“What’s going on?” he asked, gentle and with great bedside manner.
Arm still draped around Irina, he held Grace’s full attention.
“We don’t want to alarm anyone,” Grace said.
Which, Irina would note, was exactly what a person said right before ringing the alarm bells.
“But the woman’s water did break. We’re still forty minutes from Denver, so we wanted to see if there’s a doctor to help out, just in case. Honestly, you’re a real EMT?”
“Real in the sense that I did the training, took the test, and got the card?” He nodded.
“He’s a musician,” Irina said. Not to blow his cover, but because somebody should probably let them know what he did for a living.
“Dimefront.” Grace snapped her fingers. “I knew I knew you.”
“When did you have time to do all the EMT training?” Irina asked, because she couldn’t help herself. The guy was always writing songs or hanging with his guys.
“It’s online. At night.” He gave her a when-else-would-I-do-it look.
Well, she didn’t keep track of his nighttime activities, but this wasn’t what she expected he’d been doing between the hours of ten p.m. and five a.m.
Not that she didn’t think Knox was smart enough to be an EMT—he’d proven very apt in the medical emergency area. He even got Courtney to the hospital after diagnosing her with pre-eclampsia in a bar.
She simply didn’t know he’d made it official with actual coursework, that’s all.
“You know how to deliver a baby?” Grace confirmed. “If we need that?”
“Yeah, I can do it in a pinch. But she shouldn’t labor in coach. Can I upgrade her ticket to first class, so I can keep an eye on her?” He gestured to the empty row in front of them.
Irina blinked at her future husband, because that was even sweeter than the stepped-on crepe he’d brought her at the airport.
Who was this guy and why was she only now letting herself notice?
“This is nuts,” Irina said to Grace. “Can’t we just land?”
Grace shook her head. “We’re close enough to Denver they don’t want to divert unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
One would think a laboring mother would be absolutely necessary. But what did Irina know about planes and landing and schedules?
“I’m going to go get Mom,” Grace stood and moved through the curtain to coach. “We’ll move her up here.”
“I need to stand up.” Knox extracted himself from the clinch he’d had with Irina, and started to climb over her. She quickly stood to let him through.
She also moved out of the way as Knox clapped his hands for attention.
“Excuse me,” he said to the passengers in their little front of the cabin. “We’ve got a mom coming up in active labor. Research has shown that fewer people present during labor is actually more beneficial for Mom and baby, so I’m hoping if I offer you all tickets and backstage passes to the Dimefront concert in Denver next month, you might…” He tilted his head toward the curtain. “You know.”
“How can you get tickets?” a red-haired lady in the back asked. “Nobody can get tickets.”
“Because he’s in Dimefront,” Irina said. “This is Knox. Keyboard player, sometimes he sings, occasionally he dances.”
Little light bulbs seemed to flash over the first-class passengers. Those tickets with the backstage passes were probably worth more than the tickets from LAX to Denver International Airport.
Here’s the thing, first class wasn’t full, and the six other passengers didn’t have to be asked twice. Partly because the Dimefront show had been sold out moments after the tickets went on sale, and also because laboring Mom showed up and clearly wasn’t faking it.
“Give your contact information to Grace, and I’ll pass it along to our band manager who will send you passes,” Knox said, as they single-filed it back to coach.
The soon-to-be-new mom stopped walking as her abdomen tightened. It visibly tightened.
