“But it’s three weeks early.”
“According to the calendar maybe. But Baby thinks otherwise. Now, unless you want me to drop your daughter on her head here on the porch, I think you’d better go upstairs and get my suitcase. It’s in the—”
“I know where it is. Oh, hell, it’s really the baby. Jenny, will you sit down please!” Cage roared when she took a step toward the door. “Do I call the hospital, the doctor? How far apart are the pains? What can I do?”
“First you can calm down. Then you can go get the suitcase like I asked you to. I’m sure Kerry will call the doctor. His number is posted on the cork board near the phone in the kitchen,” she told Kerry calmly. “Linc, would you please check on Trent? I think Lisa just fed him a June bug.”
Jenny returned to her chair on the porch and watched with amazement and a great deal of amusement as they all rushed around like headless chickens, bumping clumsily into each other as they raced to do her bidding.
Cage forgot his manners and reverted to using the language he had learned in the oilfields from the roughnecks. Trent was enjoying the crunchy June bug so much that he set up a howl when Linc, who was looking a little green around the gills and moving as though his hands and feet had suddenly grown disproportionately large, fished it out of his mouth.
Of the three, Kerry maintained the most composure. It was her hand that Jenny grasped before the wheelchair rolled her toward the labor room as soon as they arrived en masse at the hospital.
“Everything will turn out fine. I know it.” She smiled at Kerry meaningfully as they wheeled her away.
Since Cage was Jenny’s birth partner and his participation was required in the labor room, it fell to Kerry and Linc to watch Trent and Lisa and to notify Cage’s parents and the Flemings. They were told that for the time being there was nothing they could do and that they might just as well stay at home until further notice.
Cage came to the waiting room to give them periodic reports, which amounted to nothing except that the baby hadn’t arrived yet.
“How’s Jenny?” Kerry asked him.
“She’s beautiful,” he said enthusiastically. “God, she’s just beautiful.”
When he left, both Kerry and Linc were smiling over the man’s apparent love for his wife. But when they glanced at each other, their smiles faded. Knowing that her unreciprocated love for him must be transparent, Kerry turned away to check on the two young children. The supply of picture books and Bible stories in the hospital waiting room had been exhausted. Finally Trent and Lisa had fallen asleep on the sofa. Kerry and Linc had, at different times, offered to take the children home, but Cage was insistent that they stay.
“Jenny wants Trent to be here when the baby is born,” he told them. “That way he’ll feel like he’s a part of it.”
“Funny how they can sleep through all this hospital commotion,” Kerry said now as she ran her fingers through Lisa’s dark hair.
“Yeah.” Linc’s chair was only a few inches from the corner of the sofa where she sat, but it might as well have been miles. “Any prospects on Lisa’s adoption?”
Kerry shook her head. “The foundation is working on it.”
“I hope Immigration doesn’t start hassling you.”
Kerry rubbed her hands up and down her arms as though suddenly chilled. “Surely they wouldn’t send a child back there.” She stared down at the sleeping Lisa, then looked up at him. “Before you leave, I want to thank you again for all you did to get us out.”
He shrugged irritably.
“No, please, let me thank you. We wouldn’t have made it without you. And before I forget...” She reached for her purse and took out the check she had filled in and signed earlier in the day. She extended it to him.
His eyes dropped from her face to the check. With a sudden movement that startled her, he snatched it from her hand. He read it, noticed that it was drawn on her personal account and that she had a beautiful signature, then viciously ripped it in half.
“What did you do that for?” She had been hoping that by paying her debt, she would feel a sense of finality. As long as she felt obligated to Linc, he was still a part of her life. Until he was extricated completely, she couldn’t get on with the business of living without him. “It’s untainted. I never touched my father’s money. My mother left me an inheritance.”
“I don’t care where the money came from.”
“Then why did you tear up the check?”
“We’re even, okay?” he said harshly.
Her lips parted slightly as she sustained another painful blow to her heart. “Oh, I see. You’ve already been paid for your services.” She drew a shuddering breath. “Tell me, Linc, was last night worth fifty thousand dollars?”
Furious, he surged to his feet.
“We’ve got a girl!”
Cage’s sudden appearance startled them. They spun around. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Six pounds, seven ounces. She’s beautiful. Perfect. Jenny’s fine. No complications. You can see the baby as soon as she’s weighed in, footprinted and all that.” After he received their hearty congratulations, he knelt down and whispered to his son, “Hey, Trent, you’ve got a new baby sister.” Though Kerry protested, Cage insisted that she go in to see mother and child first. At the end of the corridor, she checked in with a nurse and was led into a postnatal ward. Jenny was the only new mother in there. Her daughter, wrapped in a fuzzy pink blanket and wearing a stocking cap, was cradled in her arms.