Beat of the Heart (Runaway Train, #2)(97)

Abby peered down at her phone. “Your contractions are coming faster and faster together. Do you want me to…” She glanced between AJ and Jake before looking back at me. “You know, check on things…down there?”

“Yeah, it probably wouldn’t hurt. I mean, between the two of us, we probably have just enough nursing training to be dangerous when it comes to labor and delivery.”

When Abby reached to ease up my dress, Jake threw up his hands defensively. “Wait, I’m sorry, but I have to get the hell out of here,” he said, before ducking out of door. I caught a glimpse of Rhys pacing outside with Brayden and Lily before Jake closed the door.

Abby gently reached under my dress to remove my soaked panties. She tossed them to the side, and then pushed the hemline up. “Oh my God!” she screeched.

“What?” AJ and I demanded in unison.

“You were right. Bella’s head…it’s like…right there.”

“Oh, shit, I’ve already crowned?”

“Whoa, what the hell is crowning?” AJ questioned.

“Didn’t you read any of the baby books I gave you?”

A sheepish look entered his face. “I skimmed some of them. Those birthing pictures were way intense.”

“Well for your information, crowning means it’s time to push.”

He shook his head wildly back and forth. “But you can’t push yet. The paramedics aren’t here. Can’t you just hold it in?”

The death glare that both Abby and I shot him caused him to shrink back into the seat. He held up his hands defensively. “Sorry, that was a really stupid question.” He swallowed hard. “Okay, then what do we do?”

I opened my mouth but was interrupted by the wail of an ambulance’s siren. At AJ’s horror stricken face, I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay now. The EMT’s will know what to do.”

Just as they knocked on the window, another pain seized me—this time it felt like a giant’s hands were squeezing my abdomen. I couldn’t help but pinch my eyes shut and push, regardless of whether the paramedics were there or not. Voices echoed around me, but all I could do was focus on the contractions as they came harder and faster.





As I crouched down at Mia’s side in the back of the limo, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. We’d come together sexually as a couple for the first time on a limo floor and now our daughter was going to be born in one. Mia was advancing so fast that the EMT’s refused to move her.

When I’d dared to protest that maybe having a baby in a limo wasn’t the best idea, they had ignored me. Instead they’d jerked up Mia’s dress even further and widened her legs for the delivery. Shit was getting epically real, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

But when I got my first sight of Bella’s crowned head, it was like a lightning bolt zapped me. Even from my vantage point, I could see she had a head full of jet black hair. Something about seeing that tiny head sent wonder and instant adoration rippling through me. This was my baby girl. I no longer gave a shit that we were having her in a limo and not a sterile delivery room. All I cared about was that my daughter— mi ni?a—was about to be born.

While I whispered soft words of reassurance in Mia’s ear, she huffed and puffed out breaths of air as her face contorted in pain. I hated that she had to do this shit without any good drugs. The entire time she was pregnant she had never once advocated for natural childbirth—she’d even refused those classes where they teach you to breathe because she knew she wanted drugs. But now she was being denied that all because of me, and her stupid honor as my loyal fiancée to tag along with me to my Grammy party shit.

An electricity crackled in the air as one of the paramedics began moving faster between Mia’s legs. A flurry of activity was going on below her waist, but I focused on her. I held her gaze as she rode the waves of pain, and then finally I resorted to singing Spanish into her ear. I knew she’d always said that Spanish turned her on and that was the last thing she was thinking about now, but I figured it might be a little soothing. It seemed to help a little.

And then almost like magic, one minute Bella wasn’t there, and the next she appeared, bloodied and wailing in the paramedic’s hands. Tears stung my eyes at the sight of her, and I didn’t bother trying to hide them.

As the EMT suctioned Bella’s nose and mouth, Mia squeezed my hand. “Is she okay?” she questioned.

The EMT smiled. “Looks fine—great, actually, considering everything. Of course, they’ll check her over at the hospital.” Turning to me, he asked, “Would you like to cut the cord?”

“Sure,” I replied, taking the scissors from him. Once Bella was freed from Mia, the EMT wrapped her in a blanket and handed her to me. “Sir, I’m going to get you to hang on to the baby while we get your wife ready for transfer to the hospital.”

Unable to correct him on our marital status, I merely bobbed my head. I couldn’t have spoken if I had wanted to. I was too enthralled by the tiny bundle in my arms. Even though she was still a little bloody and messy from delivery, Bella was the most breathtakingly beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life, next to her mother that is. Her lungs seemed to be working just fine because she was wailing her head off, her tiny features scrunched in anger. “Welcome to the world, my love,” I murmured in Spanish.