Jodi O'Donnell - When Baby Was Born

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.