Christmas With Her Ex (9 page)

‘W
HAT IS GOING
on here?’ the voice of authority arrived before the face did, and Kelsie gave Connor a cool glance as he poked his head around the door as much as he could without stepping on the unconscious Wolfgang.

Kelsie frowned at him. The last thing they needed here were loud voices.

‘Anna is having her baby,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You are here in case I need a hand.’

His eyebrows shot up but his voice was low. Teasing. ‘Shouldn’t you be the one giving me the hand?’

She raised her own brows. ‘Catch thirty babies a year, do you?’

‘More than you’ve had breakfasts.’ He grinned. ‘But I can be your support person.’

The past shimmered between them and the tension lessened in the tiny cabin as they both smiled. It seemed Connor didn’t have control issues about this and the thought warmed as well as reassured her.

Connor was about to step over Wolfgang when he changed his mind. ‘Give me a minute while Max helps me move our sleeping friend.’

Kelsie looked up from rubbing Anna’s back and saw
a tall, distinguished-looking older gentleman nod before he turned away.

Wolfgang moaned and tried to sit up. His eyes rolled towards the much larger puddle on his immaculate blue carpet and then he slumped unconscious again.

Then, bizarrely, Wolfgang’s head dragged along the carpet with little bumps as Connor and the boutique manager pulled him unceremoniously out of the doorway by the ankles and he disappeared from view.

Connor stepped back to the now unimpeded doorway. He raised one dark eyebrow. ‘Status?’

‘Anna’s been having contractions since Venice, due date not known, no medical care, on the way to her unsuspecting baby’s father in Paris. Her waters broke three minutes ago… ’ she gestured to the puddle ‘… much to Wolfgang’s dismay, and I think we’re almost ready to push.’

‘Succinct.’ Connor couldn’t help admire the calm way Kelsie had managed the transfer of information. And the situation. He saw her glance with a measuring look at Anna. ‘I haven’t been able to assess the position of the baby.’

Their eyes met and he nodded and tried not to look at the wrong woman because Kelsie’s blue gown was knotted at the waist and the soft swell of breast could be seen between the folds.

He looked away to her face and couldn’t help thinking she looked so different from the soft and languorous woman he’d left an hour ago. She still looked amazing but there was decision and assurance in every line of her body.

Back on task, he reminded himself. ‘We’ll assume this baby knows the rules.’ He turned to someone behind him. ‘Can we get another light, please, Max? Or even a torch in case we need it.’

Connor glanced back along the corridor as the man hurried away. ‘Max has seen a lot on this train in the last twenty years,’ he said to Kelsie, but didn’t mention that apparently that included flirting with his grandmother if the interrupted conversation they’d been having had been what he’d thought it was.

Anna breathed through another contraction and the subtle expulsive effort confirmed Kelsie’s diagnosis. He would be right up there with agreeing with her assessment of the situation.

Kelsie looked up when the contraction had eased. ‘Do you have a doctor’s bag?’

He smiled wryly. ‘I’m not the sort of doctor who carries a bag to catch babies away from hospitals.’ He shrugged. ‘So what have we got on the plus side?’

‘Catching babies outside hospitals is right up my alley. And there’s two of us.’

He felt his mouth curve. Working with Kelsie was different from what he was used to. ‘Great pluses.’

She went on as if ticking off the points. ‘Anna is focused and healthy, so baby should be healthy too. And at least it’s warm in here.’

All good points. ‘So what can I do to help?’

‘I need you to take the baby if needed. Get your helper to find us some cord for tying off and scissors to cut the cord. And maybe a dish or a bag for the afterbirth.’

He nodded and spoke to the other porter, who was helping poor Wolfgang to sit up and then turned back to see if he could do anything else.

Kelsie had that far-away look in her eyes that he’d seen in midwives who could almost disappear in a room they became so unobtrusive, only to soothingly reappear when the woman needed them.

He waited until she refocused and passed her requested items across, and she put them on the small table by the window.

She looked back at him and smiled as if she was very glad he was there. He was conscious that his whole chest seemed to swell. What was it about this woman that touched him so much? Whatever it was, he’d better work out how to put up a force field or he’d be standing outside a registry office on his own again.

‘Thank you. That’s lovely.’ Her voice was soft. ‘I can concentrate on Anna. We don’t have anything if she decides to bleed, though, but there’s no reason she should.’

Connor wondered if she’d said that for Anna’s benefit, his benefit or her own. So he agreed in case she needed reassurance. ‘Of course she should be fine.’

It all happened very quickly after that. Anna was still standing when Kelsie peered under the hem of the nightgown, much to Anna’s embarrassment.

Kelsie murmured, ‘So, it is a breech. I wondered. We have our first tiny foot, and now the second has appeared.’

Trickier, Connor thought, but not a disaster, especially if Kelsie was right and both feet had come down together.

He kept his voice low and matter-of-fact, a mirror of Kelsie’s, so they didn’t alarm the mother. ‘Of course it is. Nothing straightforward about a baby that wants to be born on a train.’ He lowered his voice even further so that only Kelsie heard. ‘Do you want to swap places?’

Kelsie thought about that and appreciated he’d given her the choice. She liked that. But now the birth was a little more complicated he was the more experienced here and they both knew it. She’d delivered a breech birth before but this was no time for glory and not the place to practise.

‘Maybe.’

He slid in behind her and she edged away to allow him past so that he was in front of Anna. Kelsie took the towel to dry the baby after birth and spoke in Anna’s ear. ‘The doctor is taking over now. Everything is fine.’

Anna nodded, too intent on the overwhelming sensations to care, as her uterus contracted again and her baby shifted.

Connor looked up at Kelsie. His voice still low and slightly amused. ‘I know what you midwives are like. Don’t worry. I’m an advocate for breech babies knowing what they want to do without my interference, too.’ He held up his fingers. ‘So I’m keeping my hands off.’

Kelsie felt a glow of relief, and pride, and confidence. This was Connor, her Connor, and he’d matured into a caring and skilled man. Maybe he had even recovered from some of his control issues, she thought with a smile, and couldn’t help wondering what the future held for them. For the first time she wondered if some time in the future they might even meet again. She hoped so.

He spoke gently to Anna. ‘If you can stand the change, it would help if you were to sit on the edge of the seat, Anna. Right near the edge so baby’s toes can dangle. We won’t lift your skirt until we need to.’

Kelsie slid one of Wolfgang’s raincoats onto the floor and Connor knelt beside Anna. The girl’s eyes were closed and she was muttering prayers under her breath in an unending litany.

Kelsie decided that was as good as anything to do in the circumstances but everything seemed to be progressing normally—or normal for a breech baby wanting to be born on the Orient Express between countries.

With Anna’s change in position her baby’s little legs descended further until his hips were suddenly exposed and Connor folded back the nightgown so they could see the progress of the baby. Things would happen faster now.

Anna was having a son. Neither Kelsie nor Connor mentioned it, with the mother concentrating so deeply.

‘If the hips fit, the head fits,’ Connor said quietly, and Kelsie smiled at him.

‘I hadn’t heard that before. Very nice.’

Anna’s eyes were closed and Max was standing outside the door, available but not observing.

Kelsie leaned out the door and spoke in an undertone. ‘Can I get another couple of towels, please, Max?’

He nodded and disappeared up the corridor, returning in less than a minute with warmed towels.

‘Impressive.’ Kelsie smiled at him before laying one across Connor’s knees for him to use if he wanted to wrap baby before it was born.

The descent of the baby continued smoothly, with the help of gravity and his mother bearing down, and Connor’s knowledge to keep his hands off a breech baby in case he startled it or pulled, in which case a baby would throw up its head into an alert position, instead of being curled for birth.

Frightened babies ran into problems. It seemed Connor knew that. Kelsie knew that. Some less up-to-date accouchiers didn’t know that.

Connor also knew that breech babies could be a little more dazed and reluctant to breathe than babies who came head first. His main concern in this scenario.

So he was much happier to be the catcher to hand the baby on to Kelsie for assessment because he was more used to having a paediatric registrar do all his baby resuscitation while he cared for the woman.

In Kelsie’s working world, caseload midwives who caught babies in homes were often in pairs and the second person was always responsible for encouraging reluctant babies to breathe.

Anna’s baby had turned a pale shade of blue by the time the head finally arrived and Connor handed the floppy little boy across to Kelsie while he waited for the next stage with the mother.

Kelsie took the limp little body, wiped him quite firmly with a towel, dried him all over so that his little arms wobbled, but after another few seconds a mewling cry was heard, much to Connor’s relief.

He watched the mother seem to wake from her stupor at the sound, shake her head and focus on her infant. Then with a gasp she reached for her son, and with the
cord still attached he was gently eased into the open front of her gown against her skin.

Anna’s son lay with his head on the gentle swell of his mother’s breasts, facing Kelsie, so they could see the colour of his face and as he cried with gradually increasing indignation, suddenly pink-cheeked and vigorous.

These were the moments Connor savoured. And judging by the soft look on Kelsie’s face, she did too.

He wondered if she regretted not having had babies and then pushed the thought away. Pushed away the concept of a fifteen-year-old child they could have shared because the thought tore at somewhere deep within him.

He returned to the job at hand as the final stage of birth was completed with no damage.

He could hear Anna murmur in Italian, saw out of the corner of his vision the mother stroke the dark fuzz on the baby’s head, and then Kelsie tucked another warm towel over them both.

She caught his eye. She’d always caught his eye. This time she held it and for a moment they connected with the satisfaction of a wonderful outcome.

A special moment. Then she sent him a long relieved look and he was surprised because he hadn’t realised the depth of her anxiety, but she allowed it to escape now the crisis had passed. Suddenly he wanted to hold her in his arms and reassure her that everything was fine. That she was amazing. But he didn’t.

It was one a.m. on Christmas Eve and a baby was born.

Kelsie was the first to speak. ‘Congratulations, Anna. He’s beautiful.’

‘A boy?’ The new mother raised tearstained eyes and nodded as the knowledge sank in. ‘I cannot believe he is here.’

Over the next sixty minutes tiny Josef had been nursed, dressed in a hand-towel nappy, and clothed in a signature bear outfit from the boutique, so amusingly he looked like Wolfgang in miniature, complete with little blue cap. A tiny naked brown teddy bear sat beside him.

Now sated and wrapped in an Orient Express cashmere scarf donated by Max and settled with his mother after another feed, he was a contented baby.

Wolfgang had recovered, apologised for his unprofessional fainting attack and hastened to offer refreshments, but Max had taken over his duties and sent him off to sleep.

Anna was clean and warm, pleasantly drowsy and tucked into the narrow little bed with her baby. Already she’d spoken to her at first shocked then ecstatic boyfriend on Connor’s phone.

A doting waitress had been allocated to sit with the new mother as she rested, until they arrived in Paris in the morning, where she and her baby would alight. Kelsie had promised to drop in before they disembarked.

Connor had left instructions for them to wake him through the night if needed so all bases had been covered.

They’d both washed in the tiny basin in Kelsie’s room and Connor took Kelsie gently by the arm and steered
her back to the bar car, where Max had procured them a pot of tea.

Max smiled and went on his way, ensuring all was back to normal on the Orient Express.

Suddenly they were alone on the long settee in the bar car and Kelsie watched Connor flop back in the seat.

She had to smile as he said with disgust, ‘Moments of unusual interest. Babies!’

Kelsie put her head on his shoulder. ‘Such are the dear wee things. You were awesome.’

‘And you were incredible.’ He leant her way and stroked her cheek and she felt like drowsily turning her mouth to his hand and kissing his palm, but she wasn’t sure of her reception after the way they’d parted earlier. He might think she was jumping him again. Seemed she was still a coward.

Instead she said, ‘So we have a mutual admiration society. Sounds good to me.’

She closed her eyes for a moment as she nestled beside him on the long couch. Not a night she would forget in a hurry. Then she forced her eyes open and sipped the tea. ‘As good as this is, I think I’m too tired to drink it.’

She heard him pick up his cup and then a long swallow. Felt him move his head, as if realising the time. Funny how little things like that made him seem more real. As if them meeting like this had a purpose. Another long draught of his tea and he put his white and blue cup down. ‘Then let’s get you to bed.’