Home > Hot for a Cop (The Single Moms of Seattle Book 2)(5)

Hot for a Cop (The Single Moms of Seattle Book 2)(5)
Author: Whitley Cox

Removing his hand from her shoulder, he wiped the hair off her face. “You’ve got this, Lauren. You can do this.” His encouragement sounded hollow to his own ears, but he had no idea what else to say. “What a story for you and this baby. Born in a storm.”

God, had he really just said that? Fuck, he was lame.

“Do you feel like you need to push?” Nicki asked.

Lauren barely nodded, but she did.

Nicki smiled. “All right. Let’s bend your knees, and when that feeling comes again, let me know and we’ll go for it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Nicki glanced up at Isaac. “You ready?”

No. But he hadn’t been ready for very much in his life, and that hadn’t stopped him.

 

 

“One last push, Lauren,” Nicki said. “The shoulders are out now. One more big push, and then you’ll have your baby.”

Gritting her teeth and holding on as tight as she possibly could to Isaac’s hand, Lauren bore down, squeezed her eyes shut and pushed as hard as she could.

She felt the baby slide out of her.

The pressure was gone.

The pain a distant memory.

The relief was instantaneous.

Well, not quite. She needed to hear that cry.

Please, cry. Please. Oh God, just let me hear it cry.

And then she heard it. A beautiful lamb’s bleat. She glanced down the length of her body, her belly already a fraction of the size it was a minute ago, to see Nicki with a soft green blanket. Little pink arms with five fingers on each hand flailed from the center of the quilt.

“He’s perfect,” Nicki said, bundling the baby more before passing him up to Lauren.

“It’s a boy?” Tears stung her eyes as she accepted her son from the midwife and held him against her chest.

He was perfect.

Soft, light blond hair. Dark eyes that blinked unfocused but never not at her. His lips were puffy, his face round, and he was covered in goo, but he was magnificent. True and utter perfection.

“A boy!” Celeste and Bianca cheered over the phone.

“Oh my God, a baby boy!” Celeste was blubbering. “I’m so proud of you, Lauren.”

Bianca sniffed. “We both are. I can’t wait to meet him. Is she okay? Is Mom okay? Midwife? Nicki? Officer? Is Lauren all right?”

“She seems to be,” Nicki said. “Mom, Lauren, good job. You were a trooper.”

“Damn straight she was,” Celeste said. “A fucking warrior.”

“We’ll let you go,” Bianca said. “Call us once you get to the hospital. Let us know if you need anything. Anything. We mean it. We’re so happy for you, honey. You did amazing.”

“Bye guys. Sorry I couldn’t make wine night,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, but next wine night you actually get to have wine again,” Bianca said before she and Celeste both said goodbye and hung up.

She loved those two women like they were her sisters. And she had a sister—a half sister, but she and Fiona had never been close. Not that she didn’t love Fiona, but their age gap of ten years was big enough to make any significant level of bonding a challenge.

But Bianca and Celeste were her people, her bitches, and she knew that she could lean on them, count on them for anything. And even when she didn’t ask, they would be there for her—and this baby.

“You’re still attached via the umbilical cord,” Nicki said. “I’ll cut it in a moment, but I’m going to get you to push once more. Pretend to cough. It shouldn’t hurt.”

Staring at her son and the pure perfection that he was, Lauren did as she was told. She felt the placenta slip out.

“Do you have a name picked out?” Isaac asked behind her, his solid wall of muscle comforting, along with his warmth and that spicy, manly smell. She’d only just met the man, but she was damn glad it was him who had been behind her during this whole ordeal.

She shook her head. She’d gone through countless baby books and websites, and she just hadn’t been able to find anything she could settle on. Because she didn’t want to find out the baby’s sex, it’d been twice as hard. She wanted to meet her child before she named it. Wanted to see his or her personality and features before she made that all-important decision of what they should be called.

She’d struggled the most with boys’ names. She liked a lot of girls’ names. But boys’ names were tough. It didn’t help that she’d had a fair number of boyfriends over the years, and all those assholes had sullied the baby name list for her astronomically. She liked Nate, but she’d dated a Nathan in high school, and he’d been a tool. She also liked Marshall, but her college boyfriend had been named Marshall, and he’d cheated on her. She liked Luke, but that was her half brother’s name. She also liked Dereck, but that was her stepfather’s name. Seriously, all the good names were taken by friends and family or sullied by some asshole she’d dated or who’d done her wrong in some way.

Gazing down at her unnamed son, she leaned back against Isaac. “I wanted to meet my baby first, but now that I have, I still don’t know.” Tucking her finger into her son’s fist, she waited until he opened his palm and reached for her. His grip was strong. “Who are you, little man? What’s your name?”

Nicki angled over Lauren’s body and pried the blanket off the baby just over his belly. She snipped the cord and tied it off with a clamp half an inch from his stomach. “It’ll fall off in a couple of weeks.”

“Thank you.”

“You also have time to name him. There isn’t a rush. I think they give you thirty days.” Nicki grinned and turned to grab a flashlight from her bag. She turned the powerful beam on and shone it between Lauren’s legs. The woman’s bag was like Mary Poppins’s purse; it had everything in it. A baby blanket, garbage bags, you name it. The woman traveled prepared to deliver babies wherever and whenever. “A see a minor tear here. It can happen with such fast deliveries. I’m going to do a quick stitch with some local anesthetic. If we wait to do it at the hospital it won’t heal properly. Are you okay with that?”

Lauren nodded. “Sure, whatever, just do what you gotta do.”

Nicki’s smile was warm and reassuring. “I’ll do my best to minimize the pain.”

Not wanting to take her eyes off her son but knowing she should, at least for a moment, Lauren glanced up at Isaac, with his thick red hair, blue eyes and strong chin. “Thank you. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t found us.” She tried to bite her lip to keep it from trembling, to keep the tears at bay, but she couldn’t. The tears came, and they came on hard. “I was so scared. You saved us.”

“Shhh,” Isaac cooed, shaking his head and using his thumb to wipe away her tears. “You would have done the same for me, I’m sure of it.”

Through the tears and blubbering, she laughed. “I would have helped you give birth?”

His smile was like a bolt of lighting in the sky. “Well, maybe not give birth, but … you know what I mean.”

And at that moment she knew the name of her son. Smiling up at the stranger, at the cop, at the man who had saved her and her child, she blinked through the tears. “I’m going to name him Isaac.”

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