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her had been so great, she’d been on the verge of begging Raoul to come to her. The Raoul she had once imagined him to be anyway. He was so strong and capable and she’d instinctively known she’d feel safe if he was near.
    He hated her, though. He wouldn’t care. Like always, she’d been on her own.
    She’d gone through the induction and the beginning of pains without anyone at her side, only calling Molly when the nurse confirmed that yes, labor was properly started. That was when she’d been required to notify Raoul. She had been explaining that to Molly when something went wrong.
    She didn’t even know what had happened. Having a huge blank like that was frightening. His blaming her for not advising him it was a possibility added insult to injury, putting her on the defensive.
    “Why would I tell you anything?” she challenged from her disadvantaged position, flat on the bed, tied down with wires, voice like a flake of yellowed onionskin. “You can’t be happy I pulled through.”
    “You haven’t yet,” he said, snapping forward in a way that made her heart jump. He set his big hands on either side of her and leaned over her, promising reprisal despite her pathetic condition. “And don’t ever accuse me of anything so ugly again.”
    Sirena tried to swallow and couldn’t even feel her dry tongue against her arid lips. “Can I have some water?” she begged in a whispered plea. “Please? I’m so thirsty.”
    “I don’t know if you’re allowed to have anything,” he said with a scowl, something avid and desperate flickering through his eyes before he bent with the sudden swoop of a hawk going for a kill.
    His mouth covered hers for the briefest second. His damp tongue licked into the parched cavern of her mouth to moisten the dry membranes. The relief was incredible, the act surprising and intimate beyond measure.
    “I’ll tell the nurse you’re awake.” He walked out, leaving her speechless and tingling with the return of life to her entire body, mind dazed and wondering if she was still unconscious and hallucinating.
    * * *
    Sirena had thought nothing could make her melt so thoroughly as the vulnerable sight of her premature daughter. Then she began hearing the stories of Raoul learning to diaper and feed her. Raoul, who didn’t even know for sure he was the father, had paced a path between Lucy and Sirena, talking unceasingly to Sirena when they had feared she would slip into a coma. He’d only gone home for a shower and sleep now that Sirena had woken, nearly seventy-two hours after the birth.
    She told herself not to read it as a sign of caring. If Raoul was tending to Lucy, he was only stamping a claim while trying to prove Sirena was dispensable. To some extent she was. She quickly learned she could hold her baby, but she was too sick and weak for anything else. She was pumping her breasts, but only to keep her thin milk supply going while she waited for the cocktail of medications to leave her system. She couldn’t feed Lucy or do anything else a mother ought to do.
    Dejected, she was fretting over how useless she was as she headed back to bed the next morning, wiped out by the tiny act of brushing her teeth.
    Raoul walked in on her attempt to scale the bed, finding her with one hip hitched on the edge, bare legs akimbo as she quickly tried to stay decent under her hospital gown.
    Aside from faint shadows under his heavy eyes, he looked fantastic in casual pants and a striped shirt. He brought a wonderfully familiar scent with him, too. For a second she was back in the office welcoming her freshly shaved boss, sharing coffee with him as they discussed how they’d tackle the day.
    He eyed her balefully, but that might have been a reaction to the ferocious scowl she threw at him. She hadn’t been allowed coffee since early in the pregnancy and he was sipping from a travel mug tagged with a ProZess Software logo. He was a picture of everything she couldn’t have.
    “Why are you