscious of my soreness, which I really appreciated. He didn’t step back, catching me with a hand on my hip as I wobbled a little on my feet. We were so close I could smell the faint scent of the soap he used. I looked up at him, and he was watching me, his hand moving up to my shoulder to steady me.

“Okay?” he asked, genuine concern in his eyes.

“I’m good.”

He hesitated a second, but then he stepped back and gestured for me to get the baby.

We were halfway to the door when it suddenly opened and these people just flooded out. A middle-aged woman came rushing over, slipping the baby, car seat and all, out of my arms.

“He’s gorgeous,” she cooed as she uncovered the baby’s face. “All that dark hair! None of my babies had that much hair.”

“Let me see,” another woman said, waddling down the front path, her wide, swollen belly pushing everyone else out of the way. She peeked at the baby and sighed. “Beautiful.”

“Don’t worry, mama,” a dark-skinned man said, coming up behind her and resting his hands on her shoulders, “your little person will be just as gorgeous.”

Ash moved up close behind me, resting his hand lightly on the small of my back. I looked up at him, grateful that he understood how overwhelmed I was. But then another man came over, a tall man who had the same dark hair and green eyes as Ash despite the clear difference in his more slender physique.

“Brother!” this new man said. “It’s not good enough to be a wealthy business owner with your face plastered all over newsstands all over the city, but now you deliver babies in the middle of the night? Impressive!”

Ash just shook his head, a slight grin softening his features. He drew me up closer beside him and said, “David, this is Wilhelmina Kaufman.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Wilhelmina.”

“Mina, please,” I said, as I accepted his proffered hand.

“Mina,” David said with a slight bow.

Then Ash turned me and gestured to the others. “That’s Rose,” he said, gesturing to the middle-aged woman who was still cooing over the baby, “and the pregnant woman is Joss. Behind her is Kirkland, and that’s Mabel beside him.”

It was all so overwhelming. So many people all staring at my baby and me. I felt out of place in the ill-fitting scrubs. And I needed a shower. My hair was limp and greasy, falling unpleasantly all around my face. I felt like I’d just put in twelve hours of hard labor and stumbled into a formal dinner party.

There were more people inside. Ash led the way in, and I was a little surprised to see desks scattered among the couches and love seats in the large, open living room. Sitting around one of those sitting areas was a man with a small bandage on his head and a woman with long hair that was pulled back with a heavy clip. They stood as we came inside, the woman coming over to steal a glance at the baby.

“Oh, he’s beautiful,” she said, smiling at me.

“Thank you,” I said, unsure what else to say.

Someone had taken the baby out of his car seat and they were passing him around, admiring him like he was a member of their family and they were trying to identify familiar features. It was sort of surreal because this was what I’d imagined it would have been like when I was kid and I fantasized about having children. But I’d thought my mom would be here to admire my first child and I’d have a faithful, caring husband at my side beaming with pride.

I was tired.

“Are you breastfeeding?” someone asked.

I blushed, but nodded.

It seemed like a terribly personal thing to ask a stranger. But these people didn’t seem to think I was a stranger, even though I still wasn’t sure who was who or why they were here. I mean…I knew some about the people who worked for Gray Wolf Security. There’d been a magazine article. But putting names and roles to faces was a struggle.

Ash stayed close to me. After a few minutes, he whispered near my ear, “Are you tired? Do you want to see your room?”

Again, I looked at him with gratitude pouring from my eyes. He just nodded, turning me toward the stairs in the back corner of the room.

“Where are you going, Ash?” David called, rushing over to head us off.

“I’m going to show Mina her room.”

“You’re setting her up here in the house?” David cocked his head slightly, looking hard at me. “Wouldn’t one of the cottages be better?”

“No.”

That was all Ash said on the subject. He led me past David, and David, much to his credit, just stayed there. I glanced back at him and caught the concerned look in his eye, but I wasn’t sure what the concern was about. Was he afraid I was out to hurt Ash?

He might not be far from the truth.

At the top of the stairs, Ash led me down a short, wide hallway that opened up into a large sitting area with three doors strategically placed around it. He opened the door on the left, pushing it wide so that I could step through. It was a large bedroom with large, heavy pieces of furniture. There was a queen-sized bed, two dressers, and side tables. And, on the far side of the room under a window that looked out over the front of the house, was a beautiful, clearly expensive, basinet for the baby.

I pressed a hand to my mouth as I stared at it.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“The baby needs a place to sleep, doesn’t he?”

I turned to him and threw my arms around his neck. He stood stiff for a moment, but, slowly, his arms came around my waist. He held me for a second, then stepped back.

“You should try to get some rest.” He gestured to the closet. “Kate, Donovan’s wife, is about the same size as you. She brought over some clothes for you to use until we can get you some of your own.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”

He turned and left then, closing the door behind him.

I touched the cool cloth side of the basinet, tears welling in my eyes. I couldn’t have gotten anything like this for my baby, not all by myself. Not any time soon. Yet, he was going to have everything he needed, thanks to Ash Grayson.

The irony of that was not lost on me.