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And it didn’t really matter right now. Whether she was involved in the smuggling ring or not didn’t change what was about to happen. Working on some combination of stories heard and movies seen, he did what seemed reasonable, starting with rolling up his sleeves and washing his hands in the bathroom just down the hall.
“How old are you?” he asked when he came back.
She looked startled, then wary.
“I’m only asking because my sister got pregnant four years ago. She was only eighteen.”
The woman smothered another moan, then answered. “I am twenty-two.”
Better, he guessed. But not much. “She fell for a smooth-talking city boy. He deserted her.”
It wasn’t a question, nor was there any emotion in the flat assertion.
“Is that what happened to you?” he asked softly. “He deserted you, when he found out you were pregnant?”
He found himself hoping she’d say yes, that she was here because she simply had no choice, not because she had the soul of a mercenary.
“No,” she said, her tone still flat. “It was I…who ran.”
Ryder blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
A sharp cry broke from her, and he realized the pains were coming closer together, and even he knew what that meant. No more time to try and find out who this woman was or why she was here, what her motives were.
“Hot water,” he muttered. They always talked about that, too, didn’t they?
“No…time.”
He realized she meant that literally.
“The baby…is coming.”
Now. She meant right now.
Ryder stifled the urge to run. Her hands flailed wildly, as if seeking purchase. He grabbed them, startled at the strength in them as she cried out yet again.
“It’s all right,” he said, squeezing her hands. “We’ll get through it.” Somehow, he added silently to himself.
He had no plan; he worked strictly on instinct. He kept up a stream of encouraging words, trying to distract her—and perhaps himself—from the embarrassingly intimate position they found themselves in. He wasn’t sure it helped, but when he paused she asked him to keep talking.
Until it started to actually happen.
He’d had no idea birth was such a messy thing. He’d always had some image that the kid slid out and got wrapped in a blanket and handed over. But this was wet, bloody and shockingly brutal. He didn’t know who to marvel at more—the woman going through it, or the child for surviving it.
If, of course, it did.
It was when he first spotted the baby’s head emerging that his gut truly knotted. Dark hair, nearly as dark as his own. He was a little startled. He thought babies were born bald.
The woman screamed then. It was a rending sound, and he touched her gently, trying to soothe her.
“It’s coming,” he said, even though he realized that no one knew that better just now than she did. “It’ll be over soon.”
She seemed to take heart from that, and sucked in a breath.
“Can you push?” he asked diffidently, wondering if that was just a stupid cliché, too.
She grunted then, a primal, earthy sound. Then again, and again.
Women, he thought. You heard about what they went through in childbirth, but until you saw it, you didn’t really realize how tough they were.
To Ryder, it seemed to happen fast then, although he suspected it wouldn’t be wise to say so to the straining woman. He should be paying more attention to the baby, and shifted just in time to see a tiny pair of shoulders emerge.
It did happen fast then. He reached to support the tiny thing she was expelling.
The moment he touched it, the “thing” became real to him. He stared down at the baby who barely filled his two hands. So tiny, so helpless…but it was a life, another human being, a fellow inhabitant of this glorious planet, and he’d helped it arrive.
This was big, he thought.
Huge.
How could something so incredibly small, so fragile and delicate, make him feel like this?
“It’s a girl,” he whispered. “A little girl.”
The woman made a sound he couldn’t begin to describe. She sounded exhausted, but there was something else in her voice when she instructed, “You must cut the cord.”
He winced, even though he knew that. He followed her brisk instructions, glad she was able to walk him through it. She might be young, but she’d clearly done her homework on this.
Or maybe women were just born knowing, he thought, despite her earlier claim to ignorance.
“I just leave it like that?” he asked, looking doubtfully at the stub of the cord still attached to the baby who appeared to be, to his amazement, looking around. Her eyes were brown, he thought, a little numbly. Dark, rich, espresso brown, like her mother’s. Her head looked a little funny, misshapen, but he guessed that was normal.
“It will fall off of its own accord later,” the woman said. “You must clean her. Her mouth, nose, so that she breathes easily.”
He did his best, aware that he was shaking slightly. And when the tiny child in his hands let out a protesting wail, he found himself grinning; things were working fine, it seemed.
“She’s got lungs,” he said, feeling a bit loopy, as if he’d downed one tequila too many. To his surprise the new mother laughed, as if she hadn’t just been through hell.
When she was clean and dry, he wrapped the baby awkwardly, but with a need for gentleness unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He took a last look down into the tiny face.
“Give her to me.”
The new mother’s voice was shaky, and when he looked from daughter to mother he saw fear in her eyes. She reached out, as if she were afraid he would refuse to hand over the baby. Ryder wondered suddenly if she knew what was going on around here, and had the sudden thought that she might suspect him of being connected to the baby-smuggling ring.
Well, she’s right, isn’t she? he told himself.
Then he put the baby into her mother’s outstretched arms. The look that mother gave him nearly stopped his heart cold.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
For the first time in his life with a woman, Ryder was speechless. All he could do was look at her, and at the tiny bit of humanity he’d just helped bring into the world. He didn’t know how he felt, only that whatever it was, it was more intense than he’d ever experienced before.
And on some level, somewhere deep inside him, he knew he would never be the same again.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_5b65d214-b616-54a1-bba3-f1f05b6cb030)
Maria.
Ana held her baby close, savoring the feel of her, the smell of her, the miracle of her.
She had thought of other names, but when the time had come there was no other. Maria. Her mother deserved the tribute; it was not her fault that Ana’s father had not been the man she had hoped. For a long time, Ana was grateful her mother had died before she’d learned the full extent of her husband’s dishonesty and evil. But now, she could only feel sad that her mother was not here to see this precious child, her granddaughter.
So she would do the only thing she could; she would name her after her grandmother and give her the life she deserved. Somehow, she would do this. She would ask for no help, no charity, she would make her own way, for herself and her baby girl.
No help…
“A hospital,” the dark stranger said. “You and she need to see a doctor.”
Ana shook her head. She trusted no one, especially now. She had heard too much about the local baby smuggling, had pumped Jewel daily for information, information she’d given sometimes reluctantly, for fear of frightening the soon-to-be mother.
“I am not going anywhere.”
“But what if there’s something wrong?”
“There is nothing wrong. She is beautiful. Healthy. You can see that.”
“But what about you? That was…you need—”
“No.” It sounded cold and heartless to her ears, when all he’d done was express concern about her. She hastened to add, “I—and my daughter—thank you for what you did. But you must go now.”
He looked nonplussed. She supposed it was rude, but what did rudeness matter when she had her baby to protect? She knew Jewel would be back with the kids soon, then she would have help she trusted.
She did not, could not dare trust this man. She didn’t know why he was here, how he had happened to arrive just as she needed help. For all she knew, he was one of them, had been watching her, a pregnant woman obviously alone, thinking perhaps to steal her baby as so many others had been stolen, ripped from the loving arms of their mothers and sold as if they were packages of cereal.
“You don’t trust me, do you?” he said softly.
“I do not trust anyone,” she said. “A lesson I should have learned earlier.”
He studied her for a moment, and then, to her surprise, nodded. “Wise choice.”
His voice was soft, gentle, but it held a harsh undertone that stirred something in her. Who was this man who had strode in out of the moonlight and helped her without questions? What had he been—what had he done—to sound like that? Was he truly one of them? Was her baby still in danger from him?
“Go,” she said, her voice sharp as her fears grew in proportion to the exhaustion that was growing, threatening to overwhelm her at any moment.
“I can’t just leave you here alone.”
“I will not be alone for long. People will be back here soon.”
“You don’t have to lie to get me to leave.”
“I am not lying. The woman who runs this place, she will be back with her charges soon. They only went to town for an outing.”
He lifted a brow at her, and she wondered what she’d said. Her English was, she knew, nearly perfect. She’d worked hard at that in college, intending to put it to use teaching in a bilingual school.
But sometimes, she realized it was too perfect; local idioms and slang peppered the talk of others, but her collegetaught skills stood out, marked her as different. But she’d long ago decided she would rather be different that way; if she was going to be judged, as people were, by the way she spoke, better too well than not well enough. That had always been her way. She saw no reason to change it now.
“Go. Please.”
He hesitated a moment longer, looking down at her. He towered over the bed, so tall, long-legged and strong, she thought. His eyes were dark, piercing, and she couldn’t help feeling he saw more than she wished. His jaw was stubbled with slight beard growth, as if he hadn’t shaved since this morning. His hair was even darker than her own, and fell in a silky if shaggy sweep over his brow when he leaned forward. She wanted to run her fingers through it and push it back.
That thought sent a stab of shock and fear through her. She needed this man gone. She obviously was not thinking clearly in the aftermath of this life-changing experience. The very last thing she should be doing at this moment was finding a man attractive. Especially a man she knew absolutely nothing about.
Of course, she had thought she knew everything about Alberto as well.
“Go,” she said again. “Please.”
“You swear to me that there will be help here soon?”
His concern moved her against her will. “I swear. And I repeat, I do not lie.”
She meant that. Small, kind lies to avoid hurt feelings were one thing, although she preferred to avoid those as well. But big lies about things that mattered had shaped then destroyed her world. She hated them.
For another silent moment, her rescuer, the man who had helped deliver the baby squirming in her arms, stared down at her. And then, sharply, he nodded.
“Be well,” he said, in a tone she couldn’t describe, some combination of command, awe and benediction. She had the oddest thought that this time had been life-changing for more than just herself. But this handsome American seemed too strong to let something affect him that much.
And then he was gone, disappearing back into the darkness as silently as he’d appeared, surprising her that a man of his size could move so quietly. It was unsettling, someone that big should make more noise, she thought. And in her exhaustion her imagination began to come up with reasons why a man like that would learn to move so stealthily—and none of them were good.
She was relieved that he had gone. She had half expected him to grab her baby out of her arms, proving himself part of the ring she so feared and that the local authorities were so diligently searching for.
But she could not deny he’d been a godsend. She did not want to think about what she would have done had he not appeared out of the darkness.
But she also did not want to think about what she would have done had he refused to go back into that darkness.
She cuddled her baby close, running through her mind all that she had studied: when to feed her, how she would know when she herself was ready for that, all the things she’d so voraciously read in preparation for this day. The pain she’d just endured was nearly forgotten already, although the gentle, encouraging touch and words of the dark stranger were not. She thought she would never forget those, or him. One day it might be a fascinating story to tell her daughter, about the unknown man who had come to their aid, and then vanished into the night.
Perhaps in time she would wonder if he had even been real, that tall, dark man. She smiled at her own silliness, a little surprised that she was still capable of such fantasy. Perhaps she was already preparing stories to tell her child at bedtime.
Instinctively she began to sing quietly to Maria, a sweet little lullaby her mother had sung to her.
Duérmete mi niña,
Duérmete mi sol…
Not that she actually wanted her little sunshine to sleep just yet, she was still too caught up in the wonder of it all. At last, she held this miracle in her arms, and she felt she must do something motherly, something to show this tiny human being she was loved and welcomed, even if she was lacking one of her parents.
“Better no father than an evil one, mija,” she whispered, determined that the baby would hear English as much as Spanish as she grew and learned to speak.
Yes, it would be different for Maria. She would grow up speaking both, at home in both tongues in a way her mother would never be. But it was what she’d wanted, Ana told herself. She was alone, isolated by choice from the family she’d once been close to. The family she’d once trusted.
