Tiny baby: father needed!
Finding she was pregnant was the best moment of midwife Montana’s life. But days later she was widowed. Now nine months have passed, she has a tiny infant, and she knows it’s time to make a fresh start.
Dr Andy Buchanan has offered Montana a job at Lyrebird Lake because it’s the perfect place to build a new life. Her courage impresses him. And he just can’t get the beautiful new mum out of his mind…
Every time Montana sees her baby in Andy’s arms her resolve not to get involved crumbles. He’s the perfect father. And he makes Montana’s life feel complete once again…
Lyrebird Lake Maternity
Every day brings a miracle…
Excerpt
NEW YEAR’S MORNING began with the faintest hint of grey shimmer on the horizon and Montana gently stroked her fingers across her swollen stomach.
This had been the first New Year’s morning without her husband and the last she would spend at the mountain house before the new owners moved in.
The sea was a long way off, somewhere below the white fluffy quilt thrown over the mountains, shrouded like the future she couldn’t see but did have faith in.
Eagles Nest Retreat sat so high and wild that it overlooked everything and Douglas had loved it when he painted here.
The sky had lightened only enough to illuminate the deep drifts of mist in all the lower valleys across from the house, and she sat symbolically alone, and accepted it would always be so.
The first contraction squeezed gently, like the tendrils of dewed spider webs that stretched the tops of the stumpy grass, and she nodded when she felt the mysterious child within herald her intentions.
Montana had agreed with her two best friends, for her child’s sake not her own, it would be safer to avoid the mountains for the last two weeks of her pregnancy.
So it wasn’t Montana’s fault her baby had decided to come earlier.
She closed the house and gathered her shawl and water bottle and grasping the rail on the stairs made her way slowly down to her vehicle. To actually climb in the four-wheel drive proved much more difficult than she had expected and she chewed her lip as she started the engine.
The chug from the diesel engine scared a flock of lorikeets into flight a little like the flutter of apprehension she fought down while she waited for the engine to warm. Two more waves of pain came and went in that time.
As the contractions grew closer and fiercer a tiny frown puckered her forehead. It might not be as easy as she’d thought to drive the truck for two hours in early labour.
After thirty minutes of careful navigation down the misty mountain the sweat beaded her forehead and Montana’s breath fogged the windscreen with the force of the pain. Though still focussed on what lay around the next corner she found it more difficult to divide her thoughts between road and birth.
The dirt track twisted and turned like the journey her baby would make within her and on an outflung clearing overlooking the mist covered valley she had to pull over to rest and shore up her reserves.
A pale grey wallaby and her pint-sized joey stood at the edge of the clearing and their dark pointy faces twitched with fascination at her arrival.
Montana’s labour gathered force and she glanced with despair at the distance to the valley floor. It was impossible to descend the mountain safely when she couldn’t concentrate on the road and suddenly the tension drained from her shoulders as she slumped back.
So be it.
When the pain eased she slid from the truck and spread a rug on the damp grass and tucked her shawl and water beside her. She eased herself down and sat with her arms behind her to watch the deepening of the horizon from coral to pink to cerise as the sun threatened to rise through the cloud below.
When the next surge had dissolved she sighed and gazed skywards. Maybe he was looking down.
‘You should be here, Douglas.’ A single tear held her loss that still pierced so keenly.
She felt the whisper of cool breeze brush the dampness on her cheek and suddenly she was not alone and she didn’t care if she imagined him because the next pain was upon her and she needed his strength with her own to stay pliant on the waves of the contractions.
‘I am here,’ the wind whispered, ‘you are safe.’
‘I love you,’ she heard and then she listened to the nuances of her body and in her mind she watched the descent of her baby and squeezed her husband’s hand and the waves changed in tempo and direction and strength and suddenly the urge was upon her to ease her baby out into the world.
The sun cascaded through like the gush of water, her baby’s head glistening round and hard and hot in her hands, and then the next pain was upon her. Her baby’s head rotated towards her leg and the released shoulder slid down and through to follow.
In long, slow, seconds, her baby’s body eased into the world until, in a waterfall rush, legs and feet followed and in a tangle of cord and water and fresh broken sunlight, her baby was born.
The unmistaken sound of a newborn’s first cry startled the birds as Montana reached down and gathered her daughter to her forgetting the rope that joined them both and she laughed at the tug that reminded her that all umbilical cords were not long.
A daughter. Douglas’s daughter. She turned, not expecting to see him, yet so grateful she had imagined him in her greatest need.
The clearing was empty save for the mother wallaby and her skittish joey, and like the last of the night tendrils, they too disappeared silently as the fog rolled away.
She shivered.
‘You must be Montana?’ His voice was different to Douglas’s, not as deep or careful with enunciation, but the same timbre of quiet authority and caring drifted over her and that must have been why she didn’t jump.
She wound down the window and saw the darkest auburn hair and green eyes that proclaimed his relationship to her friend. So this was Misty’s big brother from Queensland. He towered over her door.
It seemed almost normal that Misty’s four-wheel drive had pulled up next to hers in the morning light and have this man stand beside her car door to look in.
He had to bend down quite a bit to her level and she smiled to herself at the trials of tall men. ‘Yes, I’m Montana. I gather Misty sent you?’
He nodded. ‘I’m Andy.’ He looked across at the top of her baby’s head snuggled into her chest with blankets over both of them in a big mound and he smiled.
To Andy they both seemed so peaceful despite the absolute isolation they’d met in. There was something so tranquil about the mother and daughter in this isolated spot that it was difficult to grasp she had birthed without support. ‘And who is this?’
Montana smiled and he felt the curve of her lips and the softening of her eyes right down to his combat boots and back up again where heat flickered in his chest like a hot coal from an outback campfire.
‘This is my daughter, Dawn,’ she said, and her serene voice wrapped around him like the fog he’d just passed through to get here.
‘Hello, Dawn.’ He smiled at the thatch of dark hair against Montana and the baby snuffled as if in answer. ‘I can guess what time she arrived.’
His smile faded and his training reminded him this woman had been without assistance. He framed the question as delicately as he could. ‘Any problems you need help with?’
She glanced at him and he felt the humour behind her voice more than he heard it when she spoke and the observation confused him. Since when did he pick up fine distinctions in tone from unknown women?
‘No, thank you, Doctor,’ she said. ‘Third stage complete and I’m not bleeding or damaged. My baby has fed.’
He didn’t like the way he was so conscious of his sister’s friend but maybe that was because he felt for her recent loss.
He knew he avoided emotions these days, had done for three years, it was the way he’d decided to stay and he empathised with her journey. But, actually, he was more than conscious of her.
They were on the side of a mountain for crikey’s sake and she’d just had a baby.
He concentrated on the things he was good at. ‘Right, then. Let’s get you out of here.’ He glanced around and decided where to reverse the vehicle.
Buy The Midwife’s Little Miracle by Fiona McArthur online now
Review: The Midwife’s Little Miracle by Fiona McArthur
4 star review of THE MIDWIFE’S LITTLE MIRACLE has been posted to the Cataromance site.
Posted By sheryl On March 30, 2009 In Harlequin Medical Romance, January 2009, Reviews
Montana thought that learning she was pregnant was the best moment of her life but days later she suffers a tragedy and now, nine months later, she is about to welcome her child into the world. She knows that her life has changed drastically and when she is offered a position at Lyrebird Lake by her best friend’s brother she leaps at the chance, hoping to make a brand new life for herself and her child. But she hadn’t counted on her attraction to Dr Andy Buchanan, the man offering her the new start or her emotional struggle to not feel like she’s betraying her husband. And for Andy, he knows all about her conflicting emotions having suffered a tragic loss too. But will they both get the second chance at happiness that fate is giving them? Or will they forever hide their growing feelings for one another?
The Midwife’s Little Miracle by Fiona McArthur is a contemporary romance where love builds slowly but once experienced, it won’t let go. I really enjoyed this book and the romance because it wasn’t an intense passionate need but a subtle and caring courtship. Montana and Andy have both suffered a loss and Andy knows what Montana is going through but he feels an attraction to her that won’t go away but he doesn’t want to push their friendship too far. Whereas Montana knows that she needs to start again but in some ways still clings to the past. This story isn’t just about romance but also of starting afresh with a new future beckoning if only they can reach out and grab it. Ms. McArthur is a fairly new author for me but I can say it won’t be the last time I pick up one of her books. Kudos to her for a fantastic and enthralling romance.
my second Kimberley’s of Western Australia book has hit the shelves.
Makes you wonder about the covers in all the other countries. 
