Cavanaugh's Secret Delivery. Marie Ferrarella

      “I can live with that,” he told her. “Now push!” he ordered.

      She had no choice. It was as if the baby had taken control of her instead of the other way around. The baby was pushing its way out.

      “It’s...coming!”

      “It sure is,” Dugan agreed, excited. “One more push,” he told her. “Just one more—that’s it,” he encouraged. “That’s it!”

      And then, just like that, he found himself holding a baby in his hands. For a second, Dugan was in complete, mind-numbing awe.

      Despite everything he’d told her, he had never been in this position before. He’d never actually had to put his training—which was far from recent—to use like this before.

      And then Dugan came to life.

      “Here,” he told the brand-new mother, placing the baby on her stomach. “Hold her and don’t move,” he ordered.

      “It’s a girl?” the woman asked him, relief highlighted in her face.

      “Oh, yeah,” he answered, realizing that he hadn’t said that before. “It’s a girl.”

      The next moment, he was taking out a knife from his pocket. It had been a gift from his mother for his fourteenth birthday, the last gift she had ever given him and he was never without it.

      “Do you have a paperclip?” he asked the new mother.

      She was holding the baby in her arms, totally stunned and totally in love with the baby girl she was holding. She blinked as she looked up at him.

      “A what?”

      “A paperclip,” he repeated. “I’m going to need something to temporarily stem any blood that might start flowing from the cut.” Dugan was already several steps ahead in his mind.

      “What blood?” she asked, looking at the baby, panicking. “Is there blood?”

      “No, but there will be when I cut the cord,” he told her.

      “Oh.” She thought for a moment, then asked, “Will a hairclip do?”

      He put his hand out. “It might. Let me see it.”

      “It’s in my hair,” the woman told him. She was still having trouble catching her breath. “You’re going to have to get it out,” she told him, almost apologizing. “My hands are full.”

      He grinned at her. “Right.”

      Leaning over the baby and looking closely at the new mother’s head, he saw the hairclip. She’d had it loosely holding back her dark-blond hair. He took it out as best he could, trying not to pull. He failed.

      “Sorry,” he apologized for the umpteenth time. “Got it,” he told her. “Okay, now for the last part.”

      She eyed the knife, her apprehension growing again. “Is this going to hurt her?”

      “No, I don’t think so.”

      Dugan said it in such a way that she felt she could believe him. “Okay,” she said tentatively.

      Taking the knife back in his hand, he quickly cut the cord, then swiftly placed the hairclip just at the baby’s end of it. Once he was sure the clip would hold—he watched it for a minute—he stripped off his hoodie.

      “Now what are you doing?” the woman asked him, not sure what to think.

      He had delivered her baby, but she knew nothing about this man, other than he’d said he was a cop. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. But even if he was one, that still wasn’t enough to convince her that everything else was all right.

      She looked up at him now, wondering if she could get away with her baby if she had to.

      “It’s chilly,” Dugan told her. “The baby’s going to need something wrapped around her while we wait for the ambulance,” he explained.

      “The ambulance?” she repeated. She’d forgotten about that. Forgotten about everything except for this baby she was now holding.

      “Unless you’d rather stay here for a while,” Dugan told her, looking perfectly serious.

      No, it was definitely better for her to be around other people. “No, I—”

      “I’m kidding, Scarlet,” he told her, waving away his previous words. “Just hang on. We’ll get you and your girl to the hospital and all of this will seem like just one bad dream,” he promised.

      “No, I didn’t mean that—” the woman began, but Dugan was already on the phone.

      Holding up his hand as a silent request that she should hang on to her thoughts until he was able to get off the phone, he started to talk to the person on the other end.

      “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a female dispatcher asked.

      “This is Detective Dugan Cavanaugh,” he said, then gave the woman on the other end of the phone his badge number. “I need a bus sent out right away to the corner of Dyer and Santa Rosa. I’ve got a mother and a baby here.” He smiled at them as he said it. “The city just gained a new citizen about three minutes ago. Mother and baby seem to be doing fine, but I’ll leave that up to you to determine,” he told dispatch.

      “Very good, detective. I can have an ambulance out there within the next ten minutes. Will you be there, as well?” she asked.

      “Got nowhere else to be,” he answered, still looking at the woman and the baby he had helped to bring into the world.

      “Fine. Ten minutes,” the woman repeated, then ended the call.

      “Are you coming with me?” the new mother asked, looking at him above her mewling baby.

      “Unless you’d rather end our beautiful friendship right here,” he said, giving her the option.

      “No,” she answered. And then, in words that had been entirely unfamiliar to her these last few years, she said, “I’d like you to come.”

      “Then I will,” he told her. Cocking his head, he listened for a second, then said, “I think the ambulance’s already coming. Must be a slow night,” he told her with a wink.

      Just then, as the baby began to cry, he felt his phone ringing. “I think I spoke too soon,” he said as he took out his cell phone and looked at the call number on the screen. “Yup, I spoke too soon.”

      The number on the screen was one he knew very well.

       Chapter 2

      “Dugan Cavanaugh,” Dugan said as he answered the phone.

      “We’ve got a problem, Cavanaugh,” the voice on the other end of the line told him. It was the detective he’d been partnered for over the last year and a half, Jason Nguyen.

      Dugan watched as he saw the ambulance pulling up into the alley. “Now?”

      “No, tomorrow,” Jason answered. “Of course now. Look, tell the honey you’re with you’ll get back to her as soon as you can, but that something’s come up and you need to go.”

      “For your information,” Dugan informed the other detective, “I’m not with a ‘honey.’”

      “Good, then that’ll make it easier for you to get over here,” Jason said. Dugan could hear noise in the background, but he refrained from asking what was going on. Jason had a habit of leaving no detail untold if he could possible help it.

      “Look,” Jason was saying, “I don’t like getting up out of a dead sleep, either, but you need to have gotten your tail out here at least