As if in answer to her question, Rhys gestured down the hall. When he turned away again, Laird made to follow.
An ache of another sort pulled at Scarlett. Laird in scrubs?
“I do believe some deep-seated fantasy I never knew I had is about to come true,” Scarlett murmured, envisioning the end result. Yum.
Emmy giggled, a playful somewhat naughty sound Scarlett hadn’t yet heard from her. “Since it’s actually a fantasy I’ve been harboring for some time, I hope Connor changes, too.”
Then all thoughts of desire and muscles bulging against blue cotton fled. “Here comes another one.”
“Won’t be long now.”
“Laird better change fast or he might miss the birth,” Scarlett panted. “Damn, I won’t even be able to appreciate the sight of him if he changes, will I?”
“There’s plenty of time for that.”
Laird
The next morning
“She’s beautiful,” Emmy cooed over the newborn.
“She’s terrifyingly wee,” Laird contradicted, his burr grave with worry. He sat close to the portable incubator with Hermione on his knee, his arm through the hole, and his bronzed finger encircled by tiny pink fingers with a strength that surprised him. Yet she was so frail.
She had come into this world with only the faintest of mewls and been whisked away by the doctor named Patel before they’d even gotten a good look at her. They’d returned her hours later in this box with numerous tubes and wires connected to her wee body.
He’d only known real fear once in his life. Not in battle, when his life had been on the line, but at the thought of losing Scarlett years before. He felt it again now. A churning, knotted twist in his gut at the thought of losing this precious lass. Aye, they’d not the means to spare her in his time, but what benefit would there be in this journey if she could not be saved in this one?
“Hermione entered the world hale and hearty, wailing with volume enough to drown out a banshee. This one is like a kitten.”
Connor clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s a fine lass and soon she’ll have the lungs enough to bring down the roof, I’d wager.”
“Aye, I’ve two bonny lasses.” Laird spoke with more confidence than he felt, never tearing his eyes away from his newborn daughter. Willing her to breathe. To thrive. “Born of a bonny mother I love more than life. Even if she continues to bear me only daughters.”
Connor shared a grin with his wife. “Maybe I should have Emmy explain the X and Y swimmers.”
Scarlett rolled into the room with Rhys pushing her in an ingenious wheeled chair. Wrapped in a coarse white robe, with hideous stockings on her feet, her long auburn hair tangled around her shoulders and a bonny, weary smile on her lips, she’d never looked lovelier to Laird’s mind. Her brown eyes were lit with laughter that warmed his troubled heart.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ve already tried and he’s not buying it.”
“Aye, a stubborn arse my brother is,” Rhys chimed in. The two laughed together and an affectionate smile tugged at Laird’s lips.
Years before, their close friendship had dealt Laird fits of jealousy. Even when he knew he had her heart, he’d envied the intimate bond between them. Now he was glad for it. For both their sakes.
However, he wasn’t pleased Rhys had stolen Scarlett for a turn around the hospital in her condition. Setting Hermione on her feet, Laird jumped up and tugged at the ridiculous garb he wore. He found the scrubs as grating as the word used to describe them. They were binding and rather tight—something Scarlett hadn’t minded as much as he for some reason—but then the scrubs weren’t meant for a man his size.
“Where have ye been, lass? Ye should be abed. Resting.”
“It’s a different time, Laird. No rest for the weary here. They’ll expect me to be up and about today and out of here tomorrow.” Scarlett shifted her gaze to the incubator and Hermione joined her, pressing her face against the plastic shell to get a better look at her new sister. “Not that I’ll be going anywhere until the baby is able to go…well, go home seems a rather loose statement at the moment, doesn’t it?” She chewed her lip. “Which leads to the bigger question. Has anyone seen Donell around at all?”
“No, he seems to have disappeared entirely,” Emmy told her. “The old bugger.”
“I hate it when he does that.”
“You’re preaching to the choir.”
Laird parted his lips, an inquiry on the tip of his tongue, but closed them again. “Nay, I’m no’ going to ask.”
He’d already spent the better part of the previous day and night gaping like a simpleton left and right, a thousand questions on his lips. From the hard white and beige floor beneath his feet to the lights shining down from above and everything between, everything single thing he gazed upon roused one question after another.
He’d seen tubes stuck in his wife and his newborn daughter with no conceivable idea as to their purpose. Had his new bairn confined to a box for reasons beyond his ken. Words were spoken by doctors, nurses, and even his wife that held no meaning to him.
Naïvely, he’d thought Scarlett’s stories had readied him to face the future, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Navigating this time was like learning a new language without knowing the alphabet it was derived from.
His wife’s warning made more sense now that he was here. He was out of his element in this place. For the first time in his life, Laird found himself inferior to others. Not even his illegitimacy had brought him so low, and the feeling sat ill upon him. His
