He immediately started toward her. “Opal?”
She swung toward him, her eyes wide and afraid.
“Hey, what’s going on, baby?” he asked, arriving in front of her only a moment later. He put both hands on her belly and felt how incrediblytightit had become.
“My water just broke,” she gasped out.
Tag backed up a step and looked down, and sure enough, the faintest trickle of liquid had puddled on the floor. Pure panic reared inside him, and every thought he’d ever had simply vanished. The farmhouse disappeared, and his ears ceased functioning.
He looked up at Opal, and when their eyes met, sound and life and the world rushed right back at him. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Momma, my water broke,” Opal said, her voice as panicky as Tag felt.
“Wes, can you help me get Opal in the truck?”
“Absolutely,” her daddy said, joining them as her momma said, “It’s fine, Opal. You guys have mapped the way to the hospital, and no first baby comes in only a few minutes.”
“Some people’s do,” Opal said.
Tag strung his arm through hers. “Opal, honeybee, we are not going to panic. We can have a baby here, or in the car on the side of the road, or at the hospital. It’s not going to matter. Okay?”
She looked at him, and after only a moment of hesitation, she nodded.
Tag adored the trust she put in him, and he got her outside and into the truck before racing around to the other side to get the engine started. He forced himself to drive at a normal speed as he trundled down the road the half-mile to their house.
“You stay right here. I’m going to run in and grab your baby bag. I know right where it is, and it’s packed.”
“I don’t want to have the baby on Christmas Eve,” Opal said.
“No problem,” Tag said. “You probably won’t have her tonight at all, and she’ll be born on Christmas Day.”
With that, he jumped out of the truck and ran inside. Opal did have her baby bag waiting at her bedside, sitting in front of her nightstand, packed and ready to go. Tag grabbed it and ran back outside, tossing it over the driver’s seat at the same time he climbed in.
Opal had both hands on the top of her belly, and as he pulled his seat belt across himself, he said, “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I had a contraction,” she said. “We probably need to start timing them.”
His eyes flew to the clock, and then he dug his phone out of his pocket. “Yep. Let’s start tracking ‘em.” He fumbled to get to the timer app and then pushed start. “We can add—what? Fifteen seconds to this when you have another one?”
She nodded vigorously, like it was all her head knew how to do. “Yeah, maybe fifteen or thirty seconds.”
“All right,” he said, handing her the phone. “Let’s go.”
He swung around their circle drive and aimed the truck down the dirt road, praying with everything he had that they could make it to the smoother, more solid asphalt quickly, so he could get his beloved Opal to the hospital. Because while he had just said theycouldhave a baby on the side of the road, he certainly didn’t want to do that.
twenty-one
Briar could admit she loved the scent of pine trees mingling with freshly baked bread; it exuded a sense of quaintness and home. With the furnace running and a fire crackling in the hearth, she felt like she’d created a tiny slice of perfection against the cold and darkness beyond the cabin’s front door.
She’d just glanced at the clock when loud thumps landed against the front door.
“Briar, it’s me,” Tarr called. “My hands are full, sweetheart.”
She rushed to open the door for him, pulling it all the way open until it touched the wall. She found him carrying a laundry basket stacked with wrapped Christmas presents and a few grocery bags slung over one forearm.
“Those better not all be for me,” she said as he quick-stepped it past her.
“Did you invite anyone else to this party?”
