âHow did you remember it was Dawnâs birthday?â
Andy shook his head, denying it had been hard. âForget the day you and Dawn came into my life?â Andy looked across at her baby, dozing now on her motherâs lap. âForget the magic on the mountain on New Yearâs Day?â he said softly, and his words brought back the serenity of that morning.
Then he leant across and kissed her cheek, and she could see he really did remember that day with emotion. âYou were amazing.â
She found herself leaning towards him, and his long fingers stroked her jaw and drew her nearer. Just the feel of his warm strength splayed across her cheek and the caress of his thumb sent sensations tumbling into her stomach and chest, and she couldnât help but close her eyes. She didnât see his mouth coming, but sheâd known it would happen. Wanted it to happen.
Fiona McArthur brings you a fabulous new trilogyâ¦
LYREBIRD LAKE MATERNITY
Every day brings a miracleâ¦
Itâs time for these midwives
to become mothers themselves!
This month meet single mum Montana Browne inâ¦
THE MIDWIFEâS LITTLE MIRACLE
Montanaâs found a new home in Lyrebird Lake, and just maybe the perfect father for her baby!
Look out for Misty and Miaâs stories,
coming soon in Medical⢠Romance
A mother to five sons, Fiona McArthur is an Australian midwife who loves to write. Medical⢠Romance gives Fiona the scope to write about all the wonderful aspects of adventure, romance, medicine and midwifery that she feels so passionate aboutâas well as an excuse to travel! So now that the boys are older, her husband Ian and youngest son Rory are off with Fiona to meet new people, see new places, and have wonderful adventures. Fionaâs website is at www.fionamcarthur.com
Recent titles by the same author:
THE MIDWIFEâS BABY
THEIR SPECIAL-CARE BABY THE SURGEONâS SPECIAL GIFT THE DOCTORâS SURPRISE BRIDE
CHAPTER ONE
NEW YEARâs morning began with the faintest hint of grey shimmer on the horizon and Montana gently stroked her fingers across her swollen stomach.
This had been the first New Yearâs morning without her husband and the last she would spend at the mountain house before the new owners moved in.
The sea was a long way off, somewhere below the white fluffy quilt thrown over the mountains, shrouded like the future she couldnât see but did have faith in.
Eagleâs Nest Retreat sat so high and wild that it overlooked everything and Douglas had loved it when heâd painted here.
The sky had lightened only enough to illuminate the deep drifts of mist in all the lower valleys across from the house, and she sat symbolically alone, and accepted it would always be so.
The first contraction squeezed gently, like the tendrils of dewed spider webs that stretched the tops of the stumpy grass, and she nodded when she felt the mysterious child within herald her intentions.
Montana had agreed with her two best friends that, for her childâs sake not her own, it would be safer to avoid the mountains for the last two weeks of her pregnancy.
So it wasnât Montanaâs fault her baby had decided to come earlier.
She closed the house and gathered her shawl and water bottle and, grasping the rail on the stairs, made her way slowly down to her vehicle. To actually climb into the four-wheel drive proved much more difficult than sheâd expected and she chewed her lip as she started the engine.
The chug from the diesel engine scared a flock of lorikeets into flight, a little like the flutter of apprehension she fought down while she waited for the engine to warm up. Two more waves of pain came and went in that time.
As the contractions grew closer and fiercer a tiny frown puckered her forehead. It might not be as easy as sheâd thought to drive the truck for two hours in early labour.
After thirty minutes of careful navigation down the misty mountain sweat beaded her forehead and Montanaâs breath fogged the windscreen with the force of the pain. Though still focussed on what lay around the next corner she found it more difficult to divide her thoughts between road and birth.
The dirt track twisted and turned like the journey her baby would make within her and on an outflung clearing overlooking the mist-covered valley she had to pull over to rest and shore up her reserves.
A pale grey wallaby and her pint-sized joey stood at the edge of the clearing and their dark pointy faces twitched with fascination at her arrival.
Montanaâs labour gathered force and she glanced with despair at the distance to the valley floor. It was impossible to descend the mountain safely when she couldnât concentrate on the road and suddenly the tension drained from her shoulders as she slumped back.
So be it.
When the pain eased she slid from the truck and spread a rug on the damp grass and tucked her shawl and water beside her. She eased herself down and sat with her arms behind her to watch the deepening of the horizon from coral to pink to cerise as the sun threatened to rise through the cloud below.