Baby's First Christmas

Michael watched her gather the turquoise duffel packed with her Lamaze stuff, the keys to the van, her cell phone, clipboard of addresses, area street maps and purse. He followed her out the back door to the van.

“I know this child exists,” he said, as Kate—who wished she could do something about the unprecedented aching in her thighs, which seemed to get worse with every passing second—unlocked the driver’s door and tossed in her gear.

“I’m going to want to know he or she is okay,” Michael continued stubbornly as the two of them continued to be buffeted by the brisk November air.

Feeling about as graceful as a whale on roller skates, Kate levered herself up and into the driver’s seat and fit the key in the ignition. “Then I’ll send you progress reports, okay?”

Michael stood between her and the door, preventing her from closing it. “No. It’s not okay.” His voice lowered a notch as his eyes held hers in a manner that let her know he wasn’t about to be dissuaded. “I’m going to need—I’m going to want—a hell of a lot more than that.”

Kate drew an exasperated breath as she reached behind her and drew her seat belt across her chest. “Look, just because I’m carrying your child—by accident, I might add—does not mean you need to be involved in my life, too.”

Michael regarded her grimly. “If we’re going to have a child together—even by accident—we need to get to know each other. The only way for us to do that is for us to spend time together.”

She considered that notion for a moment, finding it oddly—engagingly attractive, then discarded it.

Rolling her eyes, she claimed facetiously, “Next you’ll be proposing marriage—”

Michael shook his head. “Not at this stage.”

Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven for small miracles,” she said dryly, as Michael leaned into the cab of the van.

“Although, now that you bring it up, maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” he replied, unwilling, it seemed, to throw out any possibility whatsoever that would bring him closer to the child she was about to bear, “should we eventually find we can get along.”

He was an attractive man. There was even, it seemed, a purely physical chemistry between them, as evidenced by the way she tingled whenever, wherever, he touched her, but the rest was just plain nuts. She studied his face. “You’re serious,” she whispered, able to feel for the first time how much he wanted this child in his life, in his heart.

“Very.”

Silence fell between them, more awkward than before.

The situation was amazing. Incredible. Unprecedented. And so very complicated. Kate had no idea what to do. She only knew she felt simultaneously threatened and oddly comforted, cossetted, by his presence.

Michael swore softly and ran a hand through his wind-tossed hair. “Look, I don’t want to make your life any harder, but this is my child—the only child I may ever have—and I want to be a part of his or her life, too. A big part.” Noting she was beginning to shiver in the increasingly cool afternoon air, he circled the front of the van and climbed into the passenger’s seat. He swiveled to face her, all the love he felt for their unborn child in his eyes. “If you were in my place, you’d feel the same way.”

True, Kate thought, as they stared at each other in contemplative silence. Suddenly she knew—as much as she might want him to—he wasn’t going to back off. If she didn’t want to end up in court, fighting for custody of her child before he or she was even born, she was going to have to cooperate with Michael Sloane. Or at least put up the pretense of doing so until he realized this was more commitment than he really wanted over the long haul. “What exactly are you suggesting?” she asked calmly as she shut the driver door and switched on the ignition.

“Only what’s fair,” Michael said as she turned on the heater. “That starting now, you let me be a part of our child’s life in every way. Including the birth.”

Kate’s knees turned to jelly as she thought about the implied intimacy of that. “You want to be in the delivery room?” she asked in a low, trembling voice as she splayed a hand across her chest.

“I am a doctor.”

But not my doctor, Kate thought. And the thought of being disrobed in front of him, for any reason, made her heart beat all the harder. Ignoring the tingles of awareness ghosting over her skin, she frowned and glanced at her watch. “I’m going to have to think about this.”

Michael looked as though he had expected that. “It’ll have to be fast,” he warned. “If the guys at the lab were correct about the date of your artificial insemination, you’ve only got a day or so.”

As if she needed reminding about that! Kate shrugged. “The baby could be late.”

“Or early.”

Swallowing around the sudden dryness in her throat, Kate glanced at her watch again. “I really do need to go.”

Michael frowned at the list of addresses on the clipboard and the rows of gift baskets in the back of the van. “You’re going to make all these deliveries yourself?”

Kate nodded. “I always do the late afternoon deliveries. Dulcie does the ones first thing in the morning. Jeff takes care of the ones at noon.” She paused. “I like this part of the business, too. It’s fun, seeing the expression of delight on the customers’ faces when they receive a gift from my shop. And I enjoy the change of pace after being in the shop all day.”

“Let me help you. You drive. I’ll carry the baskets up to the door. It’ll go twice as fast that way. Then maybe the two of us can go to dinner and finish resolving all this.”

Kate had to admit she could use the help. Because of her talk with him, she was running a good hour behind schedule for deliveries. “It’s going to take me several hours,” she warned. “And I have to go out in the country to do the rural deliveries.”

“Then you really shouldn’t be out there alone. Not this close to delivering. What if something happened?”

“Then I’d call for help on my cell phone,” she told him calmly, knowing first babies were generally notoriously slow in arriving. And she had yet to suffer her first real contraction. Nevertheless, he had a point. She didn’t want to put her baby in danger. And she had been feeling a little achy and tired all day. Maybe it was best if she accepted his help and let him tag along with her. It would give her a chance to show him she could handle work and a baby and subtly persuade him he didn’t want to be a father as much as he thought he did. If she were successful, it would be well worth the additional time she spent with him.

While she drove, Kate told him about the preparations she had made for the baby, going into detail about the nursery she had prepared, the type of crib and changing table and rocking chair she’d selected and the extensive layette of baby clothes. Michael was interested and impressed. Nevertheless, by the time they had gotten halfway through the list of deliveries, Kate felt oddly trembly and exhausted. When he offered to do some of the driving, too, she agreed with barely a murmur of dissent.

“You feeling okay?” Michael asked as he got behind the wheel and steered the delivery van onto the lonely country road.

“Sure,” Kate fibbed with a lot more assurance than she felt, then abruptly doubled over with a sharp cry of pain.

“What is it?” Michael asked, alarmed.

Kate clutched her tummy all the harder. “Guess.”

Chapter Two

“You’re in labor,” Michael proclaimed, surprised to discover that beneath the usual physician’s calm he was feeling the initial panic all first-time fathers felt.

Kate groaned and sank even farther into her seat. Breathing through the contraction—which appeared to last about thirty seconds—she put her hands on the edges of the upholstery and gripped it until her knuckles turned white. “It would certainly appear so, yes.” Kate pushed the words through a row of even white teeth. Delicate beads of perspiration dotted her upper lip.

She seemed awfully uncomfortable for a very first contraction, Michael thought. Unless… Oh, no. “Was this your first contraction?” he asked.

“I—” Kate gasped between panting breaths that told him another contraction was starting, just seconds after the conclusion of the first. “Suppose.” No sooner had she spoken than she let out a sharp little cry.

“What do you mean you suppose?” Michael demanded. Figuring the rest of the delivery baskets could wait, he turned the van in the direction of Chapel Hill.

“I’ve felt a little funny all day,” Kate confessed as she grabbed a tissue from her purse and pressed it to the dampness at the back of her neck.

“Funny how?”

“I’ve had this pressure—this sort of aching—in my thighs, like I overdid it exercising or something.”

“But no actual contractions until just now.”

“Right.”

“And you’re sure what you felt just now was an actual contraction?” Michael persisted.

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

The important thing here was to stay calm. “When did the funny feeling—the pressure—start in your legs?”

“This morning, when I got up.”

Which meant, Michael thought, she’d likely been in the very early stages of labor all day. “I noticed you rubbing your back in the shop. Was your back aching all day?”

“Yes, but that’s been the case off and on for several weeks now, so I didn’t think anything of it. But—” Kate caught her breath as the cramping in her lower abdomen intensified. “It’s never been this bad,” she said with tears in her eyes.

Michael reached over and squeezed her hand. “Hang in there,” he said.

“I’m trying.” Kate waited until the worst of it had passed, then, still panting, reached behind her and grabbed the duffel bag she took to her Lamaze class. Inside were clean workout clothes, a blanket to stretch out on, a pillow, an unopened bottle of mineral water and a stopwatch.

“Try breathing in through your nose and slowly breathing out through your mouth,” he said as the next contraction gripped her without warning. “That’s it,” he said, as Kate gasped again and hit the start button on her stopwatch. “Take deep, slow breaths, just the way they taught you in Lamaze class. That’s it, Kate. Again. And yet again—”

At long last, the pain subsided. As it did, Kate released a long, ragged breath. And suddenly became aware—as did Michael—that she was drenched with sweat. From the looks of it, Michael thought, as she turned the temperature control knob to cool, this was going to be one hard and fast—maybe too fast—labor.

“How long was the contraction?” Michael asked as Kate’s color slowly returned to normal and he continued to drive in the direction of the hospital at a safe, steady pace.

Kate glanced at her stopwatch. “Three minutes and fourteen seconds.” She seemed surprised as she contemplated that, murmuring, “No wonder it felt like an eternity!”

“Okay, let’s time between contractions now,” Michael said. “Then we’ll call your doctor.”

Kate reset the stopwatch and absently rubbed her tummy. Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen, Michael noted with relief. All blissfully free of pain. Beginning to relax, she lay against the seat. Without warning, Kate’s teeth began to chatter. A shiver spiraled through her slender shoulders. Kate gasped as another contraction gripped her. She turned alternately red then white. “Do you know your OB’s number?” he asked calmly.

Still fighting the contraction gripping her, Kate pulled the cell phone out of her purse. “Dr. Amanda Gantor. Just punch one,” she panted.

Michael did as directed and was patched through. He explained what the situation was, then listened as he received instructions. “Right. Yes. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up as Kate’s contraction finally came to a halt.

“Let me guess,” she drawled, still panting from the strength of her last contraction. “Dr. Gantor wants me to go straight to the hospital.”

“Right. She’ll alert labor and delivery and the emergency room and meet you at the hospital.”

Kate nodded, letting him know she’d heard. “Good thing you’re driving.” She gasped, leaned forward and clasped her tummy as yet another contraction gripped her. She whimpered. “I don’t think I could drive and endure this kind of pain, too.”

“Do you have a labor coach?”

“My baby sister, Lindy. She’s a teaching assistant at UNC. She’s teaching a class right now.” Kate shifted in an effort to get more comfortable and found, as Michael had figured would be the case, that it was hopeless. “You met her at the shop.”

“Ah, yes, the one who said I was cu-u-u-te.”

“You heard that?” She slanted him an inquiring glance as she continued to shift restlessly.

Michael zoomed past a trailer park, a deserted country church and a farm. “I think she may have meant me to,” he confided, in an attempt to divert Kate’s attention from the pain. He smiled at her. “I had the feeling she would have liked nothing better than to set the two of us up.”

Kate nodded, humorously conceding this was so. “And that was before she knew who you were or what your connection to me was—is,” Kate groaned.

“You think this will up the stakes?” Michael paused at a four-way intersection, then seeing it was safe, continued on.

“As far as Lindy is concerned, heck, yes. She’s an incurable romantic.” Kate picked up her bottle of water, ripped off the plastic seal and cap and took a tiny drink.

Michael slanted her another glance. “But not you.”

“Nope. Not anymore.” Kate handed him the bottled water. “I am a very practical woman.”

Michael also took a small swig. “Good for you.”

Kate capped the water, grimaced and began to pant as she was hit with yet another labor pain. “I guess it’s lucky you’re a doctor so you know about Lamaze.” Kate stuffed her belongings into her Lamaze bag. “You can coach me through it until we get to the hospital and Lindy and a nurse take over.” Thirty seconds. Forty-five. Sixty. Seventy-five.

“No problem,” Michael retorted as they passed a road sign that said, Chapel Hill, twenty-four miles. “I could coach you through the Bradley and Gamper methods, too. But my real talent—” noting her contraction was continuing some two and half minutes after it began, he reached over to give her hand a comforting squeeze “—is in catching babies.”

Kate forced a weak smile and let herself take comfort from his touch, even as the pain increased. “With or without a mitt?” she asked, panting.

“Without.” He winked at her playfully. “Though I imagine it could be done either way.”

“That’s it,” Kate gasped, looking as if it was taking everything she had to resist the urge to scream with the pain. “Keep the banter coming,” she advised.

Michael nodded at her bright red cheeks. “You hurting a lot?”

Kate concentrated on her breathing. “Oh, let’s just say it feels like an eighteen-wheeler truck is inside me roaring to get out.”

“Hang on. We’re less than twenty minutes from the medical center.”

“Oh, no.” Kate raised her hips off the captain’s seat.

“What?” Michael was beginning to look as panicked as she felt.

“Oh, no-no-no-no,” Kate wailed in distress.

“What’s going on, Kate?”

She leaned back and gripped his forearm, hard. “I feel the baby coming.”

“That’s natural.”

Kate shook her head vigorously. She was trembling. “No. You don’t understand. The baby’s starting to come out of me, Michael. I can feel it. I can feel the—baby’s head!”

Michael guided the Gourmet Gifts To Go van into the first safe place he saw, the dirt road entrance to a farmer’s field. He put the van in park, switched on the hazard lights and set the emergency brake but kept the motor running, the air on. “I’m coming around,” he said.

He got out of the van, circled the front and opened her door. “I’m going to hit the recline button on your seat, take your seat belt off and lay you back.” He put his hands beneath her shoulders and hips, leaned in and scooted her back and up. “I’m going to have to take a look.”

She turned her head from him as he eased the hem of her jumper up and did what was necessary with clinical care.

“Well?” Kate asked when he’d assessed the situation.

“You’re right,” Michael said grimly. “There’s no time to spare. We’ve got to get you to the back of the van. Put your arm around my neck. That’s it.” He slid one arm beneath her knees, the other beneath her shoulders, then swept her effortlessly into his strong arms and carried her to the back. He opened the door and laid Kate gently on the carpeted floor of the van, pushing aside the gift baskets.

Perspiration streamed down her face. He went to get her Lamaze gear and shut the door. Kate struggled against the pain that was gripping her nonstop. “I’m going to have the baby here and now, in the back of my delivery van, aren’t I?” she panted as one contraction slipped into another.

Michael climbed in beside her and shut the rear door so there’d be no draft on her or the baby. “Looks like it, yes.” His expression all business, he lifted her hips and slid the blanket from her Lamaze bag beneath her.

“I can’t believe this,” she moaned. “First the mix-up at the sperm bank and now this!”

Michael knelt beside her and quickly divested her of her shoes, stockings and panties. “Maybe it’s just a Murphy’s law kind of year for us.” Swiftly, he checked on the position of the baby.

“Not for me.” Kate shook her head as he pushed the hem of her jumper high enough to allow him to work yet left it low enough to afford her some modesty. “I plan things out meticulously. Always have, always will, only to have everything suddenly go awry now in such a big way.” Kate groaned helplessly and tightened her hands into fists.

“If there’s one thing you can count on in this life, it’s that nothing ever goes according to plan anyway.” Working rapidly, Michael ripped into one of the undelivered gift baskets and extracted a bottle of wine. “Besides,” he continued, working to give her as much confidence as possible as he splashed his hands and then the birth area with germ-killing alcohol, “it’s been my experience that the best things in life are unplanned.”

“Well, you being the father of my baby and my going into labor now are the two absolute exceptions to the rule,” Kate muttered cantankerously. “As far as I’m concerned, the screw-ups stop here,” she said, looking panic-stricken as another contraction gripped her. She grabbed his arm. “I have to push.”

“Not yet, Kate.” Knowing he had to have something to cut the cord with, Michael plucked a silver-plated serving knife from the gift basket and sterilized that, too. “We don’t want the baby’s head to pop out too suddenly.”

“But you can see it?” Still holding tightly to his arm, Kate struggled against another gripping contraction.

“The very top of it, yes.” He put a hand on her abdomen, another on her thinning perineum. “I want you to pant or blow while I apply a counter pressure here to help the baby’s head come out gently and gradually.” Working with her to guide the baby into the world, he said gently, “That’s it, Kate, nice and slow. You’re doing great. Keep panting,” Michael said as the baby’s head began to emerge. Just a little at first, and then, several contractions later, all the way.

“There. Okay,” he said victoriously, glad all was okay so far. “The head’s out, and as soon as I get the baby’s mouth and nose clear—” Michael stroked downward on the baby’s nose, cheeks and throat “—he’s going to test his lungs for us.” Michael and Kate both grinned as the baby let out a choking, startled cry.

Knowing there was no time to lose, Michael continued to kneel between her thighs, both hands supporting the baby’s head, one above, one beneath. “Okay, Kate, I want you to push now.” Again, he supported and guided the slippery, squirming infant. “We’ve got one shoulder out,” Michael said, using gentle continued traction. “Now two. And here he comes.” Laughing exultantly, Michael lifted the kicking, screaming, healthy pink baby and placed him where she could hold onto him.

“We’ve got a boy, Kate. A beautiful baby boy. And he’s not too pleased about this,” Michael continued as he swiftly clamped the cord three inches from the baby’s abdomen. He cut the cord and carefully wrapped their squirming baby boy in Kate’s soft cotton workout pants.

“We’ll make it up to him,” Kate promised thickly as tears of joy streamed down her face. Laughing and crying simultaneously, Kate held their baby close to her heart. “Oh, Michael, he’s just perfect, isn’t he?” Kate whispered, looking as overwhelmed with the joy of the experience as he was.

Michael nodded. “He sure is,” he said thickly, aware of the love and pride welling inside him even as he checked their newborn son’s heart rate and respiration and did a routine medical assessment of the infant’s condition. “And he looks as healthy and strong as they come,” Michael said, as he touched the baby’s face, then Kate’s.

Kate caught Michael’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you,” she said gratefully. “Thank you for being here.”

Michael swallowed around the rising lump of emotion in his throat. “My pleasure.” Heaven knew there was no other place he would have wanted to be at this moment than with Kate and their baby.

She grimaced as another pain hit her.

Michael coaxed her through the spasms until the after-birth appeared. “Okay, we’ve got the placenta out.” Michael wrapped the placenta up, too, made both Kate and the baby as comfortable as he could, then retrieved the cell phone. “I think it’s time we called Dr. Gantor and the hospital, too.”

AS IT TURNED OUT, there was a fire station with an ambulance some fifteen minutes away from them. Deciding the sooner they got the two of them to the hospital the better, Michael drove Kate and the baby to a midpoint, then helped the EMS personnel transfer Kate and the baby to the stretcher and the waiting ambulance.

Realizing he was planning to follow them in the van, Kate reached out to grab him. “Stay with us,” she urged quietly. Incredible as it was under the circumstances, the two of them had bonded during the birth, and she didn’t want to lose that bond any more than she wanted to ride the rest of the way to the hospital alone.

Michael nodded. “Just let me close up the van,” he told her huskily.

By the time he got back, the EMS workers had started an IV in Kate’s arm. “So what are you going to name the baby?” the EMS worker asked.

Good question, Kate thought, looking at Michael, knowing this involved him, too. So much had changed in such a short time. “I was thinking about Timothy for a first name,” she told Michael quietly as he sat on the bench beside her.

“That’s nice.”

“And for a middle name?” the EMS worker prodded as he filled out the paperwork on Kate, and Michael continued to watch Kate and the baby.

“Initially, I was thinking about naming him after my grandfather,” Kate said softly, “but now I don’t know. I think maybe his middle name should be Michael. Timothy Michael Sloane-Montgomery. Or Montgomery-Sloane. What do you think?”

Michael’s eyes darkened as myriad emotions crossed his face. “I think nothing would make me happier.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think something was going on between you two,” the EMS worker teased.

Michael and Kate flushed simultaneously.

“Whoa,” the EMS worker said.

Exactly, Kate thought, as heat crept into her face. When word of this got out, people were going to think she and Michael had made this baby the old-fashioned way. And to tell the truth, they’d shared so much intimacy in such a short time, it almost felt as if they had. Except she didn’t even know how he kissed. Might—because of circumstances—never know.

Michael looked at the EMS worker. “If you wouldn’t mind moving up front with your partner—” he nodded at Kate and the baby “—maybe we could have a moment alone?”

“Sure.” Knowing Michael was a physician from the Chapel Hill emergency room, the EMS worker easily granted the request. “No problem. Take all the time you need.” He smiled at the happy trio, his glance resting on the blissfully sleeping baby nestled in Kate’s arms. “I’ll just radio the hospital and let them know both mother and baby are doing fine.”