Just here for Mhairi.
It was time to have a baby.
Chapter
Two
Devon sat in his car, eyes closed, his half-knitted sock in his lap.
He supposed he really should have slept at the birth center, but he really wanted a cup of coffee he hadn’t made himself. So he’d driven down to the new coffee shop, finding, of course, that it was still closed at three o’clock in the morning.
So he turned on his little neck light, and he’d knitted for a while, but then he realized that he was tearing out as many stitches as he was putting in, so he put it in his lap.
It had been a long damn couple of days. Charlie had been in labor for thirty-six hours before Devon finally called for the ambulance and had them take the man to Montrose.
He didn’t think anything was desperately wrong, and he didn’t think anybody was in danger, but he didn’t like the way that the blood pressures were running. So, he figured better safe than sorry.
Raven was on bed rest with his pregnancy, which wasnot going great. So Devon was running things basically on his own.
Thank God for Naomi. She was a queen among women, and he felt like she could do almost everything with the actual deliveries at least for twenty-four hours. He needed a day.
But he really needed it to be five o’clock or five thirty, whatever, so that the coffee shop would open, because he had to have a cup or he was never going to be able to drive home.
He’d just dozed off again when someone knocked on his window, scaring the fire out of him. Devon damn near peed himself, and he hit his head on the seat rest.
“Ow!”
He peered out the window, and he saw a vaguely familiar face. Under a watch cap, there was a rugged, square and angled face, a short beard, and bright blue eyes. He searched his birth bank memory and came up with Mhairi. Her brother.
“You okay?” the guy called. Laird. His name was Laird.
“Yeah, I was waiting for a cup of coffee.” And at this point, he wasn’t sure if he could move. He had to pee, he was cold, his joints were frozen, and he was tired, like bone-deep tired. “Maybe a muffin. Although I really don’t give a shit if there’s any muffins.”
You don’t cuss, remember? Hush. No cussing.
“They don’t open for…” Laird peered at the door. “Another forty-five minutes. Would you like to go to the truck stop?”
Wait. Was the guy asking him to coffee? Or something?
He shook his head. “I can’t.” The truck stop was on the other side of the bridge. He pointed toward the row of neat old houses a few blocks over. “This is where I live.”
“At the fire station?”
“No. A few blocks over.” He was too tired todrive anymore.
“I can take you, man. You look wrung out, and I was on my way somewhere to eat anyway. I’ve had a long double shift.” The guy grinned, his breath puffing out in frosty clouds.
“I’ve been on for a while myself.” He swayed a little bit frowning. “You don’t like me, remember? Mean to me, you thought that my birthing center was not clean.”
Maybe he was too tired to keep his mouth shut.
The guy sighed, another plume of breath frosting out. “Can we discuss why we don’t get along someplace warmer and with coffee? I promise not to leave you stranded, but I can’t just leave you here to freeze or to get carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Okay.” This was a mercy coffee. Whatever. He could have pancakes and coffee at the truck stop, then crash for a few hours.
“Come on, Devon. Out of the car.”
He felt slow and sluggish climbing out of the vehicle, but his head cleared a little as soon as he hit the cold air.
