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Prologue
Lying half-naked and spread-eagled with a hot hunk whispering encouraging words in your ear might be the fantasy of millions of women, but this particular variation was not doing the trick for Jules Kilroy.
“I need to bleedin’ push!”
“Not yet,” Doctor Harper said firmly. Her tough-as-old-boots OB must have been a sergeant major in a previous life.
Push, don’t push, deep breaths, shallow breaths…agh!Jules was trying not to act like she was the first woman to give birth, but it washerfirst time and blimey, the pain was excruciating.
“It’s not called labor for nothing,” the man at her side added, a knowing smile in his deep rumble of a voice. Usually that voice worked gangbusters to get her through the rough times, not to mention fueling a few luridly inappropriate fantasies, but today she just wanted to drop-kick Tad DeLuca’s beautiful face into the middle of the next millennium.
Instead of choosing violence, she made a conscious decision to breathe herself to serenity. From time immemorial, the entirety of womankind had endured the pain of childbirth, so she needed to stop being such a trauma queen. The sucking-in-air part she could manage.Slow,deep breaths.Around her, the low hum of hospital equipment and the professional, almost balletic movements of Team “Get Demon Out of Jules” focused her mind on the task ahead.
Bloody hell, she was having a baby!
Pain, sharper than before, lanced through her. She clasped Tad’s hand so hard she half expected to see diamonds pop out.
He didn’t flinch, but then he never did.
Tad had been her rock since she showed up in Chicago five months ago, straight off a flight from London with a bun in the oven. Those broad shoulders, indecently covered with drip-dry fabrics ready to absorb her weepfests, had borne the weight of her weary head more times than she cared to count. He was the first person she confided in about her dyslexia, the last person who comforted her through every piddling panic. She had her brother, former celebrity chef Jack Kilroy, and an amazing extended family in the DeLucas, her brother’s in-laws, but Tad was the guy who made her feel like she was part of something bigger. He made her feel special.
A rolling wave of pain caught her by surprise—surprising because she had passed the point where the contractions let up and gave her breaks. For the last hour, they had been blurring into each other, shifting like tectonic plates heralding an earthquake of suffering.
“Demon wants out,” she muttered, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Of course he does.” Tad thumbed at the corners of her eyes, swiping her leaking emotion away. “He’s dying to meet you. And we’re all dying to meet him.”
Him.That she was having a boy was bloody typical. The male of the species had been nothing but trouble since that first moment on a London school playground when she realized the anatomical differences between boys and girls were worthy of further exploration.
Curiosity, every woman’s downfall.
“Now’s the time to push,” barked Doc Harper.
Jules bore down, trying to remember how to do something that was supposedly innate and natural. She had to be getting it all wrong, like she always did.
Tad squeezed her hand, much more gently than she had squeezed his.
“Hold it for ten seconds, just like we practiced in the classes.”
With an empathetic held breath of his own, his shoulders lifted, inflating his already immense chest. The scrubs he wore should have been loose-fitting, but they molded to his muscles on that inhale, a fact she should not be noticing now, of all times. Think of the fortune this deliciously distracting man could make hiring that face, bod, and voice out to birthing mothers everywhere.
“That’s good. Now relax, don’t push,” said Dr. Harper, her professional eye on the fetal monitor. Its steady beeps reassured everyone in the delivery room that the baby was okay even if Jules felt like an alien was about to explode from her hoo-ha.
“Maybe you should take some of that dope they offered so liberally a while back,” Tad said, in clear violation of her instructions.
No matter what happens, don’t let me take any drugs.
There had been other instructions to Tad as well:refrain from flirting with the prettynursesandunder no circumstances are you to look down there!But mostly, the “just say no to drugs” was rule numero uno.
Though she had always been open to the idea of an epidural, in the end she had elected to stick with a natural childbirth. Not because she was an earthy-crunchy, tree-hugging hippie type. She had a sneaking suspicion that if she got high, she’d get chatty and might reveal a few unfortunate home truths to the man at her side.
Such as how he made her tingly in troublesome places and that she had a whopping mega crush on him.
“Too late for that,” Doc cut in, eliminating the need to make a decision.
“So the window for legalized narcotics has passed,” Tad said. “But that’s okay becauseI’mhere. I’m your drug, baby. Just look at me and tell me you’re not addicted to my shocking good looks.”
“Arsehole,” she muttered, annoyed that he had the audacity to read her mind while she was at her lowest point. Shocking good looks weren’t far off the mark, though. Taddeo DeLuca was a Prada commercial come to life. The hard bod, the piercing blue eyes, the dark, wavy hair that framed his face like a wimple of sin. In his banged-up jeans and motorcycle leathers, he was sex-on-Italian-legs.
