She eased onto the table. “My leg still looks like a three-hundred-pound football player tackled me, but it don’t hurt no more.”

He did a brief exam and said, “If you promise not to get into any more fights, I’ll release you to do whatever you want.”

“Can’t make that promise, but I will tell you this.” Betsy shook her finger at him. “If Edith wants another round, you’ll be takin’ care of her, not me.”

Doc laughed and turned to Ginger. “Your turn.”

Betsy left the table, and Ginger took her place.

Doc checked the baby’s heartbeat, then measured her belly. “Girl, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there ain’t no way around this.”

Linda nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”

Betsy gasped.

Kate threw her hand over eyes.

Connie took Ginger’s hand in hers. “Is there no heartbeat?”

“Oh, no,” Doc said. “The baby is fine, but there’s no way Ginger is going to deliver it naturally. It’s just too big, so I’m going to have to order a cesarean section for this one.”

All three sisters sighed.

Ginger felt like she might faint. “How am I ever going to pay for something like that?”

“I work for moonshine,” Doc said. “And Kate always overpays me, so this one is on the house. We do this kind of delivery two weeks early, and I’m going out of town for a week on May tenth, so . . .” He looked at the calendar on the wall. “Linda, set this up for May sixth.” He turned back to Ginger. “We’ll check you into the hospital the night before, and keep you a couple of days afterwards. That way I’ll be here until you go home.”

“That’s next week.” Ginger suddenly felt light-headed, and woozy. She couldn’t be ready for a baby in only a week. “I don’t have things ready for her.”

“Honey, it don’t take much at the beginning,” Linda reassured her.

All Ginger could think was that she had six days to get ready for a baby and that in between now and then, the ladies would be getting ready for the Rooster Romp. When the doctor helped her sit up, her thought pattern shifted to Sloan. He thought he had until the end of the month to get mentally prepared for a baby, and now it was coming in less than a week. What would he think of that?

To Sloan, the week seemed to last forever. He could be patient, but only up to a point. Now that Ginger had agreed to move in with him, he was eager to get her settled into the house. The mattress for the baby bed had arrived on Tuesday, but they had no sheets for it. He and Ginger needed to visit about things, like whether she wanted a specific color or if pink was all right, and just how prissy Martha Belle’s corner of the room should be.

He picked up the phone to call her at noon, but before he could hit the number for her, his phone rang. It startled him so badly that he fumbled the telephone and dropped it right on Tinker’s head. The dog jumped up and growled at him. The phone scooted under the sofa, and Sloan had to get down on his hands and knees to even locate it. There it was all the way back against the wall. He had to lie on his belly and stretch his arm as far as it would go just to get a grip on the thing.

“Hello.” He was breathless when he finally answered on the fifth ring.

“Well, at least you answered this time,” Commander Watterson said. “Were you out doing PT? You sound out of breath.”

“Dropped the phone,” Sloan said.

“I was wondering if you’d thought about that idea of training guys for me and helping put teams together. I’ve been given the green light to pick a civilian assistant for that job. You’d have to pass the psych eval, and it’s a seven-to-three job,” the commander said.

“Where?” Sloan asked.

“San Antonio at the Bullis Army Base,” he answered.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Sloan’s heart kicked in an extra beat. “That’s only half an hour from where I live.”

“You’d start July the first. I’ve got a whole new bunch of recruits coming out of Lawton, Oklahoma, for training. That would give you plenty of time to come over here, get all the paperwork in order, and be ready if you want to give it a shot,” Commander Watterson said. “Pay and benefits are pretty much the same as what they were when you were on active duty.”

“Yes,” Sloan said. “I would like that very much, and thank you, sir.”

“Then I’ll get the preliminary paperwork done and call you in a couple of weeks with the schedule for all your tests. Have you kept in shape, or am I going to see a beer belly?”

Sloan glanced down at his camouflage pants. “I’m still wearing the same clothes I came home with.”

“Good,” Commander Watterson said. “Then the only big hurdle will be that psych eval. Pass it and we’re good to go. You told me once that your dream had been to make a career of the military. I can’t get you back in with the discharge that you have, but I can give you a job within the ranks that will get you a twenty-year retirement.”

“I can’t tell you what this means to me, sir,” Sloan said, “or thank you enough for the opportunity you’re giving me. I’ll be waiting for your call.” He didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until it all came out in a whoosh. Surely, he hoped to God, he would pass that evaluation exam.

“I’ll send paperwork before I call,” he said. “I’ve got your address right here in front of me. Talk to you soon.”

Sloan had just ended the call when someone rapped on his door. He crossed the living room to open it and found Ginger on the other side. She looked like she was either scared out of her mind or about to explode in anger.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.

“I’ve got some news for you, too,” he told her. “Do you want to sit on the porch or come inside?”

She brushed past him and went straight to what was to be her bedroom. “Oh, my! There’s a mattress in the bed.” Then she covered her face and broke into tears.

His first thought was that there was something wrong with the baby. She’d probably just come from the doctor’s office. Cold chills chased down Sloan’s back. What if it was going to be stillborn?

He took her by the hand and led her to the rocking chair. Then he sat down and pulled her onto on his lap. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed.

“Talk to me, Ginger. Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

“The baby is coming in six days,” she said between sobs. “And I don’t have anything ready for her, and I don’t even know what to buy or where to go to shop. I’ve never bought anything new in my life. I could get her things from a thrift shop, but I wanted her to have something new and pretty to come home from the hospital in, and . . .” She stopped to catch her breath.

He stood to his feet with her still in his arms, pushed up out of the chair, and took her into the living room. “If that’s all it is, we can fix that problem. You scared the crap out of me. I thought you were going to tell me something was wrong with the baby.” He set her down in a chair in front of his desk and opened his laptop.

She put her elbows on the desk and buried her head in her hands. “And now you’ve only got six days to get ready for this big change in your life, instead of three weeks. Are you sure you want me to move in here that quick?”

“Honey, we can go get your things this afternoon. You can sleep here tonight, and you’ll have almost a week to get used to the place. Everything’s goin’ to be all right. And by the way, I like your new hairdo.”

That made her cry even harder. “No one ever noticed me before. I don’t deserve it.”

He went to the kitchen, brought back a chair and pulled it up beside her as close as he could. “Now, dry up those tears.” He reached to the back of the desk, jerked a tissue from a box, and wiped her face with it. “And let’s get you some retail therapy.”

“What’s that?” she asked. “And yes, I would like to move in this afternoon. Those stairs at the Banty House are killing me.”

“It’s online shopping, and whatever we buy can be shipped here in two days. Let’s start with sheets for the bed. Pink?” He hit a few keys and brought up a page with all kinds of baby things. “Let’s start with basics and buy all the fancy swings and stuff like that as we figure out whether we need them or not. So sheets?”

“Pink.” Ginger managed a smile. “I want her to be a princess.”

“Oh, honey, there’s no doubt that she’s already that. I almost forgot to tell you my good news,” he told her as they filled a virtual cart together.

“Sloan, that’s wonderful.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You’ll be doing what you love, and it’s not that far that you have to move. But if you just want a job, that big shot at the hospital offered you something there, and that’s a lot closer.”

“That’s a job.” He nodded. “But this is what I want to do. I loved the military, and working with them again would be like a dream come true. But I will have to change my car washing day to Saturday.”