Page 1 of Saving You

“I managed to acquire both my kid and my cat while on the job. Any chance you guys want to get into arson as a hobby so I can maybe find a husband too?”

When Ridge was the new guy in town, he didn’t mind being the single one. After all, he’s had his job and raising his daughter to distract him. But now that three years have gone by, he’s starting to wonder if maybe something’s wrong with him. Everyone else he knows has tripped and fallen into love.

So why hasn’t there been even a hint of romance for him?

Then his daughter’s very hot, very straight Deaf mentor kisses him at a party in front of his family. But it wasn’t for no reason. Oz confesses his mom and sister have been trying to set him back up with his ex and he needs a way out.

For Ridge, who has been nursing a crush on Oz for a year, this is the ultimate fantasy. But when Oz starts showing signs that he wants more than just pretend, Ridge isn’t sure. Can he trust this man with his heart? Especially when his heart isn’t the only one on the line?

Ridge has spent most of his life saving people, but soon he’ll learn if there’s a hero waiting to save him too.

Saving You is the sixth book in the Words We Never Said series. It features a friends to lovers romance with a happily ever after. In this book you will find an exhausted single dad with a hero complex, a first-year teacher trying to find the balance between work, personal life, and a family who won’t stop making things harder, fake dates, falling head over heels, and knowing that if it doesn’t come from the existential crisis region of France, it’s just sparkling anxiety.

PROLOGUE

RIDGE

“Oh my God,oh my God, I feel like I’m about to shit out a bowling ball, what’s happening to me?”

If Ridge hadn’t been on the verge of panic at the sight of a baby’s head between the woman’s thighs, he might have laughed. But this was his first emergency call with a woman in labor. Not that it had been communicated over the line. She said she was having extreme intestinal distress and bleeding.

He’d expected to find a woman shitting red Takis on her toilet. Not someone crouched on their front lawn with a baby crowning.

Glancing around, he could see half a dozen neighbors pretending to check the mail, and he wanted to preserve this poor girl’s dignity. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, if that, and she didn’t deserve to make a home-birthing show in her front yard against her will.

“It’s not a bowling ball. It’s a baby,” he told her in his most soothing voice ever.

Her hands—strong enough to leave bruises—flew up and clamped around his thighs so hard it made him grunt. “What do you mean it’s ababy? How can it be a baby? I’m not pregnant!”

“Well, if the head between your legs is anything to go by, you were pregnant, and you’re currently giving birth,” he said.

He placed his hands under her arms, prepared to lift her. He was the only one on scene. He’d been down the street in the SUV on a Tim Horton’s run when the call had come in, and the only free wagon was eight minutes away, which was plenty of time for her to both give birth and bleed to death.

It was a no-brainer, really.

“How can I be pregnant?” she sobbed. “How is this possible?”

He wanted to say, “My guess is sex or some sort of biblical miracle,” but he didn’t. That wasn’t fair, and he had no idea how this had happened to her. She could have been assaulted or deprived of a basic education, and the last thing in the world he wanted was to make her feel worse.

She looked dazed and very pale, grunting as her muscles contracted against her will. There was another gush of blood and fluid, and when he peered down, the baby’s forehead appeared. Fuck.

“I just mean we…uh. We…we used a condom,” she managed to get out. “I thought those were supposed to make sure this didn’t happen.”

Ridge eased her to her feet, slipped his arm around her as they headed inside, and supported almost all of her weight while keeping his hand on the baby’s head to try and prevent the baby from being hurt. He didn’t want to make her give birth on her lawn, but he was terrified this was going to go poorly.

“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent effective,” he said as he helped her waddle to the couch. He’d heard of cryptic pregnancies, and as he laid her down, he could see that her stomach wasn’t all that big. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

She licked her lips as she lay back, and he got her legs bent so he could check on the baby. “A-ashlynn.”

“Pretty name. I’m Ridge.”

“You sound like—uh. Oh God…” Another contraction hit her, and she grunted again. He peered down, and the baby was the same, but he noticed the forehead was very, very blue. He’d never done this before, and in the training videos, it didn’t talk about what to do if the baby wasn’t breathing. Or maybe they did and he hadn’t retained that information.

He was probably panicking.

Fuck.

“I’m going to get a couple of towels and my kit from my truck, okay? I need you to breathe through the contractions and try not to push.”

---