Anna’s nightgown had tiny buttons all the way down the front. It would do. ‘You’ll have to take off your knickers. Panties.’ Anna looked helplessly at Kelsie. ‘Underclothes.’ Kelsie pretended to pull off her underpants.
She had a horrible thought that surely Anna knew where babies came from? It seemed she did when comprehension flitted across the girl’s face. A small mercy.
Another contraction arrived just as she accompanied this feat with huge modesty and this time Anna’s expulsive breath frightened both of them.
‘What is happening?’
‘Your baby is getting ready to come.’
‘But it cannot. We are not yet in Paris.’
‘Not sure that mindset did much for you not being pregnant either,’ Kelsie muttered, and bumped her elbow painfully on a wall. ‘These cabins are pathetically small.’ She’d bet Connor and his grandmother had a double suite each.
She shifted the pillow from the door side of the bed to the window end. If Anna lay down again the table would be a problem to access and she might just need some room.
Anna moaned just as Wolfgang arrived back with a plastic sheet and two raincoats. Kelsie refused to take them as she helped Anna to breathe calmly.
‘Where is Dr Black?’ she shot over her shoulder.
‘Coming.’ Wolfgang thrust the first raincoat at her. ‘For the bed,’ he implored.
‘Okay.’ Kelsie glanced at the distraught man. ‘We need you somewhere more comfortable, Anna. Do you want to stand up? You might find the contractions easier to bear if you work with them.’
Anna shook her head doubtfully. ‘I don’t want to move.’
‘Do you have pain in your back?’ Kelsie asked patiently.
Instinctively Anna’s hand went to the small curve in her spine. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Then standing will help that and also help your baby to present the easiest way for your birth.’
‘Oh. I see.’ she struggled to her feet with Kelsie’s help, and Kelsie slid the raincoat under the blankets to protect the seats while she was up. Anna stayed doubled over, leaning on the tiny table, as the next pain arrived, but she was listening to Kelsie’s instructions.
The young woman seemed to have found an inner calm that Kelsie hadn’t expected, though she shouldn’t have been surprised—women continued to amaze her all the time in her work. ‘You are doing so well. Wonderful.’
‘I feel less frightened,’ Anna whispered, and Kelsie patted her arm.
With the contraction easing, Kelsie urged Anna to straighten her back into the full upright position before the contraction rolled on, and a sudden startled expression appeared on the girl’s face as a thin trickle of pink water ran down her leg and onto the blue carpet in a growing puddle.
Kelsie shot an amused glance at Wolfgang, who gasped in horror then looked at her accusingly, before all the blood slowly drained from his face and he crumpled to his knees in a dead faint, blocking the corridor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHAT IS GOING on here?’ the voice of authority arrived before the face did, and Kelsie gave Connor a cool glance as he poked his head around the door as much as he could without stepping on the unconscious Wolfgang.
Kelsie frowned at him. The last thing they needed here were loud voices.
‘Anna is having her baby,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You are here in case I need a hand.’
His eyebrows shot up but his voice was low. Teasing. ‘Shouldn’t you be the one giving me the hand?’
She raised her own brows. ‘Catch thirty babies a year, do you?’
‘More than you’ve had breakfasts.’ He grinned. ‘But I can be your support person.’
The past shimmered between them and the tension lessened in the tiny cabin as they both smiled. It seemed Connor didn’t have control issues about this and the thought warmed as well as reassured her.
Connor was about to step over Wolfgang when he changed his mind. ‘Give me a minute while Max helps me move our sleeping friend.’
Kelsie looked up from rubbing Anna’s back and saw a tall, distinguished-looking older gentleman nod before he turned away.
Wolfgang moaned and tried to sit up. His eyes rolled towards the much larger puddle on his immaculate blue carpet and then he slumped unconscious again.
Then, bizarrely, Wolfgang’s head dragged along the carpet with little bumps as Connor and the boutique manager pulled him unceremoniously out of the doorway by the ankles and he disappeared from view.
Connor stepped back to the now unimpeded doorway. He raised one dark eyebrow. ‘Status?’
‘Anna’s been having contractions since Venice, due date not known, no medical care, on the way to her unsuspecting baby’s father in Paris. Her waters broke three minutes ago… ’ she gestured to the puddle ‘… much to Wolfgang’s dismay, and I think we’re almost ready to push.’