Smiling as reassuringly at Lilah as he could muster, he moved in behind her, taking her weight against him, which prompted a sigh from her. “Better?”

“Yes.” Cradled, her back to his front, she gripped both his arms and immediately started writhing. “Oh God, oh God, another one. Another contraction already!”

“It’s okay,” Neely told her, but her eyes were wild. “It’s all going to be okay. We planned this, we knew it was going to be rough.”

“Rough on who?” Lilah, lost in her pain, squeezed Stone’s arms like a vice. “Listen, I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Lilah.” Emma looked up from between Lilah’s propped knees. “I can see the head. I need you to push now.”

“This was a bad idea,” Lilah gasped. “I don’t want to push anymore.” She lifted her head up to Neely. “Let’s just go home, okay? You don’t mind, right? I’ll push tomorrow, I promise.”

“Oh, baby,” Neely whispered with tears in her eyes as she stroked Lilah’s hair. “You can do this. I know you can.”

“But I can’t.” Lilah started sobbing. “I just can’t. You do it for me, okay? Please, Neely? Please do it for me.”

She sounded so terrified that even Stone was wishing he could do it for her, but once again Emma took charge. “Lilah, this is all you. Just some pushing, and then you’re done. You can do this.”

“No, I can’t-ohmigod, another one!” She screamed, thrashing around in agony while Stone tried to keep her on the clean pad.

Neely whirled on Emma, tears streaming down her face as she grabbed Emma by the front of the shirt. “Goddammit, do something for her!”

“Whoa.” Stone leaned over Lilah, intending to pry Neely’s hands off of Emma. She was in this position because of him, which made him responsible for her, but he forgot one thing.

Emma could hold her own.

She simply shrugged off Neely and put her hands on the woman’s shoulders. “Get it together,” she told Neely quietly and firmly. “Lilah needs to see that you have it together.” Then without waiting for Neely to decide whether she could or couldn’t handle it, Emma came up on her knees and leaned into Lilah, getting right in her face, which by default was also right in Stone’s. “Lilah, listen to me. I need you to-”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can, and you will. Push.”

When she spoke like that, with all that authority and certainness, even Stone wanted to push.

“I can’t”!” Lilah cried again.

If he’d been Emma, he might have been tempted to remind Lilah that she’d wanted this, that if she’d gotten herself to a hospital like common sense dictated, she might have been given pain medications, maybe an epidural, but she’d come here.

By her own choice.

“Look,” Emma said, in all her glorious New York tough-ass edginess. “Yes, this sucks golf balls, the pain is like being ripped in two. But the baby is here, Lilah. Right here. All you have to do is push and it’ll be over and you’ll be able to hold your baby.”

“My baby,” Lilah repeated weakly, sweat running down her temples.

“That’s right,” Emma said firmly, hair falling loose, her clothes smeared with blood and her own sweat, kneeling on the blanket out in the wilderness that Stone knew she wasn’t too fond of.

It was fascinating to him. She was fascinating to him, and elegant and sophisticated, and so not the priss he’d thought. Not anywhere close.

“Your baby,” Emma reminded Lilah. “There’s a big prize at the end of this hell, and it’s your beautiful baby. Now let’s do this.”

Stone watched amazed as Lilah let out a breath, stopped crying and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

It boggled Stone’s mind. Emma hadn’t coddled. It certainly wasn’t in her nature to be particularly sweet or gentle in her firm determination either, but she was undoubtedly extremely, undeniably, kind as she bulldogged through and got her way.

Right then and there, Stone felt a little catch in his gut. Not a crush, not exactly, but something that might be worse.

Far worse. Which was going to be damned inconvenient.

“A baby,” Lilah murmured roughly to Neely as they kissed. “I actually almost forgot.”

Neely laughed through her tears, and back on track now, swiped Lilah’s face, stroked her legs, doing the deep breathing with her.

“On the count of three,” Emma said, in charge of her world, and at the moment, also Stone’s. “One, two, three!”

Lilah pushed, and screamed, and pushed some more, and Stone thought she was going to break both his wrists, but then she sagged back against his very sore chest, panting for breath. Realizing his pain was nothing compared to hers, he didn’t mention it. “Doing great,” he said, hoping it was true, and also hoping he had some unbroken bones left when she was done.

“The head’s out,” Emma said, doing something with a suction bulb between Lilah’s legs that Stone didn’t want to know about.

“Push again,” Emma directed.

“Oh, God.”

“You can do this, Lilah. I can see your baby’s beautiful head. Now sit up and push!”

Stone braced himself, said goodbye to the rest of his bones, and kept his eyes on the sky while Lilah straightened and pushed.

And pushed.

This was accompanied by plenty of screaming, more squeezing, and out of the corner of Stone’s eye he saw TJ standing out of the way, his back turned, on the phone to the hospital, the bastard, not getting bled on and not getting his bones broken.

“Look,” Neely suddenly cried. “Ohmigod, look!”

Stone instinctively looked. He saw…

Oh, Jesus. He saw blood and gore, and female parts stretched to limits that boggled his mind and made him want to beg for forgiveness for his entire race.

The screaming echoed in his head, which suddenly felt detached from his body, and if he’d been standing, he’d be flat on his ass by now, but he had Lilah squeezing the holy hell out of him, keeping him conscious.

“I’ve got her!” Emma said in triumph. She came up on her knees, cradling her bundle in a towel, vigorously drying the baby and suctioning the nose and mouth at the same time. She expertly swapped out the wet towel for a dry one as the baby began to wail. “A gorgeous baby girl,” she declared, and set her on Lilah’s belly.

The baby squawked and let out a gusty cry.

Stone stared down at the sticky, gooped up baby in shocked awe.

A living, breathing person.

Emma was evaluating the baby for color, respirations, muscle movement, anything unusual as she clamped the umbilical cord, and then turned her attention to the placenta, while Stone’s head just spun.

It was truly the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, and he lifted his gaze to Emma and found her already looking at him, her eyes suspiciously bright and misty.

And then she did something totally unexpected. She smiled at him.

Yeah, she was tough as nails and cynical and blunt. And sometimes just a little mean.

And she cried over a newborn.

Neely and Lilah were both laughing and sobbing. Once Emma said that everything was okay, Stone and TJ carried Lilah to TJ’s Jeep. They got her and the baby settled in and TJ drove them down the hill to Neely’s sister, who was a midwife and registered nurse in South Shore.

Which left Stone and Emma alone.

He walked to where she stood at the cliff overlooking the open meadow below. “You okay?”

“Always.” She turned her head toward him and did the damnedest thing. She smiled again, a God-given, sweet, warm, real smile that met her eyes and curved her mouth, and rocked his world. “And how are you?” she asked.

He let out a low laugh. “I’ll come right out and admit it. My knees are still shaking.”

She smiled again and blew at least a thousand more of his brain cells, which didn’t leave him with much. But wow, the smile softened her. Made her seem gentle.

Sweet.

All the things he’d thought her void of, all the things he tended to love in a woman, and he had one thought as he felt another catch from deep inside him, as his body went still on high alert and his pulse picked up speed-

Oh, shit.

He needed to back up. Or better yet, turn and walk away. That was the easy thing to do at this point. But did he ever take the easy route? Hell, no. The hard way was his only way, always, and he stepped close.

Her smile deepened, and his next thought was hell yeah, here it came, the thank you for his help. He’d shrug and say it’d been his pleasure, and she’d maybe move in for a hug, or better yet…

A kiss.

Yeah, a slow, hot, melting thank you kiss would suit him just fine, with lots of tongue and busy hands-

“So you’re afraid of needles and pass out at the sight of blood, huh?” she asked, amused.

She wasn’t thanking him.

She was laughing at him. Openly. He tried to be insulted, but Jesus, when she smiled? It was amazing.

She was amazing. “Really?” he asked, letting loose of a stupid smile himself. “You’re going to go there?”

Still laughing, she nodded. “Yeah.”

“That’s cruel, Emma. Very cruel.”

“Sorry.”

Sorry, his ass.

She wasn’t sorry, she wasn’t anywhere close to sorry. She was cracking up, and he should be annoyed. But she looked so damned sexy as she laughed at him.

“I thought you were going to pass out a few times,” she said.

“Well you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve never seen a vagina from that angle before.”

She only laughed harder and patted his arm like he was a four-year-old, before heading toward his truck in her fancy clothes now streaked with dirt, blood and other stuff he didn’t want to think about.

God, she was hot as hell.

They weren’t finished, not by a long shot, so he followed her. “For the record, I didn’t pass out. I was in it, all the way.”