CHAPTER TWO
SHE WAS DYING. Eve was sure of it.
The pain was knifing through her, and the contractions were so powerful that it felt as if King Kong were squeezing her belly with his hairy fist. Her breathing was too fast. Her heart, racing.
And now she was hallucinating.
Either that or Lawson Granger had indeed slipped in the puddle where her water had broken and was now dying from a head injury. Great. If it wasn’t a hallucination, it meant she’d returned to Wrangler’s Creek after all these years only to cause the death of her old flame.
Her old flame grunted, cursed, and he maneuvered himself onto all fours. So, not dead, just perhaps with critical internal injuries. Of course, anything she was thinking or considering right now could be blown out of proportion because of the god-awful pain that was vising her stomach.
“My water broke,” she managed to say. “And my phone.” She’d dropped it when one of the contractions had hit, and the phone was now scattered all over the stone entryway and hardwood floor.
Eve wouldn’t mention that the reason her water had broken right by the door was because she’d been trying to hear who was talking outside the guesthouse. She’d thought it was another of her fans. Apparently not though.
“This is too soon,” she muttered. “I’m not due for three-and-a-half weeks. A baby shouldn’t come this soon, should it?” Eve knew she sounded frantic, perhaps even crazy, but she couldn’t make herself stop babbling. “Please tell me the baby will be all right.”
Lawson lifted his head, making eye contact with her. Yes, he possibly did have a head injury because he looked dazed.
Oh, God. There was blood.
It was on his head and on the butt of his jeans. Eve saw it while he was still on all fours and trying to get to his feet.
“You’re hurt,” she said, but it was garbled because another contraction hit her. For this one, King Kong had brought one of his friends to help him squeeze her belly. Because Eve had no choice, she dropped to the floor.
She was sinking onto her knees just as Lawson was getting to his. He caught onto the wall, and, grunting and making sounds of pain, he got to his feet. He glanced around as if trying to get his bearings, and he growled out more of that profanity. Some of it had her name in the mix. It definitely wasn’t the sweet tone he’d used when they’d been teenagers and he’d charmed her out of her underpants.
And speaking of underpants, hers were wet from where her water had broken. She was surprised she’d noticed something like that with the pain and with Lawson now looming over her. Since he seemed to have trouble figuring out what to do—possibly a result of his head injury—Eve spelled it out for him.
“Call a damn ambulance!” That was a lot louder and meaner than she’d planned, and she ended it with some of her own profanity. Eve also lay back on the floor.
Lawson shook his head as if to clear it, and he pulled out his phone. It took him a couple of tries to call 911. He poked at the numbers like a drunk man trying to hit a moving target, but he finally got through and requested an ambulance ASAP. When he’d finished that, he sank down next to her.
He did more cursing, followed by some wincing.
“I think you cut your butt,” she told him. “And your head. You might have a concussion.”
Considering that he’d seemed so dazed by everything else she’d said, it surprised Eve when that caused him to groan and mumble, “Vita.”
She knew that name. Vita Banchini. Hard to forget someone like that, but Eve had no idea what Vita had to do with what was going on now. Maybe the woman had put a pain curse on her and an injury curse on Lawson.
“You’re pregnant,” Lawson stated. Even though it was stating the obvious to an absurd degree, it was a good start. He was actually sounding somewhat coherent now, and he’d managed that comment without profanity.
“The baby’s coming, and he’s three-and-a-half weeks early,” she repeated. “How soon before the ambulance gets here?”
“Soon.” Lawson placed his hand on her belly. “How far apart are your contractions?”
She would have answered him if the contraction from Hades hadn’t hit her at the exact moment she opened her mouth. The sound that came out was nowhere recognizable as human speech.
“All right,” Lawson mumbled. “All right. Stay steady. Try to relax. And breathe. Don’t growl like a bear or it’ll make your throat sore.”
It was all stupid advice. She couldn’t do any of those things. But she could latch on to his hand since it was right there on her whale-sized stomach. Eve latched on and squeezed.
It helped.
Well, it helped her, anyway, but Lawson yelped in pain and cursed again. He worked his hand out of her grip—which she wanted to point out was mild compared to the contraction—and he shot her a look that could have frozen central Texas in August. That wasn’t his charming look, either, but it coordinated well with his noncharming tone and useless advice.
Over the past eighteen years, she’d fantasized about what it would be like to come home and see Lawson again, but never once had she thought it would be like this. Of course, she hadn’t expected him to welcome her back with open arms, either. Good thing, too, since he wouldn’t be able to get his arms around her right now.
How the heck had it come to this?
Here she was thirty-five, almost thirty-six, and was about to give birth to a baby she certainly hadn’t planned. A baby she loved and desperately wanted though. She just hadn’t wanted him to decide to come this early.
Added to that, she was without any medical help other than the man whose heart she’d crushed. Maybe this was some kind of karma playing out. If so, she wanted karma to know that she was really suffering. Maybe even dying.
Oh, mercy.
Was she dying?
No, she couldn’t be. Not with so much unsettled in her life. But maybe that’s how most people felt. There hadn’t been nearly enough time for her to get her ducks in a row. Heck, she wasn’t even sure she had a row yet, and her main duck was missing.
“Tessie,” she sobbed.
That came through loud and clear, and it caused Lawson to stare at her. “Your daughter.”
Since it wasn’t a question, that meant Lawson knew some of what had gone on in her life since she’d left Wrangler’s Creek. Of course he did. Most of her adult life had been tabloid news even after she’d stopped acting. Entertainment. Well, it didn’t feel so blasted entertaining right now.
“If I don’t make it,” Eve said, “please call Tessie for me and tell her I love her.”
Again, she didn’t hear Lawson’s answer because the next contraction roared through her. Eve hadn’t timed them, but she was betting they were less than a nanosecond apart.
“What about the baby’s father?” Lawson asked. “You want me to call him, too?”
Her heartbeat was drumming in her ears, King Kong and his posse were squeezing, and she was about to explode. Yet she heard that. Heard the edge in his voice, as well. She’d managed to keep the baby daddy’s identity out of the press, but Lawson probably figured that it was no one he would approve of.
Well, neither did she.
But she couldn’t do anything about that right now other than give birth to this precious child and start putting the pieces of her life back together.
“How long before the ambulance gets here?” she asked again, this time through the grunts and groans.
Lawson might have given her the answer, but Eve didn’t hear it because another contraction came. She hadn’t thought the pain could get worse, but she’d been wrong about that. She nearly reached for Lawson’s hand again, but everything inside her was screaming to do something else.
“Help me get out of my panties,” she gritted through clenched teeth.
The words were very familiar. Probably because she’d said them, or something similar, to Lawson moments before he’d rid her of her virginity. There’d been pain that night, too, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to this. Medieval torture was nothing compared to this.
Lawson’s forehead bunched up. “Uh, maybe the medics can take them off. Or I could call Garrett. He’s in the house.”
“No. Not Garrett.” She didn’t want anyone other than the medics or a doctor seeing her like this. It was bad enough that Lawson was having to witness it. Plus, she didn’t want Garrett slipping in the puddle. “Just help me with the panties.”
Lawson was clearly uncomfortable getting her partially naked, but that screaming inside her was still going on. Along with another loud message for her to push. But she couldn’t do that, not until the medics came because it would make the baby come before they got there.
She pushed.
Eve couldn’t stop herself. She bore down, making that bear growl that Lawson had already warned her about, and since he wasn’t ridding her of her panties, she fought to get them off.
“Please don’t let me die,” she told him. “Please let my baby be all right.”
Lawson looked up at the ceiling as if searching for some kind of divine assistance. “You’re not dying. Both you and your baby will be fine.”
Oh, she wanted to latch on to that poorly attempted reassurance, but the craziness was building and building. “How do you know we’ll be fine? Have you ever delivered a baby before?”
“No. Just calves.” He shimmied the panties off her. “But I suspect it’s about the same.”
The horrified look on his face said otherwise.
“Is something wrong?” Eve asked.
“No, nothing’s wrong. But I see the top of a head.” The color drained from his face.
Eve was certain the color drained from her face, too, but it didn’t last because she had to push again. That no doubt put some color back in her cheeks since she was straining and grunting.
“Here.” Lawson thrust his left hand at her again, an invitation for her to squeeze the crap out of it.
So, that’s what Eve did. She squeezed, pushed, cursed and grunted. Lawson was doing some of those things, too, in addition to putting his right hand between her legs.
“You’re almost there,” he said. “One more push should do it.”
She honed in on the sound of his voice and pushed. Then, just like that, the pain vanished. Not just a little bit of it, either. It completely went away. She looked down to see if Lawson had worked some kind of magic. No magic though.
Lawson was holding her son in his lap.
There was a split second of stunned silence from all three of them, but it didn’t last. The baby started to cry, and Eve could tell from the loud wail that there was absolutely nothing wrong with his lungs. That nothing wrong applied to the rest of him, either.
He was perfect.
Yes, perfect. Even with that squalling red face, balled-up fists and spindly legs. And huge feet. He was like a really pissed-off Hobbit. But he was her precious little Hobbit.
Lawson reached up on the kitchen counter, grabbed the roll of paper towels, and he coiled them around the baby like a hooded blanket. They certainly made a picture with him tending the baby like that. The boy she’d once loved holding the newborn boy she already loved with all her heart.
“No horns,” Lawson said.
She froze, blinked, but Eve quickly stopped the horrified look that was forming on her face when she realized he was joking. The corner of his mouth lifted into a smile, and he eased the baby into her arms.
Suddenly, her life didn’t seem like so much of a mess. All things seemed possible. But it didn’t last. It was gone in a flash—as was Lawson’s smile when his gaze connected with hers. Eve saw it then. The hurt she’d caused because of the choices she’d made.
No, not all things were possible.
“I’ll see what’s keeping the ambulance,” Lawson said, getting to his feet.
He was still bleeding, and limping, but Eve had never seen a man move so fast. At least until he reached the puddle, and his feet flew out from under him again. He dropped like a stone, his backside and head smacking the floor a second time.
Knocked out cold.
And that’s how the medics found Lawson when they came rushing through the door.