Rough (Wolf Ranch 1)

He wouldn’t want me to claim her. Hell, no. If he had any idea of my need to mate her, he’d punch me in the face again and set one of the ranch hands on her to watch her for a while.

No fucking way.

So I’d do what he said and try to figure out how to make her mine and somehow keep the fact I was a shifter a total secret at the same time.

I nodded and stuck my hat back on my head. “Done.”

My wolf was happy as fuck. I’d finish my chores, get cleaned up and head into town. Track down Audrey and become her best friend—who would soon be fucking her until her headboard broke. I couldn’t have asked for a more appealing assignment and potentially the biggest mistake of my life.

I was a risktaker, and this was one fucking huge risk. This wasn’t riding an angry bull. This was making my wolf happy.

There was no fucking way I was going to walk away when this task was over. I wasn’t going back to the rodeo and riding bulls. Not unless my sweet doctor came with me.

I wasn’t going anywhere without Audrey.

She was mine and mine alone.

I just had to make sure she got on board with that plan, too.

9

AUDREY

“That’s it, I can see your baby’s head,” I coaxed my patient. Alana had been in labor for twenty-three hours and was definitely getting tired.

“You’re almost there, Mama,” Becky, the nurse said, rubbing her shoulder. “Think how amazing it will feel to hold your sweet baby in your arms.”

Alana whimpered and nodded, sweat beading on her forehead. She’d wanted an all-natural birth, and I always honored my patient’s wishes unless I deemed it completely medically necessary to intervene. So when labor stalled, I had Becky walk her up and down the hallway rather than give her a shot of Pitocin to get things going again. It worked. The weight of the baby’s head on her cervix caused it to dilate, and labor picked back up. Now she was just a few more pushes from the finish line.

“Another push when you feel the urge. No, wait for the urge,” I coached. The monitors showed another contraction, and Alana pushed. “That’s it.” A tiny dark-haired head slid out, and I cradled it in my gloved hands.

“Oh my God!” Alana’s husband gulped, tears in his voice. He stood by her side holding her hand. “The head is out, angel.”

Alana gave a sob. Her body pushed again, and one shoulder slid out, then another.

“You’re there!” I told her. On the next push, the slippery bundle slid into my hands. “You did it! It’s a girl.”

“A girl! Oh my God, we have a girl!” Alana wept, as I set the newborn on her chest. Becky covered her with a warm blanket and rubbed her back. Her husband wept.

Becky wept.

I blinked back the film of tears from my eyes and gave a watery laugh.

This moment was why I’d chosen to be an ObGyn. Even as grounded in science as I was and always have been, I was always moved by the miracle of birth. Nature at its most beautiful. Most joyful. It didn’t mean every situation was happy, and I didn’t encounter my share of sad tears, too. For the most part, it was an upbeat profession.

I helped Alana with the afterbirth, then waited to cut the cord. Alana was one of those all-natural-kind-of women who knitted their own baby caps before birth and had strong opinions about how much medical intervention they wanted. She’d read that her baby needed its cord blood, and it was better to delay the cutting. I saw no harm in delaying. Instead of untethering the baby and giving her to Becky to clean up, I let Alana continue to hold her.

Becky and I quietly picked up and set the bed back to rights. I chucked my gloves in the biohazard can, then washed my hands at the sink.

“We’ll give them a few minutes, then we can cut the cord and get the stats,” I murmured to Becky as she came over.

I had the luxury of time in Cooper Valley. It was one of the enormous perks of the job. Sure, sometimes things got hectic at the hospital, but for the most part, we could take time with our patients, unlike where I’d done my residency in inner city Chicago.

“I told you this before, but I like the way you do things, Dr. Ames,” she whispered.

“And I told you before, you need to quit that and call me Audrey,” I replied, with a wry turn of my lips. It was a small town, and Becky had worked at the hospital for almost a decade. I wasn’t going to insist the hospital staff call me Dr. Ames. I wasn’t here for a power trip. Besides, she wasn’t more than two years older than me, and I thought of her as a friend.