‘Okay,’ Ava breathed. ‘Good.’
‘See you Monday.’
‘Bye, Andy. And thanks.’
Ava flopped back on the sofa and closed her eyes. This felt good. She needed to do this. She needed to untangle herself from the knot she’d twisted herself into. She had to find someone else. She simply had to.
Chapter Twelve
‡
Cooper swung open the front door to Chris and Ellie’s house just as Callum raised his clenched fist to knock for the fourth time.
‘What the fuck?’ Callum demanded. ‘For someone who’s so keen on getting back to LA you sure took your time. Do you want a ride to the airport or what?’
‘Get your ass in here,’ Cooper growled as he stepped back, waving Callum in. ‘You’ve arrived just in time. It’s all happening.’
‘What’s all happening?’ Callum checked his watch as he followed Cooper down the corridor, their long-legged strides echoing each other on the aged wooden floorboards. They were going to be late and that pissed Callum off. He was pissed off and cranky enough at the world as it was.
‘Coop, if I miss that plane, I’ll be cranky as hell.’
They made it to the kitchen just in time to hear an earthy, guttural groan from Ellie. Chris stood next to his wife, looking white as a sheet, holding an overnight bag in one hand and Ellie’s hand in the other.
Cooper ran a hand through his long, sun-drenched hair. ‘We’ve been trying to get her in the car for half an hour.’
Callum hadn’t seen it firsthand but he was pretty sure this was a woman in labour. If the cries weren’t a dead giveaway, the way she was clutching her stomach and swearing when she wasn’t groaning was. And what was her husband doing? Standing by, taking orders, like any good husband should.
But Callum wasn’t her husband and he decided that someone had to take charge or his niece would be born on the kitchen floor.
Chris looked pleadingly at Callum. ‘She keeps telling us that her labour’s not established yet.’
Callum looked down at her, panting, sweating, doubled over in pain, crouching with her hands on her knees.
Cooper piped up. ‘I’m no doctor, bro, but that kind of looks like labour.’
‘Don’t. Talk. About. Me. Like. I’m. Not. Here,’ Ellie scolded. ‘AAAAAGGGGHHHH.’ She doubled over in agony.
Callum pulled his car keys from his pocket. ‘My car’s out front. Get her in the back seat as soon as this contraction’s finished.’
Chris and Cooper waited and when Ellie gave them a weary nod, they swung into action, each hooking an arm under one of Ellie’s knees and lifting her. Callum reached for the overnight bag Chris had dropped on the floor and followed them out the front door, down the small front path and to the car.
‘No, no,’ Ellie cried out.
‘What is it, sweetheart?’ Chris murmured, a mixture of adoration and panic in his voice. Callum thought it slightly hilarious that a man who had spent a career working in war zones and dodging bullets should be brought to his knees by the arrival of a baby.
‘Not the car. The leather seats. What if my waters break?’
Callum shook his head. ‘What is it about women and my leather seats? Ellie, I don’t give a fuck about the seats. You two, put her in the goddamn car.’
*
The tall, broad, handsome-as-hell twin Malone brothers were a special drawcard with almost all the female doctors and midwives at the hospital. Heads turned in admiration and confusion as they strode the maternity ward corridors on the hunt for good coffee and some food, preparing for a long wait until their niece was born. Callum had driven as fast as was legally safe while Cooper made calls to rearrange their schedules. Flights to Singapore and LAX had been rescheduled; Evelyn was on standby for more news; and two brothers who hadn’t spent much time together in a decade were sitting on uncomfortable plastic chairs in a public waiting area, sipping their coffee and waiting impatiently.
A rugby league game later, there were heavy footsteps at the doorway to the hospital waiting room. Callum and Cooper turned in unison.
Their brother looked exhausted.
‘So?’ Callum asked.
‘What’s going on, bro?’ Cooper asked in his own inimitable style.
Chris held on to the doorjambs for support and his tired face turned into a beaming grin. ‘Fifteen minutes ago a daughter was born to my wife, who was screaming like a banshee and threatening to cut off my balls if I fed her one more ice chip.’
The brothers shared a look, of familiarity, of happiness, of family.
‘Nine pounds five ounces in the old money,’ Chris announced. ‘I’m in awe of my wife.’