Beth also looked up. ‘Luca?’
Luca stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Rilla? Beth?’
For a few moments no one did or said anything. The entire bush seemed to be holding its breath.
‘Rilla,’ Beth cried. ‘It’s coming!’
Rilla turned her attention back to Beth, breaking out of the twilight zone they’d entered. She looked down in dismay to find that Beth was right. The head was right there. Great!
She turned to look at Luca. There were seven years of silence and a jumbo load of baggage between them, but Rilla knew that they were in the worst possible place if the baby or Beth needed any emergency care. And estranged husband or not, Luca was an emergency medicine consultant—she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She could ponder the fickle finger of fate later.
She swallowed. ‘Luca, get down here. I need you.’
Luca knew she hadn’t meant need him need him, but it didn’t stop the quick flare of heat he thought had been extinguished long ago. He took a beat to mentally douse the flame before he responded to the obvious urgency of the situation. He moved closer, crouching down on the rug.
‘Is she full term?’ he asked. His gaze assessed the situation as his medical training came to the fore.
Rilla shook her head. ‘Thirty-six weeks.’
Luca nodded. Only just premature. And Beth’s belly certainly looked a decent size.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked. He knew Rilla was perfectly capable of delivering a baby hell bent on getting out and didn’t see any need to take over. Beth was in good hands.
‘Just be here.’ Things were out of their control and Rilla knew it. Babies that came as fast as Beth’s determined little one practically delivered themselves. All she had to do was catch. ‘Just in case.’
She could feel his presence looming beside her and felt strangely claustrophobic in the middle of the wide open bush.
On second thoughts… ‘Actually, go down the other end and give Beth something to lean against. Reassure her.’
Luca nodded. Good idea. As far away from Rilla as possible. He shifted around behind Beth, settling her back against his stomach in a supported semi-upright position. Her elbows dug into his thighs for leverage.
Luca looked down into Beth’s sweaty face purposely evading Rilla’s gaze. A fine film of grime had settled into the furrows of her brow as her face grew red from the effort of suppressing the urge to push.
‘You’re doing well, Beth,’ he said, and gave her a gentle smile. ‘Let’s just keep this bit slow and easy.’ He picked up her hand and gave it a squeeze.
‘Easy for you to say,’ Beth said, gritting her teeth, and Luca laughed.
‘She’s nearly crowned,’ Rilla said to Beth.
He glanced up, despite telling himself he wouldn’t, and caught Rilla’s gaze. She was on her knees, her left hand against the baby’s head to slow the delivery so Beth wouldn’t tear. And she was just as he remembered. Exactly as she was in his dreams.
Her hair was just as thick. As dark and rich as expensive chocolate, and the weight of it in his palms was still almost tangible seven years later. Her long fringe was plastered to her puckered forehead and a hundred memories of sweeping it back while they made love swamped him.
Her eyes were the colour of amber—tawny in some lights, like liquid gold in others. The large freckle that adorned the corner of her mouth like an old fashioned beauty spot, the only blemish on her flawless olive skin, drew his gaze like a moth to flame. Before he knew it he was staring at her mouth, remembering its softness, its secrets.
Luca bit down on a frustrated oath. How the hell had he ended up helping to deliver a baby with his estranged wife in the middle of nowhere? His analytical mind spun at the odds of stumbling across this particular set of sisters on an out-of-the-way bush track. He’d only been back in Brisbane for two days. What kind of sick cosmic joke was this?
But how much more ironic, more cruel was it that a baby was being born as well? The very thing that had been the catalyst that had driven them away from each other seven years ago was the very thing that had now brought them back together for the first time since.
Beth groaned and brought him back to the present. ‘You’re doing well, Beth,’ he soothed quietly, returning his attention to Beth. ‘You’re so close—isn’t she, Rilla?’ he added as Beth started to protest.
Rilla swallowed at the familiar way he purred her name, his accent rolling it across his tongue, branding it with his own special stamp of possession. ‘Y-yes,’ she said huskily.
A couple of voices from behind split the air at that moment and Luca was relieved to see a young couple approaching.
‘Have either of you got a mobile phone?’ he called, his voice firm and commanding, gaining their attention immediately.
The couple nodded, looking at him uncertainly. ‘Yes, but there’s no reception,’ the woman said.
Luca nodded. ‘We know. I need you to run back to the car park and ring for an ambulance. Tell them we’ve got an imminent delivery of a four-week-premature baby.’
The couple stared for a moment, not moving. ‘Now, damn it! Hurry!’ Luca demanded. And then Beth cried out again and the couple needed no further encouragement, rushing away.
Beth quietened and Luca searched for some distracting conversation. ‘I didn’t know you were pregnant, Beth.’
Rilla suppressed a snort. ‘Well, you wouldn’t. Would you?’
He heard the accusation in her tone and their gazes locked, hers flashing rich gold embers. Had she cared? He’d left the country with the distinct impression she never wanted to see him ever again. He noticed her ring finger was minus the gold band he’d given her, and he wondered how long she’d waited before removing it.
Beth moaned, interrupting the sudden tension. The moan turned into a full-throated roar as her birth canal stretched unbearably to accommodate the baby’s head. Rilla talked calmly over the top of her.
‘OK, Bethy, just pant now. The head’s crowning. Pant through it,’ Rilla instructed.
‘I…can’t,’ Beth yelled.
Rilla knew that the urge to expel the baby was now a biological imperative and that all women got to a point where they felt defeated.
‘Yes, you can,’ Rilla and Luca chorused, then glanced at each other, startled by their synchronicity.
‘Like this.’ Luca demonstrated through the ruckus Beth was kicking up. He panted like a shaggy dog in a heat wave.
Rilla felt a spike of insane jealousy as Luca coaxed Beth through the last gruelling part of the birth. This was the Luca she knew. The Luca she’d loved. The consummate professional whose rapport with people was legendary.
Was this how he would have been had she carried their baby to term? Would he have held her hand and panted with her and looked at her like she was performing the most amazing miracle on earth?
The irony of the situation smacked her in the face. Kneeling on the ground, witnessing the wonder of new life, had brought all their old problems into sharp focus. Her sister was giving birth. The thing she hadn’t managed to do and in not doing so had driven a wedge so deeply between them they hadn’t been able to find a way back to each other.
Beth cried out and Rilla murmured words of encouragement. She looked at Luca’s downcast head. This could have been her, here with Luca.
The constant emptiness that gnawed away at her womb returned with ferocious intent. She’d give anything to be in Beth’s position now, an attentive