LITMIR.BIZ

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back at him, obscuring his view inside. A windblown whip of pine needles stung his face. He swatted at it, lost his grip and dropped back to the mucky ground.

      The sky darkened again. Clouds swirled, boiled black. The wind whistled a warning and began to howl.

      Travis swore and pulled up his jacket collar until wet denim chafed his earlobes. He longed for warmth, the arid desert heat, the soft crush of dry sawdust beneath his boots. Cheering crowds. Bellowing livestock. Rawhide rasping his palms. The pungent smell of animalistic power, of sweating victory and bloody defeat.

      Ah, he missed it. Just a few more weeks and he’d be back on the circuit, back where he belonged. Travis could hardly wait.

      Ducking into the wind, he gripped the brim of his hat and circled back around the giant root ball toward the rear of the old duplex. A five-foot wooden fence creaked against the wind.

      “Great,” he muttered, automatically wrapping a protective arm around his taped ribs. At the moment, climbing a fence didn’t much appeal to him, but there didn’t seem to be a whole bunch of options. A quick glance around confirmed nothing but a few vacant lots backing up to a conifer forest. No help there.

      Issuing a pained sigh, he hoisted himself up and over, wincing as he dropped into the yard. He straightened slowly, waiting for the pain to ease. Doc had warned him that ribs fractured that badly were slow to heal. Slow? Hell, that wasn’t the half of it. A snail could’ve crawled to Texas by the time Travis had mended enough to take a decent breath. He was better now. Not great, but better.

      Travis straightened and stretched out the kinks. After a quick glance around the barren square of fenced grass, he strode to the back door of the first duplex, peered through the mullioned window and tapped on the glass.

      There was no response, but Travis focused through the galley-style kitchen into the living room of the duplex. There were no lights inside, only slight illumination from a sliver of daylight breaking through the partially blocked front window. He saw the outline of a sofa, the triangular shadow of a lampshade and a table of some kind. His gaze narrowed, focusing on the floor beside the table. Something was heaped there, a crumpled silhouette that could have been a wadded blanket or a bundle of laundry.

      But the bundle was moving. The crumpled silhouette was a person. A person in trouble.

      Travis frantically rattled the knob. It was locked, so he took a step back and kicked the door in. In less than a heartbeat, he knelt beside a woman who was curled on her side, making strange hissing sounds through her teeth.

      He laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am?”

      She opened her eyes, huge pools of emerald terror in a colorless face.

      Travis’s breath backed up his throat. “It’s all right,” he muttered with considerably more confidence than he felt. “You’re going to be fine, ma’am, just fine.”

      Her eyes widened, then squinched shut. To his shock, she formed her lips into an O and began to pant. He blinked, wondering why she would be overly warm when the room was colder than a barn in winter. For some odd reason, he noticed the bulge of her abdomen long before the reason for it struck him. When it did, he danged near went into shock.

      “Oh, no,” he murmured, utterly transfixed by the realization. “No, no, ma’am, you can’t do this…not now. Please, lady—”

      Her cheeks flexed with each quick puff.

      “Oh, Lordy—”

      Puff, puff, puff.

      “Ma’am, please stop. This just really isn’t a good time—”

      A shudder jittered through her body, then she suddenly went limp as a squashed snake and her breath slid out with a long, slow hiss.

      Travis sat back on his boot heels, wiped his forehead. “Yes’m, that’s better. Much obliged.”

      She looked up, her eyes bright with moisture. “What are you doing here?”

      “Conway Cab Company, ma’am.” He licked his lips. “You did call for a cab, didn’t you? Oh, well, sure, sure you did, but maybe, ah—” he swallowed hard “—maybe under the circumstances, an ambulance would be a better choice.”

      Her gaze narrowed. “Golly, what a swell idea.”

      He flinched, feeling stupid. Every ambulance in town was tied up on emergency duty, which was why he’d been called out in the first place. “I guess you’ve already tried that.”

      “I guess I have, cowboy.”

      Flustered and completely out of his element, Travis blurted, “Can’t you put this off for a while? I mean, this is a really, really bad time to have a baby….” His voice trailed away as her eyes thinned into mean little slits. Obviously she was well aware of that fact and didn’t appreciate the reminder. He cleared his throat. “Okay, sure, no problem. We’ll, ah, just mosey on over to the hospital and ah—ma’am?”

      As another contraction tightened, she bit her lip, made a peculiar vibrating sound deep in her throat, then started to pant again. She bent like a safety pin. Beads of sweat slicked her face. Her skin was white as death.

      Travis was beside himself. Flustered and completely out of his element, he didn’t have a clue what to do. Instinctively reaching out, he patted her shoulder, then let out a yelp as she snatched up his hand and damned near crushed every bone in it. Since there was no way short of amputation to pry himself out of her spasmed grasp, he gritted his teeth and waited for her pain—and his—to pass.

      Several long seconds later, she released him and fell back exhausted. Her hand dropped limply onto the floor, and she issued a soft, guttural moan that touched Travis to the core.

      He flexed his fingers, grateful that they still moved, then wiped a gentle thumb over her delicate brow that was the copper-gold color of a summer sunset. “Can I get you a glass of water? Maybe a wet cloth to, you know, cool you down some?”

      A flash of pink moistened her lips, then was gone. “Thank you, but I’d really like to leave now. My doctor is waiting.”

      “Oh, sure.” He glanced around the room, suddenly panicked. “We can’t get out. The front door is blocked.”

      This was clearly not news to her. She sighed and wiggled a weak finger toward the kitchen. “That way.”

      Travis considered that. “Even with me giving you a boost, it’ll be a mite tricky getting over that fence, what with your condition and all.”

      She stared at him as if the word stupid had appeared in neon welts across his forehead. “As exciting as that sounds, I’d prefer to use the gate.”

      “The gate,” he repeated, feeling more idiotic by the moment. He hadn’t seen a gate, but then again, he hadn’t spent much time looking for one. “Right. The gate.”

      When she struggled upward, he helped her to her feet, then held on, fearing she might collapse. If it weren’t for his sore ribs, he would have carried her—“My valise,” she whispered.

      “Excuse me?” He followed her gaze to a tapestry bag on a table beside the kitchen door. “Oh.”

      He braced an arm around her. She took a shaky step forward, then suddenly went rigid as another contraction hit her.

      Travis swallowed hard, tightening his grip to hold her upright. “You’re doing fine,” he murmured as she puffed and shuddered. With his free hand, he stroked her upper arm, offering the same quiet encouragement he’d have used to gentle a skittish mare. “Just a few more seconds…that’s right…breathe real short-like…that’s good, ma’am, that’s real good.”

      A rush of air escaped her slack lips. She sagged against him, gasping. She was just a slip of a thing, really, barely big enough to rest her head against his shoulder. Faded freckles were scattered across the bridge of her nose, and the scent of sweet flowers wafted from hair that tangled around her shoulders

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