Galahad in Jeans (Louisiana Knights Book 2) (20 page)

“No cell. They cut it off because Tim and I—well, we couldn’t pay the bill.”

Tim was her boyfriend, Beau knew; a beer-drinking, NASCAR-crazy kid who worked two weeks on and two off for an oil company, and spent his free weeks and most of his money on a sorry excuse for a race car. No surprise that they weren’t paying their bills.

“Where is he now?”

“Offshore. Working.”

Beau didn’t hesitate. He reached for his cell phone to make the necessary call.

“No, don’t!” Suzann reached out to clutch his wrist. “I—we can’t afford an ambulance, and it’s too late, anyway. You’ve got to do it, Beau. You got to help me have this baby, because I can’t do it by myself!”

He said several choice words under his breath. He’d had training for this kind of roadside emergency, had even been on hand for a delivery a couple of years back. But the whole rescue unit had been there then, and the former sheriff actually caught the baby.

He had no supplies with him for this kind of situation. His first aid kit was in his truck, as was a sleeping bag that would have come in handy. Still, he had to do something. Suzann was making keening sounds as another pain, hard on the heels of the last, caught her in its grip. Her whole body arched like a bow as she fought it, which meant she was likely right about her time being near.

“Hang on,” he said, reaching to touch her shoulder. “We’ll fix this.”

Sprinting back to the Lincoln, he rounded the hood to the reach the passenger door and dragged it open. Batting Carla’s skirts out of the way, he snatched open the glove box.

“What is happening?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”

His rummaging turned up a flashlight and a small bottle of antibacterial gel, bless his Aunt Tillie’s always-be-prepared heart. “It’s Suzann, and she’s in labor.”

“Labor—you mean she’s having a baby?”

She sounded horrorstruck. For some peculiar reason, that seemed to calm him down a bit. “It happens.”

“We have to get her to a doctor.”

“No time.”

He dropped the things he’d found into Carla’s lap, and then added a handful of insurance papers and maps before digging deeper into the glove box. He’d seen Aunt Tillie using a sewing kit in a small gold snap purse for pageant repairs in years gone by. Oh, yeah, there it was.

Carla put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him around to look at her. “You mean you’re going to—”

“Right now.” He gathered up the items needed and started back across the road.

“Wait,” she called after him, shoving handfuls of papers off the puffy folds of her skirts as she struggled to get out of the Lincoln. “Wait for me.”

There was no time for politeness. Suzann came first right now, even if it screwed up the gentleman thing for him worse than it was already.

Beau made for the back of the Suburban where he pulled open the rear door, raising it above his head. As the interior light came on, he checked out the cargo space for use as a bed, grabbing up a cardboard box of tools and what looked like a roll of garbage bags and setting them on the ground out of the way. Leaning in, he flipped the lever for the back seat and folded it down toward the center. As he drew back, he scanned the increased area. It wasn’t a perfect delivery table, but was the best he could do.

Carla was out of the Lincoln and crossing the road. He wasn’t sure how she’d managed it or why, and couldn’t spare the time to figure it out. Striding around to the Suburban’s driver-side door, he flung it open and reached in with both arms to scoop out Suzann. She was a little thing, thank goodness, even with the hard, basketball mound of a baby in her middle.

“Oh, Beau, I’m so sorry,” she moaned as he hefted her and amniotic fluid dripped down his front.

“Don’t worry about it. Just hold on tight.”

As he reached the back end of the long vehicle with his burden, he saw Carla unfolding what looked like a fairly new tarpaulin. She lofted it with a snap that had to have hurt her braced wrist then quickly spread it over the rubberized floor of the vehicle. It was a great idea, as the tarp looked to be a lot cleaner than the cargo space floor.

“Where did you get the tarp?“

“From the box you unloaded.” She stepped quickly aside as he maneuvered Suzann head first into their makeshift delivery area.

The instant he put her down, the mother-to-be clutched her belly and screamed, rolling back and forth in agony. He froze, the skin on the back of his neck crawling at that primal sound. Guys who claimed childbirth was only nature’s way, that there was nothing to it, were too stupid to live. His mother had died giving birth. In the Iraqi desert, a woman had delivered after being shot, and then bled out from double trauma.

“Here, hold out your hands.”

Carla had opened the bottle of antibacterial gel and stood ready to squeeze the liquid over his hands. The sight snapped him out of his too vivid imagination and memories.

“Thanks,” he said, and meant it with every ounce of his being.

Rubbing the gel into his hands, he swung back to Suzann and took a deep breath. “Okay, hon,” he said, “I guess I’ve got to get these pants off you.”

“No, no, no,” she moaned. “You can’t. You can’t look. Tim will kill you.”

It was dumb, but might be true. No matter. He couldn’t allow it to get in the way of what had to be done. “Be reasonable, Suzann. You’ve got to let me help you.”

She scooted away from him in her unreasoning pain and fear. “No, no. no!”

Beau gave a helpless shake of his head. “Then we’ll have to drive like hell to the hospital, the way I should have done before. Unless—”

He turned to look at Carla.

“Yes,” she said with a lift of her chin. “I can do it.”

She moved in closer, easing him back out of the way. Voice steady and soothing, she talked Suzann free of her stretchy yoga pants and underwear. Reaching for the flashlight laid ready, she switched it on.

“Beau! I think you’d better—”

“No!” Suzann said, though that protest ended with another piercing yell that rose so thin and high it seemed likely to shatter the Suburban’s windows.

“She—I think I see the top of the baby’s head,” Carla said with strain in the low timbre of her voice.

“All right. We don’t have much time.” Beau touched her shoulder as a sudden idea struck him. “Take off your hoop. Can you do that?”

She turned to meet his gaze in the dim light from the flashlight’s glow and the Suburban’s taillights. “What do you mean?”

“She needs a screen. If we had a sheet—but we don’t. The hoop you’ve got on is a humongous petticoat with strips of circular plastic sewn into its width, right?”

She got it instantly. Bending in haste, she gathered up the top layer of her ball gown until it reached her waist. He put out a hand, holding that excess fabric for her, totally conscious of that intimacy but doing his best to ignore it. She untied whatever ribbons held the thing, letting it drop down around her ankles. Stepping out of it, she lofted it up and over Suzann, and then stepped to one side, holding it in place like a large, white nylon tent as she gestured him forward.

The rest was fast and not at all complicated. The baby was a girl, a small mite who resented the hell out of being delivered on the side of the road, and didn’t mind letting everyone know it. Soon enough, Suzann was redressed and transferred to the front seat, along with little Maddie wrapped in what was left of a silky white hoop skirt that hadn’t been used for her mom. The tarp and its contents went into a garbage bag. Beau then drove the Suburban with mama and baby to the hospital emergency room while Carla followed behind in the Lincoln.

The story of the roadside delivery had to be told, of course. Beau left that to Carla while he went to the business office to make financial arrangements on his own hook for the day or two Suzann would be in the hospital. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the local newspaper on the premises when he rejoined Carla in the hospital lobby, but it didn’t happen. To make sure there was no chance, he hustled her out, holding her hand in the crook of his elbow so she wouldn’t trip over the hem of her gown that, minus the hoop, dragged along behind her like a bridal train.

Back at Windwood at last, he switched off the Lincoln’s engine. Resting one wrist on top of the steering wheel, he turned to look at Carla there in the dim light from the porch. He only sat gazing at her, this woman who had helped deliver a baby in trying circumstances and never breathed a word of complaint, never said she didn’t know how, but pitched in to do what was necessary.

“What?” That single word sounded as perplexed as the look in her eyes.

“Nothing,” he said with a smile and quick shake of his head. “I’m proud to know you, Carla Nicholson, and glad you were there for Suzann tonight.”

“You delivered her baby, not me.”

“You backed me up all the way. I’m grateful.”

A faint smile curved her mouth, or he thought it did; it was hard to tell. “I was happy to help.”

“At least it turned out okay, even if I did go and spoil any chance of matching the perfect gentleman image you have in your head.”

“Is that what you did?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Suzann and the baby are fine. It was worth it.”

“It was, and that’s what matters.”

“To me, it is.”

“Yes, I can see that,” she said, almost to herself. She looked away, reached for the door handle. “Well, it’s been a long day and most of a night.”

“It has,” he agreed without moving. “I’d see you inside, but I’m so dirty even I don’t want to be anywhere around me. I need to put the Lincoln in the garage, too.”

She was quiet, her gaze resting on him and the uncomfortable stains on his gray uniform, for the space of a long breath. “I can see how you’d be dying for a shower.”

She apparently recognized what he’d said as the out for her he’d intended. That was fine, and yet he somehow expected her to brush it aside after what happened in the library, as well as their waltz at the pageant finale. Disappointment stiffened his voice as he answered. “Yeah, and you probably have an article to write.”

“I suppose I do.”

She stepped out of the car and then hesitated, almost as if she thought he would say something more. He couldn’t think what that might be, not when he didn’t know what she wanted from him. After a moment, she closed the door and went slowly up the walk and into the house with the hem of her gown slipping along behind her.

Beau watched her go, watched until she was safely inside, safe from being bothered by him. Because he could have discarded his uniform with its blood and amniotic fluid stains and hit the shower. She could have shed her long ball gown and corset and joined him under the spray. He might have invited her to do that, might have pushed it, maybe made it happen. That was if he wasn’t supposed to have such great manners. Yes, and if he didn’t see her as a woman who knew her own mind, so could ask for what she wanted.

Being a gentleman could be a damned nuisance.

Carla closed her bedroom door and leaned against it. She was suddenly tired beyond words. It wasn’t solely the events of the day, she knew, but the fading of the adrenaline high from trying to help with Suzann tonight.

She’d never forget those few minutes beside the road. Never.

How many men would have slowed when they saw that vehicle with flashing emergency lights? Most would have driven past without a thought, assuming whoever was inside probably had a cell phone and was able to call for whatever help they might need.

Not Beau.

He was an EMT and rescue squad volunteer, yes, but he also cared more than most men. He saw a need and answered it without fanfare or expectation of reward.

And he thought she’d decided he wasn’t a gentleman because he got a little dirty doing it. Good grief.

A laugh bubbled up inside her as she remembered his frustration over Suzann’s reluctance to have him see her naked while she was in such pain. He hadn’t ignored it, however; hadn’t forced her to accept his help. He’d honored her objections and worked around the problem the best way he knew how. If that didn’t make him a gentleman, she didn’t know what did.

He’d also found an ultra-polite way, just now, to let her know he wouldn’t be taking their kiss in the library any further tonight. That was gallant of him, too, most gentlemanly in the effort to let her down gently.

At least, that’s what she thought he’d been saying. She’d begun to understand something of the oblique communication between these people, though she was no expert at it.

She could have barreled through the polite song and dance, putting what she wanted on the line and forcing him to do the same. She might have if he’d been a different kind of man. But how could she be less considerate, especially when she didn’t know what she expected to come of it?

Pushing away from the door in abrupt irritation with that indecisiveness, she took a step but then stumbled over her skirts. Jerking them from under her feet, she spread the low neckline of the gown and then pulled her arms from the puffed sleeves. Taking a deep breath to release the tension on the waist, she caught its gathered fabric and spun the whole thing around, slipping it over the silky fabric of her corset until the back zipper was under her hands. Sliding that down, she flung off the gown over her head and tossed it at the foot of the bed.