Jingle Bell Baby

But not her.

Not by a long shot.

She wasn’t going to get her tail tied in a knot over Sheriff Clint Bradshaw. Not tonight, anyway. She had a baby to tend to and the very thought made her glow with excitement and shiver with flat-out fear.

This was a definite case of “watch out what you wish for because you just might get it,” she reflected as she walked back to Daisy’s basket. Well, it was just one night, she reminded herself, and the night was nearly over besides. Surely she could manage to care for one little tiny baby for a few hours? Why, the poor little girl would probably be asleep the entire time anyway.

It was almost as if Daisy had read Jessie’s mind and had, on cue, decided to prove just how wrong a person could be about a baby. One moment, she was sleeping peacefully as Jessie looked on, contemplating how her tiny features were set in the most angelic expression. And a split second later, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, her body stretched with tension, her little face turning as red as a Christmas ball.

“Here we go again,” Jessie mumbled, shaking her head as she reached for the baby. “Oh, now, now, sweetie. What’s all this racket about, honey pie?” she asked the baby as she lifted her up.

It seemed unlikely that Daisy would be hungry so soon after having virtually inhaled that huge bottle, Jessie reasoned. It had to be something else. Her diaper! Yes, that was it. She hadn’t given the downtown area any attention recently and was sure that must be the cause of Daisy’s hysteria.

“Okay, sweetie. I think I have a clue now—” With the crying baby slung over her shoulder, Jessie scampered around the house, pulling open drawers and closets with her one free hand as she tried to fix up a makeshift diaper station.

She brought all the supplies into the living room and tossed them on the couch. Then she laid Daisy down on the couch on an open bath towel and got to work. Removing the dirty diaper and cleaning the baby’s bottom was no problem. But the disposable diapers were not nearly so easy to use as they looked. Jessie found that securing one around a squirming, wailing infant was quite a challenge. Almost as fast as Jessie could get the diaper on her, Daisy seemed to twist and burst out of it, messing up all the sticky stuff on the tabs.

When Daisy was finally, though haphazardly, diapered to Jessica’s satisfaction, the room was littered with clean but unusable failed attempts.

The baby’s nightgown and undershirt were also wet, Jessie noticed while diapering her. After another long bout of squirming, crying and figuring out what seemed to Jessie a very complicated arrangement of snaps, Daisy had on a fresh diaper and a clean, dry undershirt and nightie.

Exhausted but proud, Jessie picked up Daisy and carried her back to her basket. Just as she was placing the baby back in her basket, however, she realized that somewhere during the clothes change, Daisy had managed to dirty her diaper again.

This time, in a more substantial manner.

“Courage, Malone,” Jessica said, bolstering herself. “You can do it.”

Daisy smiled up at her and stuck her fist in her mouth.

Jessica carried her back to the couch, and went through the entire operation one more time.

By the time Jessie had Daisy cleaned up again, the baby had begun a whimpering cry. Jessie realized that several hours had passed since she’d been fed. She fixed Daisy’s bottle quickly and fed her.

She was careful this time to remember to burp the baby. As Daisy gave out another astounding burp, Jessie glanced at the clock. It was well after three. Didn’t babies need to sleep a lot? Daisy seemed totally unaware of that part of her job description and did not look to Jessie at all likely to fall asleep anytime soon.

Jessie swaddled Daisy in a blanket and sat down with her in a rocker near the Christmas tree. The only lights in the room were the brightly colored tree lights, and through the large bay window Jessie could see the snow outside still falling.

In an hour or two, Christmas would be here, Jessie thought. As she rocked Daisy and hummed a lullaby, she thought back to the Christmas-morning rituals of her childhood. No matter how early she woke up, Aunt Claire had always gotten up just a little before her and there was a big mug of hot cocoa and a slice of her aunt’s special cinnamon Christmas bread waiting at her place. And even though the bread and cocoa were delicious, Jessie couldn’t sit still at the table long enough to eat them. With her mug and dish in hand, she’d dash into the living room and start unwrapping her presents as Aunt Claire looked on.

Jessie missed her aunt especially on the holiday. She could only dimly remember her parents, who died in a car accident when she was four years old. Claire, her father’s older sister, had taken her in.

Claire had never married or had children of her own, and though she was well into middle age when Jessie arrived in her life, she was a wonderful, devoted parent. She had showered Jessie with love and had been there for her, to celebrate her successes and support her over the rough spots.

Not that there had been all that many rough spots, Jessie conceded. She’d just hit one great big one, on Christmas Day five years ago; a major pothole on the road of life that had spun her life around like a crash car in a demolition derby.

She was to marry Sam Kincaid, the boy she’d grown up with, the first boy she’d ever kissed, had ever flirted with, danced with, had ever made promises and plans with. But when the time had come for their marriage ceremony to begin, Jessie had waited at the church, dressed in her white satin gown, as her family and friends looked on. Even now she remembered thinking how lucky it was that the veil had been pulled over her face, concealing her distraught expression as she’d waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally the minister had taken her aside. Some flowers had been delivered for her. He’d led her to his office and had given her the bouquet. A letter had been attached, from Sam. It’d been full of regrets and apologies. But still, Sam didn’t want to marry her. It wouldn’t be fair, he’d explained, since he had fallen in love with someone else. That someone else being a woman who was willing and even eager to make a life in the city—in Boston, or maybe even New York. While he knew that Jessie would never willingly leave Hope Springs.

I am sorry for the pain I have caused you, Jessie, he’d written, but I know someday you will look back and see that it has all turned out for the best.

Well, five years to the day had passed and still that elusive “someday” had not arrived. Jessie wondered if it ever would. Oh, she had quickly learned that there was indeed life after Sam. She’d picked up her skirts and plowed on, as Aunt Claire would say, and had never wasted a moment feeling sorry for herself.

The time had passed. People finally stopped talking about her “disappointment.” Year to year, her life changed. Aunt Claire decided she’d had enough New England winters for one lifetime and had retired to Arizona. She left Jessie the cafе and enough money to buy her own home.

In the past five years, Jessie had done her fair share of dating, yet she had never fallen in love again. Did you only get one chance for love and happiness? she sometimes wondered. Had her chance been used up on Sam Kincaid?

Maybe she was waiting in vain for something that didn’t exist. Maybe she should just marry the next nice, acceptable man that came her way. Was there even such a thing as true love? She believed she had felt it for Sam and yet, their marriage had been so…expected. Expected by their parents and friends—by the whole town, actually. Thinking back, she couldn’t even recall if Sam had actually proposed to her. Had she and Sam really loved each other—or were the feelings they shared more a mixture of familiarity, friendship and adolescent hormones?

Perhaps the only deep regret she had now about missing out on marriage was the fact that she wanted a baby—a baby just like sweet little Daisy, who was cuddled against her and not far from sleep.

Jessie glanced at the presents under her tree that her aunt and friends had sent her. The best gift of all this Christmas was Daisy, she realized, looking down again at the bundle in her arms. Daisy had finally fallen asleep, her head nestled against Jessie’s breast. Jessie stared down at her in wonder. She knew now what it was to hold an angel in her arms.

If only I could keep her, she thought. Keep her forever.

Daisy shifted in her sleep and Jessie wondered if she should get up and settle Daisy comfortably in her basket. But then she decided not to risk waking her so soon after she’d fallen asleep. Jessie closed her tired eyes and kept rocking.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Jessie opened her eyes. Someone was banging on the door. She started to get up and her sleep-muddled mind wondered for a second why she had fallen asleep in the rocker. Her body ached—especially her arms—and she realized in a flash that the strange weight in her arms was a sleeping baby.

Jessie’s eyes fully opened and it all came back to her. She had fallen asleep in the rocker with Daisy. She wondered what time it was. The living room was dark, but not nighttime dark. She glanced out the window and realized that the snow was still falling.

The thumping had stopped for a moment, but now started again in earnest. Daisy was squirming, but not quite awake. Jessie got up from the chair with the sleepy baby cuddled against her shoulder.

Jessie trudged to the door and pulled it open. She felt a knot instantly clench up in her stomach.

“Looks like I woke you,” Clint Bradshaw greeted her.

She hadn’t been able to guess who was banging on her door. But he was the last person she’d expected to see. Was he here to take Daisy after all? So early?

“I guess you did.” Jessie lifted a hand to her sleeptousled hair. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like. She didn’t want to know. “We—uh, had a late night,” she said. She pulled the door open wider and stepped aside. He came inside, his big body instantly filling up the small foyer and creating an uncomfortable sense of intimacy between them.

He stared down at her. “How’s the baby?”

“Oh, she’s fine.” Jessie looked at the drowsy baby, then back up at Clint. “Still a little sleepy, I guess.”

“Did she cry much last night?”

“A little,” Jessie replied. “I guess she missed her mother.”

Jessie could now recall falling asleep with Daisy in the chair the first time. Daisy waking, getting fed and changed and having another crying spell a few hours after that and Jessie ending up right back in the chair with her sometime right before dawn, only to fall asleep again.

“Yes, I guess so,” he answered, nodding.

Enough of the small talk, Sheriff, she wanted to say. It’s really not your style anyway.

“Have you come to take her?” Jessie forced herself to ask him.