Baby's First Christmas. Cathy Thacker Gillen

of aftershave clinging to his freshly shaven jaw. “As long as you want it to work.” Wanting it to work was key. She headed for the front of the shop, where she informed Dulcie, Jeff and Lindy she was leaving to do her deliveries.

      Michael watched her gather the turquoise duffel packed with her Lamaze stuff, the keys to the van, her cell phone, clipboard of addresses, area street maps and purse. He followed her out the back door to the van.

      “I know this child exists,” he said, as Kate—who wished she could do something about the unprecedented aching in her thighs, which seemed to get worse with every passing second—unlocked the driver’s door and tossed in her gear.

      “I’m going to want to know he or she is okay,” Michael continued stubbornly as the two of them continued to be buffeted by the brisk November air.

      Feeling about as graceful as a whale on roller skates, Kate levered herself up and into the driver’s seat and fit the key in the ignition. “Then I’ll send you progress reports, okay?”

      Michael stood between her and the door, preventing her from closing it. “No. It’s not okay.” His voice lowered a notch as his eyes held hers in a manner that let her know he wasn’t about to be dissuaded. “I’m going to need—I’m going to want—a hell of a lot more than that.”

      Kate drew an exasperated breath as she reached behind her and drew her seat belt across her chest. “Look, just because I’m carrying your child—by accident, I might add—does not mean you need to be involved in my life, too.”

      Michael regarded her grimly. “If we’re going to have a child together—even by accident—we need to get to know each other. The only way for us to do that is for us to spend time together.”

      She considered that notion for a moment, finding it oddly—engagingly attractive, then discarded it.

      Rolling her eyes, she claimed facetiously, “Next you’ll be proposing marriage—”

      Michael shook his head. “Not at this stage.”

      Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven for small miracles,” she said dryly, as Michael leaned into the cab of the van.

      “Although, now that you bring it up, maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” he replied, unwilling, it seemed, to throw out any possibility whatsoever that would bring him closer to the child she was about to bear, “should we eventually find we can get along.”

      He was an attractive man. There was even, it seemed, a purely physical chemistry between them, as evidenced by the way she tingled whenever, wherever, he touched her, but the rest was just plain nuts. She studied his face. “You’re serious,” she whispered, able to feel for the first time how much he wanted this child in his life, in his heart.

      “Very.”

      Silence fell between them, more awkward than before.

      The situation was amazing. Incredible. Unprecedented. And so very complicated. Kate had no idea what to do. She only knew she felt simultaneously threatened and oddly comforted, cossetted, by his presence.

      Michael swore softly and ran a hand through his wind-tossed hair. “Look, I don’t want to make your life any harder, but this is my child—the only child I may ever have—and I want to be a part of his or her life, too. A big part.” Noting she was beginning to shiver in the increasingly cool afternoon air, he circled the front of the van and climbed into the passenger’s seat. He swiveled to face her, all the love he felt for their unborn child in his eyes. “If you were in my place, you’d feel the same way.”

      True, Kate thought, as they stared at each other in contemplative silence. Suddenly she knew—as much as she might want him to—he wasn’t going to back off. If she didn’t want to end up in court, fighting for custody of her child before he or she was even born, she was going to have to cooperate with Michael Sloane. Or at least put up the pretense of doing so until he realized this was more commitment than he really wanted over the long haul. “What exactly are you suggesting?” she asked calmly as she shut the driver door and switched on the ignition.

      “Only what’s fair,” Michael said as she turned on the heater. “That starting now, you let me be a part of our child’s life in every way. Including the birth.”

      Kate’s knees turned to jelly as she thought about the implied intimacy of that. “You want to be in the delivery room?” she asked in a low, trembling voice as she splayed a hand across her chest.

      “I am a doctor.”

      But not my doctor, Kate thought. And the thought of being disrobed in front of him, for any reason, made her heart beat all the harder. Ignoring the tingles of awareness ghosting over her skin, she frowned and glanced at her watch. “I’m going to have to think about this.”

      Michael looked as though he had expected that. “It’ll have to be fast,” he warned. “If the guys at the lab were correct about the date of your artificial insemination, you’ve only got a day or so.”

      As if she needed reminding about that! Kate shrugged. “The baby could be late.”

      “Or early.”

      Swallowing around the sudden dryness in her throat, Kate glanced at her watch again. “I really do need to go.”

      Michael frowned at the list of addresses on the clipboard and the rows of gift baskets in the back of the van. “You’re going to make all these deliveries yourself?”

      Kate nodded. “I always do the late afternoon deliveries. Dulcie does the ones first thing in the morning. Jeff takes care of the ones at noon.” She paused. “I like this part of the business, too. It’s fun, seeing the expression of delight on the customers’ faces when they receive a gift from my shop. And I enjoy the change of pace after being in the shop all day.”

      “Let me help you. You drive. I’ll carry the baskets up to the door. It’ll go twice as fast that way. Then maybe the two of us can go to dinner and finish resolving all this.”

      Kate had to admit she could use the help. Because of her talk with him, she was running a good hour behind schedule for deliveries. “It’s going to take me several hours,” she warned. “And I have to go out in the country to do the rural deliveries.”

      “Then you really shouldn’t be out there alone. Not this close to delivering. What if something happened?”

      “Then I’d call for help on my cell phone,” she told him calmly, knowing first babies were generally notoriously slow in arriving. And she had yet to suffer her first real contraction. Nevertheless, he had a point. She didn’t want to put her baby in danger. And she had been feeling a little achy and tired all day. Maybe it was best if she accepted his help and let him tag along with her. It would give her a chance to show him she could handle work and a baby and subtly persuade him he didn’t want to be a father as much as he thought he did. If she were successful, it would be well worth the additional time she spent with him.

      While she drove, Kate told him about the preparations she had made for the baby, going into detail about the nursery she had prepared, the type of crib and changing table and rocking chair she’d selected and the extensive layette of baby clothes. Michael was interested and impressed. Nevertheless, by the time they had gotten halfway through the list of deliveries, Kate felt oddly trembly and exhausted. When he offered to do some of the driving, too, she agreed with barely a murmur of dissent.

      “You feeling okay?” Michael asked as he got behind the wheel and steered the delivery van onto the lonely country road.

      “Sure,” Kate fibbed with a lot more assurance than she felt, then abruptly doubled over with a sharp cry of pain.

      “What is it?” Michael asked, alarmed.

      Kate clutched her tummy all the harder. “Guess.”

       Chapter Two

      “You’re in labor,” Michael proclaimed, surprised