Mine To Keep (Love By Design 7)

I wondered if he did half the stupid shit he did just to annoy me because I boned his girlfriend once upon a time. Okay, not all that long ago, but still. Kristen could have been the one for me. There was a time I would have put a ring on it. I even proposed, but I always knew she harbored a thing for demon-dipshit. Who was I to stand in the way of fate? Call me an asshole, but at the time, I wasn’t going to turn down prime pussy when it was freely offered, even if Kristen came back to me as a revenge fuck. I was a single guy with a hard dick to appease and only so much went down with a good hand job on my own.

My musings were interrupted by a car that sped by doing nearly twice the speed limit on this stretch of highway, making me toss my phone aside. “Shit, what the hell. Dispatch, this is car forty-nine twenty-seven in pursuit of a speeding vehicle, possibly requesting backup.” Dispatch answered and let me know they would be calling for another car just in case.

I flipped the switch on my sirens and peeled out, following the car. I followed them for about a mile when they finally pulled over on a wider shoulder of the road. I ran the plates, not waiting for an ID to come up, and got out, adjusting my hat as I walked up to the side window of the car.

“License and registration, please.” The window lowered as the occupant struggled to manually crank the window down. Wild curls of hair fluttered and wide green eyes looked back at me.

“S-sorry, Officer Rooney.” Remington Kennedy whimpered, clutching the steering wheel in a death grip. Her face was ghostly pale. My concern for her reckless driving ceased as I thought about all the possible worse things that had her driving like a maniac this late at night.

“Remi, are you all right?” I shuffled to put my flashlight away.

Quickly, I opened her car door to find her clutching her belly and struggling to breathe, bathed in glistening sweat. She grunted again, leaning over the wheel. Her hair matted against her scalp, and sweat covered the freckles of her nose. I reached for her, placing my hand on her shoulder before it found its way up her neck and into her messy hair. My thumb stroked the soft skin of her neck. She felt clammy and her pulse beat rapidly under my fingers.

“Shit, Remi, what’s going on? Do you know how fast you were going?” Once I saw the state she was in, it didn’t take an genius to figure out why she was driving like a bat out of hell. Kneeling down beside her, one hand caught up in all her hair, pulling her close to my chest, I used my other to grab the radio receiver on my shoulder. “Dispatch, cancel backup.” The radio crackled, receiving my transmission.

Remington was busy concentrating so hard on breathing her eyes were squeezed shut in a painful scowl. “Awe, sweet girl, you’re doing fine.” My hand rubbed up and down her back. I was helpless to reassure her as she gritted her teeth, keeping quiet through a series of whimpers that broke me. She sounded like the mewling kitten I found as a kid. My dad had taken the cat and her litter to the pound to punish me back then. I couldn’t save that cat and her babies, but I could save Remi.

My radio blipped. “Evan, what’s going on?” Kimberly, one of our dispatchers, patched through again, blaring in the radio I wore over my vest. Tonight was a shit night for stuff to go crazy.

I pinched the receiver and shifted my face away from Remi to speak. “I need an ambulance dispatched to route two ninety-nine east heading toward Poughkeepsie right before interstate eighty-seven exchange ASAP.” I clicked off the radio.

Kimberly patched in. “Jesus, Evan, what are you doing on a stop out there?”

“My job,” I snapped. I didn’t have time to discuss being on the town border and how I could have turned this over to a State Trooper for jurisdiction. We both knew I was skirting the town limits at this time of night, and maybe it was serendipity that made me think to park out there, watching traffic and radar.

Kimberly sighed. “Back up is about twenty minutes out, and the ambulance just responded to a heart attack in town.”

“Damn it!” My dispatcher of the night couldn’t have jinxed me more if she tried. I clicked the radio back on to explain the situation further. “I’ve got a pregnant woman in labor.”

I hoped that speeded things up in my favor, but all I got was a chuckle from the voice on the radio. Kimberly would never let me live this down.

“Got that, Officer Rooney, and you’ve got a backseat in your squad car. The medical kit should be in the trunk under the rifle with a warming blanket and gloves, correct?”

“Shit,” I grumbled, feeling the panic of what I was about to do.

“Hey, you got this,” Kimberly said in a tone that brought my training to the forefront of my mind. I had to do this. I was all Remi had at the moment, and I couldn’t mess this up. Besides, first babies took forever, right?

Remi doubled over into my arms, crying out painfully while I mumbled every curse word under the sun over the radio feed.

“My baby can hear you!” Her cries gave me pause to rethink the brevity of the situation here. One pregnant woman and me on the side of the highway? She’s delirious, yelling at me for cursing. I do not want to be a hero. Fuck it, I was driving to Poughkeepsie. The squad car could sprout wings as far as I was concerned. Fuck the morning shift wanting a pristinely detailed car. That’s why we had departmental discretionary funds.

My radio buzzed again with she-wolf chuckling. “You know I can walk you through this. I’ve had EMS training...”

With a shaky hand, I placed it over Remi’s swollen belly, which seized the moment I touched her, jerking my hand back. What the hell is in there? Satan’s spawn came to mind. It was inappropriate and uncaring to be blaming an unborn baby when I was pissed at its father for leaving her like this, and now me in this predicament of maybe delivering a baby on the side of the highway. No way did I want baby or bodily fluids in the back of my car. Last time there was a baby anything in this vehicle, it was my co-worker Noah who saved a baby deer after a truck hit its mother, taking it to Chase’s vet practice. The squad car still smelled gamey on warm nights.

“Shit, Kimberly, I don’t think we have that long.”

My dispatcher clucked over the radio, testing my patience. “How do you know? First babies take a while.”

Remi whimpered, leaning into me, and I shushed her, rubbing circles on her back, trying to calm us both down. I was not suited to this part of the job, but I did the best I could.

“This baby is coming now, not later.” I grunted.

“Did you check?” Kimberly asked her tone sarcastic.

“Check what?” If she thought I was flipping skirts on duty, she was as nuts as Kristen. Remi’s face clenched in pain, and I didn’t need to look below the waist to see that this kid was game on.

“You got a manual for that, Evan.” Kimberly chortled and the need to strangle her through the phone was overwhelming. I might as well have a thundercloud over my fucking head. Every time we worked together, shit was always spinning out of control. This was every officer’s nightmare. We had the basics in medical training and a module strictly for delivering babies. Somehow I missed that day, and now I fucking regretted it.