LITMIR.BIZ

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was so fine-boned and slim, he wondered how she had been able to carry such weight. Wondered how she would look without it.

      Who was she and why couldn’t she remember that? He’d have to find that note of hers and take a good look at it, see if he could tell who’d sent her into the great wide lonesome of West Texas to hook up with a perfect stranger.

      And by God, where was the man who’d given her this child? If it’d been him, Cade knew nothing between heaven and hell could have made him leave her side.

      He lifted his eyes to find Sara’s upon him, questioning—but hardly indignant at his familiarity. And oh, so very blue. She may doubt it, but some real instinct of his own told him: Sara was her name.

      And he would have to get a handle on himself if he was going to make it through this.

      Cade stepped away. “Far as I can tell, the baby is presenting properly. I’ll call the doctor back and get instructions on what to do next if you’ll time any contractions while I’m gone.”

      He grabbed up his watch from the nightstand and handed it to her without even asking if she had one. But he needed to get out of there, away from her, just for a while, like a man needing to fill his lungs before diving back into the deep blue sea.

      Cade gathered an armful of clean blankets and sheets from the linen closet and swung by the downstairs bathroom for a box of sterile gauze, a bottle of antibacterial soap and some rubbing alcohol before heading upstairs to his bedroom again. Doc Barclay had given him a bunch of instructions and told him to round up the supplies he’d need, most of which he didn’t have on hand and would have to improvise. He was going to have to use a couple of large plastic trash bags in lieu of a plastic sheet to protect the mattress. Luckily, he’d found a new pair of shoestrings in a drawer. Doc said that would be best for tying off the umbilical cord. The kitchen shears would have to do for cutting the cord after the baby was born. As for a syringe to suction the baby’s nose and mouth, all he had was an eyedropper. That’d do the trick.

      At least he assumed it would. He and Doc had been cut off in midconversation when the phone went dead. Obviously, the storm was doing its share of damage. Cade took a measure of comfort in knowing that the generator would keep the furnace running, even if the electricity went out.

      He’d hate, though, to deliver a baby by the meager glow of a flashlight. He was already enough in the dark as it was.

      At the thought, his hands shook so hard he dropped the rubbing alcohol. The bottle bounced off the step and all the way down to the foot of the stairs, from where he retrieved it.

      He had to get a grip on himself. Maybe he’d do better to separate himself a little from the situation, as he did when delivering calves. He’d have liked a tad more experience with women in general, however. But since Marlene, he hadn’t done much associating with the fairer sex.

      With a start, he remembered the letter, still unread, on his bed stand. He’d forgotten it in all the commotion. Well, he’d no time to read it now. Yet he knew that particular moment of reckoning would have to come sooner or later.

      Entering the room and setting the supplies on the dresser, Cade turned to Sara. “Doc said as long as you felt up to walking you should do it. It increases the effectiveness of the contractions,” he rattled off, avoiding her eyes. He refrained from calling her Sara outright. It kept the distance between them. “What are we talkin’ about so far as those?”

      “The last one was about forty-five seconds long, seven minutes ago.”

      “Do they feel like they’re getting stronger and closer together than they were before?”

      She cradled her belly. “Y-yes,” she said softly.

      “Then it looks like we should get prepared to deliver a baby,” he said, matter-of-fact. He brushed past her, going to the bed and stripping it. He wadded the used bedclothes in a ball and tossed them toward the doorway to remind him to put them in a load of wash. He didn’t have that many changes of sheets, and they were going to need at least two or three.

      With silent efficiency, he made up the bed again, making sure he padded the middle with several layers of towels and arranging the pillows in a stack so when the time came for her to give birth, her back would be supported and she’d have leverage to push through the contractions.

      Cade paused, not facing her. “I don’t really have anything like a nightgown for you to change into, but maybe that clean shirt of Virgil’s on the dresser will at least cover the vital areas. There’s some antibacterial soap there, and washcloths in the bathroom down the hall. You’ll want to wash up best you can. I’ll—I’ll give you a chance to change while I check on the water I’ve got boiling on the stove.”

      He plain couldn’t look at her as he left the room again. She would know as well as he did that modesty would soon take a back seat to urgency.

      Talk about really being exposed—and vulnerable.

      Downstairs, Cade stalled for ten minutes, busying himself with sundry tasks, before venturing into the bedroom again to be greeted by the fetching sight of Sara in his ranch hand’s chambray shirt.

      She swam in it, the tails hanging to her knees and the sleeves engulfing her hands as she clutched the neckline together. The color of the shirt brought out the blue in her eyes, making them shimmer as she looked askance at him.

      She seemed so much an innocent girl in her daddy’s nightshirt and not a mother about to give birth that he had to remark, “Dang if Virgil’s shirt doesn’t fit you to a tee.”

      Her frown was just as engaging as her smile had been.

      Cade noticed that the toes of one bare foot curled over the other. “Here, let me get you some socks to keep your feet warm.”

      He fetched a pair of his own from a drawer, and it seemed the considerate thing for him to put them on her himself, rather than make her struggle with bending over.

      Going down on one knee, he patted his thigh for her to put her foot up, which she did while clinging to the bedpost for balance. Cade realized right away that while it was polite, it was also the wrong move so far as his composure was concerned.

      Because she wasn’t a girl. She was all woman, no mistake. Holding her slender ankle, sliding one of his rough woolen stockings over her soft foot and tugging it over her delicate heel, being close to her and having the womanly scent of her overtake his senses…all of it nearly overwhelmed him, it had simply been so long since he’d been close to a woman this way. It was like that tidal tug he’d experienced earlier, making him want to slide his hand up her calf, over that fascinating indentation behind the knee, and further up—

      “Oh!” she cried, and a gush of fluid poured down her legs and pooled on the floor in front of him.

      In one motion, Cade came to his feet and grasped her upper arms in support as the contraction rocked through her. Eyes squeezed shut, she clutched her belly, gasping. “Oh…God.”

      “Deep breaths now,” he counseled, even as he tried to count the seconds in his head. Where in hell was his watch? “Exhale. Get that air out for me. Now a deep breath in. That’s it.”

      Sara was flushed and perspiring and shaking on her feet by the time the contraction passed. He eased her down on the bed then sidestepped to the dresser, grabbed a couple of towels, and dropped one to the floor to mop up the puddle. The other she used to dry herself. When she’d done with that, he got her a fresh one to hold between her legs in case of another onslaught.

      Yup, so much for modesty.

      Glancing up at him in apprehension, she asked, “H-how long was the contraction? I couldn’t tell.”

      “So far as I could make it, it lasted about a minute.” He spied his watch lying on the sheet next to her and noted the time. “Looks like we’re moving right along,” he said as confidently as possible. He was doing a little sweating himself.

      She nodded, obviously trying to take her cue from

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