The Storm Brought Her Twins Too Soon. By Dawn, She Knew Why the Stranger Had Been Waiting.
The first child entered the world without making a sound.
Outside the little line shack, thunder rolled across the northern Utah wilderness like cannon fire.
Rain hammered the warped roof hard enough to shake dust from the rafters.
Wind tore through the sagebrush and screamed around the corners of the building.
Inside, Natalie Foster lay half-conscious on a narrow bunk, her damp hair plastered to her forehead and her fingers clenched around an old wool blanket.
She had imagined this moment a hundred times.
She had imagined James beside her.
She had imagined a clean room at her sister’s boardinghouse in Kelton.
She had imagined a doctor.
Warm water.
A cradle.
Maybe even laughter.
She had never imagined a collapsing shack in the middle of nowhere.
She had never imagined a stranger kneeling between her knees.
And she had certainly never imagined
watching that stranger hold her premature son in complete silence
.
Natalie’s breath caught.
“Why isn’t he crying?”
Ryan Patterson did not answer.
That frightened her more than anything.
The cowboy was usually steady.
He had been steady when he found her wagon stranded beneath storm clouds.
Steady when another contraction had bent her nearly double.
Steady when he carried her through the rain after her legs stopped holding her.
Now his face had gone pale.
The child looked impossibly small in his large hands.
Too small.
Too still.
“Ryan?”
“I know.”
“Make him cry.”
“I’m trying.”
“Please.”
Ryan wiped the infant’s mouth with the corner of a clean cloth.
He turned him slightly, cleared his nose again, and rubbed two fingers firmly across the tiny chest.
Nothing.
Natalie felt something inside her begin to break.
“No.”
Ryan rubbed harder.
“Come on, little man.”
The rain struck the roof.
Natalie heard herself whisper, “Please, God.”
Ryan bent closer.
“Come on.”
Nothing.
Then, with a desperation that made Natalie’s heart stop, Ryan cupped his mouth over the infant’s tiny face and gave the smallest breath he could manage.
Once.
Twice.
He rubbed the baby’s back.
A thin sound escaped the child.
Ryan froze.
Natalie froze.
Then came another sound.
Weak.
Tiny.
Angry.
But alive.
The baby began to cry.
Natalie covered her mouth as a sob tore through her.
Ryan’s shoulders dropped.
“There you are,” he whispered.
He wrapped the boy in a piece of flannel and carried him to Natalie.
She reached for him—
Then her body seized beneath another contraction.
Natalie screamed.
Ryan looked at her in disbelief.
She stared back at him, terrified.
“The other baby.”
For one absurd second, neither moved.
Then Ryan muttered, “Right.”
Natalie almost laughed.
Instead another contraction hit.
And the night began all over again.
Six hours earlier, Natalie Foster had been certain she would reach Kelton before dark.
The storm had changed that.
So had the babies.
The northern Utah country stretched around her in lonely miles of gray-green sage, broken rock, and distant ridges.
The old trail had been fading beneath wagon wheels for years, but it remained the shortest route to Kelton.
