Zero Tolerance Policy In Effect

Copying this material in any way, shape, or form, without the express consent of the author will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including via civil suit.  The author has had enough.

KISS ME, KILL ME

Maggie Shayne

Secrets of Shadow Falls Trilogy, book 3
On Sale August 30th

Prologue

Sixteen-plus Years Ago

Carrie Overton had known her life was about to change forever.  She just hadn't known how drastically.  But when her headlights picked out the shape of lone woman, standing beside her car on the roadside, she knew something was wrong.  It was the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere.  The woman was leaning on her rusty, lopsided car, one arm braced on the hood, the other, encircling her swollen belly.  Her face bore a grimace of pain, and no small amount of fear.  And, in fact, when Carrie flipped on her signal light—though there was no one other than an army of raccoons to see it, she thought—some of that fear changed to visible, almost palpable relief.  The woman—no, she was really little more than a girl, Carrie saw as she drove closer—held up a hand, as if to signal her to stop.  Carrie had already decided there was little else she could do.

She pulled over behind the girl's car, a primer colored breakdown-waiting-to-happen, shut her own engine off, and got out.  The silence of the night struck her as she walked quickly to the girl.  Her shoes crunched over gravel, crickets chirped as if nothing was wrong, and nightbirds called out noisily every fourth step or so.

"Car broken down?" she asked, almost hoping it was as simple as that.  Even while every instinct in her body was telling her otherwise.  And those instincts were probably better than most, seeing as how she was a doctor.  A new one, yes, but a doctor, all the same.

The girl met her eyes, and Carrie saw that they were wet.  "No," she said.  "I think I might be in labor."

Carrie felt her own quick gasp, but just as fast, grabbed hold of her nerves, and replaced them with the quiet calm she had learned patients needed from their MDs.  "Lucky for you I came along, then.  I'm a doctor."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope.  I'm on my way to start a new job at Shadow Falls General Hospital."

"That's where I'm going, too!" she said, but then she whimpered, and closed her eyes and hugged her middle.  "God, that hurts."

"Okay, breathe through it," Carrie told her.  "Like this."  And then she demonstrated, puffing short bursts of air from pursed lips.

The girl obeyed, and in a moment, as the pain eased, Carrie opened the rear door of the girl's car, and helped her in.  "Come on, lie down on the back seat where you can be more comfortable until I get us some help."

"I think comfortable is impossible at this point."  The girl said, but she moved anyway.  Not far, though.  She took two steps, and then bent double again, almost falling to her knees this time.  She began puffing those short breaths, and Carrie felt, for the first time, some real alarm.  Hunkering down to be at eye level with the now crouching mother-to-be, she asked, "How far apart are the pains?"

"Almost constant," she whispered between puffs.

"Okay.  Okay."  Carrie waited for the pain to pass, then quickly moved the girl into the back seat.  Another birth pang came and went before the girl even got her lower half undressed.  Carrie had to leave her just long enough to race to her own car and grab her bag.  Then she was back, kneeling on pavement, beside an open car door, looking at a woman who was going to give birth momentarily. 

"The pains only started an hour ago.  I thought I'd have time to get to Shadow Falls."

"Most women would have," Carrie told her.  "You're being an exception to the rule today.  But don't worry.  I can deliver your baby right here just fine.  There's nothing to be afraid of."

"Then why am I scared shitless?" the girl asked.  "Unhh!  Oh, God."

Carrie tried to project confidence and hide her own nervousness—she'd delivered babies before.  Not on deserted country roads in the back seats of broken barely road-worthy cars, but she didn't imagine many doctors had.  She laid a calming hand on the girl's bulging belly and felt the baby move inside.  It instigated a wave of sadness but she tamped it down.  "It's a miracle, you know.  It's a miracle you're experiencing right now."

"Miracles hurt!"  Pant, pant, pant.  "Have you ever – oh, hell – delivered a baby before?"

"Dozens of them," Carrie lied.  She'd delivered three—exactly three--during her residency, but she'd never had to fly solo, without a nurse or sterile tools or gloves or a backup neonatal team standing by.

"I'd give anything not to have to do this!" the girl moaned.

"I'd give anything to trade places with you right now," Carrie told her.

"You must be nuts, then—oh hell oh hell oh hell!"

"Not nuts, just broken.  I . . . I'll never be a mom." Maybe telling her that would make her realize what a blessing this event was.  How important.  How special.

The contraction passed and the girl's face eased.  She studied Carrie's.  "You can't have kids?" she asked.

Carrie met her moist eyes.  "Nope.  I was born with defective fallopian tubes and—"

"Oh, shit!  Something's happening.  I have to push.  I have to—"

"Go ahead, push."  Carrie got low, flattened her hands against the bottoms of the girl's feet so she'd have something to brace against, and as she pushed, the top of the baby's head appeared immediately. 

The contraction eased, and the girl fell back, blowing a sigh.

"Relax until the next contraction," Carrie told her.  "Then we'll push again."

"It's odd, me meeting you out here like this," the girl said, her eyes moving over Carrie's face.

"We haven't actually met, though," Carrie said.  "I'm Carrie.  Doctor Carrie Overton, that is.  And you are--?"

She didn't answer.  She was gripped by another contraction, and then another, and most opportunity for conversation was gone, aside from the necessary bits.  Breathe through it.  Push harder. 

It wasn't long before the baby's head came into sight.  And with the next push, it began to emerge.  "God, you're so strong," Carrie said.  "This is going to be over in no time, hon.  Two more pushes, maybe three."

"I want it to be over with now!" she whined.

"I don't blame you.  Come on, push with me now."

The girl pushed, and Carrie talked and comforted and within short order, she was holding a tiny, wriggling baby boy in her arms.  He released a series of congested bleats, making her laugh softly.  "A boy," she said.  "And he's got a great set of lungs on him, too." 

"Is he okay?" the girl asked.  "I want him to be okay."

"He's fine.  He's absolutely . . . beautiful.  God, look at him.  He's perfect."  Carrie sniffled, then tied off the cord, cut it, and wiped the baby down as best she could with gauze and sterile water.  She suctioned his nose and mouth with a small blue aspirator, wrapped him in her own jacket, and for just a moment, held him in her arms, smiling down at his tiny face.   When tears burned in her eyes, she blinked them away and gently placed the baby in his mother's arms. 

"You should try to nurse him," she whispered.  She couldn't speak much louder than that for the tightness in her throat.  The idea of never being able to have a baby of her own—it was a constant, twisting blade in her heart.  She knew she would be a far better mother than her own, volatile, passionate, hot-tempered mother had been.  "I can hardly wait to see what he weighs," she added, mentally trying to change the subject.

She helped the new mother clean herself up, got her upright, watched her trying to nurse the newborn, and then nodded.  "Okay, listen.  I passed a house a few miles back.  I'm going to drive back there, see if I can use their phone to get an ambulance out here for you, and we'll get you and your little guy to a nice clean hospital where you can recover properly.  Okay?"

The girl lifted her face, her expression, oddly detached.  "I thought doctors all had those mobile phones nowadays."

"Not this one.  Not yet, anyway.  I doubt it would work out here if I did.  But I'll be quick."

"And you'll come right back here?" she asked.

"Right back.  I won't be more than ten or fifteen minutes.  And you'll be fine, I promise."

"And the baby too?  He'll be fine too, alone for that long?"

Carrie tilted her head.  "He won't be alone, honey.  He has you."

"I could fall asleep, or—"

"He'll be fine.  I promise."  She started to back herself out of the car, but the girl reached out and gripped her hand.  "This was supposed to happen.  You finding me here.  It was meant to be, I know it was."

"Maybe so," Carrie said.

"For sure.  I knew a man once.  He always said everything happens for a reason.  And that if you want something bad enough, it can happen."

"Well, I'll bet you wanted help pretty badly.  Maybe he was right."

She nodded slowly, her gaze turned inward.  "Please hurry back."

"I promise, I'll be just as fast as I can."

The girl nodded.  "Thank you," she whispered, and she squeezed Carrie's hand before she let her go.

Back in her own car, Carrie held her tears in check until she got the vehicle turned around and was headed back in the direction she'd come from.  But then the dam broke, and the insistent tears spilled over.  And she knew it was stupid, because there were other ways to get children besides giving birth to them.  There were lots more babies in the world than there were suitable homes or deserving families for them.

She drove through the darkness, her eyes peeled for the house she'd passed, squinting to see better through the stupid tears.  She was starting a new life, a new job, fabulous career, in an idyllic New England town.  She was buying the cutest little house she'd ever seen, and she had every intention of raising kids there, someday.  The adoption process was slow, slower yet for a single parent with a demanding job.  It would take a long time.  But someday—someday she would have a child and she'd give it the kind of solid, stable home she'd never had.  No way was her child going to have to be uprooted and move from place to place every time its father got itchy feet.  The Overton home would be a permanent home, a solid one, and it would always be calm and quiet.  No loud screaming matches.  No physical altercations with the neighbors.  No temper tantrums.  None of the drama she'd grown up with. 

No.  Her child would have a quiet, loving, peaceful existance, and a hometown.  She'd always wanted a hometown. 

And she was on her way to the one she'd chosen, she reminded herself.  Part One of her dream, all but complete.  And even though the waiting lists were long, and even though adoption agencies tended to give preference to married couples over single women, she would get her baby someday.  She would.

There!  There was the house she'd passed!

She flipped on her signal light and prayed it was only entirely dark because it was two a.m.  But there was no car in the driveway, and after about five minutes worth of pounding on the door and jabbing the doorbell repeatedly, she realized no one was home.

That poor girl back there.  Well, all right.  She would just bundle the mother and baby into her car and take them onward with her, until she found a phone.  Or maybe she would just drive them the rest of the way to Shadow Falls herself.  It couldn't be more than two hours away.

Returning to her car, she backed out of the empty driveway, turning back in the direction she'd left the young woman and her son.

When she got to the spot, however, the rust-colored sedan was gone. 

A jolt of alarm shot through Carrie as she drove nearer, wondering if she had the right spot, but she was sure she did.  There was her jacket, the one she'd wrapped the baby in, lying in the grass along the roadside, right near where she was sure the other car had been parked.  Her headlights picked out the pale green fabric.  Carrie pulled over and stopped.  Surely that young woman couldn't intend to drive the rest of the way on her own, could she?  She'd just given birth for heaven's sake.  She needed rest, and the baby needed—

The jacket was moving.

"No," Carrie whispered.  "No, tell me she didn't—"  She wrenched open her door and got out, hurrying around the front of the car, hopping the slight ditch to where her jacket lay, still wriggling. 

Almost afraid to look, she bent and opened the jacket.  The tiny newborn lay inside, pink and healthy and squirming. 

"Oh, God, she left you.  How could she—how could anyone?"

Carrie gathered the baby, jacket and all, into her arms, then felt the rustle of paper as she rose again.

A note, written on the back of an old envelope with the address torn off, was pinned to the jacket.

Carrie,

His name is Sam.  I hope you'll let him keep it.

We were supposed to meet, so I could give him to you. That's what I meant by what I said before.  You've been wanting a baby—and you got one.  I've been wanting a solution, and you were it for me.  This was meant to be.  That man I knew was right.  I always knew he was special.  My Sam is all yours now.  And don't worry.  I won't change my mind about this.

Ever.

The note was unsigned.  Carrie folded it and tucked it into her jeans pocket.

Then, snuggling the baby close to her chest, she walked back to the road, to her car.  She looked up and down the deserted stretch of pavement, but she didn't see any sign of the girl or her car.  No headlights approached, announcing that the new mother had come to her senses. 

And then she looked up at the sky, silently asking the stars overhead, what she was supposed to do next.  As she stood there in the night, a star shot in an arcing path, right over her head.

Like an answer.  Like a wish. 

He cried softly, and Carrie stared down into the open, unfocused blue, blue eyes of a newborn baby boy.  And softly, she smiled. 

"Hi, Sam," she said softly.  "I think maybe . . . I think maybe I'm going to be your mommy.  What do you think about that?"  She was almost trying out the notion, testing the words as she said them.  But they felt so good she could barely believe it.

She didn't now how she would pull this off—find the mother and make it legal, she supposed.  Somehow, she would find a way.  Somehow, she could make this work.  Somehow . . . .

Somehow, in one night on her way to her new life, she had found her dream come true.  Whoever that man was, who'd told the girl that if you wanted something badly enough, it could happen, he must have been wise.  A guru or a holy man or something.  Because this felt like a gift.  Like it really was meant to be. 

Bending, she pressed her lips to Sam's forehead, as tears, happy ones this time, rolled down her cheeks.  "I'll find a way to make this work, Sam.  I promise.  And I will be the best mother you could ever wish for."

Top of Page