The Wolf's Surrender
Autore
Sandra Steffen
Letto da
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Capitoli
12
Chapter One
Kelly Madison stood outside her locked car in the parking lot next to the county courthouse, rummaging through her bag for her keys. She found a receipt she’d been looking for and notes and briefs for a case she was working on, but not her car keys.
It was nearing the end of March in Black Arrow, Oklahoma. One never knew what it might bring. Today it had brought rain that had turned to ice, making the streets and sidewalks of this friendly city treacherous, especially for a woman eight months pregnant.
A horn honked on the street out front. An instant later, Kelly heard the high-pitched whir of tires spinning on ice. Metal crunched and more horns honked. Oh, dear, she thought, a fender bender. Transplants to Oklahoma, like Kelly, often joked amongst themselves that folks out here just plain didn’t know how to drive in wintry conditions. Officials had been known to close schools and businesses if snow flurries were so much as forecast. Back in the suburbs of Chicago where she grew up, people didn’t let a foot of snow and sub-zero temperatures render them homebound. They just threw on a sweater.
She liked it here, though. She liked the wide-open spaces and the incessant hum of the wind, and the people. She liked the people here most of all. Placing a hand on her round belly, she smiled. She’d been doing that all day. “Three more weeks, sweetheart, and you’ll see what an amazing and interesting place the world is.”
Taking her phone from her bag, Kelly pressed 911 to report the accident, which by now included four more cars. The line was busy. Evidently, everyone in town was calling to report some sort of mishap this afternoon.
Now, where were her keys?
She pulled the hood of her brown trench coat closer to her face. Huddling inside her coat, she blinked through a fine, icy mist, and continued rummaging through her bag. Almost of its own volition, her gaze strayed through the driver’s-side window.
Her keys dangled from the ignition. She tried the door, even though she knew it would be futile. It was still locked, just as it had been all day.
Even that didn’t dampen her sunny mood. She didn’t know why, but she felt like skipping and singing and laughing, all at the same time. She felt invincible, as if she could run a marathon and paint her kitchen, too.
With the mystery of her missing keys solved, she wrapped her happy mood around her, hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder and carefully made her way back inside the courthouse to search for Albert Redhawk, a dear of a custodian who’d used a coat hanger to unlock her door on more than one occasion before she’d left town nearly seven months ago. The heavy door closed behind her, the sound echoing through the entire first floor of the courthouse. The hundred-year-old lights were on, but the place had a distinctive empty feel. Apparently, the painters and electricians, who were in the final stages of repairing the portion of the structure damaged in a fire during her absence, had all gone home at the first sign of bad weather. The treasurer’s office door was closed and locked, as was every other door she tried.
Albert was nowhere to be found, either. It looked as if she was going to get the chance at that marathon after all, or at least the equivalent of one. The mile-long walk to her little house on icy sidewalks would take care and concentration. Experience had taught her it would be fortuitous to visit the ladies’ room first.
The baby moved, a glorious feeling if there ever was one. Until the past few weeks, she’d sailed through the entire pregnancy without so much as an ache or pain, or even a hint of morning sickness. Her doctor assured her that a low backache and occasional leg strain was normal for a woman scheduled to deliver in three weeks. Placing one hand on her belly and the other on the ache in the small of her back, she smiled all over again and rounded the corner.
“Oh!” She screeched to a halt mere inches from Grey Colton, the youngest judge in Comanche County.
“Easy.” His hands shot out to steady her.
Her smile gone, she slid the strap of her bag back to her shoulder, and took a backward step. “I thought I was the only person left in the building.”
“You’re close. I think there are three of us. You, me and Albert’s here somewhere.”
As always, Judge Colton’s implacable expression was unnerving.
“Do you know where Albert is?” She swallowed. “Your Honor?”
“My guess is, he’s down in the boiler room. Why?”
Something, like displeasure, glittered in his dark brown eyes, causing her to answer quickly. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
His expression stilled and grew even more serious. Kelly held in a sigh. At thirty-three, Grey Colton’s face bore just enough evidence of the Native American lineage of his great-grandfather to set the hearts of the women in his county aflutter. Half the time, his expression of pained tolerance made Kelly seethe. Since she’d recently taken a position with a law firm here in Black Arrow, and therefore couldn’t afford to get on his bad side, she nodded politely. “I just have to, er, that is…” She sidestepped him. “Excuse me, Your Honor.” Giving him a wide berth, she ducked inside the rest room.
Grey Colton released a deep breath through his nose. It was a reflex action his sister insisted had a lot in common with a buffalo’s snort.
He took a dozen steps toward the elevator, stopped, and slowly turned. He strode to the window next, and peered out. Sleet pinged against the glass. Seven vehicles were stopped in a zigzag pattern, blocking traffic on the street out front, as well as at the exit from the parking lot below. Since it didn’t look as if he was going anywhere anytime soon anyway, he decided it wouldn’t hurt him to walk Kelly Madison out to her car.
Not that she would appreciate it.
She didn’t like him.
And that was fine with him. He’d heard she was coming back to Black Arrow. All right, he hadn’t been any too happy about it. Something about her got on his nerves. He’d met her in the corridor a few times these past few weeks. Three times to be exact. She’d been courteous—he couldn’t fault her for her manners—but nothing more. The truth was, his gaze had a way of settling on her without his permission, and it rankled the hell out of him. Actually, he was thankful that Kelly Madison maintained a cool, diplomatic reserve with him, even though he was well aware that she showered everyone else with her sunny, outgoing, upbeat personality.
She wasn’t his type. Thank God. Oh, he didn’t have any aversion to her wavy auburn hair and clear green eyes, although there should have been a law against any woman having lips that soft-looking or full. He’d heard she was newly divorced. She was obviously very pregnant. If that didn’t make her completely unsuitable, she seemed to genuinely believe each and every client she’d ever defended was innocent. Grey didn’t like naive women, and he couldn’t afford to so much as look at one with any skeletons in her closet. Even in this day and age, an unmarried, pregnant woman would be the kiss of death for a man who aspired to gain a position on the Oklahoma State Supreme Court one day.
He didn’t know why she didn’t like him, but the fact remained that she didn’t. That didn’t mean he could leave her to her own defenses in the middle of an ice storm.
He tugged at the collar of his white shirt, wishing he could loosen the tie and open the top button. He checked his watch, and waited. The wind had picked up outside. Inside, the courthouse was silent, eerily so.
He checked his watch again.
He paced to the far end of the hallway. Jiggling the loose change in his pocket, he paced back to the rest-room door. It had been fifteen minutes. What could she possibly be doing in there?
He had a mother and a younger sister, and while he didn’t pretend to understand what women did with all their little tubes and vials and lotions, he knew it could take a hell of a long time. He strode to the far wall again. He checked his watch again. He listened again.
He couldn’t hear a thing.
He was getting a bad feeling about this. Pacing to the rest room, he raised his fist and knocked decisively.
Silence.
He knocked again, louder.
More silence.
“Kelly?”
Still, nothing.
“Kelly!” His voice thundered through the courthouse.
At least she answered this time. Her “yes” was more like the plaintive sound of an injured kitten, raising the hair on the back of his neck.
“You okay?”
“I…don’t think so.”
He opened the door far enough to stick his head inside. She was lying on the floor, her face ashen. He threw open the door and rushed inside. “What’s wrong?”
She lifted her head weakly. “The baby. I think it’s coming.”
“You think it’s coming! Now? Here?” His voice boomed, echoing, causing even him to cringe.
She rolled to her side, as if to try to get up.
“Don’t move.”
Resting on one elbow, she breathed deeply. “I had a little backache. Just a tiny one, mind you. And then, the next thing I knew, I doubled over. My water broke. The pains haven’t stopped for more than twenty or thirty seconds and they last well over a minute and a half. According to my prenatal classes, that means I’m in the final stages of labor.” Her voice started to shake. “First babies are supposed to take hours and hours. Days. They’re supposed to take days.”
She wet her dry lips, those full, ought-to-be-a-law-against-them pink lips. Grey’s mouth thinned in irritation. “Okay, you doubled over. You’re in the throes of labor. Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
She’d closed her eyes, and was breathing strangely. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face.
Finally, she said, “I…didn’t know…you were…still here.” She took several more deep breaths before relaxing. Her eyes opened, and her gaze unerringly met his. “Why are you still here?”
“Good question.” But he thought it was a good thing he was. A good thing for her. That bad feeling was getting worse.
Grey’s great-grandfather, George WhiteBear, claimed every Comanche man, woman and child had his or her own guardian spirit. The old man had made several journeys in search of his of late. Grey had never felt the need to do the same. George WhiteBear’s guide was a coyote. There were no coyotes in the Comanche County Courthouse. Some would say that was a good thing. Grey could have used help in any way, shape or form.
He saw Kelly’s phone lying next to her on the floor. Lowering to his haunches, he reached for it. “Why didn’t you call 911?”
“I tried, all right? Why are you so grouchy?”
He wasn’t grouchy. He was focused.
Maybe he was a little grouchy.
He punched in the three digits. At the first sound of the busy signal, he punched the off button. “The emergency phone system must be down.”
“Or overloaded.”
“Damn.”
“I hear you. And I understand your frustration. But my baby can hear you, too, so would you mind not swearing?”
She pushed herself to a sitting position. He could tell it hurt. Her coat was open. For the first time, he noticed she was wearing a long, moss-green knit dress and sensible leather boots. She placed both hands on her stomach, which seemed to be rock-hard. Her green eyes narrowed, and her face grew even more pale.
Grey didn’t know what the hell to do.
He jumped to his feet and paced the small room. Kelly moaned quietly. She was in labor. The pains were close and severe. He started to swear, only to clamp his mouth shut before he’d completed the word. He was judge of Comanche County. He didn’t swear. He had when he was younger, but not anymore.
Damn it to hell, what was he going to do?
He stared at his reflection in the mirror. The black-brown eyes staring back at him seemed to narrow and dilate. Strangely, a sense of calm settled over him. It started behind his eyes, moving down to his throat, easing the tense muscles in his shoulders, uncurling the knot in his stomach.
“Can you get up?” he asked. Even his voice sounded calmer.
She swallowed tightly and nodded. The moment she tried to rise, she slumped down again. This time, her groan was agonizing.
He turned on the water and punched the hand soap button. When his hands were clean and relatively dry, he lowered to his haunches again. “I’m going to pick you up. Tell me if I hurt you.”
“If you help me to my feet…” Her voice trailed away on a sound that was barely human. “Maybe I can walk.”
It wasn’t easy to help her to her feet. He didn’t know where to put his hands. It seemed he couldn’t put them anywhere without brushing the outer edge of her breast or the hard girth of her stomach. He ended up putting an arm around her back. She grasped his other hand. Her grip was strong. She was strong. She proved it by making it to her feet. Once there, she leaned against the counter behind her. “Well. So far so good.” Swaying, she took a step. It cost her.
Without conscious thought, Grey swung her into his arms. He staggered backward a step. She was slender, but she was about five feet six. And pregnant.
A glance at her face showed a small smile. While she steadied herself by wrapping an arm around his neck, probably in an effort to hold on for dear life, he redistributed her weight more evenly in his arms.
“Are you sure you can do this?” she asked quietly.
The sound he made had a lot in common with a snort again. “Just open the door.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
She pulled on the door. Using his foot, he pushed it to the wall, then shouldered his way through.
“Where are we going?”
Until he saw the elevator door that was standing open, he hadn’t known. Entering the small compartment, he said, “There’s a sofa in my chambers.”
He figured she would have argued, if another pain hadn’t ripped through her. She squeezed her eyes shut, and he swore every muscle in her entire body tensed.
They reached his chambers before her pain subsided.
This was bad. He had no knowledge of medicine. He hadn’t so much as had a cold in twenty years. And while he’d helped his cousin, Bram, deliver one of Bram’s prize quarter-horse colts a few years ago, Grey had no idea how to deliver a human baby.
With painstaking care, he lowered Kelly to the leather sofa. Instantly, he grabbed the phone on his desk and tried 911 again. The results were the same. He dialed his mother’s number next. He got her machine. He was in the middle of dialing his sister’s number when the phone went dead.
Reluctantly, he hung it up.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The ice must have taken down the phone lines.”
“My cell phone isn’t working, either. I’m going to have my baby here, aren’t I?” There was hysteria in her voice.
“I think so.”
She gasped, and he said, “I can think of worse places.” He could think of better ones, too. Hospitals. Clinics. The moon.
Kelly took a series of deep breaths. “The labor instructor lied. Breathing doesn’t help.”
“It’s got to be better than the alternative.”
Her pain subsided long enough to appreciate his stab at wry humor. She eased back on the supple leather sofa, taking stock of her situation. The baby was coming. She could feel it pressing lower and lower. It hurt so bad. She couldn’t call the hospital or her doctor. But she was warm and dry. And she wasn’t alone.
She placed a hand on her swollen abdomen.
“Lie back and rest.”
She could hear Grey fluffing a pillow. A moment later, he tucked it under her head.
“Talk to me,” she whispered, her eyes closed. When he made no sound, she realized he probably didn’t know what to say. She whispered, “Who decorated your chambers?”
“My sister, my mother and my grandmother. Does it show?”
She smiled, again the epitome of diplomacy. “My grandmother made this pillow for me before she died,” he said. “She made one for my sister, my brothers, and all our cousins.”
Kelly felt him taking the pins from her hair. She focused on the heat in his fingertips. She lost her concentration during the next pain, but he was still there those interminable minutes later, when the contraction subsided.
“What do you say we get you out of your boots?”
She reached for her ankle, but he took over, sliding the right boot off easily. She didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or scared out of her wits. Placing a hand on her belly, she thought about the baby and said, “I can do this.” She said it six times in all.
The next thing she knew, her other boot was off, too. While he placed it against the wall with the first one, Kelly said, “Women used to have babies at home all the time. We’ve all heard stories of women who gave birth, then went back to work in the rice paddy.”
“It’s not quite as bad as that,” he answered.
“Exactly.”
She brought her legs up, and groaned.
Grey raked his fingers through his hair. “You’re going to have to remove some clothes, Kelly.”
Her eyes were round all of a sudden. She swallowed her panic admirably. “Would you mind turning around?”
He stared at her for a moment before giving her the privacy she’d requested. “Giving birth is no time for modesty.”
“I know, but the only people who are supposed to see a woman like this are her doctors and her lover.”
Grey had no business thinking what he was thinking at a time like this. It was the way she’d said lover.
The quiet rustle of fabric on leather was punctuated by an occasional catch in her breathing. “What was your grandmother’s name?”
Grey didn’t comprehend the question. “What grandmother?”
“The one who made you and all her grandchildren a pillow like this one?”
He turned around again, and saw that Kelly was covered up with her coat. She was still wearing her green dress, but her undergarments were folded neatly on the floor near the couch.
“Her name was Gloria WhiteBear Colton. Her husband, my grandfather, died before she gave birth to twin sons, my father, Tom, and my Uncle Trevor, who died a long time ago. My grandmother raised my five cousins, but she had a hand in raising my brothers, sister and I, too.”
Kelly gripped his hand as another pain gripped her. Grey tried to decide what he should be doing. In the movies, somebody always boiled water at times like these. That was the extent of Grey’s medical training. He wet some paper towels at the small sink in his lavatory, then smoothed them across her face. “Did your prenatal classes prepare you for what’s going to happen?” he asked.
“More or less.” Her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and even. “You should have heard me proclaiming how I was going to have my child naturally. What I wouldn’t do for an epidural or some other painkilling drugs right now.”
“You have your sense of humor. That’s good.”
Another pain took her. When it was over, she said, “Keep talking. Even when I don’t seem to be listening.”
“I’m not much of a talker.”
“Oh.”
“It’s one of the downfalls of growing up in a large family. It isn’t easy to get a word in edgewise.”
“I have one older sister. It was never easy to get a word in edgewise in our house, either.” There were a few seconds of silence. And then she asked, “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
He ended up naming and describing all four of his brothers, his sister, as well as his five cousins. He wasn’t sure she heard half of what he said, but it didn’t matter. He sat on a straight-backed chair pulled close to the leather sofa. His chambers were in the interior portion of the old courthouse, which meant there were no windows. The only light came from hundred-year-old fixtures on the paneled walls and a lamp he’d turned on on his big, mahogany desk.
He reminisced about simpler times, and what it was like growing up in a loud, boisterous family. She was breathing quietly when he started to tell the story of the time he, Billy, Jesse, Sky and their cousin Willow had been visiting the family ranch.
“We climbed up a rickety ladder nailed to the wall in the barn. At the top was a window with no glass where barn swallows and doves roosted. From there it was an easy climb out onto the roof of a lean-to that housed straw and machinery and little animals that scuttled, heard but rarely seen. We all knew that roof was forbidden territory. That was half the allure. The other half was the view. We sat up there in a row, smugly enjoying our adventure. Our grandmother’s voice carried around to the back of the barn, calling us in for lunch. Being the oldest, I went last, the others climbing down ahead of me. We could smell the homemade soup and fresh-baked bread before we reached the house.”
“What kind of soup?” Kelly asked.
So she was listening. “Vegetable beef. My mother was stirring it on the stove when we got there. My grandmother, who had been raising my cousins ever since their parents died a few years earlier, looked at each of us in turn. Tossing her gray braid over her shoulder, she said, ‘Willow, would you like your spanking now or later?’
“All five of us froze like antelope trapped in the glare of headlights. How could she have known? My ever-wise grandmother nudged my mother and said, ‘Are you going to line yours up for spankings, too, Alice?”’
“Not exactly good appetizer talk, huh?” Kelly whispered.
Grey shook his head at the memory. “My mother said that she would prefer to wait until our father got home.” He leaned ahead in his chair, quietly adding, “And you’re right. None of us ate much at lunch that day.”
“Did your father spank you when he got home?”
“I don’t think my mother ever told him. I doubt she’d planned to. That six-hour wait was our punishment.”
Kelly grew silent, panting through another pain. It lasted almost two minutes. Deep lines cut into the corners of her mouth; her face was wet with perspiration long before the contraction was over. Exhausted, she slumped back. Without opening her eyes, she said, “Do you believe in spanking children?”
“Most of the time, no.”
“But?” she whispered.
“If they climb out onto a rotting roof forty feet off the ground, when one wrong move could get them killed, or worse, then, yeah, I believe in spankings. Not beatings, or whippings, but a swat on the seat of their pants, or the threat of one, was very effective.”
Kelly thought about that. Grey’s mother sounded like a wise woman. The “wait for your father to get home” ploy had worked, probably because she hadn’t overused it. Kelly’s baby wasn’t going to have a father. It was all up to her. She didn’t want to think about that right now.
“Tell me more. About that big family of yours.”
Grey Colton, a man who’d professed that he wasn’t much of a talker, told her about the years his family had moved around while his father had been in the army. He talked about his great-grandfather George WhiteBear and his spirit quests. Sometimes she whimpered. Sometimes she squeezed his hand so hard he feared for the internal integrity of several of his bones. She never screamed or yelled, and by God, he wasn’t about to.
Before long, there was no time between pains. Her body strained as if being guided by inner wisdom fueled by some ancient knowledge.
Grey went on automatic pilot. Since he had no blankets or sheets or towels, he removed his white dress shirt and the cotton T-shirt underneath, for later use. The sounds Kelly made now were guttural, her breathing labored as he reassured her and told her she was doing great. A nearly bald head crowned. Soon, a shoulder emerged. He didn’t know where Kelly found the strength to keep pushing. She was so tired, and God, the pain…
But she pushed again, and an unbelievably tiny child was born into Grey’s hands. “I’ve got her.”
“Her?”
“It’s a girl.” His throat closed up tight.
The child was warm and moving. Using his T-shirt, he cleaned the baby off as best he could. It caused her to start to cry.
“What’s wrong?” Kelly whispered.
“Nothing that I can see. I don’t think she likes to have her face washed.”
That tiny, mewling cry grew stronger as he wrapped her in his starched white shirt. Carefully, he placed the tiny bundle in Kelly’s shaking arms. The baby stopped crying.
And Kelly started.
She hadn’t shed a tear through the entire ordeal. Now she cried, big, fat tears rolling down her face. “She’s beautiful.”
The baby was bald, wrinkled and red. She needed a bath. “Not just beautiful,” Grey whispered. “She’s perfect.”
Kelly sniffled. “I need to call my mother.”
Grey handed her the cell phone. She pushed speed dial, and, lo and behold, the phone worked. She told her mother all about the birth. Of course her mother freaked and insisted Kelly hang up and call 911 immediately.
And miraculously, this time that worked, too.
Grey took the phone from her. “This is Judge Grey Colton. I’m in my chambers on the second floor of the courthouse, with Kelly Madison. She’s just had her baby. We need an ambulance and some paramedics up here, now. I’ll stay on the line. Try to disconnect me and I’ll see you in court.”
Feeling her eyes on him, he glanced at her.
“Even without your shirt, you’re formidable.”
She wavered him a woman-soft smile that went straight to his head. He barely managed to hold the phone to his ear.
“Was it worth it?” she whispered.
At first he thought she was referring to delivering her daughter. But then she said, “Was climbing onto that barn roof worth it?”
A lump came and went in his throat. “I can still remember the view.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She pressed her lips to her daughter’s cheek. “Why is it that the most worthwhile things in life always come with the greatest risk?”
Their gazes locked, and something nearly tangible passed between them. She leaned back and closed her eyes, drawing the baby closer.
He wished he had a blanket to cover her and the infant. Those paramedics had better hurry up and get here. “Yes.” He spoke into the phone. “I’m still here. Yes.” He answered a few questions, gave a few details, which he followed up with one succinct order to hurry.
“Help is on the way,” he said.
He looked at Kelly. She and the baby were both asleep.
