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Travis was horrified. He pulled onto the dirt shoulder behind a clunky old sedan and fervently hoped he was at the wrong address. Even in the gray, rain-dark pall he could see that anyone left inside that crushed structure needed an ambulance, not a cab.
He exited the checkered taxi and headed toward the duplex, veering around a massive root ball jutting from soaked earth. Closer examination revealed that except for the porch, now a splintered nest of rubble under the toppled tree, the dwelling itself seemed to be relatively unscathed.
Shading his eyes, Travis squinted between blowing pine boughs and saw a snapped porch beam had crushed one of the unit’s two doors. The other door was undamaged, but completely blocked by the tree trunk, which he judged to be about four feet in diameter.
He cupped his mouth and shouted, “Conway Cab. Anyone in there?” A movement behind one of the windows caught his eye. He shifted toward the unit on the left, thought he saw a shadow inside the room. Before he could focus, the shadow seemed to collapse, melt in upon itself and was gone.
Shifting, Travis grabbed a sturdy limb and hoisted himself up onto the fallen trunk, hoping for a better look, but gray light threw his own reflection back at him, obscuring his view inside. A windblown whip of pine needles stung his face. He swatted at it, lost his grip and dropped back to the mucky ground.
The sky darkened again. Clouds swirled, boiled black. The wind whistled a warning and began to howl.
Travis swore and pulled up his jacket collar until wet denim chafed his earlobes. He longed for warmth, the arid desert heat, the soft crush of dry sawdust beneath his boots. Cheering crowds. Bellowing livestock. Rawhide rasping his palms. The pungent smell of animalistic power, of sweating victory and bloody defeat.
Ah, he missed it. Just a few more weeks and he’d be back on the circuit, back where he belonged. Travis could hardly wait.
Ducking into the wind, he gripped the brim of his hat and circled back around the giant root ball toward the rear of the old duplex. A five-foot wooden fence creaked against the wind.
“Great,” he muttered, automatically wrapping a protective arm around his taped ribs. At the moment, climbing a fence didn’t much appeal to him, but there didn’t seem to be a whole bunch of options. A quick glance around confirmed nothing but a few vacant lots backing up to a conifer forest. No help there.
Issuing a pained sigh, he hoisted himself up and over, wincing as he dropped into the yard. He straightened slowly, waiting for the pain to ease. Doc had warned him that ribs fractured that badly were slow to heal. Slow? Hell, that wasn’t the half of it. A snail could’ve crawled to Texas by the time Travis had mended enough to take a decent breath. He was better now. Not great, but better.
Travis straightened and stretched out the kinks. After a quick glance around the barren square of fenced grass, he strode to the back door of the first duplex, peered through the mullioned window and tapped on the glass.
There was no response, but Travis focused through the galley-style kitchen into the living room of the duplex. There were no lights inside, only slight illumination from a sliver of daylight breaking through the partially blocked front window. He saw the outline of a sofa, the triangular shadow of a lampshade and a table of some kind. His gaze narrowed, focusing on the floor beside the table. Something was heaped there, a crumpled silhouette that could have been a wadded blanket or a bundle of laundry.
But the bundle was moving. The crumpled silhouette was a person. A person in trouble.
Travis frantically rattled the knob. It was locked, so he took a step back and kicked the door in. In less than a heartbeat, he knelt beside a woman who was curled on her side, making strange hissing sounds through her teeth.
He laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am?”
She opened her eyes, huge pools of emerald terror in a colorless face.
Travis’s breath backed up his throat. “It’s all right,” he muttered with considerably more confidence than he felt. “You’re going to be fine, ma’am, just fine.”
Her eyes widened, then squinched shut. To his shock, she formed her lips into an O and began to pant. He blinked, wondering why she would be overly warm when the room was colder than a barn in winter. For some odd reason, he noticed the bulge of her abdomen long before the reason for it struck him. When it did, he danged near went into shock.
“Oh, no,” he murmured, utterly transfixed by the realization. “No, no, ma’am, you can’t do this…not now. Please, lady—”
Her cheeks flexed with each quick puff.
“Oh, Lordy—”
Puff, puff, puff.
“Ma’am, please stop. This just really isn’t a good time—”
A shudder jittered through her body, then she suddenly went limp as a squashed snake and her breath slid out with a long, slow hiss.
Travis sat back on his boot heels, wiped his forehead. “Yes’m, that’s better. Much obliged.”
She looked up, her eyes bright with moisture. “What are you doing here?”
“Conway Cab Company, ma’am.” He licked his lips. “You did call for a cab, didn’t you? Oh, well, sure, sure you did, but maybe, ah—” he swallowed hard “—maybe under the circumstances, an ambulance would be a better choice.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Golly, what a swell idea.”
He flinched, feeling stupid. Every ambulance in town was tied up on emergency duty, which was why he’d been called out in the first place. “I guess you’ve already tried that.”
“I guess I have, cowboy.”
Flustered and completely out of his element, Travis blurted, “Can’t you put this off for a while? I mean, this is a really, really bad time to have a baby….” His voice trailed away as her eyes thinned into mean little slits. Obviously she was well aware of that fact and didn’t appreciate the reminder. He cleared his throat. “Okay, sure, no problem. We’ll, ah, just mosey on over to the hospital and ah—ma’am?”
As another contraction tightened, she bit her lip, made a peculiar vibrating sound deep in her throat, then started to pant again. She bent like a safety pin. Beads of sweat slicked her face. Her skin was white as death.
Travis was beside himself. Flustered and completely out of his element, he didn’t have a clue what to do. Instinctively reaching out, he patted her shoulder, then let out a yelp as she snatched up his hand and damned near crushed every bone in it. Since there was no way short of amputation to pry himself out of her spasmed grasp, he gritted his teeth and waited for her pain—and his—to pass.
Several long seconds later, she released him and fell back exhausted. Her hand dropped limply onto the floor, and she issued a soft, guttural moan that touched Travis to the core.
He flexed his fingers, grateful that they still moved, then wiped a gentle thumb over her delicate brow that was the copper-gold color of a summer sunset. “Can I get you a glass of water? Maybe a wet cloth to, you know, cool you down some?”
A flash of pink moistened her lips, then was gone. “Thank you, but I’d really like to leave now. My doctor is waiting.”
“Oh, sure.” He glanced around the room, suddenly panicked. “We can’t get out. The front door is blocked.”
This was clearly not news to her. She sighed and wiggled a weak finger toward the kitchen. “That way.”
Travis considered that. “Even with me giving you a boost, it’ll be a mite tricky getting over that fence, what with your condition and all.”
She stared at him as if the word stupid had appeared in neon welts across his forehead. “As exciting as that sounds, I’d prefer to use the gate.”
“The gate,” he repeated, feeling more idiotic by the moment. He hadn’t seen a gate, but then again, he hadn’t spent much time looking for one. “Right. The gate.”
When she struggled upward, he helped her to her feet, then held on, fearing she might collapse. If it weren’t for his sore ribs, he would have carried her—“My valise,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” He followed her gaze to a tapestry bag on a table beside the kitchen door. “Oh.”
He braced an arm around her. She took a shaky step forward, then suddenly went rigid as another contraction hit her.
Travis swallowed hard, tightening his grip to hold her upright. “You’re doing fine,” he murmured as she puffed and shuddered. With his free hand, he stroked her upper arm, offering the same quiet encouragement he’d have used to gentle a skittish mare. “Just a few more seconds…that’s right…breathe real short-like…that’s good, ma’am, that’s real good.”
A rush of air escaped her slack lips. She sagged against him, gasping. She was just a slip of a thing, really, barely big enough to rest her head against his shoulder. Faded freckles were scattered across the bridge of her nose, and the scent of sweet flowers wafted from hair that tangled around her shoulders like a curly mass of poppy red fire.
A protective surge swelled up in his gut, an odd sensation that made him want to whip out a saber and fight the world to keep her safe. At the moment, that meant getting her to the hospital.
Travis tugged down his Stetson, grabbed the valise and ushered the exhausted woman to the cab.
* * *
“Aa-a-ah!”
The cry from the back seat sent chills down Travis’s spine. He looked in the rearview mirror, and could have wept. The poor woman was contorted in pain, white as death except for a bright trickle of blood where she’d bitten her lip. “Hold on, ma’am. We’ll be there soon.”
Her features relaxed slightly. She licked her lips and gave a weak nod.
Focusing on the road, Travis swerved around a large rock dislodged by the rain, then slowed to forge a muddy puddle. Black sludge splattered the cab’s hood and fenders. Travis’s brother-in-law, who owned the cab company, was a spit-and-polish stickler, but at the moment Travis didn’t much care. He concentrated every ounce of his attention on his mission, which at the moment was traversing a winding gravel pathway that was pitted, potholed and edged with a quivering mass of muddy muck.
Navigating Virginia Road had always been a challenge; now it was a nightmare, But with paved interstate access still blocked by the overturned big rig, this was the only available route into town.
Squinting into the dreary late morning light, Travis saw the hairpin curve up ahead and touched the brake with his boot.
A blood-curdling shriek came from the back seat.
Travis jerked his eyes from the road to the mirror and back again, but it was too late. The mud slide loomed like a mountain. And they were heading right for it.
Chapter Two
Travis yanked the wheel. The woman shrieked. The cab spun doughnuts on wet gravel, then sank to its hubcaps in the mucky shoulder.
He gunned the engine. The tires spat mud and sank deeper. Logically, Travis understood that the vehicle was irretrievably mired, but panic was not a logical emotion. He jammed the cab into first gear and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The engine revved madly. Black goo shot from beneath the spinning tires.
“Aa-a-ah!”
A quick glance into the rearview mirror confirmed that the situation in the back seat was not going at all well. Sweat trickled into his eyes. He snatched up the microphone. “We’ve got big trouble! Send an ambulance to Virginia Road, about three miles down from the turnoff. For God’s sake, hurry, Sue Anne. We’re fixing to have a baby here!”
The radio crackled. “Say again?”
“A baby, a baby!”
“Ayeee-ee!” The woman gasped, bolted upright. “It’s coming! Oh, God, it’s coming!”
Travis spun in his seat. “Not yet, ma’am, please. Help is on the way. Just hold on a few more minutes, okay?”
She went limp and fell back against the door, panting. “I need to push.”
“Oh, Lordy, don’t do that!”
“I have to.”
“No, no, you don’t.” Frantic, Travis dropped the microphone and hoisted his torso over the headrest far enough to grasp her cold hand. “Think of something real calming, you know, like a pasture of grazing horses or maybe a pretty little creek. That always helps me to hold off during, uh, well, you know.”
She gave him a look that could freeze meat.
Travis swallowed hard. “I guess maybe you’re not in the mood to think about that sort of thing right now.”
Her eyes were green slits. “Oh, I’m thinking about it, cowboy. Believe me, I’m thinking about it— Ah! Oh! Oh!”
As the contraction hit, she clutched his wrist with both hands, hauling half his torso into the back seat. Behind him, a voice cracked over the radio, but Travis couldn’t deal with that because the thrashing woman with a death grip on his arm was shrieking distinctly unladylike epithets along with horribly graphic, gender-specific alterations she planned to perform on a man named Clyde.
Sue Anne’s voice crackled from the radio. “Travis! Travis, pick up. I’m patching you through to Vanderbilt Memorial’s ER. Travis!”
The driver’s headrest pressed Travis’s throbbing ribs as he teetered over the seat back, struggling to extricate himself from the woman’s clenched fingers. When he freed himself, he scooped up the microphone.
Before he could scream into the speaker, a crisp, female voice crackled out. “This is Dr. Jennings—”
Travis plunged his thumb on the mike switch. “Help!” he blurted. “She wants to push!”
“How close are the contractions?”
Travis shifted a wary glance toward the thrashing woman. “One right after another. Geez, they just won’t stop.”
“Can you see the baby’s head?”
“Huh?” Travis frowned at the microphone. “You’re kidding, right?”
The doctor gentled her tone. “My name is Amanda. What’s yours?”
“Travis, ma’am.”
“Well, Travis, you’re going to deliver this baby—”
“The hell I am!”
“And I’m going to help you.”
“Uh-uh, no way.” Travis shook his head so hard his hat shifted. “This is not going to happen—”
“It’s coming!” the woman screamed, then curled forward, teeth gritted as her face folded in on itself.
Travis dove into the back seat, dragging the microphone with him. “She says it’s coming!” he shouted, yanking the mike cord taut. “What do I do?”
The doctor’s voice was crisp, competent. “Remove her clothing and see if the head is crowning.”
Defeated, Travis issued a pained sigh, licked his lips and mumbled, “I’m real sorry, ma’am, but we, ah, need to adjust your skirt and such.”
The woman bared her teeth, allowed him to do what had to be done, then snarled like cornered prey.
Taken aback, Travis wiped his forehead, blinking at the woman who appeared ready to rip out his Adam’s apple and shove it up his nose. But he saw something else in her eyes. He saw terror.
Her snarl slipped into a broken sob. “Please,” she whispered. “Help me.”
Travis’s heart melted. “I will, ma’am. Don’t you fret. I’ll take real good care of you and your baby.”
Her gaze was skeptical, but tinged with hope. “Have you done this before?”
“Hmm? Oh, sure. Dozens of times.” Since the reassurance seemed to calm her, Travis chose not to mention that all of his previous patients had hooves.
A split second later the woman was convulsing again, locked in the throes of the worst contraction yet. Travis grabbed the mike. “The baby’s coming, all right. I can see its head.”
