My Kind of Trouble (46 page)

The nurse's lips twitched, "This your first
baby?"

The woman had evidently just come on duty,
she wasn't here when he was at the desk last...or she would fucking
know
this was his first baby. Luke clutched his gut as a
pain racked him that made him want to drop to his knees. "Oh,
god..." he moaned and felt beads of sweat breaking out on his
forehead.

"You okay?" the nurse asked tilting her head
to the side to study him.

"I feel like my gut is about to split open.
No, I'm not okay..." he said in a pained whisper. "I need you to go
see about my wife...
NOW
!" he yelled the last word as another
excruciating pain ripped through him, and this time he did sink to
his knees to ride it out.

Once it passed, Luke sucked in a deep breath
then used one hand to push back up to his feet and glared at the
nurse.

"Oh, gosh...you're one of
those
. This
is going to be a fun delivery."

"What the
he
--" Luke roared as
another pain hit him and he staggered back to the door of Cassie's
room, then stumbled over to sit in the chair beside the bed. The
nurse came in behind him with a syringe. Instead of giving it to
Cassie however, she walked toward him.

He leaned away from her and she just smiled.
"I'm going to give you something to help you calm down Mr.
Matthews.

He felt the blood drain from his face as he
stared at the large needle, then back up at the nurse. "Is this
because I complained?"

"No, it's because you're having sympathetic
labor pains. This will help," she assured him then said, "Roll up
your sleeve."

"I'm the one in pain over here and you're
giving
him
the drugs?" Cassie shouted incredulously, then
moaned as another contraction squeezed her and she inhaled deeply,
then pushed and huffed out breaths then panted.

Luke moaned at the same time and clutched
his stomach squirming in the chair. "What the
fuck
?"

The nurse smiled smugly at him then asked in
a sing song voice, "Want the shot now Mr. Matthews?"

He quickly jerked up his sleeve and the
nurse stuck him and pressed the plunger to send the medicine into
his muscle. It hurt like hell, but nothing like the stomach pains
he was having.
Sympathetic labor pains?
What the hell was
that?

He felt the drug move into his system and
his brain got a little fuzzy, and he thought the tenseness in his
belly had eased some. Breathing a sigh of relief, Luke went to get
up to go and help Cassie, when another pain hit him full force, one
that almost sent him in a facer to the floor. He grabbed behind him
and sat back down huffing through the pain. Just like he heard
Cassie doing in the bed.

Jesus, this was just too fucking weird. He
had to call Cole to come in here and help him...he was in the
waiting room. But the pains were less than a minute apart, and he
was falling apart...not even able to get up and help Cassie.

He saw the nurse put on rubber gloves, then
go give Cassie a dilation exam. "Yep, she's crowning. I'll go get
the doctor."

The woman left the room and Luke and Cassie
had two more contractions before the doctor came into the room and
grinned at Luke. "How're your labor pains, Mr. Matthews? Did the
shot kick in yet?"

Cassie bore down on another contraction and
Luke spat out through the pain, "
No
!"

"Well hopefully it will before you deliver,"
the doctor told him with a chuckle then went over to check on
Cassie.

Luke sure didn't see what was so fucking
funny. He was a man--and he was
having a baby
--literally!
This had to be some kind of strange cosmic joke. God, if this was
what women went through, he was surprised the world's population
wasn't dwindling. Surely women talked! He knew he sure as hell
would!

When another contraction hit her, he noticed
that his was a little less intense, but it still made him want to
howl. He heard the doctor announce that the head was out, and Luke
was thankful, because both he and Cassie would be out of pain soon.
Or so he thought until they had another contraction, this one
longer and more pronounced.

"That's it Cassie, bear down...hold
it...hold it...and let it go." The doctor coached her and Luke was
right along with him. "This looks like a big baby...I thought it
was from the ultrasound, but wow."

Cassie had decided she didn't want to know
the sex of the baby was before it was born, and Luke had
reluctantly agreed. He was surprised, because his wife wasn't long
on patience. She hated a secret being kept from her. How he'd
managed to hold out against her less than fair interrogation
procedures about the honeymoon, he'd never know. He should have
gotten some prize for managing to surprise her with a visit to
several Kentucky horse farms, and their nights at the races at
Churchill Downs were amazing...their whole honeymoon had been
amazing.

Cassie had even managed to buy two great
broodmares to add to their stock. It was a good thing they'd
doubled the size of the barn they'd rebuilt to replace the one that
burned down. The way Cassie collected horses, they'd need every
stall soon.

Luke tensed up when he heard Cassie have
another contraction, then he relaxed and sent up a silent prayer of
thanks when he didn't have one. The medicine must have kicked in.
He was exhausted from the ones he did have...he could only imagine
how Cassie was feeling.

Weakly, he got up from the chair and went to
her side and picked up her hand to hold it, then bent down and
kissed her cheek. "You're doing good, baby..."

Amazingly, she grinned at him then said, "So
are
you
..." before she gave a belly laugh.

He wondered why she wasn't having
contractions anymore then looked down at the doctor who held his
daughter up by her feet and spanked her ass. It made him want to go
punch the doctor in the nose. Luke could see it was a girl from her
lack of male equipment.

Then he heard his baby girl wail, and tears
rushed up to his eyes, and a lump formed in his throat. The doctor
cradled her then handed her off to the nurse, who suctioned out her
nose and mouth, then took her over to weigh her and clean her
up.

Luke held Cassie's hand and watched the
doctor finish the delivery and then the nurse brought them their
baby girl wrapped in a pink and green striped blanket. Her head was
covered with a pink knit cap, but Luke could see her dark hair
curling around the edge of the cap by her tiny pink ears. Gently,
the nurse put the baby in Cassie's arms and the baby found her
thumb and began sucking. Luke sat on the bed then leaned down and
kissed Cassie gently on the lips, then pressed a kiss to his
daughter's head.

"So what are we going to name her?" Luke
asked, since they hadn't really decided yet on a boy and a girl
name yet.

She looked up at him with love shining in
her sky-blue eyes and said, "What do you think about Annabelle
after my mother? Daddy always called her Bella...that means
beautiful in Spanish."

"I think it's perfect, darlin'," Luke's eyes
filled up and he swiped at them with his arm then drew in a
shuddering breath.

"You pick a middle name..." Cassie told
him.

"Hmm..." Luke said trying to come up with
something. He hadn't know his mother...he knew from his birth
certificate that her name was Jewel though. "How about Jewel?

"Beautiful Jewel. That's perfect, Luke...why
did you pick that?"

"It was my mother's name," he told her and
felt blood rush to his face.

Cassie's eyes filled with tears this time,
"I think that's wonderful, darlin'."

Luke leaned down to hug her and Annabelle at
the same time, and he thought his life couldn't be anymore
complete. He had the family that he'd always yearned for, and so
much more. He had a lifetime of triumphs
and
trouble to look
forward to with them and he couldn't be happier.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Becky McGraw is a married mother of three
adult children, and a Southern girl by birth and the grace of God,
ya'll. One of several career changes transplanted Becky and her
family to Indiana, where she now lives with her husband and dog
Abby.

A jack of many trades in her life, Becky has
been an optician, a beautician, a legal secretary, a senior project
manager for an aviation management consulting firm, which took her
all over the United States, and now a graphic artist, web designer
and writer.

She knows just enough about a variety of
topics to make her dangerous, or to put that knowledge to work for
her in her romance novels. Being a graphic artist, is a good thing
for her too, as she can do her own cover art as well as write the
novels.

Becky has been an avid reader of romance
novels since she was a teenager, and has been known to read up to
four novels of that genre a week, much to the dismay of her
husband, and the joy of Barnes & Noble.

She has been writing fictional short stories
and novels for fun, as well as technical copy for her jobs for many
years. She was a member of the Writer's Guild on AOL during her
last venture into writing romance, as well as a founding member and
treasurer of the first online chapter of the Romance Writers of
America, From the Heart Romance Writers.

With the advancement of online publishing
opportunities, Becky has started writing again as voraciously as
she reads, and is self-publishing her debut e-novel
My Kind of
Trouble
, Cassie and Luke's Story. My Kind of Trouble is the
first in a series called
Texas Trouble.
Please be looking
for the second release which will be
The Trouble with Love
,
which is Sabrina and Cole's story.

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as
real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.