Father On The Brink

Two

Eventually, night became morning. And by the time it did, the blizzard had tapered off into an almost magical-looking snowfall, the power in Katie’s house had come back on, and Cooper had helped to deliver a bouncing baby boy.

The knowledge of that startled him still.

In spite of the restoration of electricity, a fire continued to crackle happily in the fireplace, and the lights were dimmed low. He sat in his ancient blue jeans and Kmart special T-shirt on the floor of Katie’s big, expensive town house, amid more opulence and luxury than he’d imagined was possible. And he ignored it all to stare instead at a sleeping mother and child for whom he felt, at least partially, responsible.

He thought about the tradition that other cultures embraced, about how when a person saved another person’s life, he became responsible for whomever he’d rescued. He supposed the same must hold true when a person brought another person into the world to begin with. That was the only reason Cooper could conceive why he felt such a strong tie to the little guy tucked safely and snugly in his mother’s arms.

He studied the baby’s mother, too. For some reason, Cooper also felt responsible for Katie Brennan now. She lay on the floor with her upper back and head supported by a pile of pillows, naked amid a tangle of sheets. Purple crescents smudged her eyes, and her dark hair was shoved back from her forehead m a heap of wet snarls. He knew nothing about her other than her name and address. Yet he couldn’t quite chase away the sensation that he was bound to her irrevocably.

His gaze dropped to the ring encircling the fourth finger of her left hand. Studded with diamonds, it was the kind of wedding band a man gave to a woman he intended to keep forever. Certainly, it was a far cry from anything Cooper could ever hope to afford for a woman himself, regardless of how much he might love her. Katie Brennan was obviously a woman accustomed to a way of life vastly different from his own.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. The woman was married, after all, and tied to her husband with a bond far more significant and lasting than the one represented by the ring on her finger. She had a child. Her husband’s child. And nothing on earth could shatter a bond like that.

Cooper cupped a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed hard. Long night hadn’t begun to describe what he and Katie had just been through. And if he was this tired, he could only imagine how she must feel after a grueling session like that. She’d screamed, and he’d hollered, and they’d both sworn like drunken sailors. She’d pushed and shoved and heaved and cried. He’d cajoled and threatened and bribed and heartened. And sometime just before the sun began to stain the sky with pink and yellow, Andrew Cooper Brennan had been born.

It had been Katie’s idea—no, her demand—that her son carry Cooper’s first name for his middle one. Andrew, she said, had been her father’s name. And when Cooper had asked how her husband was going to feel about his son carrying a stranger’s name, Katie had smiled sadly through her exhaustion and told Cooper he was less of a stranger to her than her husband was. Before he’d had a chance to get her to clarify that, she’d drifted into a sound slumber, and he’d decided she must have been touched with a bit of postpartum delirium and hadn’t known what she was talking about.

Not for the first time since she’d fallen asleep, his gaze wandered up to the mantel, to the scattered collection of photographs. Katie with her arms circling a collie’s neck, both of them grinning from ear to ear. Katie smiling shyly from beneath the broad brim of a straw hat, a tranquil, turquoise sea behind her. Katie with her head bent to and partially obscured by a bouquet of yellow roses. Katie with a good-looking man Cooper assumed was her husband, the two of them standing beside a sleek black Jaguar, laughing as if they’d just played the biggest joke in the world on someone.

And another photograph that seemed oddly out of place, yet more suited to Katie than any of the others. It was a picture of her as a young teenager, standing on the steps of what looked like a sagging farmhouse, a man and woman situated like fence posts behind her, each one with a hand on her shoulder. The only one in the picture who was smiling was Katie. But even hers was a sad, almost wistful expression.

Cooper’s gaze fell to her sleeping so near him, and again he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible for her now. For her and her baby both. The realization was still flooding over him when Katie opened her eyes and smiled.

“Good morning,” she said softly, obviously no better rested for her sleep than she had been when she’d closed her eyes two hours ago.

Cooper smiled back. His voice was scarcely a whisper as he replied, “Good morning to you, too.”

She looked down at the baby in her arms, who awoke and whimpered a bit before snuggling into her breast. He rooted around, and Katie chuckled, trying to get him properly positioned. Only after a number of trials and errors did the baby finally affix himself onto her nipple and begin a greedy suckle.

“I’m going to have to find someone who knows more about this breastfeeding business than I do,” she said when she met Cooper’s gaze again. “I don’t think either Andrew or I have a clue how to go about it.”

For the first time, Cooper noted that her speech carried just the hint of a southern accent of some kind. Obviously, she wasn’t from the tristate area originally.

He shrugged off her concern. “There will be someone at the hospital who can help you out. Or they can at least give you a referral.”

Her smile faltered. “Hospital?”

He raised his arms over his head and arched his back into a stretch. “Sure,” he said absently when he’d completed it. “Now that the snow’s letting up, the plows ought to be able to get through. And seeing as how so many wealthy taxpayers live right here in Chestnut Hill, your neighborhood will probably be one of the first to get plowed.” He hoped none of the edge he felt when he uttered the last of his comments found its way into his voice.

“But—” She hesitated, leaving her objection unuttered.

“But what?” he asked. “Aren’t you anxious to get to the hospital to make sure everything’s okay with you and the baby?”

She shook her head. “I know everything’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Cooper nodded, but found it more than a little strange that she would be so reluctant to get to a medical facility. “Yeah, well, it might not be a bad idea to have the two of you checked out anyway. Just to be sure. I called the hospital a little while ago, and they’re sending an ambulance ASAP. Of course, with all that snow out there, ASAP isn’t going to be as fast as it usually would.”

If possible, her face became even paler than it already was. “You did what?”

“I called the hospital. An ambulance should be here in a couple of hours to collect you and little Andrew. It’s standard procedure. What’s the problem?”

Katie shook her head and wondered what she was going to do now. The problem was that going to the hospital necessitated registering Andrew’s birth and lots of questions about his father. She knew she was legally obligated to inform the state of a new arrival. Even if in doing so, she was providing an already well-armed monster with just the right weapon to take her baby away from her forever. Once William’s name was on Andrew’s birth certificate, his stable of overpaid, amoral attorneys would have everything they needed—in writing—to ensure that Katie never saw her son again.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” she said.

Cooper arched his brows in surprise. “Why not?”

“I just…I can’t, Cooper. You have to call them back and tell them you made a mistake.”

He gaped at her. “A mistake? Excuse me? What do you want me to do, call and say, ‘Hi, this is Coop again. You know that baby I told you I delivered? Well, I was wrong. It was actually a pepperoni pizza that I delivered. Sorry about the mix-up.’”

She made a face at him. “No, of course not. But it’s very important that Andrew and I not go to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“We just can’t,” she snapped.

“Well, that’s too bad,” he snapped back. “Because you’re both going to the hospital. And I intend to escort you every step of the way, just to make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle.”

Katie opened her mouth to object again, then decided it would be fruitless to do so. She’d learned at some point during the night—when she kept insisting that she had changed her mind, and that she had decided she was not going to have this baby, no matter how much Cooper begged or threatened, and that was final—that the man simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She glanced down at Andrew, who pulled hungrily at her breast. He was fat and pink and squirmy, and it hit Katie with the force of an aircraft carrier that she was entirely responsible for him. It was up to her to make sure no harm ever came to her son. It was up to her to be certain that he had the very best of everything she could offer him. It was up to her to see that he was safe and happy and free to live a good life. It was up to her to ensure that William Winslow never got his hands on his son.

Therefore, she had to be certain that she and Andrew were as physically fit as possible before they went into hiding.

Her gaze locked with Cooper’s again. “All right. We’ll go to the hospital.”

He expelled a dubious sound of relief. “Well, thank you very much.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

It occurred to Katie then that she was sitting in the middle of her living room completely naked with a man she scarcely knew. A man who had helped to bring her son into the world. A man who still carried smudges of her blood and her son’s afterbirth on his T-shirt and jeans. The full realization and understanding of the intimacy she had shared with this stranger struck her, and she tugged the bed sheet up around her shoulders a little more.

Cooper’s gaze flickered away from hers when she completed the action, and she thought she saw him blush. She smiled. It comforted her that, in spite of what they had gone through together, he could still respect her modesty.

“So…” he began, his voice quiet and a little bemused, “where’s the dog?”

She frowned. “What dog?”

He gestured toward the photographs on the mantel. “The collie. Where is he?”

“She,” Katie corrected him. “She belongs to an old friend of mine back in Las Vegas. I haven’t seen either of them for nearly a year.”

“You’re from Las Vegas?” he asked, turning to look at her again. “That’s funny. I could swear you have more of a southern accent.”

She chuckled, then fumbled for a moment as she switched Andrew from her left breast to her right. When the baby was once more suckling happily, she looked up to find that Cooper had again looked away. Her smile grew broader.

“Still?” she asked. “I was hoping I’d managed to wipe it out completely.”

“So you are from the south?”

She nodded. “Originally. Western Kentucky. I have a cousin who used to live in Vegas, though, so I went out there after I graduated from high school—that would have been about eight years ago—to make my fortune as a singer. Instead, I wound up working as a waitress. Until I met my…until I met William.”

Cooper nodded but said nothing more.

“How about you?” she asked him.

“What about me?”

“Are you married? Got any kids?”

He laughed anxiously. “No way.”

“Not the marrying kind, huh?”

“No.”

The one-word answer, offered so quickly and certainly, told Katie just about everything she needed to know.

“Not the fathering kind, either,” he added hastily, as if it were very important that he clarify his position on that, as well.

She nodded her understanding and told him, “Well, if you find yourself on your deathbed regretting that decision, you can rest easy knowing you’re responsible for at least one child in the world I really don’t know what Andrew and I would have done if you hadn’t shown up last night. I’ll have to send a thank-you note to whoever got their wires crossed and sent you here by mistake.”

He rubbed his eyes wearily as he told her, “No thanks necessary. I’m sure it was destiny.”

Katie watched him covertly as he stretched again. If he was single, she thought, it certainly wasn’t because no woman found any potential in him. During the night, she’d had neither the time, nor the inclination, to give much thought to her companion. But now, in the quiet light of the dawn, as her son—her son!—drifted off to sleep again in her arms, she took a moment to consider the man who had come to her out of the darkness and snow the night before.

He was, quite simply, beautiful. Beautifully formed, beautifully arranged, beautifully packaged. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a man more attractive than Cooper Dugan. Nor had she ever met one so self-possessed. She had, understandably, been a bit anxious and panicky during the night. But Cooper had always managed to somehow keep her steady. She would never forget the sturdy, easy timbre of his voice as he’d coached her through Andrew’s birth. Nor would she forget the strong hands that had so gently settled her baby on her belly the moment he’d emerged from inside her.

She shifted a little, wincing at the pain that shot through her with the motion. Not for the first time, Katie found herself wishing Cooper Dugan was the man who had fathered her son. Or, at least, a man like him. What could she possibly have been thinking to fall under William’s spell? she wondered now. How could she have been so stupid?

She opened her mouth to say something to Cooperthough what she had meant for that something to be, she couldn’t remember—when an almost debilitating fatigue overcame her. One minute, she was tired and weak, the next, she couldn’t lift her hand to push her hair off of her forehead. “I need to sleep now,” she managed to say before her eyelids fluttered down.

Though she wasn’t absolutely certain, just before unconsciousness claimed her, she thought she heard him reply, “I understand.”

And she found herself thinking, Oh, Cooper, if only you could…

Cooper watched Katie sleep for a few minutes, then glanced down at his clothes, soiled here and there with the remnants of Andrew’s birth. Being a paramedic, the sight of blood and gore generally moved him not at all. Yet somehow, the recognition that this particular blood had once belonged to Katie did funny things to his insides. Usually, the blood Cooper washed off at the end of a run was the result of some violent act or tragic accident. Gunshot wounds, stabbings and vehicular or mechanical mishaps were the stuff of his everyday routine. And all too often, the victim he tried to save wound up dying instead.

But not this time. This time, instead of hearing a last gasp, Cooper had heard a first breath. This time, instead of feeling a body go limp and spiritless, the body he’d held in his arms had squirmed and fidgeted with vitality. This time, Cooper had experienced a profound joy at witnessing life instead of a helpless anger at witnessing another senseless, stupid death.

This time, for the first time, he had felt an odd, unnameable warmth surround his heart, had felt a tension unknot inside him that he’d never even realized he was carrying around. And for the life of him, he could understand none of it.

Pushing the strange workings of his mind away, Cooper returned to the kitchen, noting more thoroughly this time the sleek white design and numerous frivolous small appliances. The Brennans even had a huge, copper cappuccino maker that looked as if it had never been used. And he thought vaguely to himself that some people just had too much damned money. He headed for the sink, reached a hand behind himself to grab a fistful of his T-shirt, and pulled it over his head.

Contemplating the smudges of blood, he tossed the shirt into the trash can, then turned on the water to fill the sink. After dressing again in his relatively clean sweatshirt, he prowled around in search of Katie’s bedroom. Surely, somewhere in the house, there was one of those inevitable bags packed in preparation for her trip to the hospital. People expecting their first kid always overdid things, packing months in advance for the hospital stay, and way too much stuff at that.

To his surprise, however, when he finally located the master bedroom, he found a huge suitcase on the floor, and scattered about it were far more articles of clothing and toiletries than were necessary for a brief hospital stay. Those items also seemed to have been heaved to the floor without care, as if Katie had been doing the packing when Andrew had decided to be born.

Cooper shrugged off the uneasy suspicion that wandered into his mind. Katie had told him her baby was coming three weeks before her due date, so she obviously hadn’t anticipated his birth this morning. She couldn’t have had a hospital stay in mind when she’d been packing yesterday. So why would she…?

He halted the question before his mind could form it. Her packing yesterday had no doubt been the result of something perfectly normal. Maybe she’d planned on joining her husband, wherever he was. Maybe she’d been going to visit a relative. Maybe she’d been stowing things in the suitcase to store them under the bed.

Maybe it was none of his business.

Definitely it was none of his business, Cooper corrected himself. Whatever Katie had going on in her life was completely immaterial to him. Last night, he’d been in the right place at the right time—as far as she was concerned anyway—and he’d been able to help her out in a very precarious situation. But once the ambulance arrived to ferry her and her son off to the hospital, it would put an end to any tie that might bind him to her. They were the proverbial ships in the night. The cliché of two strangers thrown together in a crisis. After this morning, Cooper would never see Katie Brennan again.

And why, in God’s name, did that realization bother him so damned much?

Without even thinking about what he was doing, Cooper collected Katie’s scattered belongings and arranged them as neatly as he could on the bed. Then he grabbed a few items that she would need for the hospital—functional, cotton, mommy-type underwear, a functional, cotton, mommy-type nightgown, functional, cotton, mommy-type socks and a few articles of clothing that would be big and loose enough to accommodate her still swollen abdomen. A perfunctory search of the closet netted him a modest-size Louis Vuitton overnight bag, and he filled it with Katie’s things.

He tried not to think about the intimacy involved with what he was doing for her at the moment, just as he had tried all night not to think about the intimacy of experiencing with her the birth of her son. Inevitably, however, that intimacy never left the forefront of his brain for a moment.

He was a big boy, he reminded himself. He had seen women naked before, had shared things with some of them that went way beyond intimate. Katie Brennan was a virtual stranger. How could strangers be intimate?

“Jeez, Coop,” he muttered to himself as he zipped the bag shut. “When did you become such a freakin’ philosopher?”

He pushed away all the nagging, annoying questions that had been plaguing him since he’d entered the big town house, but couldn’t chase them off completely. Demanding answers, they lingered in the corners of his mind, and he realized he’d probably never quite be able to dispel his memories of the one night he’d shared with Katie Brennan and her son.

Which was probably just as well, he decided further as he bolted from the bedroom. Because it was no doubt as close as he was ever going to come to being instrumental in the birth—or the life—of a child.

Three

Katie awoke to the sound of voices and realized she must have dozed off on the gurney as the orderly wheeled her to her room. When she opened her eyes, she saw Cooper Dugan, laughing in response to something a woman wearing raspberry-colored hospital scrubs was saying. Katie smiled, too, for a minute forgetting exactly who she was or what had happened to her. For one very brief, very magical moment, all she was aware of was her own existence in the same room with Cooper. And for that very brief, very magical moment, that was all that mattered in the world.

Then the baby in her arms snuggled closer to her, and she remembered that there was in fact something in the world infinitely more important than a laughing, handsome man. She bent her head to nuzzle her son’s soft, downy black hair, and her smile deepened. She placed a kiss on the crown of his head and hugged him tight. The nurse and orderly helped her into her bed, and in the bright white light of the fluorescent bulb buzzing above her, she marveled again at Andrew—the new man in her life.

Men had come and gone in Katie’s past, some leaving her with more than she’d had to begin with, some leaving her with nothing at all. But Andrew would be with her forever. And already, she could sense that the changes he wrought in her were, without question, changes for the better. Where before she had been wandering through life with absolutely no destination in mind, the birth of her son had endowed her with a sense of purpose, and a drive to make sure the two of them would never be torn apart.

It was almost terrifying, really, the genesis and immediacy of these new emotions inside her—this fear of harm coming to her child, this love that overwhelmed everything that had come before. She knew utterly and irretrievably that she would die before she would allow anyone—anyone—to hurt her son or take him from her. But instead of being frightened by such a certainty, she was oddly calmed by it. Motherhood was something that had always awed Katie in the past, when she’d observed other women participating in it. And now, finally, she understood why.