She glanced up.
For a heartbeat, her piercing clover-green stare locked with his. Feeling part rescuer, part voyeur, he lowered his own gaze.
Sleet fell harder. Thunder rolled.
“You okay for me to cut the cord?” Gideon tugged his hat brim lower against the sleet’s assault.
“Please. Come in.” Her voice barely rose above nature’s racket. She’d cleaned herself and her baby, but the tent floor was still a mess. “I guess now’s as good a time as any since my son is sleepy from his meal.”
“Yeah.” My son. Gideon hadn’t even thought to ask. In another world, he’d longed for a son. Now he knew better. His time in the Navy had left him reactionary. Trapped in a crisis loop. He fixed impossible situations. A long time ago, broken people. Now, horses. Still a good thing, right? But according to his ex, his capacity to genuinely care? To give a shit? He’d left that ability in Iraq along with his—No.
Not going there today.
He stepped into the tent, then poured hot water over one hand, then the other, letting the runoff flow onto the already-wet floor.
“This should only take a sec.” He tried conveying a sense of calm that was a bald-faced lie considering the pounding of his heart.
Lightning cracked. Thunder boomed.
Sleet fell hard enough to make the tent’s ceiling appear as if it were writhing.
“This can’t be good,” the woman mumbled.
“Nope.” Gideon set down the pot to check on their sole means of transportation. Careful not to touch his freshly rinsed hands, he used his elbow to nudge the tent flap back to check on Jelly Bean.
“What are you looking for?” the woman asked.
“A horse. Or, in other words, our ride out of here.”
“Is he okay?” She gingerly sat up.
“Kind of hard to tell.”
“Why?”
“She’s gone...”
“Sorry.” The man set the cast-iron pot alongside her, then headed back into the storm. “But I’ve got to find the horse. You’re too weak to walk out of here, and—”
“Go. I’m fine. No need to explain.” And there wasn’t. She might not be able to remember her name, but she knew enough to realize Mother Nature wasn’t doing them any favors. The faster the man found their ride, the better.
Once he’d gone, leaving her alone again with her panic, minutes seemed stretched into hours.
What if he was hurt, and she was on her own again? Instinct told her she was a strong woman. If she’d survived giving birth in a tent, she’d somehow make her way back to civilization. But it would sure be a whole lot easier with a friend—not that she and the cowboy could be called friends.
She didn’t even know his name.
But she wanted to.
She eyed the pot he’d set beside her and lifted the lid. Beneath a thin layer of water were two nylon strings and a mean-looking knife. Everything needed for her to cut her son’s cord herself. Once they were separated, she could bundle him, then help her new friend find his horse.
Her backpack was within reach, so she tugged it closer, taking a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer from the front pocket. How could she have known it was there, yet not know her name or who’d fathered her child?
None of this made sense.
Her runaway pulse made her breaths choppy.
Lightning stabbed the earth with enough force to make her jump. Where was the cowboy? He shouldn’t be out in this weather.
Operating with newfound urgency, she exposed her son’s tummy, then enough of her own abdomen as low as she could comfortably reach. She squirted hand sanitizer into her palms, rubbed them together, then tied one nylon string roughly two inches from her baby’s navel. She recalled reading about this procedure and knew there were no nerves in the cord, which is why cutting it didn’t hurt. Doctors clamped it to prevent bleeding. The string would serve essentially the same purpose. She made quick work of tying the second string as low as physically possible, then took the knife from the pot, careful to touch only the bone handle.
Drawing her lower lip into her mouth, she clamped down with her teeth, then made the first cut. The knife was sharp, easily cutting the cord. The second cut was completed as smoothly and while she might have expected to feel a certain melancholy, her current drive to save the stranger who had saved her overrode sentimentality.
Before her son’s delivery, she’d had the forethought to make a pallet of clothes. Those were blood-soaked and ruined. She’d covered herself and the baby with more clothes.
Now she rose, eyeing the stranger’s saddlebags that he’d left inside the tent.
Darkness was falling too fast, making the lightning flashes all the more disturbing.
She swaddled the thankfully still-sleeping baby in a dry sweatshirt, then used the pot’s remaining warm water to wash herself. There were clean undergarments and a jogging suit in her backpack, so after bathing, she hurried to dress before her teeth chattered out of her head. Her long hair was a nuisance. Hands trembling from the cold, she finger-combed the tangles and leaves, then braided it, fastening it with a ponytail holder she’d instinctively known was in her backpack.
The tent floor resembled a crime scene.
After drinking more water and eating a protein bar, she rolled the entire mess into the floor tarp she’d spread, wadded it into a ball, then flung it outside.
She next unrolled her down sleeping bag and tucked the baby inside.
From the stranger’s saddlebags, she borrowed a red long-sleeved flannel shirt. Teeth still chattering, she lost no time in pulling it on.
She found a ball cap in her pack, as well as a plastic pouch containing a foul-weather poncho. Dizzy from the energy she’d expended, she ate a second protein bar, drank a bottled sports drink, then forced a deep breath before ducking out into the storm.
* * *
“JELLY BEAN!” GIDEON climbed onto a boulder, only to slide back down. “I swear to God once I find you, you’re headed straight for the glue factory.” Of course, that would never happen, but in the heat of the moment, the notion deserved consideration.
Thankfully, the sleet had eased up.
The thunder and lightning moved on.
In this part of the country if you didn’t like the weather, all you had to do was stick around ten minutes and it would most likely change. In the higher elevations, snow had already set in, closing the trails and passes.
He spent another thirty minutes circling the camp’s perimeter, but felt obligated not to venture too much farther. With luck, Jelly Bean would return on her own. Without luck? She’d either show up back at the barn or become bear or mountain lion bait. The grim fact forced him to increase his pace.
“Jelly! Where the hell are you, girl?”
He rubbed his left thigh. For the most part, he was one of the lucky ones. His old war wound only reared its ugly head when he overexerted himself or when fronts rolled through. He had friends who’d been to hell and back fighting two wars. One in the Middle East, and another once they got home, battling pills and depression.
A lot of times,