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“Tell you what?”
He took a hit of confusion when she turned and he saw what her position in the bed and the comforter had hidden from him: She was pregnant. Heavily so.
He must have stared, for her arms went protectively around the burden under her navy corduroy jumper.
“T-tell me how you know me,” she said, that unnamed emotion coloring her words and sending up another flag of warning.
“Ma’am, I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Cade said in dead earnestness.
“I…see.” She closed her eyes briefly, as if absorbing another shock. Her mouth trembled in fear.
That was the other emotion he’d spied a minute ago: fear. Again, the warning went off in his head, like an alarm, but at least now he understood what it was about.
For in the next moment an unmistakable shiver of pain crossed her delicate features.
“Oh no,” she moaned. Her hand shot out to grab the bedpost as she bent forward, clutching her belly.
Cade didn’t need a medical degree to know what was happening. In an instant he was around the foot of the bed to take her elbow. “It’s the baby, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s why you stopped here.”
“No!” She shook him off. “It’s not time yet! It’s too early!” She gasped for breath, then seemed to ask of someone besides him, “Why? I did everything I could! Everything I could think of—”
She doubled over. In one motion, he lifted her and laid her back on the bed.
To his dismay, she locked her arms around his neck to keep him from rising.
“P-please,” she panted, obviously still in pain. “Please…tell me the truth. Are you sure you don’t know me?”
Bending over her, Cade could only shake his head. “Why do you think I should?”
“Because,” she answered, her gaze searching his face desperately, “I’ve been sent to you, Cade McGivern.”
“Sent to me? But…why?”
She shifted slightly, and her belly brushed against his naked stomach. The scent of sandalwood rose up to meet his nose.
“It must be…for you to deliver my baby…and not why I’d thought.”
The warning in his ears suddenly sounded louder than ever, like the bong-bong-bonging of a thousand clocks striking midnight.
Because she was looking up at him, hitting him again with that blue gaze as deep as the ocean. And what he now saw in her eyes was aloneness—crushing and soul deep.
It reached out to him, grabbed hold of him and drew him in as nothing else on earth could.
“What did you think you’d been sent to me for?” Cade asked through a throat gone sandpaper-dry.
“To tell me who I am,” she whispered. “Because I don’t know.”
Cade climbed the stairs with a heavy tread, dreading what he had to tell the woman in his bedroom. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for her, finding out she’d only a ham-fisted cowboy—and perfect stranger to her, to boot—to depend on as doctor, midwife and partner in the delivery of her baby.
But then, she was pretty much a perfect stranger to herself, apparently.
He sure as hell wished Virgil would get home. The old ranch hand would be useless so far as helping him with the actual delivery, but it’d be handy to have someone to sterilize whatever needed sterilizing and to keep the fresh linen coming.
But Virgil must have stopped for the night at the Old-field Ranch next over, rather than trying to ride the six miles back on horseback in a blinding blizzard. No one in the county knew West Texas terrain and weather better than Virg, but not even the most experienced cowboy looked to have any truck with Mother Nature when she got her back up.
Hopefully the hand was safe and warm at the Oldfields’, but Cade had learned that, more often than not, hope bought you more trouble than it was worth.
The proof of that was upstairs in his bedroom.
Mentally bracing himself, he entered the room to find the woman walking its length, back and forth, chin against her chest and one hand on her back, the other flattened on her belly.
She glanced up when he came in the room, relief chasing the fear out of her eyes. But not the desolate aloneness that had a way of pulling him in, despite himself.
That feeling of trouble on the hoof struck him once again.
“I got through to Doc Barclay back in Sagebrush,” he said a little more curtly than he meant to. He’d had a moment to put on a shirt. It made him feel a little less vulnerable, at least physically.
“Doc Barclay?”
“He’s the G.P. in these parts.” Cade decided he may as well give it to her straight. “He said there’s no way with this storm blowin’ full force that he can get here to deliver your baby. We’re lucky we’ve still got phone service.”
“And d-driving—” she pressed her fingers to her mouth for a moment, then tried again “—Driving to the doctor?”
“To be frank, you’d have to be related to yourself to be so simpleminded as to go out in this weather. It’s a total whiteout out there. Even in my dually four-by-four, we’d like as not end up goin’ off the road and get stuck in a ditch.”
“I see.” She bit her lip in a way that very nearly distracted him from the emergency at hand. “I guess I’m lucky to have found you.”
It was a narrow opening, to be sure, but he jumped on it. “Yeah, let’s talk about that a minute, if you don’t mind.”
He jammed his fingers into his front jeans pockets, knowing he was being contentious bringing the subject up when the woman was about to give birth, but he had the right to at least a couple of questions before then. “I didn’t see a car outside when I rode in, but that’s probably because it’s half-buried under a drift of snow. You said you don’t know who you are,” he said leadingly, “but what do you know, like how or when or why you came here?”
Her stance turned wary, her arm around her swollen belly protective, which did nothing to improve his confidence in her truthfulness. “I must’ve gotten here…oh, I guess two or three hours ago—by car.”
“Did you stop here at the ranch ’cause it was the first place you came to when you realized the weather was getting ugly?” he tried again.
“But I told you,” she answered. “I thought I was coming to you.”
Cade steeled himself against the appeal in those blue eyes. “Look, you said that before, but I’m obviously not making the connection. How on earth could you know you were comin’ to me?”
“I had a…a note in my coat pocket with your name and address on it,” she said, glancing around. “I must have left it downstairs.”
“A note?” Was it just him or was this whole situation becoming less believable by the second?
“Yes. It said ‘Sara—”’
“Wait a minute,” Cade interrupted. “So now you do know your name? You said before you didn’t remember.”
“I don’t remember.” She looked at him pleadingly. “All I know is that I have a note to a Sara, sending her into your care.”
Nope, it wasn’t just him, Cade thought. This was definitely the strangest situation he’d ever been in, bar none. “Well, if you don’t mind my askin’, who sent you?”
“The note didn’t say.”
He had to ask. “Y’think it could’ve been your husband?”
At the question, they both glanced at her left hand. She wore no ring, and Cade didn’t like the ensuing relief he felt. Didn’t like that he was being drawn yet further into a situation that had all the earmarks of trouble.
In fact, her next words only notched up his suspicions.
“Cade, please, I know it’s difficult to understand,” she said rather urgently, taking a step toward him. “Heaven knows I don’t. But all the way here I thought, if I could just make it to you, everything would make sense. I thought you might be…oh, I don’t know—that you might be my husband, or at least someone who knew me. Cared for me…”
Her shoulders slumped in discouragement. “But you don’t. You don’t know me at all.”
Her voice cracked, and she half turned from him, one palm still pressed to her belly, the other over her mouth, as if she sought to hold back her tears along with the birth of her child.
She was apparently successful, for she went on fiercely, her fingers closed in a fist, “I have to believe I had the right instinct in coming here.”
“The right instinct,” Cade doggedly pointed out, “would have been to stop fifteen miles back in Sagebrush where there’s a doctor with some skill at handling these sorts of situations.”
She pivoted back toward him. “I know for sure I didn’t pass through any place named Sagebrush,” she contradicted. “Besides, you’re a cattle rancher, right?”
“What the hell does my being a cattleman have to do with your giving birth?”
“You’ve probably delivered hundreds of calves, that’s what,” she said, her voice rising with panic. “You know how labor progresses and how—”
“They’re calves!” Cade broke in, his own voice sounding close to panicked, even to his own ears. “Deliverin’ a baby would be completely different!”
The room echoed with his doomsday words.
“In any case, no matter how I got here or why I was sent to you,” Sara said with just the whisper of a quaver in her voice that sent self-disgust slicing through him like a knife, “you’re all I’ve got right now, Cade.”
Abruptly, her face contorted with pain, and she sagged forward, hands spread on her stomach. Cade was by her side in a single stride, supporting her under her elbow as the contraction intensified, her fingers gripping his forearm, before it finally ebbed.
“How far apart are they?” he asked, still steadying her while she caught her breath.
She rubbed her forehead distractedly, as if that caused her pain, too. Had she hit her head and that was the reason for her memory loss? Cade wondered. Or had someone hit her?
The thought roused a fury of protectiveness in him.
“Maybe ten minutes or so,” she answered. “I haven’t been keeping track.”
“Well, let’s make sure we do that next time.” Her face sheened with perspiration. “Should you be up walking right now?”
“I don’t know! I’ve never had a baby before…at least I d-don’t think I have,” she said, that quaver creeping back into her voice, making him even more ashamed.
She was right, of course. The doctor had been extremely clear about a lot of things, but mainly that if Cade was this woman’s only source of support to get through this, then it was up to him to convey to her complete reassurance and trust in him. “The more fearful she is,” Doc had said, “the more she’ll like to have trouble. You know that, Cade. One of your mama cows goes into labor, ’specially for the first time, it’s a loving hand and calming voice that’s going to see her safely through.”
But this is no cow! Cade had thought, as just now he’d said.
Which he shouldn’t have. He hadn’t mentioned the amnesia to Doc, his own instinct deeming such information best kept to himself for now. Who knew the trouble this Sara might be in, or who in actuality had “sent” her here.
He decided he’d also keep the observation to himself that whoever or whatever force had sent her was about as reliable as the Texas weather outside, and she’d be wise to hitch her hopes to a different star from now on. Because while he’d delivered hundreds of calves, it wasn’t a process that came to him instinctively. That had always been Loren’s particular gift.
Whatever the case, as she’d said, he was all she had to depend on right now, as much as Cade might wish differently.
He noticed her watching him, as if actually looking for that sign, just as she had when she’d gazed at him from his bed.
Cade realized he still held her arm, and he released it.
“All right, let’s forget the third degree for now about why you’re here,” he said, pushing the hair off his forehead and back across his scalp. “The next contraction that comes, let’s keep tabs on how long it goes on and how long till the next one. Do you feel more comfortable walking around?”
“For now, yes.”
“Do y’know if you had a suitcase or some clothes other than what you’ve got on?”
“Th-there was nothing in the car. Not even a purse.”
The question seemed to upset her again, so he moved on. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I seem to remember stopping for…something on the way here,” she said with that certain vagueness he’d seen in her before. He chose to ignore it, since it tended to make him second-guess anything she told him.
“So that was some time ago. Doc said we need to keep your energy up but didn’t think you’d be wantin’ anything solid.”
She confirmed that assumption with a nod.
“I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of broth or the like. I think there’s some orange juice, though. Would you like some of that?” he asked gruffly.
“Oh, yes,” she said with a grateful smile, the first he’d seen from her. And damn if it didn’t take him by surprise, stealing his breath away.
It was just a shade crooked, with one corner denting in, creating a dimple, while the other side of her mouth curved up. Combined with those blue eyes, it was about as fascinating as finding the first wildflower in spring.
Which made it doubly hard to do what he needed to next. He may as well get it over with.
“I…uh, I also need to get an idea of how the baby’s going to be presenting, so I can tell Doc.” Cade extended one hand, indicating her bulging waistline, and asked, “Do you mind?”
She shook her head.
Uncomfortable as hell, he hovered tentatively over that roundness before he gritted his teeth and touched her. Even through the corduroy of her jumper, he could feel how taut and smooth her skin was. He moved his hand downward, feeling for the baby’s backbone, hoping—there was that word again—to detect it pressing up against the wall of her womb. If the baby wasn’t in the normal position and they’d be dealing with a complicated birth, Cade didn’t know what he’d do.
“You’re right, I’ve done this hundreds of times with a pregnant heifer,” he murmured, more for himself than for her. But never a woman.
His touch, he was glad to note, seemed to calm her, for she put her hand over his and moved it over a spot on her belly. “Is that a foot there?”
The firmness of her swollen pregnancy captivated him, so much so he didn’t answer her. Every bit of her was baby, and despite the fear she’d expressed that she wasn’t ready to go into labor, he didn’t see how she couldn’t be. She 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.
