Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (32 page)

“Here’s the head,” Dr. Greene stated calmly.  “Keep pushing.”

“Keep pushing,” Amelia echoed.

Charlie pushed.  Amelia willed all of her strength to go to her friend.  Dr. Greene fumbled under the sheet covering Charlie’s legs.  A moment later the sharp wail of a newborn split the air.  Amelia caught her breath, her heart spilling into a thousand pieces of light.

Dr. Greene lifted the crying newborn to show Charlie.  “It’s a girl.”

“Oh!” Charlie cried with the purest joy Amelia had ever seen.  Her eyes were alight with tears and wonder, all pain forgott
en.  She reached for her baby.

“Take the baby and clean her up,” Dr. Greene ordered Amelia.

Amelia swallowed her heart out of her throat and rose to accept the newborn when Dr. Greene cut the cord.

“Oh, Charlie, she’s precious!” she whispered, carrying the baby to a basin of water on the bureau beside the bed.

Working off of instinct alone, she bathed the wailing newborn and wrapped her in a blanket.  She carried her back to the bed and handed her into Charlie’s reaching arms.  Amelia wept as she watched Charlie study her daughter.  She was perfect, tiny and perfect.  Her ruddy skin glowed with life.  Charlie held the baby close, mouth open in wonder.

“Look at her hair!” she exclaimed, sniffling through her tears.  “And her fingers!  They’re so small.”

Amelia looked, wiping her tears with the back of her sleeve.  The pain and anxiety that had filled the room moments ago was gone, utterly gone.  All that remained was love and promise.

“I’ll let the father know,” Dr. Greene said at length.  Neither Charlie nor Amelia reacted as he got up and washed his hands before stepping into the hall.

“Could you hand me a washcloth,” Charlie asked, eyes on her daughter.  “I don’t want Michael to see me looking like a fright.”

“I’m sure he won’t care,” Amelia told her.  She wanted to laugh at the notion.  Of course Michael West wouldn’t care that his wife was damp and sweaty, her hair sticking to her face.  All he would see was his beautiful daughter and the wonderful woman who had brought her into the world.

A knock at the door was followed by Michael West bursting into the room, Eric and Phineas Bell behind him.

“Is it over?  Are you all right?”  Michael dashed to the bed, grabbing his wife’s free hand complete with the wet washcloth.  “Tell me you’re all right.”  He kissed her hand and her face feverishly.

Charlie burst into tears, kissing him back even though she was clearly exhausted.  “It’s a girl,” she said.  “You have a daughter.”

Charlie handed the now peaceful baby into her father’s arms.  Michael let out a soft breath of wonder, hand shaking as he touched his dau
ghter’s tiny hand.

“Oh dear God, she’s beautiful!”  Michael’s voice throbbed with emotion.  He kissed his baby’s forehead.  Her eyes opened and she looked up into his face.

“Love at first sight,” Phin said, choked up himself.  “You always were a sucker for it.”

Michael blinked back tears behind his glasses.  “Come meet your Uncle Phin,” he said to the baby in a voice that squeezed Amelia’s throat tight with emotion.  “And your Uncle Eric and Aunt Amelia.”

Amelia caught her breath, her tears flowing freely.  Aunt Amelia.  As if she were one of them, as if they were family.  Amelia glanced to Eric and found him watching her, his expression transported with rapture.  She stepped across the room and into Eric’s arms, ignoring everyone else there.  For the first time in her life she was part of something good.

As Michael handed the baby into Phin’s arms and Phin beamed with unearthly joy, Amelia hugged Eric.  How could she even think of leaving this wonder?

Eric spread his hand across her stomach, kissing her forehead.  “Soon,” he whispered.  “Soon it will be our turn.”

Amelia squeezed her eyes shut and rested her head against Eric’s shoulder.  “Soon,” she repeated.  Soon it would be her turn to be born anew.

Chapter Eighteen

Amelia folded each of her lovely dresses carefully and laid them in her carpet bag.  There were two more in the last few weeks, dresses more suitable for her expanded shape that Charlie had loaned her.  They were a thank you gift for being there for her during the delivery.  Little Eloise West was the most darling baby Amelia had ever seen, but it was Charlie’s insistence that she couldn’t have made it through without Amelia that warmed her heart.

“Delilah said I should come up and see if any of the suitcases are ready to go down to the wagon,” young Roy the bellhop popped into the doorway.

Amelia twisted to smile at him.  “Thank you, Roy.  Those two over there can go, and this one is just about ready too.”

Roy nodded and jumped to gather Eric’s suitcases into his arms.  He dashed out of the room again with an excitement only youth could bring.

Only youth
and the promise of a new life.

Amelia smiled and held one of Charlie’s dresses to her face to breathe in the unfamiliar scent, like wildflowers and expensive perfume, before folding it into the suitcase and closing the lid.  It was the scent of friendship.  She actually had a friend.

More than one friend.

Delilah knocked on the frame of the open door and swept into the room, the taffeta of her skirts swishing.

“So you’ve finally come to your senses, huh?  You’re finally moving out to the ranch.”

“Yes, I am.”  Amelia swung to face Delilah.

“It’s about damn time.  You’ve been here much too long.”

“Eager to get rid of me?”  Amelia reached for her carpet bag and attempted to lift it off the bed.

“Honey, leave that for Roy.  You’re far too pregnant to carry anything other than that child.”  Delilah took the carpet bag out of her hands and shooed Amelia into the hall.

“I’ve still got more than a month.”

“And I’ve still got a handsome bellhop whose job it is to lift things.  Come on.”

They walked down the stairs together, through the lobby, and out into the warm summer sunlight.

“Truth be told,” Amelia said, pausing on the hotel’s porch and looking out over Main Street, her hands on her ample belly, “I’ll be sad to move so far away from the heart of town.  It’s more than an hour’s drive.”

“That’s nothing.”  Delilah waved the distance away.  “You’re going home, where you belong.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said on a sober note.  “Eric still deserves better.  I’m selling him short.  I haven’t changed.”

“Honey, that’s bullshit and you know it.”  Amelia’s eyes flew wide at the curse.  “You’ve changed since you arrived in town and I suspect you’ve changed even more since leaving that God awful situation in London.”

“Perhaps.”  Amelia shrugged.

Sarah had just stepped out of the saloon with a man who looked like a miner.  She smiled at him with her indomitable innocence, kissed his cheek, then waved goodbye as he strode off on his way.  Not a single one of Cold Springs’s citizens passing by gave the scene a second glance.

“Perhaps I’ve become more selfish,” Amelia went on, counting it strange that the scene she’d just witnessed gave her hope.  “I have friends here, friends like I’ve never had before.  I like Cold Springs.  I don’t want to give it up.  That’s selfish.  And I don’t want to leave Eric, even though I know I should.  He is so kind to me, so good.”

“And you love him,” Delilah added.

Amelia didn’t answer.  She may have been selfish, but there were some truths that were too painful to face still.

“Curtis still living out at the ranch?” Delilah asked, leaning against one of the hotel’s porch posts and crossing her arms.

“As far as I know.”  Amelia rubbed her belly with anxious strokes.  Her baby was kicking again.  “Eric was going to speak to him to ask him to move into one of the smaller houses where the workers had been living.”

Delilah grunted.  “That’ll go over well,” she said.  “Although if you ask me, it’s no more than that boy has deserved for years.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Amelia said, guilt welling, even for Curtis.  “I feel like I’m pushing him out of his home.  He does own half of the ranch.”

“He owns part of the ranch,” Delilah corrected her.  “Not half.  Who told you he owns half?”

“Curtis.”  The uneasy feeling that the man gave her spread.

“Yeah, well, Curtis always has had some strange and grand ideas.”  She nodded and smiled as one of her customers climbed the stairs and entered the hotel.  “You find out more about what that snake is up to?”

Amelia sighed and shook her head.  “No.  He’s untrustworthy and I know he’s up to something, but I can’t for the life of me untangle what it could be.  He’s been nothing but courtesy and smiles to me for the past few weeks, every time I’ve been out at the ranch helping Eric clean and straighten it.  In fact, he rarely lets me alone when I’m out there.”

“Well you keep on him, honey,” Delilah said.  “Something about that boy just ain’t right, and the sooner we figure it out the better.”

“I should have a much greater chance of getting to the bottom of things living at the ranch,” Amelia agreed.  Her frown for Curtis dissolved into a smile.  “But I shall miss being close to you.  I owe you so much.”

“Honey, it’s not like you’re moving to China.”  Delilah
crossed the porch to hug her.

“Excuse me,” one of the hotel guests, a well-dressed gentlemen, interrupted their moment of camaraderie.  “Excuse me, I’m looking for a man, a local.”

“Are you now?”  Delilah melted into the role of hotel owner.  “Who might that be?”

“A Mr. Quinlan?  He’s a local rancher?”

Amelia’s heart reverberated between relief and suspicion.

“He was just here,” Delilah answered.  “He’s off running errands though.”

“Do you know where I might find him?” the man asked.

“I believe he was heading to the courthouse,” Amelia said.  “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the man nodded to both Amelia and Delilah.  “This is a business matter.  I’ll go find him.  Have a pleasant day.”

Amelia watched the man leave the hotel, unsure whether to feel hope or fear.  She turned to Delilah.

“What in the hell was that all about?” Delilah asked her own thoughts aloud.

“I don’t know,” Amelia answered.  “Perhaps Eric has another business prospect that he hasn’t mentioned to me yet.”

“Could be.”  Delilah shrugged.  “Wouldn’t that be something!  Going from no business at all to business out the wazoo!  And good for Eric.  He deserves a break.”

“He most certainly does,” Amelia agreed.  And security for the ranch would be just the thing.

A tremor hit her gut even as she thought it.  Nothing was ever that easy.

Eric crossed Main Street to the courthouse with all the swagger of a man who owned the world.  He did own it, as far as he was concerned.  Amelia coming home with him today.  And the kicker was that in the end it was a newborn baby that had convinced her to let go of her objections.  He still got all emotional when he thought of the glow in Amelia’s eyes as she held little Eloise.  Soon it would be her own, their own.

“Hey Christian!” he called as he burst through the courthouse door.  “Christian!”

“What?” Christian’s irritated answer came from the office to the side of the courtroom.

Eric strode down the side aisle and poked his head around the door.  Christian sat at his desk reading a bundle of papers.  More importantly, Jacinta sat at the small desk opposite his, pen in hand.  Her face pinched tight and she colored from red to puce at the sight of him.

“Jacinta,” he greeted her, far more subdued.

“Eric,” she clipped in reply and went back to her work.

Christian shook his head and stood with a sigh.  “What do you want?”

“I want the deed to my ranch,” he said, smile returning.  “I want to put Amelia’s name on it.”

Jacinta stiffened.

“It’s a bad idea,” Christian said.  He walked around the end of his desk to the row of filing cabinets against one wall.

“It’s not a bad idea, it’s the best idea in the world!” Eric protested.  “If it weren’t for Amelia I wouldn’t have a ranch at all.”

Jacinta gave a derisive sniff.

Christian rolled his eyes at her over his shoulder and searched in the cabinets.  He took out a certificate and motioned for Eric to follow him out of the office.

“It’s easy, right?  Adding someone to a deed?” Eric asked as they walked to the large desk at the front of the courtroom.

“It could be,” Christian said.  “It should just be a matter of an amendment.  I’ll have to read through the deed to see if there’s a provision allowing that.  Unless you want to take a look.”  He offered Eric the certificate.

“Nah.”  Eric eyed the deed, afraid to even touch it.  He wasn’t about to make a fool of himself in front of his friend by trying to read.  “I’m sure an amendment is fine.

“Whatever you want.”

“Oh, and one other thing too.”  Eric’s smile turned sheepish as Christian arched an eyebrow at him.  “Um, see, the thing is, Amelia and I … we aren’t exactly married.”