Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

Adrenaline singed a path through his arteries and exploded in his heart. “You’re in labor?”

A sniff before she gritted out a resentful “Yes.”

He threw off his hard hat and safety goggles. “Where are you?”

Silence.

“Adara!”

“In the apartment,” she groused. “And you’re not.”

“Where in the apartment?” he demanded, running up the emergency stairs two at a time to the service entrance. “Don’t scream if you hear someone in the kitchen. It’s me. Did you change the code?”

“What? How are you in the kitchen? I’m in the bed—” She sucked in a breath.

He stabbed the keypad and the light went green.

He shot through the door, into the kitchen, and strode to her room, ears pounding at the silence. Her bedroom looked like a crime scene with clothes tossed everywhere, nylons bunched on the floor, slippers strewn into the corner, but no Adara. He checked the bathroom.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“Here,” she insisted in his ear. “By the bed.”

He’d been on both sides of her bed and rounded it again, but she wasn’t there. “Damn it, Adara.” He lowered the phone and shouted, “Where are you?”

“Here!” she screamed.

Her voice came from the other side of the penthouse. He ran

through the living room to his room. Their room. A faint part of him wanted to read something significant into that, but when he entered, he didn’t see her there either.

Was she torturing him on purpose—?

Oh, hell. He spotted one white fist clinging to the rumpled blanket. Her dark head was bent against the far side of the mattress.

“Oh, babe,” he said, and threw his phone aside to come around to where she knelt, bare shoulders rising and falling with her panting breaths. She had a towel around her, but nothing else. Her hair was dripping wet.

“Okay, I’m here. You’re sure this is just labor?”

“I know what labor feels like, Gideon.”

“Okay, okay,” he soothed. “Can I get you onto the bed?” He was afraid to touch her. “Are you bleeding?”

“No, but my water broke. That’s why I had a shower.” She kept her forehead buried against the side of the mattress. “I’m not ready for this. It hurts. And I’m so scared the baby will die—”

“Shh, shh.” He stroked her cold shoulder with a shaky hand. “Have you felt the baby move?”

She nodded. “But anything could happen.”

“Nothing is going to happen. I’m right here.” He prayed to God he wasn’t lying to her about this. Shakily he picked up her phone and ended their call. “Have you called the ambulance? Karen?”

“No.” She swiped her eyes on her bare arm, and peeked over her elbow at him, gaze full of dark vulnerability and a frightened longing that put pressure on his lungs. “I just thought of you, that you said you’d be here with me. Where were you? How did you get here so fast?”

“Downstairs,” he answered, dialing Karen’s personal line from memory. In seconds he had briefed her and ended the call. “She’ll meet us at the hospital. An ambulance is on the way.”

“Oh, leave it to you to get everything done in one call.”

“Are you complaining?” He eased her to her feet and onto the bed, muscles twitching to draw her cold, damp skin against him to warm her up, but he drew the covers over her instead. Sitting beside her on the bed, he rested one hand on the side of her neck and stared into her eyes. “You know me. I won’t settle for anything less than the best.”