Page 4 of Mine to Keep

“What’s wrong with my baby?” she screamed.

Jamison said nothing as he continued breathing oxygen into her baby’s lungs before rubbing the center of her body.

Her.

Bryn’s eyes filled with more tears.

She had a little girl.

The baby’s arms and legs jerked. A sudden cough and cry filled the air. A collective gasp and cheers echoed in the background.

“That’s it.” Jamison smiled. “You gave your mommy and me a bit of a scare.” He placed her daughter on Bryn’s stomach. “She looks big for being born six weeks early. I think she’s going to be fine. The ambulance is only a block away. Can I call someone for you?”

She hugged her little girl. Her sweet baby. “No.”

“What about your husband?”

“There’s no husband. No boyfriend. No father.” She rested her hand on her sweet girl’s stomach, making sure it rose and fell with breath. She kissed her daughter’s head. She smelled like sunshine and sea salt with a hint of caramel. “It’s just me and now Zadie.”

“That’s interesting. Is it a family name?”

She glanced up, but Jamison had taken a step back as a couple of paramedics raced to her side.

As more strangers began examining her and the baby, she searched for the one who had saved her child’s life.

But he was no longer anywhere to be found.

Jamison Kirby tookthe clean shirt his father handed him and tugged it over his head, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Thanks for coming.” The crowd had dissipated, and the ambulance had pulled away, carrying mother and child toward the hospital.

“No worries. My office is two blocks up. You’re just lucky I happen to live above where I work.” Dalton Kirby pointed toward the car that Bryn had given birth in. “If she has no one to call, what are you going to do with that?”

“I told Bryn I’d have it detailed and leave it at her place. She literally just moved to town today. She’s the one renting Chip’s cottage.” Jamison leaned against his Jeep and adjusted his baseball cap. His heart still beat wildly and a bit out of control. During his seventeen years as a firefighter, he’d helped deliver two babies, but they’d been considered easy births in the sense that the umbilical cord hadn’t been wrapped tightly around the baby’s neck, nor did the children have to be resuscitated.

In all of Jamison’s career, he’d never been so terrified as he had been the moment he’d seen the cord choking the poor child. He’d done his best to remain calm. The last thing he’d wanted to do was panic Bryn, but he’d known he had when he started the CPR.

“I’m glad he was finally able to find someone. I know it has been hard on him financially to carry his mom’s place.”

Jamison nodded. Chip had been incredibly close to his mother and letting go of her things had become increasingly difficult. Selling her home was the one thing that Chip just couldn’t do. He believed that if he did, he’d lose his mother forever. It was a sentiment that Jamison wished he shared.

“Speaking of mothers. Have you spoken to yours lately?” His father gestured toward his police officer brother, Nathan, who happened to work for their mother, the current Chief of Police.

“Nope. And we’re not having this conversation.”

“It’s been two years since—”

“You finally divorced her,” Jamison said. He was tired of the same old argument. “You couldn’t forgive her, so why should I?”

“For the record, I left your mother before everything went down. And that’s not the only reason we divorced, and you know it. Our relationship was a rollercoaster ride from the get-go, and let’s not forget that we married because she was pregnant. That’s not necessarily the best reason. Sometimes, I think we kept getting pregnant, thinking it was the only way we would stay married. And we both loved the idea of a big family. But the point is, Steve was only the icing on the cake.”

“Are you kidding?” Jamison struggled to understand why his father had stayed with his mom after she’d slept with another man, which had then resulted in a child.

And then, his father had raised that child as his.

Of course, Jamison shouldn’t question that decision since hewasthat kid, and he loved the man he called Dad more than he could ever express in words. He was grateful for his father’s decision and, most days, wished he’d never been informed of Steve’s sperm donation.

Jamison wondered if Steve had only decided to come back into the picture because his wife decided to leave his sorry ass after all the years of the guy pining after the woman who’d chosen to stay with her family instead of running away with him.

“Come on, Dad. You left Mom because she never got over Steve. When he came back to town, it ended your marriage.”

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