“But she isn’t—”
“Tell me this is almost over.” Jessi threw her head back on the pillow propped behind her while a drop of sweat rolled down her temple. “I knew it would hurt, but I thought I’d get some good drugs. Why can’t I have drugs?”
“You’re too far along for an epidural,” Haleigh said, focusing on the task at hand. “The baby is crowning now. You’re doing great, but we need a few more pushes.” Casting a furtive glance Cooper’s way, Haleigh said, “You want to have a look?”
“What?” Green eyes went wide. “Heck no.”
Haleigh struggled not to laugh. Abby was going to love this one.
“Here it comes again,” Jessi cried and curled forward.
“Grab that knee,” Dottie said to Cooper, who reluctantly followed the nurse’s order. “You can do it, Jessi. Get that baby out here.”
As Jessi pushed for all she was worth, two newcomers entered the room.
“Looks like we’re just in time.” Edgar Lauden, the pediatrician on duty, stepped into Haleigh’s peripheral vision. “Nurse Felicia and I almost missed the little guy’s entrance.”
“It’s a girl,” Jessi corrected through clenched teeth.
Haleigh looked to Dottie as she asked the patient, “Did an ultrasound show that?”
Jessi shook her head. “I had a dream. She’s a girl, I know it.”
Not the answer Haleigh wanted to hear. “Did you ever have an ultrasound?” she asked.
The young girl shook her head no, her body still clenched in half.
Haleigh nodded toward her fellow doctor, giving a silent warning to get ready. “A couple more pushes,” she said. “That’s all we need.”
Two minutes later, Haleigh held Jessi’s screaming baby girl in the crook of her arm. As Dottie slid the clamps into place, Haleigh met Cooper’s eye. “Are you ready to cut the cord?” she asked.
The mechanic’s face went sheet white as he shook his head. “I’m not cutting anything,” he said. “I don’t even know this girl.”
Haleigh Mitchner was more beautiful than ever. And downright evil.
When she’d walked into the tiny exam room, Cooper had nearly forgotten that his hand was locked in the bone-crushing grip of a total stranger, who was in the process of trying to evict another human being out of her body. One look into Haleigh’s dancing brown eyes and he knew she’d guessed right—that he didn’t belong in that room.
But had she saved him? Hell no. She always did have a wicked sense of humor.
No amount of brain bleach was ever going to get those images out of his head. Women were right. If men had to give birth, the human species would die off quick. And to think, his mother had given birth to two at the same time. No wonder he and Abby didn’t have younger siblings.
This was not the way he wanted to run into his high school crush.
Before she became Dr. Mitchner, Haleigh had been the prettiest girl at Ardent High—smart, ambitious, and out of Cooper’s league. A gearhead with grease-stained hands, who couldn’t spell calculus let alone pass it, didn’t stand a chance with a girl like Hal. But that never stopped him from wanting her.
“Are you pursuing a second career as a birthing coach or is this a one-time deal?” Haleigh asked as she joined Cooper in the hall.
Her golden-blonde hair, pulled tight into a ponytail, still mimicked the flecks of gold in her expressive brown eyes, while the grin that showed off perfect teeth and a full bottom lip still hit him in the solar plexus. Though her face had defied aging, this wasn’t the girl he’d pined for as a young man. Haleigh the MD was sleek, professional, and even more out of Cooper’s reach than ever.
“I didn’t mean to be in there,” he said. “I tried to tell you.”
Hugging her white lab coat tight over her chest, Haleigh smiled. “I assume you aren’t the father?”
“Come on,” he answered, shocked that she’d make such an assumption. “She’s a kid. You know I wouldn’t be knocking up some teenage girl.”
“I was joking, Cooper,” she said. “If anyone knows your penchant for stepping in for lesser men in situations like this one, it’s me.”
Neither of them had ever talked about what happened that summer after senior year when Haleigh had gotten herself into a delicate condition and Cooper had attempted to play the white knight. In response to his marriage proposal, she’d jerked him out of fantasy land with a flip, “Don’t be ridiculous.” As far as he knew, Cooper was still the only person aware of how Haleigh had dealt with the situation.