Page 6 of Winter Vows

Hardy sighed. Word of this was going to spread like wildfire. He could just imagine what the rumors would be like by morning. He’d never live it down. “I have some paperwork here,” the nurse said. “If you’d just fill out these forms for me, I’d appreciate it.”

His frustration mounted at her refusal to take his word for the fact that he didn’t know the woman in the back room. “I can’t help you. I don’t know her. I don’t even know her name. I don’t know where she’s from. I don’t know what sort of insurance she has. Ask her.”

“She’s pretty well wiped out,” the nurse said. “Then look in her purse. She probably has ID in there, an insurance card, whatever you need.”

“I can’t go through her purse,” the nurse retorted with a touch of indignation. “I just thought, given your relationship, that you could provide the necessary information.”

“There is no relationship,” Hardy said tightly. “None. What about that word don’t you understand?”

The nurse withdrew the papers with a heavy sigh. “They’re not going to like this in the billing office.”

Hardy whipped his checkbook out of his back pocket. “How much?”

The nurse blinked. “What?”

“I asked you how much. I’ll write a check for it.”

“I don’t know the charges, not yet. She’ll be here overnight at least. There will be routine tests for the baby.”

“Then give me something to sign and send me the bill.”

“You said you don’t know her.”

“I don’t, but I wouldn’t want your precious paperwork messed up. Just send me the bill, okay?”

The bright patches of color on the nurse’s cheeks suggested embarrassment, but she popped some papers in front of him, anyway. Hardy signed them all. He knew, even as he scrawled his signature in half a dozen places, that he was dooming himself. After all, what kind of fool would pay for the hospitalization of a woman he didn’t even know? Obviously everyone was going to jump to a far different conclusion.

Well, so be it, he thought as he jammed his checkbook back in his pocket and headed for the exit. What was it they said? No good deed goes unpunished. Between his reputation and his bank account, it looked as if he were going to take a real hit.

Then he thought of the baby and the sassy woman who’d been forced to trust him with their lives. What if they did cost him a few bucks? What if he took a little ribbing for a few weeks? It would pass soon enough.

And in the meantime he could remember forever that he’d been part of a miracle, the kind of unexpected miracle that a bachelor was unlikely to experience, the kind of miracle that assured a man of God’s presence. What price could he put on that?

Three

The last thing Trish remembered was falling asleep, her baby in her arms, as the stranger rushed her to the hospital. She’d been exhausted, but she had never before felt such contentment, such an incredible sense of accomplishment.

She woke up to bright lights and chaos as three people swept her from the truck, wheeled her into the emergency room, then took her baby from her arms and clucked over her bravery. Once she was inside, there was no further sign of her reluctant hero. He vanished just as quickly as he’d appeared earlier. She hadn’t even had time to thank him properly, to apologize for the grief she’d given him.

No one seemed to stay still long enough for her to ask a single question. Finally she latched on to the sleeve of a pretty, dark-haired woman whose bedside manner had been gentle, cheerful and briskly efficient. She read the name printed on her tag: Lizzy Adams-Robbins, M.D.

“Doctor, is my baby all right?” she asked. “She was a couple of weeks early, and I was in the middle of nowhere when she decided to come. The man who helped was wonderful, but he wasn’t a doctor...” She realized she was babbling but she couldn’t seem to stop.

“Your baby is perfectly healthy,” the woman assured her. “She weighed in at a respectable seven pounds, three ounces. Terrific lung power. Despite the circumstances of her untimely arrival, I’d say everything turned out just fine.”

Trish remembered the baby’s wails and couldn’t help smiling. “She already has a lot to say for herself, doesn’t she? No wonder she was so anxious to get here.”

The doctor grinned, then patted her hand sympathetically. “Right this second you may find that charming, but take it from me, you won’t feel that way a week from now when she’s been waking you out of a sound sleep a couple of times a night. By the way, have you decided on a name for her?”

Trish hadn’t given the matter of naming the baby a lot of thought. Despite the increasing size of her belly, the routine of prenatal visits and regular kicks from an active baby, she had somehow gotten the idea that she had forever before she had to decide on anything as important as a name. She’d been too busy trying to plan her escape and steer clear of her father, who was dead set on having her marry the baby’s father.

Even now with the baby a reality and the future uncertain, she still knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t marry Jack Grainger if he were the last man on earth. On the same day she’d found out she was pregnant, she had also discovered that he’d been seeing at least two other women—intimately—while he was supposedly engaged to her.

Even if those two pieces of news hadn’t collided headfirst, she would have wriggled out of the engagement. She’d discovered that Jack bored her to tears, maybe because he was so busy with his other women that he hadn’t had time for her. She suspected he hadn’t been any more overjoyed by the prospect of marriage than she had been. He’d just been too much in awe of her father—or her father’s fortune, more likely—not to go along with Bryce’s plans for the two of them.

Very methodically she had gone about quietly selling her business to a friend who’d expressed interest in it. She’d put her furniture in storage and slipped out of Houston. She’d been heading west to start the new year and a new life...someplace, when she’d gone into labor. The fact that her daughter had arrived early did not alter her determination to move ahead with her plans, and they definitely did not include Jack or any of the Delacourts.

The baby was her responsibility, and she was going to do right by her. That started with giving her a name she could be proud of, honoring someone who deserved it. Certainly not Jack. Certainly not anyone in her own family, since they’d all been far more concerned about convention than about her well-being or the baby’s. Assuming that the marriage was a foregone conclusion, her mother had pleaded with her more than once to rush the wedding so that her pregnancy wouldn’t show. When Trish had made it plain that there was to be no wedding despite her father’s wishes, her mother had been appalled.

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