Heart of Texas Vol. 3 (39 page)

“I wish I'd thought to charge the batteries in my phone,” Dovie said with an apologetic expression.

“So do I,” Frank muttered as he headed out of the church. “I'll get Amy's suitcase while I'm at it. We picked it up before we came out here.”

Amy moaned, and Wade knelt down on the floor next to her.

“Oh, Wade, it hurts so much,” she whimpered.

“Do you want me to rub your back?” Dovie asked.

“No…no.” Amy stretched out her hand to Wade.

He clasped it in his own. Wanting to help as much as he could, he reached for the cool washcloth Dovie had brought in and wiped her brow.

The pain seemed to ease and so did her fierce grip on his hand.

“Have you ever delivered a baby?” Dovie asked him, looking paler by the minute.

“No,” he said.

“Me, neither.”

“I'm not exactly a pro at this myself,” Amy said weakly in what he sensed was an effort to insert a bit of humor. A pain must have overtaken her again because she closed her eyes and started to moan.

“Do something,” Wade pleaded with Dovie, who took her position by Amy's feet.

“The baby's fully crowned,” Dovie whispered, glancing up at Wade.

Amy's answering smile was weak. “She's coming, Dovie, she's coming.” With that she began to bear down.

“Pant!” Dovie instructed. “Pant.”

Amy did, and Wade encouraged her with a stream of praise and reassurance.

“The suitcase,” Dovie said. “We'll need the suitcase.”

“It's in the car,” Wade remembered. “Why the hell isn't Frank back? I'll go get it.” He loosened his grip on Amy's hand but she refused to release his.

“No! Wade, Wade, please don't leave me.”

Wade met Dovie's look.

“I'll go,” she said and hurried from the church.

Wade held Amy's hand against his heart. “I love you.”

“I know. I love you, too. So much.” Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and rolled toward her ears. She sniffled once and started to moan again.

“Wade!” she cried. “The baby's coming!”

A calmness came over him, and he moved to the end of the pew, taking Dovie's role. The first thing he saw was a full head of wet dark hair. Amy panted, and the baby's head slipped free. Wade supported the tiny head, which fit perfectly in his large hands. The baby's small eyes were squeezed shut and she didn't look the least bit pleased with this turn of events.

It seemed that no time had passed before Dovie and Frank burst into the back of the church. Frank carried the suitcase.

“We need a baby blanket,” Wade called.

Frank knelt down and opened the suitcase, and Dovie rushed forward just as Amy gave a shout and half rose. As she did, the baby slid into Wade's waiting arms. He gazed down at this perfectly formed miniature human being and experienced such a rush of love and joy it was all he could do not to break into sobs himself.

“Is it a girl?” Amy asked, crying openly.

“No, a boy,” Wade said as the infant wailed loudly. The cry pierced through the church and Wade swore it was the most beautiful sound he'd heard in his entire life.

“An aid car's on the way,” Frank told them. “I'm going to meet them by the highway.”

“Go,” Dovie said, waving him off. She took the baby from Wade and wrapped him in a blanket, then handed the bundle to Wade, while she tended to Amy, who had delivered the after-birth.

“A boy,” Amy said, half sitting to look at her son. Tears streaked her beautiful face.

Tears of his own blurred his eyes as he stared down at the incredibly tiny being. The immediate sense of love he felt for this child was beyond comprehension. It took a real effort of will to hand him to his mother, but at last he laid the baby on her abdomen.

Amy gazed upon her son and lovingly kissed his brow. “Welcome, little Joseph Gair.”

The baby screamed as if he was protesting the rough treatment he'd already received from life.

“Gair—that's my middle name,” Wade choked out. It had been his grandfather's first name.

“Your mother told me.”

Wade reached out his finger and Joseph immediately clenched it with his hand. The connection was one that would last all his life. Wade was sure of it.

While Dovie finished with Amy, Wade sat at the far end of the pew holding Joseph. The child's eyes opened briefly and he looked up at Wade in the soft light and stopped crying. Within a minute he was sound asleep.

A boy. Not Sarah, but Joseph. “Sleep, darling boy, sleep,” Wade whispered and kissed his brow.

“Is everything all right?” Amy asked, turning to see Wade and her son.

“Perfect,” he whispered. “Perfect.”

Tears glistened in Amy's eyes, and he didn't know how she knew what he was thinking, but she did. He saw it in her look, in everything about her.

“Marry me,” he said softly.

“Honestly, Amy, put that boy out of his misery and marry him,” Dovie pleaded.

Wade could have kissed Dovie. He'd never been more convinced of anything than the rightness of marrying Amy and making Joseph his son. The moment the infant had entered life, he'd come into Wade's hands—to guide, to love, to support. This was his son, born of his heart. This was the woman he would love and cherish all his life.

“I love you so much,” Amy whispered.

“Does that mean yes?”

“Yes.” Her whispered response was half laugh and half sob.

This was the way it was meant to be. Amy and Joseph and him, and whatever other children might be born in the years to come.

“The aid car's here,” Frank announced from the back of the church.

“Already?” Dovie sounded as though she didn't believe him.

“It was dispatched earlier,” Frank said, walking toward them. “Apparently when we didn't show up at the hospital, Jane called the office and they radioed ahead for an aid car.”

“It might have helped if they'd arrived ten minutes earlier,” Dovie muttered.

Wade knew better. The aid car had arrived right on schedule.

A
MY HAD NEVER SLEPT LIKE THIS
.
The hospital room was dark, and she sighed and smiled as she reviewed the events of the day before. It didn't seem possible that she'd actually given birth in Bitter End. Things had gone crazy all at once, but she'd always be grateful for the way they'd happened. Otherwise Wade wouldn't have been there, and she couldn't imagine what Joseph's birth would have been like without him at her side.

If she'd ever doubted his love, he'd proved it ten times over in those few hours. She closed her eyes and recalled the incredible sense of rightness that she'd felt when she agreed to marry him. All her doubts and fears had melted away. Instinctively she knew it was what she had to do.

All her reasons for declining earlier remained, but after Joseph's birth, those reasons didn't seem nearly as important. Her greatest fear was that she'd be a detriment to Wade and his commitment to his church. Wade deserved someone better. It was what she'd sincerely felt, but all that had changed when she realized how much Wade loved her and her child. How much she loved him.

Content, she smiled, and for the first time noticed a shadow in the corner. Sitting upright, she saw Wade sprawled asleep in a chair. He'd stretched out his feet and slouched down, his arms flung over the sides.

“Wade,” she whispered in astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

He awoke immediately, saw her and smiled softly. Sitting up, he glanced around the room. “What time is it?”

She looked for a clock but didn't see one. “I don't know.”

“Oh.” He glanced at his watch. “It's 4:00 a.m.”

“Have you been here all night?” she asked.

“Guess so—it sure feels that way.” He rubbed the back of his neck and rotated the stiffness from his shoulders.

“You must have been so uncomfortable.” Amy couldn't believe that he'd been with her all this time.

“I'll live,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Starved,” she admitted.

He stood and shook out his legs. “I'll see what I can do about scrounging up something to eat.”

“Don't go,” she begged him and held out her hand.

He walked over to her side and she lifted her arms to him. They kissed, and it was beautiful, sensual, intense. It felt good to be in his arms again, to recognize that sense of belonging.

“How did you happen to spend the night?” she asked.

She felt Wade's smile against her face. “They let me into the nursery to help with Joseph. I was there, Amy, when they weighed and measured him and washed him for the first time. He doesn't take to baths well.” He paused to smile and their eyes held a long moment.

“Oh, Wade, I'm so happy.”

“He's a beautiful baby boy,” he told her.

“I'm having a little trouble adjusting to the fact that Sarah's a boy!”

“He's got a fine pair of lungs on him, too.”

“I heard, remember?”

“Dr. Jane was by, and Ellie and Glen stopped in, too, and there are quite a few floral arrangements. The nurses kept them by their station because they didn't want to disturb your sleep.”

“Everyone's been so good to me.”

“It's because you're loved.”

Amy felt that love. It overwhelmed her that the people of Promise would be this kind. That they would accept a stranger the way they had.

“Everyone was full of questions, too.”

Amy could well imagine that.

“I must have been asked a dozen times how you ended up giving birth in the ghost town.”

“I guess people think it was foolish of me to go there so close to my due date.”

“I don't,” Wade countered. “I'm convinced it was exactly where we were supposed to be.”

She smiled and understood what he was saying. There was a rightness to her being in Bitter End, as if all this had been ordained long before.

Wade yawned loudly and covered his mouth.

“You must be exhausted,” she said.

“I am,” he told her. “It isn't every day a man delivers a son and convinces a gal to marry him.”

“I should hope not,” Amy said and kissed the back of his hand.

“D
OVIE
,” F
RANK CALLED
,
hurrying from room to room to search for his wife. He could hardly wait to tell her the latest about little Joe.

“I'm in the garden.” Dovie's melodic voice drifted into the house from the backyard.

Frank walked onto the back patio to discover his wife picking ripe red tomatoes from her ever-abundant garden. She wore a large straw hat and, in his view, had never looked lovelier.

“I saw Amy and Joseph this afternoon,” he said, then laughed at the immediate flash of envy he read in her eyes.

“Frank Hennessey, why didn't you come and get me?”

“I would have, but it was a chance meeting. I'll have you know that little tyke smiled at me.”

“He didn't.”

“Dovie, I swear it's the truth. He looked up at me with his big, beautiful, brown eyes and grinned from ear to ear.”

Dovie added a plump tomato to her basket. “He was probably pooping. He's only two months old. That's far too young to be grinning.”

“Hey, I'm his godfather. I know these things.”

She gave an exaggerated sigh. “And I'm his godmother and I know about these things, too.”

“You're jealous because he didn't smile for you first.”

“Well, I have news for you, Frank Hennessey. Little Joe most certainly did smile for me.” The moment the words left Dovie's mouth, she snapped it closed, knowing she'd said more than she'd intended. Frank recognized that look of hers all too well.

“You've been to see him again,” he charged. “I suppose you bought him another toy.”

“I didn't,” she denied.

The flush in her cheeks claimed otherwise. “All right, all right, I bought him a designer bib. Oh, Frank, it was the cutest little thing you've ever seen.”

His eyes narrowed as though he disapproved, but in reality, he was having the time of his life spoiling this youngster, too. Amy and Wade had made him and Dovie the official godparents—and little Joe's unofficial grandparents. Christmas was a month away, and they'd already bought him more presents than Santa delivered to the entire state. They seemed unable to stop themselves. It was as though an entire new world had opened up to them with the birth of this child. They were crazy about the baby and crazy about each other, too.

“The bib was a policeman's uniform complete with badge,” Dovie told him. “You aren't
really
angry, are you, sweetheart?”

How could he be? Frank loved this child as though he were his own flesh and blood. He suspected a great deal of this was the result of being present at little Joe's birth, but that was only part of the reason.

Frank had waited until he was sixty years old to marry, and once he'd committed himself to Dovie he wanted to kick himself for leaving it this late. He recalled with clarity the talk he'd had with his wife some months previously. Dovie had lamented the fact that they would never be grandparents.

He hadn't been much of a churchgoer, but after he'd married, he'd started attending services with her. He remembered one of Wade's sermons about Abraham and Sarah becoming parents well after their childbearing years. In some ways the story reminded him of what had happened to him and Dovie. Amy had arrived in Promise needing a family, and she'd adopted them and they'd adopted her. All the love they had in their hearts was lavished on Amy, Wade and little Joe.

“He's an incredible baby,” Frank said.

“Incredible,” Dovie echoed.

Frank slipped his arm around her waist. “You're pretty incredible yourself, Dovie Hennessey.”

“So I've been told.”

He threw back his head and hooted with laughter.

Dovie set her basket of vegetables aside and threw her arms around his middle. Her eyes sparkled with joy as she gazed up at him. “I'm happy, so very happy.”

“I am, too.” The transition to married life had been much easier than Frank had suspected. He'd fought long and hard, convinced he was too set in his ways to give up bachelor-hood—and his stubbornness had nearly cost him the only woman he'd ever truly loved.

Frank hugged Dovie close. “We're going to spoil that baby rotten!” he declared.

“But, Frank, we're going to have so much fun doing it.”

Frank could see that once again his wife was right.

T
HREE MONTHS AFTER
C
HRISTMAS
Savannah Smith ventured into Bitter End. What she found caused her to race back to the ranch and breathlessly inform her husband. Laredo suggested she tell Grady and Caroline that same afternoon, which she did. The news burst from her in a rush of excitement.

“You're sure about this?” Grady asked.

“Grady, I know what I saw.”

Caroline and five-month-old Roy came to visit the following day. “You went to Bitter End?” her best friend asked. “Good grief, Savannah, what would ever make you go back there?”

“The anniversary of my first visit. It was two years ago, March twentieth, and I wanted to see if the rosebush I'd planted in the cemetery had survived.”

Savannah's whole life had changed that day two years earlier when she found a weary cowboy walking down the side of a country road and offered him a ride. She'd never done anything like it before and she never would again. For the first and only time in her life, she'd picked up a hitchhiker, and before the year was out she'd married him. She and Laredo Smith had become partners in the Yellow Rose Ranch and partners for life.

“Grady phoned and told Cal,” Caroline said, cradling her son in her arms.

“I talked to Nell and Travis, too,” Savannah said.

“Someone must have phoned and told Wade.”

“Glen and Ellie, I think,” Laredo suggested.

“Wade suggested we all meet out there first thing in the morning.”

“You're going, aren't you?” Caroline asked.

Laredo and Savannah looked at each other and nodded. “We wouldn't miss it,” he told her.

Fourteen of them planned to gather in the ghost town and see the strange phenomenon for themselves. Each one had been to the town at some point or other in the past two years. Each for his or her own reasons.

Savannah felt a certain responsibility to be present, since she was the person who'd started it all two years ago when she'd gone to Bitter End in search of lost roses. She was also the person who'd stumbled upon this latest wonder.

They met and parked their vehicles outside the town. Then each couple walked down the steep incline onto the dirt road that led into the center of town.

Savannah watched and smiled at their reactions, knowing that the same sense of astonishment must have shown on her face twenty-four hours earlier.

Grady's arm was around Caroline's shoulder. Roy was asleep in his carrier. Little Joe, too. Savannah knew that in the years to come these two boys would be best friends. Much the same way Grady and Glen and Cal had been from grade school onward.

“It's true,” Ellie whispered. Her pregnancy was obvious now. Glen's hand held hers.

“It's a miracle,” Nell whispered, gazing around her.

All around them, in every nook and cranny, against the corral, by the old water trough and even near the large rock, roses bloomed. Their scent wafted about, perfuming the air, their muted colors bringing life and beauty to a once dead place. Pansies winked from small patches of earth—gardens a century ago—and bluebonnets covered the hillside, waving bright blue petals in the breeze.

Perhaps most incredible of all was the dead tree in the center of town. Up from the trunk had sprung new life, green shoots. In time the new tree would overshadow the old; life would vanquish death.

“Who can explain such a thing?” Frank asked, awestruck.

Savannah understood his awe; she felt the same way herself. Naturally there'd be a logical explanation for what had happened if they sought one. Most likely a freshwater spring had broken free.

“I don't know that I can explain it,” Travis said, looking thoughtful. “But I can speculate about what might have caused this.”

Everyone turned to him. “Bitter End's come full circle now,” he said.

“Why now?” Ellie wanted to know.

“Well, keep in mind that I'm a writer—a storyteller—and I like events to have a structure. I like a sense of completion.” Travis smiled at Amy and Wade. “But if my guess is right, we have little Joe to thank for all this.”

“Joe?” Amy gazed down on her sleeping son.

“Amy, too,” Dovie added, slipping her arm around the young mother's waist.

“A preacher's son died in Bitter End all those years ago,” Travis said. “And now a preacher's son has been born here. So, like I said, everything has come full circle.”

“Full circle,” Savannah whispered, knowing instinctively that this was indeed what had happened.

“The curse is gone.”

Savannah smiled. “And in its place is a profusion of beauty.”

A town in bloom, filled with promises for the future. Promises for life.