Second Chance Pass (Virgin River #5)(79)

“John, I’m so glad to see you,” Jack said.

“And I’m just so glad to be here. Jack, why don’t you glove up, help me out here.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure. I can do that. How you doing, baby?”

“I’m ready,” Mel replied.

“Hey, Jack,” John said. “Why don’t you go ahead. I’m right here. Go ahead, bring her out.”

“No way, man,” he said, backing away.

“Come on—you know you want to. Might as well. You did the hard part. You put up with this for nine months.”

“Hey!” Mel objected. “Excuse me?”

But Jack got a funny, dreamy look on his face and said, “Yeah. Let me bring her out. Let me. Since you’re right here…” All these months of insisting this wasn’t what he wanted and suddenly it was all he wanted. He’d pulled the last one right out of her body and he felt as if he’d gone to heaven, it was such a trip. He gloved up real fast. “There won’t be anyone for Mel’s back,” he said.

“I’ll take her back, and I’ll coach you,” John offered. “But you’re okay, you know what to do. Go for it, man. It’s your baby.”

“Okay,” he said, getting himself settled on his knees, right at the foot of the bed, and waited through a few more contractions, and then she delivered the baby’s head. Without even being told, he checked around the neck for the cord. John left Mel for a second to look over his shoulder to be sure. Then Jack supported the baby’s head with a large hand and John told Mel to give them a little push. The baby came out slick and easy, mucky and screaming.

Jack held another life he’d produced in his hands. No one should be this lucky, he thought. No man on earth should have all this.

John spread the baby towel over Mel’s belly and Jack placed the baby there and began to dry her off so he could wrap her in a clean, dry blanket. He clamped and cut the cord.

“Okay, I’ll take care of the placenta,” John said. “You get that little girl to her mother, then to the breast.”

Now Jack was on terra firma—he’d done this before. He wrapped her, moved her into Mel’s arms and got down on his knees to watch as his baby daughter nuzzled against Mel’s warm flesh for a little while, then rooted and finally latched onto the breast, suckling. “Aaah,” he said, smiling. “Another genius.”

He pulled off the gloves and ran a couple of fingers along Mel’s cheek, then over the baby’s head. She turned her watering eyes up to his face. “You’re getting pretty good at this,” she said in a weak whisper.

“I am, huh. So are you. Mel, she’s gorgeous. Positively gorgeous. She’s going to look like you.” He leaned over the baby to put his lips against hers. He moved over her mouth lightly. “God, I love you.”

“She’s smaller than David,” Mel whispered.

“She’s a good size,” Jack said, as if he knew. “God, she’s gorgeous.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“You do this to me one more time without my permission, you’re a dead man.”

“Sure, honey. I’ll be careful…”

“And all those people out there?”

“Yeah?”

“You get out there and tell them, if they mess up my clean house, they’re going to pay. Pay, do you hear me?”

He grinned at her. “I hear you, Mel.”

Walt Booth was just dishing up dinner—two plates of fish he’d steamed in foil packages on the barbecue, wild rice and fresh broccoli—when the phone rang. The answering machine was in the kitchen and he decided to listen before picking up. “Dad? Dad, are you there?” Vanessa asked.

He picked up the phone. “Right here. Everything all right?”

“We’re all at the Sheridans’. Mel’s in labor! We’re waiting—and according to Mel it isn’t going to be long. Want to come over?”

“Hmm,” he said. “I’m just about to eat some fish I cooked. I’ll be along…”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll have Paul save you a cigar.” Then she hung up.

Walt looked over the kitchen counter at Muriel, who was still on one of his bar stools with a glass of wine. She tilted her head and smiled at him. He brought the plates to the table. “I think you’re about to have your debut,” he said.

“You think so, huh?”

“Mel, the local midwife, is in labor, and it’s kind of a tradition around here for friends to gather at the house, see the baby fresh out of the chute, have a drink and a cigar. It’s a girl, I hear. We should go.”

“I’ve met Mel. Just as I thought,” she said. “You didn’t tell your daughter you were having me to dinner.”

“Of course not,” he said, sitting down opposite her. “Vanessa would have stayed home. That didn’t fit into my plans.”

Muriel laughed and dipped into her fish—sea bass that Walt had seasoned wonderfully. She sighed and let her eyes drift closed for a second in appreciation.

“There you go,” he said, smiling. “You could do that. I could teach you.”

“I’ll pass.”