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She shamelessly clung to Cade’s hand, and he hung with her until the contraction passed, leaving her gasping and exhausted.
With infinite gentleness, he stroked the washcloth across her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t’ve pushed you for information, especially when I told you I wouldn’t.”
But it had drawn him out of his remote, brusque manner, bringing the tenderness back to his warm brown eyes. Sara didn’t want to see it leave again, didn’t think she could stand it if it did. But she realized it came with a price to herself.
Because when the next contraction came, just as strong, a few minutes after that, then the next and the next after that, she knew it meant she was going into hard labor. Her baby was on its way. Yet still something held it back, something in her held back, for there was little progress.
She was reaching the edge of her endurance. The edge of her reason.
“Oh, Cade.” Sara clutched his hands with both of hers as yet another contraction came and went, and still no baby. “I don’t know…if I can do this.”
“Sure you can, darlin’,” he countered with quiet firmness as he sat beside her on the bed. “Sure you can.”
No, I can’t. She could barely hold her head up, much less hold at bay the doubts and fears boiling up in her. Why didn’t the baby come? What was wrong with it? What was wrong with her? This was her own flesh and blood, for God’s sake! If she hadn’t the strength within her to bring her own child into the world, then what did she have the strength to withstand?
“No,” Sara said, shaking her head. “No, you don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I can’t understand,” Cade agreed placatingly. “No one can who hasn’t birthed a child.”
“That’s just it! Who knows if I have before?”
Even she could hear the hysteria that rose in her voice. She couldn’t breathe. The pain, the confusion, the lack of any mooring in this storm in her head—each was taking its toll.
“C’mon, darlin’.” Cade’s voice was steady, his gaze unwavering, keeping the connection. But even that was barely getting through to her. Panic prowled nearby, stalking her in her weakened state. “Remember our pact? Just focus on what’s directly in front of you. Focus on that baby of yours, ready to come into the world.”
“I know…I am…but oh, Cade, I don’t even know where he came from, where I came from!” she cried, giving in to her fears at last. It was simply too much to contain.
Yet it only cleared the way for her next fear, which clambered up from the depths of her being, fighting her for expression. “I don’t even know who we belong to…and why he’s not here!”
Another contraction socked her, pitching her forward, her spine rounding and body shaking with effort. The pain seemed unbearable, the contraction intense, as if every muscle in her body was converging to push out this child.
But it wouldn’t come! It wouldn’t come, and she didn’t know why.
Sara fell back, drained. It seemed impossible she’d find the strength and energy to endure the following wave.
“Sara.” The name came to her as if across a canyon, wide and deep. “Stay with me now. Stay with me.”
She found Cade’s words unexpectedly humorous. He was the one she was trying to keep engaged in the moment, wasn’t he? she thought as laughter bubbled up from her chest. What emerged was a sob, then another. Sara turned her head away as she worked to contain them.
“I’m sorry, Cade,” she whispered.
“Sorry for what?”
“For…drawing you into this.” She squeezed her eyes shut, but still the tears streamed from their corners. She couldn’t hold them back, another failure. “You don’t know me…and whoever sent me to you…why they sent me to you…it wasn’t right. I don’t belong…here.”
He said nothing for a few minutes. Then his weight next to her on the bed stirred as he released her hand.
Arctic cold, as icy as the wind outside whistling under the eaves, swept through Sara.
Then she felt his palm on her cheek, urging her to turn her head. Weakly, she resisted.
“Hey. Look at me.”
Reluctantly, Sara opened her eyes, afraid of what she’d find. Cade’s face swam before her, and she blinked away tears to see him gazing at her—no, connecting with her, as she so needed.
“You’re right,” he said, “I can’t begin to know what it’s like havin’ a baby—or what it must feel like to be without the anchor of a name I knew was mine, or a place to belong. But I do have some experience with goin’ without the tie of loved ones. Without someone to belong to.”
His gaze faltered briefly, but then came back home to hers. “And I won’t have you feel so alone as that.”
Like dawn breaking over the horizon, she saw in Cade’s brown eyes so many things she’d hoped for, without even realizing it: reassurance, encouragement, confidence—and maybe a little bit of love.
Or was it her exhaustion, the pain, the utter despair she had been fighting that made her think she saw all those things?
Then Cade said, “I’m here to tell you, though, that wherever both of you came from, you and your baby, you’re here now—in my house, in my bed, right where you need to be.”
He wove the fingers of one of his large, capable hands in hers. “For now, you belong here, with me. And I won’t let you down.”
It seemed unreal, but at his words Sara felt the pain, the fatigue, her every doubt and fear for her child, dwindle and wane like an echo across both space and time. They were all still there, most certainly, but manageable now.
Some part of her, though, still doubted. She had to be sure. “Just…don’t leave me, Cade.”
“I won’t,” he vowed, low. “Not for anything.”
Her eyes spilled over with new tears, for she knew then in her heart that she had had the right instinct in finding this man. Or perhaps it hadn’t been her doing at all, and she’d been guided to him, not by some mysterious note writer, but by a force much larger than them all.
It was a gift, she realized, this trust in a force—call it heavenly or fateful or whatever—that she somehow had lost faith in, in that slumbering memory of hers.
Tremulously, Sara smiled at the man who had given her such a gift. Cade’s gaze dropped to her mouth, then came around again to hers. What she saw there overwhelmed her anew.
It was that connection, to be sure, but stronger than ever, made so by the naked longing in his eyes. The power of it reached out to her, and she couldn’t help but respond with an answering yearning that rose up from deep inside her, almost from another life, another time completely—
The next contraction hit.
Cade helped her pull herself forward, her shoulders hunched and her chin lowered as she bore down hard, a guttural moan of effort rising from her chest. His fingers laced with hers, and her nails dug into his palm. He didn’t bat an eyelash.
“I can see the head crowning,” he told her, not without some excitement. She slumped back as the contraction subsided. “Next one, give a big ol’ push, and I bet we’ll have him.”
“Really?” she panted, not daring to believe it.
“You bet.” He massaged her calves, seeming to know without a word from her that they were seconds from cramping. “When the baby does start to come out, though, I’m gonna have to concentrate on it, you know. So I won’t be able to hold your hand. You okay with that?”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Good. I already told you, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
And he didn’t, even as her agony increased twofold with the next contraction. Yet they were making progress.
“C’mon, darlin’, you’re doin’ great,” Cade urged, both hands now flush up against her intimately, ready and waiting to receive precious cargo. “Big push now. You can do it, darlin’. You can.”
Sara pushed with all her might, putting everything into it, holding back nothing, for now she knew someone would be there to see her through to completion.
“There you go,” Cade exhorted her. “I’ve got his head, just give me the rest of him—”
“Him?” she puffed, straining to see. “Is it a boy?”
“I don’t know yet,” Cade said, full upon his knees by now, every muscle in him seeming to strain with her in empathy. “Just one more push, baby. One more, just for me…”
She couldn’t let him down. Where she found the strength, she didn’t know, but it came to her, and one last time, Sara bore down. The last of her apprehension disappeared as she watched the miracle unfold as he received her child into his large hands.
First off, he checked its parts. “Hoo-haw! It is a boy! You got yourself a son.”
“We do?” she breathed. “Oh, let me see him!”
“In a sec, darlin’.” With barely a pause, he snatched up an eyedropper and suctioned the infant’s mouth and nose.
From her position, the babe looked a good weight, easing some of her apprehension that he was early. But why was he so still?
“Is he…is he all right?” she asked, fear creeping into her voice despite herself. “What did the doctor say to do if the baby’s not responding?”
He didn’t answer. “Cade, what did he say!”
“He didn’t…we didn’t get that far in the conversation,” he said curtly, still suctioning feebly.
“But why…?” Then it dawned on her. “The phone—it did go out, didn’t it?”
Again, Cade refused to answer, his wide shoulders hunched over the tiny form, his face a study in fierce determination. His silence, however, was all the confirmation she needed.
Oh, what kind of woman was she not to protect her child better, to put him at such risk?
It was her worst fear revealed.
“Cade, please, I can’t lose this baby!”
“You won’t. He’s just gettin’ his bearings.”
Frantically, Sara pushed herself upright, trying to see, trying to reach for her baby. “But he’s not moving—”
“He will!” Cade hit her with his bloodshot gaze, and she saw his own fear in it. Yet she saw something else, too, enduring as the day was long. “He’s going to be fine. I promise you.”
Then, as if in answer to that promise, the baby sputtered briefly, filled his lungs and, with a grimace, gave a mighty cry.
Grabbing a towel, he dried the baby off, and Sara could see for herself that the infant was quickly gaining color. His tiny fists waved about as he gave another gloriously vigorous wail.
Cade placed him on her stomach. “There you go, darlin’—a healthy baby boy.”
“Oh, you sweetheart!” She caressed the babe, wet and warm and still connected to her through the umbilical cord. But he was his own person now, even if they would forever be connected.
Hands on his thighs, Cade smiled across the bed at Sara. Even with his dark hair matted with perspiration and his eyes ringed with exhaustion, Sara thought she’d never seen anything so noble and true as this man. She’d hold the image in her heart forever.
Downstairs, a clock chimed, and she could tell he counted the strokes, as she did, twelve in all.
“Happy New Year, darlin’,” he whispered.
She couldn’t not do it. Whoever she was, wherever she’d come from, she had to reach out to him one more time with her gaze—reach out, grab hold, and connect. Because she knew. Knew there had been a moment of grave danger for her child. And Cade McGivern had seen him—seen them both—safely through the storm. She would never, ever forget that.
No, she’d not lose memory of Cade McGivern. Not for anything.
“Yes, it is, Cade,” Sara murmured. “It’s a very happy one—because of you.”
And when she saw the look in those whiskey-brown eyes, it almost made her forget the slender band of gold she wore around her neck.
Almost.
Cade helped Sara to get cleaned up, best she could, changed the padding beneath her and kept the clean towels coming for the bleeding after she’d delivered the afterbirth, anything he could do to make her more comfortable and rest easier until she felt like getting up for a real shower.
He himself did the honors, giving the baby a sponge bath in the bathroom sink, as fascinated as she with the tyke.
What a perfect package he made! Cade couldn’t help thinking as he finished up. Newborn calves were precious in their own way, but gangly. Swaddled in a blanket, this babe fit in his hands like he was made to, dinky butt situated in one palm, tiny head cradling just right in the other. The shock of dark hair that stood up on his head like a bristle brush had been impossible to slick down, and in fact Cade’s efforts to do so had only made matters worse. He hoped Sara wouldn’t mind having a newborn who looked like a startled rooster.
“I don’t have a proper diaper for him,” he said, coming back into the bedroom. “I imagine I can rig him up somethin’ that’ll keep him dry—or actually, keep you dry.”
Sara let go of Virg’s shirt, which she’d been clasping shut at the neckline, as he handed her child back to her. She’d declined a change into another of the hand’s shirts.
“I’m more concerned about him soaking your bed,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I did a load of wash.” Still lacking his own shirt, Cade leaned a shoulder against the bedpost, openly enthralled with the picture the two made. “And soon’s I have a minute to get up to the attic, I’ll bring down the cradle that’s been in my family for years. I should get you somethin’ to eat first, though. You gotta be hungry after all that work you did.”
“You must be exhausted yourself, Cade,” she protested, but he wouldn’t hear a word of it.
“It won’t take me more’n a minute to fix you an egg or somethin’.”
“Th-that sounds wonderful.” Sara ducked her chin, avoiding his eyes. “I want to thank you, Cade, for all the work you’ve done. And for, well, for everything. I’ve completely commandeered your bedroom, and now I’m going to inconvenience you further by your having to wait on me and my baby till I can get up and around.”
“I don’t mind,” he told her truthfully. “Honest.”
But he guessed what was going on—and what he was trying mightily to ignore. They’d just shared an intimate act in delivering her son, almost as intimate as the one that had made him. It hadn’t escaped Cade how at the moment of birth she’d called him their baby. It wasn’t theirs, though.
It was hers—and some other man’s, wherever he was.
Cade didn’t like that he felt disappointed at this reality, but what, really, did he expect?
He expected…something more, for in that moment when he’d set that child into his mother’s arms, and she’d looked at him as if he’d performed a miracle, he’d felt anything was possible, anything on earth. And maybe even anything in heaven above, although he couldn’t have said what he’d have wanted that to be.
The baby, who’d been fussing, finally cut loose with a full-fledged howl that echoed in the room and brought his attention back to front and center.
“That’s some set of lungs,” he remarked.
Sara jostled the infant slightly, worry etched between her eyes. “I wish I knew more about babies.”
“Hell, what’s there to know? He’s probably just hungry,” Cade suggested. “At least, that’s what a newborn calf bawls about.”
“That’s a thought.” Her hands were at the buttons of her shirt before she seemed to remember herself. In flushed confusion, she murmured, “If you wouldn’t mind, Cade…”
He got her meaning. “Of course,” he said, cutting for the door, feeling a little flushed and confused himself. And unjustifiably rankled.
In the hallway, he leaned back against the wall. So he’d just taken her baby from her body! And sure, it made him feel like he’d performed a miracle. Never in his life had he felt such power of emotion before. And like a miracle, it had been transforming. But she wasn’t his wife with whom he’d have shared the real miracle in creating this baby.
Was there a chance, though, that she might not be anyone else’s?
With that thought, Cade realized he’d do almost anything to recover the feeling he’d shared with Sara—and that he definitely didn’t like, not at all.
Because heaven and earth couldn’t have stopped him in the next instant from turning back into the bedroom with the words of his own hopes for the two of them on his lips.
He stopped dead in his tracks. She’d already opened her shirt, revealing a creamy breast, and was in the process of guiding the newborn’s mouth to one rose-colored nipple.
Sara looked up in startlement, trying to pull the edges of her shirt together, but the baby’s mouth had already found its target and latched on.
Cade couldn’t have looked away even if his immortal soul depended upon it.
For in that instant before Sara’s gaze dropped, he caught the flutter of her lashes as she took in his own exposed chest. And instead of hope, raging desire surged through him in a torrent that stunned him, for it seemed an even greater force to be reckoned with—and even more one not to be denied.
Until he caught the glisten of a chain around her neck. On it, nestled in the hollow between her breasts and just above her child’s downy head, was a simple gold wedding band.
It glittered in the light, and in just such a flash, Cade saw himself in his own desperate, vulnerable aloneness as he never had in his life.
From the direction of the stairs there came a clatter like a herd of elephants stampeded up them. In the next instant a man appeared in the doorway, steam rising from his clothing, hoarfrost covering his bushy mustache and eyebrows, his face white as the driving snow outside.
His eyeball-popping gaze went from Cade to the woman in his bed to the baby cradled in her arms, then back to Cade. His shaggy head wagged back and forth slowly.
“Lordy, Cade!” Virgil exclaimed. “I knew I was late and prob’ly worryin’ ya to death, but I didn’t know you’d take to such extremes to distract yourself!”
She could not take her eyes off him.
Alone for the moment, Sara took the opportunity to explore every inch of her sleeping child.
Utterly exhausted but still too wound up to sleep, she made a thorough inventory, counting each finely formed finger, each tiny toe, each delicate dimple. She caressed each satiny surface, reveling in a softness that felt like none she could have ever imagined.
Whatever pain she’d endured, whatever heartache she’d lived through or would live through, it was worth it for this child.
It didn’t seem possible that just a few hours ago he had been inside her, a part of her, and now was a separate person—but oh! still so much a part of her, as he always would be.
To her surprise, features that had earlier been unrecognizable to her in the bathroom mirror she now glimpsed in her son: her own nose in the button on his face, a certain familiar look about his cupid’s bow of a mouth.
Tears misted her sight as she clung to that recognition like a lifeline. Who knew why she’d forgotten who she was, but perhaps her baby would help her to remember.
Who else was he a part of, though? The question haunted her. What man had she so loved—and had so loved her—they had created a child together?
And where was he now?
Turning, she stared blindly out the window where the blizzard continued to blow, as all the questions she’d managed to keep at bay since her delivery rose up inside her again. Questions she’d seen reflected in Cade’s eyes as they focused on the ring she wore around her neck.
The resulting desolation of spirit she’d glimpsed in him had been heartbreaking, for it was her own.
The tears standing in her eyes spilled over. What kind of woman was she? Had she only used that fine man, taken advantage of his good heart and tender feelings to keep him invested in her and her baby through the delivery?
But she’d had to! She herself had had to reach out to him with everything in her. He was real; he was there. The knowns in her life had had to take precedence over the unknowns.
And what had she known? That she was going into labor. That she was alone. That she’d been sent to Cade.
But now…now she had to ask about…him. The father of her child. What kind of man was he not to have been here with her now? Had she been trying to find him, and somehow gotten it in her mind she would discover him here?
Was that in fact her real transgression, not taking from Cade what she needed, but seeking from him what she’d been missing from the man who’d placed this ring on her finger?
“Hey, there,” came a soft call from the doorway. She turned.
Cade stood at the threshold to his bedroom as if needing an invitation inside.
“Hello.” A warmth having nothing to do with her erratic hormonal state swept over her. Suddenly, it didn’t seem real—that only a few hours ago he’d been with her on this very bed, the two of them partners in a battle for her baby’s life. It simply didn’t seem possible that such broad shoulders, such sturdy arms and large hands, could have yielded over their might to the kind of gentleness it took to hold a newborn babe. Seemed impossible that, with his reserved, remote bearing, she could have felt completely cared for and safe. Because right now, the sheer height and breadth and strength of presence of him took her breath away.
She could not take her eyes off him.
And what kind of woman did that make her?
“How’s the little mite doin’?” he asked in that provocative, gravelly drawl of his, coming into the room to drop a dark piece of clothing over the arm of a chair.
“He’s eaten his fill and is sleeping like a lamb,” she reported, covertly sweeping away the traces of moisture on her cheeks.
“Now that I most definitely can’t tolerate.”
The wind left her lungs with completeness. “But…why?”
“Sleepin’ like a lamb?” He shook his head gravely. “This territory’s strictly cattle ranching, and I’m afraid if word got out that Cade McGivern was tendin’ sheep on his place, I’d get tarred and feathered within an inch of my life.”
Sara was struck dumb—until she caught the amusement in his eyes. Relieved laughter shook loose any lingering anxiety. “Oh…you!” was the best she could come up with, flustered as she’d become.
For a second there, she’d experienced a riot of sheer panic that he meant to turn them back out into the storm.
Which was ludicrous. Yes, she’d done what she’d needed to, to secure the safe delivery of her baby. And yes, he’d seen the ring. Yet neither what happened before or afterward could diminish the moment when he had made her and her child his own.
But it had only been for that moment, he said. And now?
Sara only realized her mind had drifted when she heard Cade clear his throat, obviously not for the first time.
“So,” he said tersely, “how’s that makeshift diaper Virg made holding up?”
“Just fine. Want to see?”
She obligingly drew back the blanket as he bent close, leaning on one hand on the bed next to her hip. He’d showered, she noticed; his chestnut-brown hair shone slickly, the forelock hanging in spikes over his forehead. It reminded her of how his hair had been when she’d awakened and looked up into his eyes for the first time.
She pushed her own hair, limp and lank, back from her face. She must look a mess. As soon as she could, she was taking a shower.
The diaper was basically a clean washcloth with some extra gauze padding the front and pinned at the sides. The key component was the waterproof pants Virgil had fabricated out of a plastic freezer bag by cutting a couple of leg holes and rimming them with duct tape to prevent tearing and leakage. Two more pieces of tape secured the pants at the sides.
Cade eyed the whole contraption speculatively. “It sure enough makes him look like some home plumbing work, but I guess it does the job.”
“Baby Cade doesn’t mind,” she said before thinking.
His head shot up. “You named him after me?”
“Why, yes,” Sara said, commanding her gaze not to falter. It was difficult to do, with his face so close to hers. “I can think of no one finer.”
Shock rimmed his eyes. “That’s because you don’t know anyone else at this point!”
“I know you,” she averred stubbornly. “I know what you did for me and my baby.”