Baby's Watch

“You must have done something to get ready for this,” he said.

“There are…blankets and things…in the trunk.” She made a gesture toward the heavy trunk at the foot of the bed. He went to it quickly, lifted the lid, found the things she’d mentioned. He got out the pile of soft cotton cloths, spotted a pair of scissors in a sealed package and grabbed those, too.

Cord, he thought. You had to cut the cord, right?

God, he was way out of his depth.

“There’s no one to call?” he asked her, wanting to be absolutely certain before he committed to this.

“No one…could be here…in time.”

She was panting now, and he wondered if she’d taken some class in special breathing—didn’t they always say stuff about that?—or if it just happened naturally.

He laid her gently down on the bed. She cried out as another pain seized her. He reached over and turned on a bedside lamp, turned back and forgot to breathe for a moment.

She was more than pretty, she was beautiful. Her wide, dark eyes were huge, gleaming in the light. Her skin was a light, luscious olive tone—smooth, flawless, glowing. Her lips were full, soft, and slightly parted as she tried hard not to moan; he could see the ferocious effort she was making. It jogged him back to reality, and the urgent matter at hand.

“I don’t know anything about this,” he told her. “You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“And you think…I know?” Her laugh wasn’t bitter, but it wasn’t amused, either. And for the first time he wondered how she’d gotten into this situation. He couldn’t quite believe she’d done it intentionally, getting pregnant to sell the baby. It was feasible. But something in her dark, exotic eyes, and the way she looked up at him, made that impossible for him to believe, at least right now.

And it didn’t really matter right now. Whether she was involved in the smuggling ring or not didn’t change what was about to happen. Working on some combination of stories heard and movies seen, he did what seemed reasonable, starting with rolling up his sleeves and washing his hands in the bathroom just down the hall.

“How old are you?” he asked when he came back.

She looked startled, then wary.

“I’m only asking because my sister got pregnant four years ago. She was only eighteen.”

The woman smothered another moan, then answered. “I am twenty-two.”

Better, he guessed. But not much. “She fell for a smooth-talking city boy. He deserted her.”

It wasn’t a question, nor was there any emotion in the flat assertion.

“Is that what happened to you?” he asked softly. “He deserted you, when he found out you were pregnant?”

He found himself hoping she’d say yes, that she was here because she simply had no choice, not because she had the soul of a mercenary.

“No,” she said, her tone still flat. “It was I…who ran.”

Ryder blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

A sharp cry broke from her, and he realized the pains were coming closer together, and even he knew what that meant. No more time to try and find out who this woman was or why she was here, what her motives were.

“Hot water,” he muttered. They always talked about that, too, didn’t they?

“No…time.”

He realized she meant that literally.

“The baby…is coming.”

Now. She meant right now.

Ryder stifled the urge to run. Her hands flailed wildly, as if seeking purchase. He grabbed them, startled at the strength in them as she cried out yet again.

“It’s all right,” he said, squeezing her hands. “We’ll get through it.” Somehow, he added silently to himself.

He had no plan; he worked strictly on instinct. He kept up a stream of encouraging words, trying to distract her—and perhaps himself—from the embarrassingly intimate position they found themselves in. He wasn’t sure it helped, but when he paused she asked him to keep talking.

Until it started to actually happen.

He’d had no idea birth was such a messy thing. He’d always had some image that the kid slid out and got wrapped in a blanket and handed over. But this was wet, bloody and shockingly brutal. He didn’t know who to marvel at more—the woman going through it, or the child for surviving it.

If, of course, it did.

It was when he first spotted the baby’s head emerging that his gut truly knotted. Dark hair, nearly as dark as his own. He was a little startled. He thought babies were born bald.

The woman screamed then. It was a rending sound, and he touched her gently, trying to soothe her.

“It’s coming,” he said, even though he realized that no one knew that better just now than she did. “It’ll be over soon.”

She seemed to take heart from that, and sucked in a breath.

“Can you push?” he asked diffidently, wondering if that was just a stupid cliché, too.

She grunted then, a primal, earthy sound. Then again, and again.

Women, he thought. You heard about what they went through in childbirth, but until you saw it, you didn’t really realize how tough they were.

To Ryder, it seemed to happen fast then, although he suspected it wouldn’t be wise to say so to the straining woman. He should be paying more attention to the baby, and shifted just in time to see a tiny pair of shoulders emerge.

It did happen fast then. He reached to support the tiny thing she was expelling.

The moment he touched it, the “thing” became real to him. He stared down at the baby who barely filled his two hands. So tiny, so helpless…but it was a life, another human being, a fellow inhabitant of this glorious planet, and he’d helped it arrive.

This was big, he thought.

Huge.

How could something so incredibly small, so fragile and delicate, make him feel like this?

“It’s a girl,” he whispered. “A little girl.”

The woman made a sound he couldn’t begin to describe. She sounded exhausted, but there was something else in her voice when she instructed, “You must cut the cord.”

He winced, even though he knew that. He followed her brisk instructions, glad she was able to walk him through it. She might be young, but she’d clearly done her homework on this.

Or maybe women were just born knowing, he thought, despite her earlier claim to ignorance.

“I just leave it like that?” he asked, looking doubtfully at the stub of the cord still attached to the baby who appeared to be, to his amazement, looking around. Her eyes were brown, he thought, a little numbly. Dark, rich, espresso brown, like her mother’s. Her head looked a little funny, misshapen, but he guessed that was normal.

“It will fall off of its own accord later,” the woman said. “You must clean her. Her mouth, nose, so that she breathes easily.”

He did his best, aware that he was shaking slightly. And when the tiny child in his hands let out a protesting wail, he found himself grinning; things were working fine, it seemed.

“She’s got lungs,” he said, feeling a bit loopy, as if he’d downed one tequila too many. To his surprise the new mother laughed, as if she hadn’t just been through hell.

When she was clean and dry, he wrapped the baby awkwardly, but with a need for gentleness unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He took a last look down into the tiny face.

“Give her to me.”

The new mother’s voice was shaky, and when he looked from daughter to mother he saw fear in her eyes. She reached out, as if she were afraid he would refuse to hand over the baby. Ryder wondered suddenly if she knew what was going on around here, and had the sudden thought that she might suspect him of being connected to the baby-smuggling ring.

Well, she’s right, isn’t she? he told himself.

Then he put the baby into her mother’s outstretched arms. The look that mother gave him nearly stopped his heart cold.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

For the first time in his life with a woman, Ryder was speechless. All he could do was look at her, and at the tiny bit of humanity he’d just helped bring into the world. He didn’t know how he felt, only that whatever it was, it was more intense than he’d ever experienced before.

And on some level, somewhere deep inside him, he knew he would never be the same again.

Chapter 4

Maria.

Ana held her baby close, savoring the feel of her, the smell of her, the miracle of her.

She had thought of other names, but when the time had come there was no other. Maria. Her mother deserved the tribute; it was not her fault that Ana’s father had not been the man she had hoped. For a long time, Ana was grateful her mother had died before she’d learned the full extent of her husband’s dishonesty and evil. But now, she could only feel sad that her mother was not here to see this precious child, her granddaughter.

So she would do the only thing she could; she would name her after her grandmother and give her the life she deserved. Somehow, she would do this. She would ask for no help, no charity, she would make her own way, for herself and her baby girl.

No help…

“A hospital,” the dark stranger said. “You and she need to see a doctor.”

Ana shook her head. She trusted no one, especially now. She had heard too much about the local baby smuggling, had pumped Jewel daily for information, information she’d given sometimes reluctantly, for fear of frightening the soon-to-be mother.

“I am not going anywhere.”

“But what if there’s something wrong?”

“There is nothing wrong. She is beautiful. Healthy. You can see that.”

“But what about you? That was…you need—”

“No.” It sounded cold and heartless to her ears, when all he’d done was express concern about her. She hastened to add, “I—and my daughter—thank you for what you did. But you must go now.”

He looked nonplussed. She supposed it was rude, but what did rudeness matter when she had her baby to protect? She knew Jewel would be back with the kids soon, then she would have help she trusted.

She did not, could not dare trust this man. She didn’t know why he was here, how he had happened to arrive just as she needed help. For all she knew, he was one of them, had been watching her, a pregnant woman obviously alone, thinking perhaps to steal her baby as so many others had been stolen, ripped from the loving arms of their mothers and sold as if they were packages of cereal.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” he said softly.

“I do not trust anyone,” she said. “A lesson I should have learned earlier.”

He studied her for a moment, and then, to her surprise, nodded. “Wise choice.”

His voice was soft, gentle, but it held a harsh undertone that stirred something in her. Who was this man who had strode in out of the moonlight and helped her without questions? What had he been—what had he done—to sound like that? Was he truly one of them? Was her baby still in danger from him?

“Go,” she said, her voice sharp as her fears grew in proportion to the exhaustion that was growing, threatening to overwhelm her at any moment.

“I can’t just leave you here alone.”

“I will not be alone for long. People will be back here soon.”

“You don’t have to lie to get me to leave.”

“I am not lying. The woman who runs this place, she will be back with her charges soon. They only went to town for an outing.”

He lifted a brow at her, and she wondered what she’d said. Her English was, she knew, nearly perfect. She’d worked hard at that in college, intending to put it to use teaching in a bilingual school.

But sometimes, she realized it was too perfect; local idioms and slang peppered the talk of others, but her collegetaught skills stood out, marked her as different. But she’d long ago decided she would rather be different that way; if she was going to be judged, as people were, by the way she spoke, better too well than not well enough. That had always been her way. She saw no reason to change it now.

“Go. Please.”

He hesitated a moment longer, looking down at her. He towered over the bed, so tall, long-legged and strong, she thought. His eyes were dark, piercing, and she couldn’t help feeling he saw more than she wished. His jaw was stubbled with slight beard growth, as if he hadn’t shaved since this morning. His hair was even darker than her own, and fell in a silky if shaggy sweep over his brow when he leaned forward. She wanted to run her fingers through it and push it back.

That thought sent a stab of shock and fear through her. She needed this man gone. She obviously was not thinking clearly in the aftermath of this life-changing experience. The very last thing she should be doing at this moment was finding a man attractive. Especially a man she knew absolutely nothing about.

Of course, she had thought she knew everything about Alberto as well.

“Go,” she said again. “Please.”

“You swear to me that there will be help here soon?”

His concern moved her against her will. “I swear. And I repeat, I do not lie.”

She meant that. Small, kind lies to avoid hurt feelings were one thing, although she preferred to avoid those as well. But big lies about things that mattered had shaped then destroyed her world. She hated them.

For another silent moment, her rescuer, the man who had helped deliver the baby squirming in her arms, stared down at her. And then, sharply, he nodded.

“Be well,” he said, in a tone she couldn’t describe, some combination of command, awe and benediction. She had the oddest thought that this time had been life-changing for more than just herself. But this handsome American seemed too strong to let something affect him that much.

And then he was gone, disappearing back into the darkness as silently as he’d appeared, surprising her that a man of his size could move so quietly. It was unsettling, someone that big should make more noise, she thought. And in her exhaustion her imagination began to come up with reasons why a man like that would learn to move so stealthily—and none of them were good.

She was relieved that he had gone. She had half expected him to grab her baby out of her arms, proving himself part of the ring she so feared and that the local authorities were so diligently searching for.

But she could not deny he’d been a godsend. She did not want to think about what she would have done had he not appeared out of the darkness.

But she also did not want to think about what she would have done had he refused to go back into that darkness.

She cuddled her baby close, running through her mind all that she had studied: when to feed her, how she would know when she herself was ready for that, all the things she’d so voraciously read in preparation for this day. The pain she’d just endured was nearly forgotten already, although the gentle, encouraging touch and words of the dark stranger were not. She thought she would never forget those, or him. One day it might be a fascinating story to tell her daughter, about the unknown man who had come to their aid, and then vanished into the night.

Perhaps in time she would wonder if he had even been real, that tall, dark man. She smiled at her own silliness, a little surprised that she was still capable of such fantasy. Perhaps she was already preparing stories to tell her child at bedtime.

Instinctively she began to sing quietly to Maria, a sweet little lullaby her mother had sung to her.

Duérmete mi niña,

Duérmete mi sol…

Not that she actually wanted her little sunshine to sleep just yet, she was still too caught up in the wonder of it all. At last, she held this miracle in her arms, and she felt she must do something motherly, something to show this tiny human being she was loved and welcomed, even if she was lacking one of her parents.

“Better no father than an evil one, mija,” she whispered, determined that the baby would hear English as much as Spanish as she grew and learned to speak.

Yes, it would be different for Maria. She would grow up speaking both, at home in both tongues in a way her mother would never be. But it was what she’d wanted, Ana told herself. She was alone, isolated by choice from the family she’d once been close to. The family she’d once trusted.

You must remember who they really are, she told herself. She couldn’t help thinking some of them had to know what she had only recently learned, how vast were the criminal dealings her father was involved in. Once she herself had found out, the evidence was so obvious she could not believe she had missed it for so long. The older ones, her father’s brothers, sisters, the ones she could no longer think of as aunts and uncles, they must have known.

Had they indeed known, and conspired to keep it from her? Or had no conspiracy been necessary? Was she such a naïve fool that they had managed to keep the truth from her with no such effort?

The baby stilled, seemingly calmed by the sweet song. Ana held her even closer. She closed her eyes, shifting in the bed. The big man had seen to her comfort in an unexpectedly gentle manner, cleaning her, changing the bedclothes, and disposing of the mess of the birth quickly and efficiently. For a man who claimed to know nothing about the process, she thought he had handled it with remarkable aplomb. Her mother had often told her how her own father had been worse than useless. She liked the idea that her gallant stranger was much more of a man than her wicked father. She wondered what that stranger was thinking now, if he’d already put them out of his mind, if what had been a miracle to her was simply an odd occurrence to him.

He probably thinks you’re just another illegal looking for a handout, she thought.

She told herself it didn’t matter what he thought, not when she herself knew the truth. She was an intelligent woman, she had an education to offer, and she was going to start a new life for herself and her daughter. She would do it herself, without charity or handouts. Anything given to her, she would repay, in some form, as she was helping here at Hopechest Ranch in return for Jewel’s hospitality and kindness.

No matter what it took, she and Maria would make their way, and have a good life.

“I promise you, mijita. You will be safe, you will have good things, you will grow and learn, and above all else you will be loved.”

Ana settled in to wait, wondering what Jewel would think when she returned to find the population of her beloved Hopechest Ranch increased by one.

Chapter 5

This was insane, Ryder thought a couple nights later.

There was no reason in hell why that woman and her baby should haunt him like this.

He’d done the right thing. He might be the black sheep of the Texas Coltons, but even he had been unable to simply leave a pregnant woman in labor without help.

So why couldn’t he just chalk it up to some unexpected sense of decency, hope it might someday tip the judgment scales in his favor and move on with the job he was here to do?

He shook his head as he drove to a meeting with Alcazar. A daylight meeting for a change, which Ryder acknowledged with wry humor; rats didn’t usually come out in the sunlight.

And he himself was tired, tired enough that he needed to be on guard against making a mistake. His time in prison had given him some creds with the gang he hadn’t had before. He’d had to spin a tale about how he’d been released early due to prison overcrowding and good behavior—a first in his lifetime, he’d laughed as he relayed the carefully concocted story—and Alcazar had obviously checked it out before setting up this meeting today.

Ironically, the track his investigation had led him on, all around New Mexico and southwest Texas, had served to cement his position. He’d done a few jobs for people Alcazar knew, and word had gotten back.

Of course, he’d had to cover his ass with his new, government bosses, and had reported on each incident. They’d told him going in that a lot would be forgiven if he accomplished the main goal. Apparently they’d meant it; nothing had come down on him for doing exactly what had landed him in custody in the first place, joining the coyotes who traveled under cover of darkness, smuggling in illegals.

Only this time, he was doing it with full intention and knowledge. It was still unsettling even though the feds had ordered him to go along. And he’d been on track all the way.

Until that night.

It hit him again, hard, the memory of that moment when a tiny little girl had nestled into his hands, looking up at him with dark eyes like her mother’s. He figured she probably wasn’t seeing him, not really, but it surely seemed as if she were peering into his dark, bruised soul.

He’d been right. This was insane. It made no sense. It was only a baby, one he would likely never see again. So why did he feel as if there were some sort of connection between them, him and that tiny bit of squalling humanity? Just because he’d had the misfortune of being there at her birth? Just because he’d been the first one to touch her, hold her, because he’d been the one to make sure she was breathing and clean and dry and warm?

It made no sense, he repeated to himself.

Now, her mother, that made sense. She was a beautiful woman, a woman any man would take notice of. Even here, where olive-skinned beauties were common, she stood out.

But this puzzled him, too. Because it wasn’t simply her looks—she had been swollen with child and under the worst of circumstances when he’d first seen her—but her quiet courage under those circumstances had him thinking about her often. Too often. She was occupying his thoughts unlike any woman ever had.

And he didn’t even know her name.

He was so lost in his contemplations that he nearly missed his turn. He yanked the wheel left and headed into the brush along a barely visible track that wound into the back country, where anything could be lost forever.

As he got closer to the selected meeting place, he checked the cubby in the door of the truck where he’d hidden the handgun, a Glock 17, they’d given him after the crash course in using it. But going armed into a meeting with Alcazar would be the height of idiocy, and he was hoping he was past that kind of foolishness. It was secure, and they’d have to literally tear the truck apart to find it, so he felt reasonably sure they wouldn’t.

His government-issue cell phone rang. He reached for it automatically, then stopped. That was one advantage to working out here in the vast expanse of empty space; he could always claim he hadn’t gotten the call due to lack of signal. He supposed they had ways to verify that, but unless he abused the excuse, he doubted it was worth it to them. And he usually called them back before too much time had passed.

It was a silly, perhaps childish game, but it gave him the illusion of some kind of control, and right now he would take what little he could get. He didn’t want to tell them about what had happened at the ranch.

He wasn’t even sure why, if he was afraid they’d chew him out for violating what they called protocol, stepping out of his undercover role and being seen, or if he just wanted to keep it to himself. It almost felt as if telling anyone would violate a promise he hadn’t even made, to a courageous woman and a newborn he’d helped bring into the world.

And that made less sense than anything, he thought as he checked the truck’s odometer and began scanning for the small building he’d been told to look for.

When he spotted the ramshackle shed, he thought he must be wrong; this wasn’t a building, it was a lumber pile in the making. Alcazar wouldn’t hang out here. But then, would the man trust him enough to let him know where he really hung out? Ryder knew if he were in Alcazar’s position, he would trust no one.

Just as she trusted no one, he thought, the image of that dark-eyed beauty snapping vividly into his mind once more.

Annoyed at himself, he shoved the image away, forcing himself to concentrate. Hadn’t it been hammered into him during his weeks of training at that super-secret facility, that lack of focus could be fatal?