Until they got to the table and he introduced her to his mother.
“Bailey!” The woman was tall—she stood as they approached, her hands out in welcome—and Bailey saw where her son had inherited his curly black hair and piercing blue eyes. “Dom has told me so much about you! Come! Sit!”
What else could she do? The woman took both her hands, squeezing gently as they sat. Bailey sank into the chair beside her as Dom slipped around to the back of the table. The woman still hadn’t let go of her hands. In fact, she turned them over to look at Bailey’s palms, scrutinizing.
“Good hands. Strong hands.” The dark haired woman met her eyes and smiled. “A midwife’s hands.”
Bailey’s whole body tingled at her words and she stared at the smiling woman, incredulous.
“I guess I should introduce you.” Dom sat back in his chair, looking very much like the cat that ate the canary. “Bailey, this is my mother—Regina Jacobs. She’s been a midwife for thirty years. Mom, this is Bailey—she’s the one I told you about.”
Bailey gaped at him, the last piece of the puzzle falling into place. No wonder he had so much knowledge about birth!
The woman rolled her eyes in her son’s direction, now holding Bailey’s wrists as she leaned in to whisper, “Ignore Captain Obvious over there—we’re women, we know. I could tell the moment I saw you that you were born to be a midwife.”
“How—” Bailey blinked, glancing down at her dress—the one she’d worn when she was sure she was sure this was a date—and then up into Regina’s dancing blue eyes. She certainly wasn’t dressed like some hippy-dippy midwife, at least not tonight!
“Oh, I know these things.” Regina finally let go, reaching for an empty glass on the table and flagging the waitress as she passed. “Another strawberry margarita for me and one for this lovely young lady.”
“Oh, no—” Bailey shook her head, still trying to let it all sink in, and she was pretty sure alcohol wouldn’t help the process.
“You are over twenty-one?” Regina raised an arched eyebrow.
She nodded. “Twenty-three.”
“Good. Two strawberry margaritas then. Dom, do you want more of that piss water you call beer?”
Bailey hid a smile. She was starting to like Regina, in spite of her boundary issues—in that, she didn’t seem to have any!
“I’m good.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and Bailey noted the label. Miller High Life.
“So I heard you delivered your first baby!” Regina’s hand found Bailey’s knee under the table, giving it a squeeze. “Tell me. Everything!”
“I already told you, Mom,” Dom reminded her. Bailey met his eyes and that feeling came back instantly. The adrenaline made her heart pump and her skin tingle. They had shared a moment so intimate it was beyond words. And then that kiss…
“Oh, hush.” Regina didn’t even glance at her son. She was focused solely on Bailey “Tell me.”
So she did. From the moment she’d discovered Sunny laboring in the women’s room to the moment the EMTs arrived, all aghast that no one had cut the cord.
Regina laughed at that.
“Silly men. They learn from books, what do they know?”
“Hey now,” Dom protested, his brows drawn together in that cute way all the girls talked about whenever he was annoyed. “Books are a good source of knowledge.”
“Sometimes,” his mother agreed, but she sounded like she was placating her son and he looked like he knew it. When Bailey smiled behind her margarita he shot her a look that said he knew damned well who she was siding with.
“But…” Regina raised her eyebrows in his direction and he rolled his eyes like he knew there had been a “but” coming. “Sometimes they’re written by institutions with their own agenda and have nothing to do with science—or evidence-based medicine for that matter.”
“Okay, Mother, let’s not argue science textbooks—we’ll be here all night.” He put his beer on the table, leaning forward and looking straight at Bailey. He made her toes curl when he looked at her like that. “Besides, we’re here for Bailey, remember?”
“So we are!” Regina turned back to Bailey, all smiles and jangly bracelets. She had so many rings on her fingers Bailey lost count and she couldn’t tell if the one on her ring finger was a wedding ring or not. “So tell me how you handled the shoulder dystocia.”
Bailey told her. She told her about the stuck shoulder, how the baby had turtled and turned dusky. She told her about finding the crook of the armpit, how Sunny had screamed but she had continued, pulling baby’s little arm down and out. She even told her how Dom had helped, keeping Sunny as focused and calm as he could. Bailey smiled over at him when she told this part and his eyes never left her. Regina laughed and said he’d always been a big help at births whenever she had to take him along when he was young.