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But there were many kinds of poverty, she now understood. And William suffered from the basest kind Emotional poverty. Moral poverty. Poverty of the soul.
He wasn’t her husband, she reminded herself again. Which was good, now that she thought about it. Because that would give her a little more leverage when he came to take her son away from her.
She cried out as a new kind of pain shook her, and for the first time, she became afraid—really afraid. Afraid that something was going to go wrong with the baby, afraid of being alone for the rest of her life, afraid that no matter how hard she tried, she’d already ruined things irreparably.
She splayed her hands open over her belly, the closest thing she could manage to an embrace of her unborn son. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as tears stung her eyes. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so, so sorry.”
Cooper pounded the door with his closed fist for the third time, cursing Patsy with every other breath for giving him the wrong address. He punched the doorbell over and over and over, listening in helpless frustration. He was lifting his hand for one final knock when the radio in his pocket buzzed and crackled, and Patsy’s voice came over the line.
“Cooper?”
He withdrew the two-way with a snarl and lifted it to his lips. “Yeah?”
“Um, sorry, hon, but I think I sent you on a wild goose chase.”
He let every four-letter word he knew—and some more that he made up on the spot—parade across the front of his brain before he responded quietly, “What?”
“Uh, yeah. That dialysis note was from this afternoon. The guy’s been in and is safely back home now. I’m sorry. You don’t need to be where you are.”
Cooper was about to agree with her, was about to tell Patsy that where he actually needed to be was lying in the arms of a willing woman who cradled a big snifter of very expensive, very warm, brandy beneath his lips, when he heard an almost unearthly feminine scream erupt on the other side of the door he’d been about to pound off its hinges.
Immediately, he dropped his hand to the knob and twisted hard. But it wouldn’t budge. Another scream raged at him from inside, and without thinking, Cooper lifted his metal first-aid kit and brought it crashing down on the knob. Over and over again, he repeated the action, until he’d bashed what had been an elegant collection of brass curlicues and engravings into a twisted metal mess. Finally, the entire fixture failed, and he shoved his shoulder against the door, hard.
Inside, the house was dark. Only the reflection of a street lamp on the other side of the street colliding with the quickly falling snow prevented the foyer from being completely black. He heard someone gasping for breath somewhere beyond his vision, and assumed it to be the woman who had screamed. Cautiously, he took a few steps forward.
“Hello?” he called out. “Who’s there? Are you all right?”
His only reply was a stifled, disembodied groan.
“Hel-looo?” he tried again. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. I’m a paramedic. I can help you.”
At first, he thought the woman had stopped breathing, so silent did the room become. His heartbeat quickened, rushing blood to warm the parts of his body he’d begun to fear had frozen. He pushed the hood of his sweatshirt back off his head, then raked his fingers through his snow-dampened, overly long, pale blond hair. He held his own breath, waiting for something, some indication that he wasn’t too late to remedy whatever had gone wrong in this house.
Finally, a tiny, feminine voice called from the other side of the room, “H-h-help me?”
Cooper took a few more strides in the direction from which the question had come. “Yeah, I can help you. Just tell me where you are.”
“H-help. Please.”
He opened his first-aid kit and pulled out a flashlight, switching it on to throw a wide ray of white light all around the room. The hazy halo finally settled on a woman in the corner. A woman whose dark hair was soaking wet with perspiration in spite of the chill in the house, and whose huge, gray eyes were terrified. A woman who was clutching a belly distended in the very late stages of pregnancy.
“Oh, no,” Cooper muttered. “No, no, no. Not this. Anything but this.”
The woman lifted her hand to him. “Help,” she whispered, her voice sounding thin and weak and exhausted. “Please…my baby. Help my baby.”
He threw his head back to stare into the darkness above him. Great. This was just great. Of all the damned, stupid, crazy luck, he had to wind up with a home birth. Because there was no way he was going to try to get this lady to the hospital. The only thing worse than a home delivery was a back seat of a Jeep in a blizzard delivery.
He sighed his resignation to the situation, set his flashlight and first-aid kit on a nearby coffee table and looked at the woman in the corner again.
“Are you here all alone?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Husband’s…out of town.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, a singularly troubled gesture. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you to the hospital in time. Looks like we’re going to have to deliver that baby right here. Is that okay with you?”
She nodded weakly, but said nothing.
Cooper felt the chill winter wind sweep past him from behind and went back to close the front door. He spied a fireplace upon his return, noting gratefully that it was already laid for a fire and needed only the flick of a match to provide some much needed warmth. There was a box of matches on the mantel, settled amid a half dozen framed photographs of the woman who was crumpled into a ball in the corner of the room. He ignored the pictures, scratched a couple of matches on the side of the box and tossed them into the kindling. Within moments, the flames began to flicker upward into the wood, bathing the room in a faint yellow glow, warming his face and hands.
He turned back to the woman. “Okay. That’ll get us started. We’ll have to deliver the baby down here, since I assume there’s no heat anywhere else in the house. We’re going to need some clean sheets, some water…I think I have everything else we’ll need in my kit. So, where do you keep all that stuff, and where can I wash up?”
Katherine stared back at the huge apparition that had come out of nowhere, feeling anything but relieved. In the weak ray of the flashlight, with the scant flicker of flames in the fireplace illuminating him with an odd play of light and shadow, the only impression she had of him was that he was big, broad and blond. His voice, nch and masculine and anything but comforting, told her he was none too thrilled to be acting as midwife. But he’d said he was a paramedic. That meant he had to know something about childbirth, right? Certainly more than she knew herself.
The pain in her midsection seemed to have abated some after pelting her repeatedly with one severe spasm after another, and she took advantage of the opportunity to inhale a few deep, calming breaths. When she trusted her voice to remain steady, she gave the man the information he’d requested, then pointed toward the kitchen and told him he could wash up in there. Immediately, he disappeared into the direction she’d indicated, and Katherine slumped back against the wall. She had changed into a nightgown after her water had broken, but the fluid continued to leak from her in a steady flow. Now the white cotton fabric was cold and damp She wanted to be near the fire.
She was struggling to stand when the man returned and saw her intentions, so he helped her to her feet and led her to the sofa. Again she was struck by his size and solidity. She told herself if she were smart, she’d be afraid of him. But Katherine had never been any too intelligent where men were concerned, as evidenced by her current predicament. And for some reason, in spite of his size and demeanor and the fact that he was a complete stranger, this man didn’t frighten her at all.
“Where did you come from?” she managed to ask him as he settled her on the sofa. “How did you know I was here?” She couldn’t quite stop herself from asking further, “Did…did William send you?”
The man had turned his back to her and was busying himself with what looked like a very substantial first-aid kit. “Who’s William?” he asked, though his mind didn’t seem to be on the question.
“My…my husband. Did he…are you here because of him?”
The man shook his head, but still seemed to be preoccupied with making the proper preparations for bringing her son into the world. “Nope,” he said. “It’s just sheer, dumb luck that linked us up, lady. Sheer, dumb luck.”
She was about to ask him to elaborate on that, but a faint pain rippled up inside her again, and she squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth together in an effort to ease the ache a bit.
“How long has the power been out?” the man asked her when he spun back around to look at her.
She dropped her hand to her belly, rubbing at another, less intense, contraction. “I don’t know. It was still daylight when my water broke—about four, four-thirty maybe. What time is it now?”
The man turned his wristwatch toward the dim glow of the flashlight. “Just past nine. You’ve been in labor for five hours?”
Katherine thought for a moment. The pains hadn’t really started until some time after her water broke, but for the life of her, she couldn’t quite remember now how long. “I don’t know,” she said again.
The man dropped to his haunches before her, bringing his face level with hers. She was able to tell a little bit more about him when he was up close this way, the growing light from the fire illuminating one side of his face, but not much more. At least one good cheekbone, she noted. And at least one vivid green eye. And a pair of lips, one half of which anyway, that were full and beautiful and still managed to be very, very masculine.
He started to extend his hand toward hers, then seemed to think better of it, and wove his fingers together on one knee. “What’s your name?” he asked her.
She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, then realized the truth was in fact a lie. She wasn’t Katherine Winslow. There was no Katherine Winslow. William had made her that with his farce of a wedding. Without him, she had no idea who she would be now. So she told the man, “I’m Katie Brennan.” It was what she had been called in her other life, a million years ago. And it seemed to suit her now.
“Katie Brennan,” the man repeated.
He smiled, and for the first time in what seemed a very long time, Katie felt a warming sense of relief seep into her. This time when he reached out for her, he carried through, taking her hand in his.
“Nice to meet you, Katie,” he said. “I’m Cooper. Cooper Dugan. And, like I said, I’m a paramedic. But I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never delivered a baby before. I mean, I know what to do—pretty much—but I’ve never actually…” His voice trailed off when he seemed to detect her growing sense of misgiving. “Is this your first?” he asked quietly.
She nodded, her sudden conviction about feeling safe faltering a little with his announcement.
He nodded back. “Then I guess we have something in common.”
She was about to say something else when the pains flared up again, bursting out of nowhere with even more intensity than before. Katie cried out, crushing with what she was sure was bruising strength the hand that Cooper Dugan had offered her in comfort.
It was going to be a long night.
She didn’t realize she had spoken her thought aloud until Cooper nodded in agreement and said, “Yeah, it sure is.”
She watched as he reached behind himself for his jacket, plucked a two-way radio from one pocket, and spoke into it. “Patsy,” he said with a sigh, “this is Coop. Better take me off the dispatch list. I’m going to be, um, indisposed for a little while.”
Two (#ulink_f2e48f2e-a442-5757-94c8-4fb8c7274cab)
Eventually, night became morning. And by the time it did, the blizzard had tapered off into an almost magical-looking snowfall, the power in Katie’s house had come back on, and Cooper had helped to deliver a bouncing baby boy.
The knowledge of that startled him still.
In spite of the restoration of electricity, a fire continued to crackle happily in the fireplace, and the lights were dimmed low. He sat in his ancient blue jeans and Kmart special T-shirt on the floor of Katie’s big, expensive town house, amid more opulence and luxury than he’d imagined was possible. And he ignored it all to stare instead at a sleeping mother and child for whom he felt, at least partially, responsible.
He thought about the tradition that other cultures embraced, about how when a person saved another person’s life, he became responsible for whomever he’d rescued. He supposed the same must hold true when a person brought another person into the world to begin with. That was the only reason Cooper could conceive why he felt such a strong tie to the little guy tucked safely and snugly in his mother’s arms.
He studied the baby’s mother, too. For some reason, Cooper also felt responsible for Katie Brennan now. She lay on the floor with her upper back and head supported by a pile of pillows, naked amid a tangle of sheets. Purple crescents smudged her eyes, and her dark hair was shoved back from her forehead m a heap of wet snarls. He knew nothing about her other than her name and address. Yet he couldn’t quite chase away the sensation that he was bound to her irrevocably.
His gaze dropped to the ring encircling the fourth finger of her left hand. Studded with diamonds, it was the kind of wedding band a man gave to a woman he intended to keep forever. Certainly, it was a far cry from anything Cooper could ever hope to afford for a woman himself, regardless of how much he might love her. Katie Brennan was obviously a woman accustomed to a way of life vastly different from his own.
Not that it mattered, he told himself. The woman was married, after all, and tied to her husband with a bond far more significant and lasting than the one represented by the ring on her finger. She had a child. Her husband’s child. And nothing on earth could shatter a bond like that.
Cooper cupped a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed hard. Long night hadn’t begun to describe what he and Katie had just been through. And if he was this tired, he could only imagine how she must feel after a grueling session like that. She’d screamed, and he’d hollered, and they’d both sworn like drunken sailors. She’d pushed and shoved and heaved and cried. He’d cajoled and threatened and bribed and heartened. And sometime just before the sun began to stain the sky with pink and yellow, Andrew Cooper Brennan had been born.
It had been Katie’s idea—no, her demand—that her son carry Cooper’s first name for his middle one. Andrew, she said, had been her father’s name. And when Cooper had asked how her husband was going to feel about his son carrying a stranger’s name, Katie had smiled sadly through her exhaustion and told Cooper he was less of a stranger to her than her husband was. Before he’d had a chance to get her to clarify that, she’d drifted into a sound slumber, and he’d decided she must have been touched with a bit of postpartum delirium and hadn’t known what she was talking about.
Not for the first time since she’d fallen asleep, his gaze wandered up to the mantel, to the scattered collection of photographs. Katie with her arms circling a collie’s neck, both of them grinning from ear to ear. Katie smiling shyly from beneath the broad brim of a straw hat, a tranquil, turquoise sea behind her. Katie with her head bent to and partially obscured by a bouquet of yellow roses. Katie with a good-looking man Cooper assumed was her husband, the two of them standing beside a sleek black Jaguar, laughing as if they’d just played the biggest joke in the world on someone.
And another photograph that seemed oddly out of place, yet more suited to Katie than any of the others. It was a picture of her as a young teenager, standing on the steps of what looked like a sagging farmhouse, a man and woman situated like fence posts behind her, each one with a hand on her shoulder. The only one in the picture who was smiling was Katie. But even hers was a sad, almost wistful expression.
Cooper’s gaze fell to her sleeping so near him, and again he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible for her now. For her and her baby both. The realization was still flooding over him when Katie opened her eyes and smiled.
“Good morning,” she said softly, obviously no better rested for her sleep than she had been when she’d closed her eyes two hours ago.
Cooper smiled back. His voice was scarcely a whisper as he replied, “Good morning to you, too.”
She looked down at the baby in her arms, who awoke and whimpered a bit before snuggling into her breast. He rooted around, and Katie chuckled, trying to get him properly positioned. Only after a number of trials and errors did the baby finally affix himself onto her nipple and begin a greedy suckle.
“I’m going to have to find someone who knows more about this breastfeeding business than I do,” she said when she met Cooper’s gaze again. “I don’t think either Andrew or I have a clue how to go about it.”
For the first time, Cooper noted that her speech carried just the hint of a southern accent of some kind. Obviously, she wasn’t from the tristate area originally.
He shrugged off her concern. “There will be someone at the hospital who can help you out. Or they can at least give you a referral.”
Her smile faltered. “Hospital?”
He raised his arms over his head and arched his back into a stretch. “Sure,” he said absently when he’d completed it. “Now that the snow’s letting up, the plows ought to be able to get through. And seeing as how so many wealthy taxpayers live right here in Chestnut Hill, your neighborhood will probably be one of the first to get plowed.” He hoped none of the edge he felt when he uttered the last of his comments found its way into his voice.
“But—” She hesitated, leaving her objection unuttered.
“But what?” he asked. “Aren’t you anxious to get to the hospital to make sure everything’s okay with you and the baby?”
She shook her head. “I know everything’s okay.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
Cooper nodded, but found it more than a little strange that she would be so reluctant to get to a medical facility. “Yeah, well, it might not be a bad idea to have the two of you checked out anyway. Just to be sure. I called the hospital a little while ago, and they’re sending an ambulance ASAP. Of course, with all that snow out there, ASAP isn’t going to be as fast as it usually would.”
If possible, her face became even paler than it already was. “You did what?”
“I called the hospital. An ambulance should be here in a couple of hours to collect you and little Andrew. It’s standard procedure. What’s the problem?”
Katie shook her head and wondered what she was going to do now. The problem was that going to the hospital necessitated registering Andrew’s birth and lots of questions about his father. She knew she was legally obligated to inform the state of a new arrival. Even if in doing so, she was providing an already well-armed monster with just the right weapon to take her baby away from her forever. Once William’s name was on Andrew’s birth certificate, his stable of overpaid, amoral attorneys would have everything they needed—in writing—to ensure that Katie never saw her son again.
“I can’t go to the hospital,” she said.
Cooper arched his brows in surprise. “Why not?”
“I just…I can’t, Cooper. You have to call them back and tell them you made a mistake.”
He gaped at her. “A mistake? Excuse me? What do you want me to do, call and say, ‘Hi, this is Coop again. You know that baby I told you I delivered? Well, I was wrong. It was actually a pepperoni pizza that I delivered. Sorry about the mix-up.’”
She made a face at him. “No, of course not. But it’s very important that Andrew and I not go to the hospital.”
“Why?”
“We just can’t,” she snapped.
“Well, that’s too bad,” he snapped back. “Because you’re both going to the hospital. And I intend to escort you every step of the way, just to make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle.”
Katie opened her mouth to object again, then decided it would be fruitless to do so. She’d learned at some point during the night—when she kept insisting that she had changed her mind, and that she had decided she was not going to have this baby, no matter how much Cooper begged or threatened, and that was final—that the man simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She glanced down at Andrew, who pulled hungrily at her breast. He was fat and pink and squirmy, and it hit Katie with the force of an aircraft carrier that she was entirely responsible for him. It was up to her to make sure no harm ever came to her son. It was up to her to be certain that he had the very best of everything she could offer him. It was up to her to see that he was safe and happy and free to live a good life. It was up to her to ensure that William Winslow never got his hands on his son.
Therefore, she had to be certain that she and Andrew were as physically fit as possible before they went into hiding.
Her gaze locked with Cooper’s again. “All right. We’ll go to the hospital.”
He expelled a dubious sound of relief. “Well, thank you very much.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”
It occurred to Katie then that she was sitting in the middle of her living room completely naked with a man she scarcely knew. A man who had helped to bring her son into the world. A man who still carried smudges of her blood and her son’s afterbirth on his T-shirt and jeans. The full realization and understanding of the intimacy she had shared with this stranger struck her, and she tugged the bed sheet up around her shoulders a little more.
