The Bravo Bachelor. Christine Rimmer

      He glanced at his Rolex. Seven-fifteen. He rubbed his grainy eyes and wondered at how the day had raced by with him hardly aware it was passing. He’d missed a couple of meetings in the afternoon.

      Plus, there had been a lunch he was supposed to go to, hadn’t there? With his dad, his brothers Ash and Matt and a couple of BravoCorp’s biggest investors. He knew he shouldn’t have blown that off. His assistant, Georgia, had probably spent the day going nuts, calling him over and over, wondering where the hell he’d gotten off to. He should have called her when he decided to take Mary to the hospital.

      And he needed to stop putting off calling his dad. Davis was probably past being annoyed with him and starting to get worried. He didn’t want that.

      But then he thought about Mary. And Ginny.

      And somehow all that crap that added up to his real life…? So what about that?

      Later. For all of it.

      He was still hungry, so he got another sandwich, more coffee and a piece of chocolate cake. That time he ate slowly, letting Mary have all the time she needed, to talk to Ida, to eat her own dinner.

      Almost an hour had gone by when he poked his head back in the door of her room. She’d switched off the lamp by the bed. Only the dim recessed light in the ceiling, turned down low, bathed the room in a dim glow. The remains of her meal waited on the swinging bed tray, which she’d pushed to the side. She seemed to be sleeping, her head turned to the far wall. He couldn’t see the baby, but figured she must be in the bassinet on the other side of the bed.

      He started to duck back out again, thinking how it was time, after all, for him to go. He could slip away without disturbing either of them, and get in touch in the morning, to make sure she was doing okay.

      But Mary turned her head with a sigh and saw him, her eyes half-open, a slow smile curving her soft mouth. She whispered his name. “Gabe…” And she held out the hand without the IV hooked into the back of it.

      His heart strangely lighter, he slipped into the dim room and let the door shut silently behind him.

       Chapter Five

      After he put her dinner tray outside the door, Gabe returned to Mary, took the hand she offered and sat in the chair. They were quiet for several minutes, just being there, together, in the dark. He could hear Ginny’s breathing, even and shallow, from the bassinet across the bed.

      “She’s sleeping,” Mary whispered, and squeezed his hand. He was thinking that she was bound to drift off to sleep herself in a minute or two. Then he would go.

      But instead of closing her eyes, she whispered, “Poor Ida. She’s all upset she wasn’t here. She said Helga took a turn for the worse. Ida had to rush her to the hospital—and in the confusion, she left her cell at Helga’s house.”

      Funny, but by then, he’d started to feel as if he knew Mary’s mother-in-law—and her sister, Helga White, too. “Is Helga okay?”

      “She’s better, Ida said.”

      He realized he didn’t even know what illness Helga suffered from. “What’s going on with Helga?”

      “She has heart problems. Low blood pressure and congestive heart failure. This time, her heartbeat slowed and almost stopped. They got her stabilized at the hospital. But now they’re talking about a pacemaker. She’ll be hospitalized for the next several days.”

      “So what will Ida do—I mean, now that Ginny’s here?”

      “She says she can get her other sister, Johanna, to fly up from Arizona and take over with Helga. Ida says they agreed, she and her sisters, that she would have to be here when the baby came. Poor Ida…” Mary chuckled, low. “She feels so bad she wasn’t here for me—and plus, there’s the disappointment. She wanted so much to see her grandchild born. This was a once-in-a-lifetime deal for her. Rowdy was her only child.”

      “That’s rough.”

      She shrugged. “Oh, she’ll get over it—the minute she gets her arms around Ginny.”

      Ginny. So Mary was calling the baby Ginny, too. He supposed it was a logical choice as a nickname for Virginia. Maybe it had even been the name Mary’s mother went by. Still, for some crazy reason, it pleased him to no end that he had called her Ginny first, and that Mary thought of her as Ginny, too.

      Gabe shook his head. Was he losing it or what?

      Mary was watching him. “What?”

      As if he would ever cop to getting all warm and fuzzy because they both called her baby Ginny. “Nothing. So Ida’s coming back to look after you, huh?”

      She nodded. “It might be a few days until she and her sisters get things worked out and she can come home. And Dr. Breitmann said they’ll probably release me from the hospital tomorrow afternoon, if there are no complications. So in the meantime, until she gets here, Ida insists I’m supposed to get a doula to stay out at the house with us. Ida will foot the bill.”

      “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a doula?”

      “Kind of a combination housekeeper, nanny and nurse.”

      “Where do you find one?”

      “Ida will make some calls and get back to me with some numbers.”

      “Well, all right then. You’ll have a doula.”

      Her eyes were shining. “So everything will work out—oh, and I told Ida all about you.”

      He faked a scowl. “All about me.. .like what?”

      “Like how you came over to try and get me to sell the Lazy H and ended up driving me to the hospital and sticking with me right through to the end. She says you’re a hero and she can’t wait to meet you—but to warn you that if you think I’ll sell that raggedy stretch of sagebrush and boulders Rowdy left me just because you came to my rescue in my hour of need, you’ve got another think coming.”

      Ida’s warning didn’t surprise him. “She loves the ranch, too, huh?”

      “Uh-uh. She hates it. It belonged to her husband and he made her live there when she wanted a house in town. He left it to Rowdy, knowing that if Ida got her hands on it, she’d sell it in a heartbeat.”

      He couldn’t help thinking that maybe Ida was the one he should approach with BravoCorp’s offer. If he convinced her she needed to put the pressure on Mary for Mary’s own good, and Ginny’s, too…