O’Rourke slipped the rain slicker onto his now-drenched arms. He might still be a wee bit rough around the edges, he thought, remembering something his mother had once said about him, but at least chivalry wasn’t entirely dead within his heart.
“You coming?” the female attendant asked as her partner stabilized the stretcher inside the rear of the ambulance.
O’Rourke shook his head. Chivalry notwithstanding, his part in all this was technically over now that there were more competent people on the scene. Time for the Good Samaritan to be finding his own way home. He began to back away.
“No, I—”
“Sure, he’s coming,” Gary told the woman, putting out one hand to stop her from closing the ambulance doors. “He’s the daddy.”
Time to set this man straight. “Actually—” But O’Rourke got no further.
Like a conspirator, unmindful of the rain, Gary lowered his head in close to O’Rourke. His voice was nothing if not sympathetic. He spoke like a man with years of domesticity behind him.
“Now, you don’t want to go planting seeds of doubt and discord with the little mother at a time like this, do you? She’s been through a great deal.” Gary arched a knowing, shaggy brow. “Whatever went down between you from your first time together to now’s all in the past. She needs you, boy.” The policeman all but pushed him toward the ambulance. “Go hold her hand and tell her she’s beautiful.”
With rain plastering his hair to his head and pouring down his face, O’Rourke stared at the other man incredulously. In his experience, policemen didn’t stand around, doling out advice like some kind of psychologist. “What?”
“Beautiful. Tell her she’s beautiful,” Gary repeated, raising his voice as the wind began to pick up. “A woman needs to hear stuff like that, especially when she looks as if she could scare the paint right off the walls.” He looked toward the interior of the ambulance. The female attendant was scowling at him, waiting to close the door he wasn’t releasing. “She’s just had your kid, and it looks like she’s done a great job, if you ask me. Give her the support she needs. Believe me, you’ll come out a winner in the end.”
Before O’Rourke had a chance to say anything to protest the blatant assumptions the policeman had made, Gary propelled him into the ambulance.
“Got one more for you, Martha,” Gary announced triumphantly.
Suddenly, O’Rourke found himself inside the ambulance. The doors behind him were being closed and Kitt was looking up at him in dazed confusion. He had no choice but to take a seat beside the strapped-in gurney.
“I’ll follow you in.” The policeman’s voice wedged itself into the ambulance just before the rear doors were shut. “It’s a slow night.”
Not for everybody, O’Rourke thought.
The next second he heard the siren wailing as the ambulance driver picked up speed. They were on their way to the hospital. This evening was definitely one he was going to tell the others about when he phoned home.
Or arrived home, he amended, thinking of the deportation notice on his desk at the apartment.
Was she imagining it, or was the stranger with the washboard stomach at her side again? Kitt blinked twice, trying to clear her vision. The man remained sitting where he was.
“What are you doing in here?”
O’Rourke laughed shortly, trying to stay out of the attendant’s way as Martha monitored Kitt’s vital signs. “I’m asking myself the same question.” He glanced toward the closed doors, wondering if the policeman was making good his claim and was following the ambulance. “The good constable seems to think you need moral support.”
His attention drawn back to the woman who was the reason for all the mayhem he’d found himself in in the last half hour, O’Rourke looked at her. There was no doubt that she was exhausted, but there was also no need for him to serve up empty platitudes about her appearance the way Gary had suggested. Despite what she had just been through, wet hair notwithstanding, Kitt Dawson looked radiant. Above and beyond the call of new motherhood. There was something in her face that transcended her ordeal.
O’Rourke had a sneaking suspicion that, fixed up, Kitt Dawson immediately became the center of attention in every room she entered.
Moral support, Kitt thought dully. She could certainly do with some of that right about now. Too exhausted to concentrate, she knew she was going to have to puzzle out what her next move was going to be—and sooner than later.
When she was discharged from the hospital, she could probably stay with Sylvia, her best friend, in her Newport Beach studio apartment. But two people—two and a half people, Kitt silently amended, looking at the sleeping bundle in her arms—living in such close quarters got awfully old fairly quickly.
But at least it would give her a little time to think. And hopefully come up with a viable plan. Right now, she had nothing.
Her Good Samaritan was talking to her, she realized. Concentrating as best she could, Kitt tried to absorb what he was saying to her and not think about how much she hurt. Physically and emotionally.
“Besides,” O’Rourke was saying, “you’ve still got my sweater and my jacket and I sort of thought I’d be taking them back by and by, once they have you settled in at the hospital.” He figured it was as good an excuse as any. Besides, the sweater had been Beth’s going-away gift to him. His youngest sister would be hurt if she thought he’d just given it away.
Kitt realized that the sweater was still wrapped around her baby. The jacket had somehow managed to come along with her when the attendants had transferred her from the van to the gurney. She felt beneath her head now.
“Your things,” she acknowledged with a note of embarrassment. “They’ll probably need a lot of work before you can wear them again.”
“Don’t be worrying about that.” As the attendant withdrew, O’Rourke unconsciously drew in closer to Kitt, placing his hand over hers in a silent bond that was as natural to him as breathing. “My mother taught me how to take care of my things well and make them last,” he told her with a smile. She’d had to, he added silently, doffing his cap to his mother. When there were six children, money only stretched so far. Fabric stretched farther. “So, what’re you going to call her?” He nodded toward her sleeping bundle.
Kitt tightened her arm around the bundle instinctively. She hadn’t thought of names, at least not girls names. Something inside of her had been convinced she was going to give birth to a boy. Just like something inside of her had been convinced that Jeffrey was going to make a miraculous turnaround and suddenly become responsible.
Good thing she didn’t make her living as a fortune teller, she thought sarcastically. She would have starved to death a long time ago.
Looking down at the bit of heaven in her arms, Kitt sighed now. “I don’t know yet.”
He’d had a sibling or two who’d had to wait for a moniker, O’Rourke thought. As if sensing she was the topic of conversation, the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at him.
O’Rourke felt his heart being claimed in an instant. “So you’re nameless, are you, little one?” he whispered to her softly.
As if in response, the baby made a noise and then closed her eyes again.
Very gently, taking care to only touch his hand lightly along the downy hairs, O’Rourke passed his hand over the small head. “I supposed this qualifies as our first conversation.”
Kitt found she couldn’t say anything in response. There was suddenly a large lump in her throat, blocking any words.
The next moment, the ambulance had stopped, its rear doors parallel with the doors leading into Harris Memorial’s emergency room. The doors flew open. Kitt and her baby were engulfed in a sea of