LITMIR.BIZ

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so magical that she just wanted to burst with it. She’d found a true prince in Graham, when at thirty-eight, she’d given up believing she’d find anyone at all. And living in Grosse Pointe was like living in her own private Camelot—which it was, it really was. It was just that this crazy panic was blindsiding her. Maybe it had all been a dream. She didn’t live here. How could she possibly live here? She didn’t DO elegant. Cripes, she didn’t even LIKE elegant.

      Not that she’d ever complained. Graham had said too many times that his ex-wife, Janelle, had been a nonstop complainer.

      It wasn’t as if she spent much time in the fancy-dancy parts of the house, besides. With the baby coming, the kitchen was the room that mattered, and all the high-tech appliances were a cook’s dream. Still, the dishes were bone china. Heirlooms. Beautiful—but it was darn hard to imagine a baby in a high chair, drinking milk from a lead crystal glass and slopping up cereal from a 22-karat-gold-rimmed bowl onto that virgin-white tile floor.

      Shut up, Kasey. Just shut your mind up. Another pain was coming. This one felt like lightning on the inside, as if something sharp and jagged was trying to rip her apart. Then came the twisting sensation, as if an elephant were swollen in her stomach and trying to squeeze through a space smaller than a spy hole.

      She opened her mouth to scream her entire heart out, when Graham suddenly jogged into the room. “All right, I reached Dr. Armstrong. He’ll meet us at the hospital. You holding up okay?”

      Of course she wasn’t okay. She couldn’t conceivably be less okay. She was wrinkled, stained, shaky, and positively within minutes of death by agony. Graham, typically, looked ready to host a yacht club outing. Abruptly—and with all the grace of a walrus—she pushed away from the counter and aimed for the back door. “Which car are we taking?”

      “The Beemer. Easiest to clean the leather seats if we have to. Although I brought towels.”

      For an instant she thought, Come on, Graham, couldn’t you think for one second about the baby instead of fussing over getting a stain in a car? But even letting that thought surface shamed her.

      Her attitude had sucked all day, when she knew perfectly well that Graham was unhappy about the coming baby. During their courtship, he’d been bluntly honest about wanting no children—he adored his nearly grown daughter, but that was the point. He’d done the fatherhood thing. At this life stretch he wanted Kasey, alone, a romantic relationship with just the two of them.

      Maybe there was a time when Kasey fiercely wanted children, but even at thirty-eight, there were increased health risks with a pregnancy. More than that, she’d already settled into a life without kids—and she loved Graham and everything about her life with him, so it just wasn’t that hard to go along with his choice.

      Birth control hadn’t failed them so much as life had. She’d tracked conception down to the week she’d had a bad flu and couldn’t hold anything down—including her birth control pills. By the time she’d recovered, the fetus already had a grab-hold on life. If the problem had never happened, Kasey would undoubtedly have been happy as things were—but once she realized that she was pregnant…well, there was only one chance of a baby for her. This one.

      She wanted this baby more than she wanted her own breath, even her own life. It was her one shot at motherhood. She just couldn’t give it up.

      And she totally understood that Graham wasn’t happy about it—but there was no fixing that yet. Once the baby was born, she could work on him, make sure he never felt neglected, take care to shower him with love. Besides which, once the baby was born and Graham held the little one, Kasey felt certain the baby would win his heart. It’d all work out.

      If she just didn’t blow it in the meantime.

      “I love you,” she said in the car.

      “I love you, too, hon.” But immediately he fell silent, steering through the quiet night, his profile pale as chalk. Dribbles accumulated on the windshield. Not rain, just the promise of it. She heard a siren somewhere, the thunk of the occasional windshield wiper, and realized that she was doing better. The pains were easing up, not one galloping right after the other now.

      Randolph Hospital loomed ahead. Graham pulled up to the emergency-room door where a sign read NO PARKING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. The hospital looked more like an elegant estate than a medical facility, with security lights glowing on the landscaped grounds and garden sculptures.

      Graham slammed out of the car. “I’ll get a wheelchair or a gurney. I hate to leave you alone, Kasey, but I promise I’ll be right back.”

      “I’ll be fine.”

      But she wasn’t fine. He’d barely disappeared inside before another lumpy gush of blood squeezed between her legs. How come no one ever said labor was a total gross out? Certainly not that nauseatingly cheerful Lamaze instructor. And then another pain sliced her in half, so sharp, so mean, that she couldn’t catch her breath.

      Pain was one thing. Being scared out of her mind was another. She fumbled for the door handle, thinking that she’d crawl inside the hospital if she had to—anything was better than dying here alone in the dark. She got the door open. Got both feet out. But then the cramping contraction took hold and owned her. She cried out—to hell with bravery and pride and adulthood and how much she wanted this baby. If she lived through this, and that was a big IF, she was never having sex again, and that was for damn sure.

      The emergency-room doors swung open. She didn’t actually notice the man until she heard the clip of boot steps jogging toward her, and suddenly he was there, hunkering down by the open curb.

      “You need help?”

      “No, no. Yes. I mean—my husband’s coming. It’s just that right now—” The pain was just like teeth that bit and ripped.

      “What do you want me to do? Get you inside? Stay with you? What? I can carry you—”

      “No. It’s—no. Just stay. Please. I—” She wasn’t really looking at him, wasn’t really seeing him. Her whole world right then was about babies and labor and pain. Still, there was something about him that arrested her attention. Something in his face, his eyes.

      Their whole conversation couldn’t have taken two minutes. She only really saw him in a flash. Background light dusted his profile, sharpened his features. He was built tall and lanky, with dark eyes and hair, had to be in his early forties or so. His clothes were nondescript, the guy-uniform in Grosse Pointe of khakis and polo shirt, but his looked more worn-in than most. He looked more worn in than most. The thick, dark hair was walnut, mixed with a little cinnamon. The square chin had a cocky tilt, the shoulders an attitude—but it was his eyes that hooked her.

      He had old eyes. Beautiful brown eyes. Eyes that held a lot of pain, had seen a lot of life. In the middle of the private hospital parking lot, mosquitoes pesking around her neck, panting out of the contraction, scared and hot…yet she felt a pull toward him. He exuded some kind of separateness, a loneliness.

      She knew about loneliness.

      Of course, that perception took all of a minisecond—and suddenly the emergency-room doors were clanging open again. The man glanced up, then back at her. “Damn. You’re Graham Crandall’s wife? And you’re having your baby in this hospital?”

      His question and tone confused her. She started to answer, but there was never a chance. Graham noticed the man, said something to him—called him “Jake”—but then he disappeared from her sight. The world descended on her. In typical take-charge fashion, Graham had brought out an entire entourage—a wheelchair, three people in different medical uniforms, Dr. Armstrong.

      Graham was midstream in conversation with the doctor. “I don’t care what you have to do. She comes first. No exceptions, no discussion. You make sure she’s all right and gets through this. And I want her to have something for the pain. Immediately.”

      “Mr. Crandall—Graham—first, I need to examine her, and then everything else will follow in due course. I swear that I’ve never yet lost

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