“By choice?”
He was actually startled to see tears well up in those gray eyes. She looked away, busying herself with unbuttoning her gown to put the baby to breast. A flush of self-consciousness stung Ryan’s cheeks as he watched Maddie help her new daughter find the nipple. Why he should be reacting at all made no sense. He’d watched dozens of mothers nurse their babies. Hell, how long had it been since nakedness had meant anything more to him than anatomy?
The alert, hungry infant hit pay dirt almost at once; Maddie’s soft laughter glittered with love and momentary surcease from her worries, and something inside Ryan warmed a little more…and made him feel as if he needed to justify his presence in the room.
“Tired?” he asked.
Maddie shook her head. The fingers of her left hand—graceful, short-nailed—stroked her baby’s cheek. “No.”
“It’s not a sign of weakness to admit you’re tired after having just given birth, Maddie.”
Her mouth stretched thin. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, you’re fine. Feel like talking, then?”
After a moment, she said, “Answering questions, you mean?”
“A stranger gives birth in my house, you might say I’m curious. And concerned.”
Pride flashed in those silvery eyes. “I’ll pay you for delivering the baby.”
“I’d bet my life on it. But that’s not what I want to know.”
Again, he saw the tears, figured she’d do just about anything to keep them from falling. “I could say it’s none of your business.”
Ryan tried real hard to squelch the exasperation this woman seemed determined to stir to life inside him. “You made it my business when you showed up here in labor. You’re at least twenty pounds underweight. So forgive me for taking my job seriously, but I want to know why. You’re blamed lucky the baby’s as fit as she is, but it won’t do you or her any good to neglect yourself any more than you already have. Did you even have any prenatal care?”
Maddie stared hard at the baby, her mouth set. With her free hand, she swept a hank of straggly hair off her face; it fell right back. “This is my third child. I know how to take care of myself.” She looked up at Ryan. “I don’t smoke or drink, if that’s what you’re thinking, and I ate as well as I could. I never have weighed more than a hundred ten pounds, even when—”
She stopped, cleared her throat, fingering the baby’s cheek.
Ryan let out a ragged sigh, deciding a cup of coffee sounded real good, right about now. “I’m not judging you, Maddie,” he said, and she snorted her disbelief. “I’m not. I just wonder how you’re going to take care of yourself. And your children.”
After a moment, she said, “I’ll get by.”
He folded his arms. “You know, why didn’t you just go ahead and have the baby in the car?”
Her mouth twisted. “There wasn’t room.” A beat or two passed before she added, “I don’t like being beholden to people.”
“I gathered that much,” he said, then waited until she looked at him. “But it looks to me like you haven’t got a whole lotta choice in the matter right now. All I want you to worry about for the next few days is feeding that new daughter of yours and getting your strength back.”
The eyes sparked, like the flash of sword-steel. “I don’t need—”
He stared her down. She got quiet, but her embarrassment pricked his heart when she palmed away a tear. “We’re strangers to you. Why should you feel obligated to take care of us?”
Ryan suddenly felt hard pressed not to strangle the woman. Moving as cautiously as his brother Cal might with an unbroken colt, he eased around the bed and sat on its edge, leaning over so she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “Let’s get one thing clear, right now. Obligation doesn’t have a blamed thing to do with this. Like it or not, you and your daughter are now my patients, because I took an oath a long time ago that won’t allow me to see the situation any other way. Got that?” She hitched one shoulder, her mouth quirked. “Good. At least we got that settled.” He leaned over, grabbed a clipboard and blank chart off the nightstand. “So let’s make it official. Full name?”
“Madelyn Mae Kincaid.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Is that the truth?”
She blew out a breath. “You can check my driver’s license if you don’t believe me. Which is in my coat pocket with my change purse.”
So she was a few years older than he’d thought. Still awfully damn young to be a mother three times over, though.
“Address?”
Her resultant silence gave him no choice but to look over. She was frowning down at the baby. “Maddie?”
After a moment, she met his gaze. “I guess I don’t have one, just at the moment. Well, unless you count the Double Arrow.”
The Double Arrow. His brother Hank’s place. Wasn’t the Hilton—hell, it wasn’t even a Motel 6—but she’d been safe there, at least. However, even cheap motels ate up money at a good clip. Money he suspected she didn’t have. “Where were you before?”
“Arkansas. Little Rock.” She made a face. “We moved there from Fayetteville after Noah was born…” Something in her expression led Ryan to believe there was more, but then she said, “I came here to find my husband’s great-uncle. Maybe you know him? Ned McAllister?”
“Ned? You’re kidding? He’s kin to you?”
“Like I said, by marriage. I…we’ve never actually met.” Then she paled even more, if that was possible. “Oh, no…he didn’t die or anything, did he?”
Ryan let out a soft laugh. “Ned? I imagine that old buzzard’ll outlive me. But his bones aren’t as strong as they used to be. Broke his hip last week, so he’s in the hospital over in Claremore. Which is where he’ll be for some time, at least until he’s finished up his physical therapy.”
“Oh!” With that one word, Ryan could see Maddie’s last shred of hope vaporize. She looked down at the baby, her hand trembling when she stroked the infant’s cheek. “He never had a phone—well, I suppose you know that—and all I had was a P.O. box for an address. I knew I was taking a chance, just coming on out here like this, but there was absolutely nobody else….”
Pride and panic were a helluva combination, weren’t they?
The baby had fallen asleep. Ryan leaned over and gently removed her from Maddie’s arms, making sure to keep the infant well swaddled in the double receiving blankets Ivy had brought, even though the heat had taken the chill off the house by now. She was diapered, too—Ryan always kept packages of disposables in his office to accommodate his littler patients. And their sometimes forgetful mothers.
He sure did have a soft spot for the babies, he admitted to himself as he smiled at little Amy Rose, giving Mama a chance to regain control. Shoot, giving himself a chance to quash a feeling akin to hitting a patch of black ice.
Lucky thing for him he was real good at steering out of the skids.
“I’ve got some clothes for her, back at the motel,” Maddie said on a shaky breath. He glanced over at her, imagining how ticked she’d be if she had any idea how worn out she looked, lying there against the pillows. “I guess I kinda forgot them, once the pains hit.”
Ryan felt one side of his mouth lift. “Understandable.”
Maddie stayed quiet for a moment, her attention fixed on the baby, then let out a sigh. “Before