Birthday Gift (Blessed Inlet #1)

Prologue

As the sky faded to a soft mauve and stars began to dot the horizon, William Locke heaved a sigh.

The lighthouse rose behind him, the one hundred- and fifty-year-old sandstone brick tinted by the setting sun.

A light breeze ruffled William’s dark hair and he pushed his fingers through it, unsettled.

This place was perfect. Exactly what his family wanted.

They knew how these things worked, what their clients demanded.

As corporate retreats went, the Blessed Inlet lighthouse and surrounding buildings would fit the bill impeccably.

The buildings themselves needed a fair bit of work; they had barely been looked after over the last fifty years.

The road up from the beach might need to be widened.

Parking would have to be expanded, perhaps some accommodation added.

Equally distanced from both Melbourne and Sydney, it would attract clients from both.

So, what was wrong with it? Or maybe more accurately, what was wrong with him?

These sorts of situations usually gave him a buzz of excitement, following the thrill of success.

His job in the family business was location scout and he was damned good at it and for years, had loved it.

But just recently, there was that creeping sense of ennui, of dissatisfaction.

Just a creeping question of “what was the point of it all?” that he couldn’t shake.

He rolled his shoulders and moved his head from side to side, the tight little ball of frustration in his gut was undeniable.

Pushing the thoughts aside, he turned away from the cliffs and the Tasman Sea, heading around the buildings to his car.

It was a six-hour drive back to Sydney and he wasn’t going to get there until after midnight as it was. Best to make a move.

He drove down the steep, curving track away from the lighthouse, tooling the black Porsche Cayman through the little town of Blessed Inlet.

It didn’t take long, a town of just over one thousand people didn’t take up much space.

Turning on Inlet Road, William shifted through the gears and gunned the Porsche, heading for the highway.

Tall gum trees lined the road, their pale trunks turning skeletal in the fading light.

He swore as he approached the turn off onto the Princes Highway and a truck came roaring past him, doing at least twenty kilometers over the speed limit.

Maniac, he thought to himself. He pulled out onto the sorry excuse for a highway.

It was less a highway and more just a ribbon of road winding through the state forest before turning North and crossing the border, heading up the East coast to Sydney.

He grinned as the road took a wide curve and he pressed on the accelerator, feeling the car hug the asphalt as it turned into the camber.

As he exited the curve and straightened the wheel, something registered at the edge of his vision, but focused as he was on driving, he didn’t allow it to intrude.

As he continued along the highway though, it niggled at him.

It could have been a car accident. The more he thought about it, the more that seemed the most likely scenario.

Heaving a sigh, he waited for the next turnout in the road and circled back.

Within a few minutes, he was at the site and sure enough, a car had gone off the road, tires sliding across the gravel and into the wide trunk of a mountain ash, its hazard lights flashing.

He pulled in behind, noting that there was no damage to the back or sides of the little Honda Civic, so maybe it was ok. He got out of the Porsche, grabbing his cell phone and sliding it into his pocket.

“Hello?” he called out, approaching the driver’s side of the car.

The door was pushed open, but the driver was nowhere in sight.

The car was piled high with stuff; bags, pictures, blankets, a birdcage—but no driver.

What the fuck? “Hellooo?” He called out, louder this time, peering into the gloom beyond the beam of his headlights.

“Help.” A soft, female voice all but whispered, the voice tight with pain.

Grabbing his phone, William switched the torch app on and shone it towards the sound of the voice.

He took a few steps forward, holding the phone high to maximize the reach of the light.

Another few steps revealed a woman, leaning against the trunk of a tree, her back to him.

Wild, blond curls cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. Her feet were bare.

“Shit! Are you okay?” He rushed forward as she turned. A hot, oily lump of dread curled in his stomach as he saw her. She was heavily pregnant, her arm curled protectively around her stomach. He met her eyes, pale green and filled with terror.

“Thank goddess. Please help me. I’ve-” she gasped, doubling over.

William moved closer, reaching out a hand, not sure if he should touch her or not.

After a moment that seemed to last an eternity, the pain passed, and the woman straightened.

“I’ve gone into labor. My phone’s dead. The baby’s not due for another three or four weeks.

I don’t know what to do.” The rising note of panic in her voice was unmistakable.

“Alright. It’s alright.” He quickly punched triple zero into his phone, refusing to dwell on the knowledge that the nearest ambulance would have to be at least forty-five minutes away and that was the absolute best case scenario. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Dispatch. Police, fire or ambulance.”

“Ambulance, please.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Victoria. Ah, on the highway.”

“What is your nearest town?”

“Um, probably Genoa.”

“One moment while I put you through.”

He waited while the call connected, painfully unsure of what to do as the woman stood by the tree, her arm still holding her bulging belly. “What’s your name?”

“Juniper. What’s yours?”

“William.”

“Well, William, thanks for stopping. I really appreciate it.”

He had to appreciate that she was making an effort to control the perfectly understandable panic that must have been gripping her.

“Ambulance Victoria. What’s the emergency?” The voice was female and very professional sounding. He was oddly comforted, even though he couldn’t see how a disembodied voice on the other end of a phone line could help him here, no matter how professional she sounded.

“Ah, yeah, hi. I’ve just stopped to give assistance at a roadside accident and there’s a woman here who appears to be in labor.”

As if on cue, Juniper doubled over again, giving a low moan as she did so.

“Ok, you’re calling from a mobile. You need to give me as much information about your location as possible.”

He quickly calculated in his head, thinking back to the last sign post he’d driven past and told her.

“Okay, can you tell me what’s going on there? You said a woman has had a car accident and is in labor, correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Is the woman conscious and breathing?”

“Yes, to both.”

“Great. She can talk and speaks English?”

“Yes, to both again.”

“Can you ascertain what injuries she has, if any?”

“Juniper, are you injured at all? Juniper?” She had pushed off from the tree and was heading away from the road, down a slight embankment, into the scrub.

He followed her, feeling a stab of fear.

She seemed to be in a daze. Maybe she’d hit her head?

She stopped, holding onto a tree branch as she rubbed her back.

, “Juniper, honey, you have to talk to me. Are you injured at all?”

The urgent note in his voice got her attention and she turned and looked back at him. “No, I don’t think so. My neck hurts a bit.” She rubbed at her chest. “Maybe my chest, from the seatbelt, I think.”

“She says she has no injuries but her neck hurts,” William said into the phone.

“Ok, that’s good news. What about the labor? Has her water broken?”

He checked, Juniper said no. “No.”

“Can you ask her how far along she is in the pregnancy?”

He relayed the question to Juniper. “She says about thirty-six weeks.”

“Any complications or contraindications?”

He followed Juniper, who seemed to be wandering aimlessly through the bush.

He didn’t think it was a good idea to get too far away from the road, but he couldn’t see how he could stop her, short of manhandling her, which he definitely wasn’t prepared to do.

“Juniper, the dispatcher wants to know if you’ve had any complications or anything? ”

She shook her head, her back still to him as she walked.

“She says no.”

“A truck ran me off the road.” She’d stopped in a small clearing, turning and looking up at the sky as she spoke.

William followed her gaze. The moon was rising, just floating on the edge of the horizon, bright white against the night sky.

“He came around the bend, halfway over on my side of the road. I swerved, hit the gravel, then hit the tree. But I’d been having contractions, on and off all day. Just thought they were Braxton Hicks.”

He relayed all of that information to the woman on the other end of the line.

“Right, I’ve sent an ambulance, but they’re going to be a while. The nearest available station is Blessed Inlet, so you’re looking at forty-five to fifty minutes. Can you tell me how far apart her contractions are?”

His worst fears realized; William forced himself to stay calm as he tried to figure it out. From when he’d first stopped to standing in the clearing, she’d had two contractions. “Maybe four or five minutes.”

He could hear her typing on the other end of the line. “Ok, I’m going to stay on the line with you until the ambulance arrives. If you like, put me on speaker and put the phone down. You might need both hands.”