Their Unexpected Christmas Gift

Mavis’s phone went straight to voice mail. Della didn’t answer her phone either, but he didn’t expect her to because she and her husband were on a cruise or something. The inn had a computer registry for guests—in Della’s locked office. Mavis normally left the keys behind, but a quick glance at the hook in the pantry told him that she’d forgotten to do that today. So he moved on to his last resort. It took four rings before his mother picked up, her voice all breezy and cheery. The country club voice, as false as the Astroturf on the putting green of the back patio of the club. “Hello, Nicholas!”

“Mom, I…have a problem.”

“I’m just heading into court. Can’t it wait?” The friendly golf-course tones yielded to annoyance and impatience. Nick already regretted making the call, but it had seemed like the right choice. Find a baby on the kitchen table, call the woman who was biologically connected to you and therefore supposedly equipped for this kind of thing. Not that this was the kind of situation that had a guidebook.

He glanced down at the baby again. She’d stopped crying, thank goodness. But at some point she was going to start again, or need to be fed, or changed, or, well, raised into an adult. All things outside of Nick’s capabilities. “Uh, no. This is kind of an urgent problem.”

“Well, could you call your father or one of your brothers? Actually, your father is doing a deposition and I have this trial—”

“Mom, someone left a baby on my kitchen table and I don’t know what to do with it.” And his father wasn’t talking to him, something his mother conveniently forgot whenever she wanted to pass the buck.

A long moment of silence. “Tell me this is a joke, Nicholas. What did you do? Did you impregnate some girl?”

He scowled. He should have known better. His mother lacked the maternal gene. The thought of her showing motherly concern for a stranger’s baby was almost laughable, since the closest she could come to showing concern for her own son was to blame him for all of his problems. Some things never changed. She’d been the least maternal person he’d ever known, and had treated all three of her sons like mini-mes to their father, grooming the three of them to go into the family business of law. To achieve those goals, he and his brothers had been provided with nannies and maids and drivers and tutors, but when Nick had chosen a different path for himself, any hints of warmth or concern for him had vanished. What had made him think his mother would suddenly change in the course of a phone call? “I didn’t do anything, Mom. Never mind. Sorry I interrupted you.”

“Nick, if you truly have a baby there, call the fire department or something. Legally, you shouldn’t touch that child because you could be sued if anything happens. The fire department will know what to do. There are safe haven laws—”

As always, Catherine Jackson went back to the comfort zone of the law. She was right, but that didn’t mean he liked the option. “Yeah, thanks, Mom, I’ll do that.” Nick hung up, tucked his phone in his pocket, then paced his kitchen for a while. The baby stared up at him from her place in the basket, all wide-eyed and curious.

What was he going to do? He supposed he could call Colton Barlow down at the fire station and have him get the baby, the way his mother had instructed. But handing a baby off to someone he only sort of knew, especially at Christmas, seemed so wrong, so…cold. Surely the whole thing had just been a mistake and the women would be back right away.

The baby’s eyes began to water.

Oh God. She was going to start crying again. He poked around the blanket, careful not to disturb the infant, looking for a pacifier or a bottle—anything. All he saw in the basket was the baby and the blanket. The baby stared at him, ever closer to tears. “Hey, sorry. Just checking for a tag or something. Even Paddington Bear had one of those.”

But the baby didn’t. No supplies. No identification, at least not that he could see in his cursory look. No “if lost, return to” information. The baby started snarfling again and balled up her hands. Don’t cry, please don’t cry. “Kid, I don’t have anything for you. I don’t even know what to do with you.”

The snarfle gave way to a hiccup, then a wail. She waved her hands and kicked her feet, dislodging the blanket, revealing pink socks over tiny feet and baby lambs marching across the baby’s onesie.

“Oh, hell.” He reached down and grabbed the baby. She was heavier than he’d expected, denser, and when he picked her up, she stopped crying and stared at him. “Well, hey there.”

The baby blinked. Her eyes welled, and her cheeks reddened. Nick turned her to the right and did a sniff test. Nothing. Thank God. If there’d been a diaper situation, the kid would have been out of luck. She’d come with no instructions and no supplies. Maybe he should google baby care or something.

Then he saw the corner of a piece of paper, tucked under the blanket at the bottom of the basket. With one hand, he fished it out and unfolded it. In neat, cursive script, the note said: “Please take care of Ellie as well as you took care of me. I know she’ll have a good home with you. Love, Sammie.”

Sammie. That was the name of one of the women, he remembered now. Who was the other one with her? Something with a V. Or maybe a K. Damn it. He couldn’t remember.

“Ellie?” he said. The baby blinked at him. “Where’s your mom or moms or aunt or whoever it was that brought you here?”

Ellie was holding her head up on her own, which was a good thing, he knew that much. It meant she wasn’t brand-new, but also not old enough to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so if he didn’t figure something out soon, he was going to have to decide what—and how—to feed her.

“Kid, do you have teeth yet?”

The baby began to whimper. Nick brought her to his shoulder and began to rub her back in a circle. He’d seen someone do that in a movie once, and it seemed the kind of thing someone did to calm a baby down. Within seconds, it worked. The baby stopped crying, but then she did something worse.

She curled against Nick, fisted her hand in the collar of his shirt…and cooed.

“I’m not parent material, kid.” Big blue eyes met his. Damn. He’d always been a sucker for blue eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.”

She kept on staring at him, nonplussed. As babies went, she was pretty cool. And she smelled like strawberries and bananas, all sweet and innocent. Damn. “What am I going to do with you?”

Just then, the front door opened and the brunette who had checked in yesterday walked into the inn. About damned time.

Nick kept the baby against his chest, grabbed the basket with his other hand and hurried down the hall. With each step, his aggravation with the woman grew. It had been irresponsible as hell to leave a kid alone and drive off, even if she had come back just a few minutes later. At the last second, he put the baby back in the basket, then picked it up and carried it with him. If this woman was the kind of mother who forgot her kid on a kitchen table, maybe he shouldn’t give her back without asking a few questions. Or calling the cops. “About time you came back, lady. You—”

“Why were you holding Ellie? Where’s Sammie?”

Some of his anger derailed as soon as he was face-to-face with the woman. She was just that beautiful in her tailored navy suit and heels. She had her hair back in a bun at her nape, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. She had one fist on her hip, a circle of keys hanging from her finger and an oversize boxy purse in the other hand. For someone with a baby that he guesstimated wasn’t more than a couple months old, this woman looked really, really great.

“Where is she? How am I supposed to know?”

Nick grabbed the basket and headed down the hall to the kitchen and set the baby back on the table. “If you’re the kind of person who can’t keep track of your girlfriend or sister or whoever Sammie is, not to mention your kid, I’m not giving the baby back to you.”

The woman ignored him. She barreled past Nick and crossed to the basket before Nick could react. “Ellie! Are you okay?” She pulled back the blanket, counting fingers and toes, acting all concerned.

Nick wasn’t buying it. He yanked the basket up and out of the woman’s reach. “What kind of mother are you, anyway? And who said you can even touch her? I should call the cops. I found her abandoned on the kitchen table in this basket. Anyone could have walked in and taken her, you know.”

The woman put her hands out. “Thank you for taking care of her. Now, if I could just have the basket—”

Nick should have slammed the door in the woman’s face or something. But he’d been all discombobulated by the baby on the table, and the sneaking suspicion that he was missing part of the story here. “I’m not letting you leave here with this baby. In fact, I’m calling the cops right now.” He unlocked the cell and started pressing numbers. “I’ve seen Dateline,you know.”

“I’m not the baby’s mother—”

“All the more reason for me to call the cops, babynapper.”

“I’m her aunt. My sister, Sammie, is the irresponsible one.” She gave the baby a smile, but stayed a solid three feet away. “Ellie knows, doesn’t she? I’m your auntie Viv.”

Nick tucked his phone away. The two women were sisters, and the baby was this woman’s niece. Made sense, but still didn’t explain why the baby got left on the kitchen table. “Well, I want to see some ID.”

The woman smiled. Holy hell, she had a beautiful smile. Wide and with a slightly higher lift on one side than the other. There was a tiny gap between her front teeth that Nick might have found endearing under other circumstances. “An ID? For Ellie? I don’t think they hand out licenses to three-month-olds.”

Three months old. Barely a person, which caused a roar of protectiveness in Nick. “Not for her. For you. Prove you’re this kid’s aunt.”

“I can’t. I mean, it’s not like I run around with an ID saying I’ve got a niece. A niece I have only known about for twenty-four hours.” She sighed. “I checked in yesterday, and you saw me then. Mavis checked my license and took my credit card, and…” Her voice trailed off. She opened her purse, took out her wallet and cursed. “Damn it, Sammie. She must have taken my AmEx when I was in the shower.”

“You still have to pay for the room.” The words felt way too weak as soon as they left his mouth. This was his biggest threat? After Sammie or Viv—a nice name for a woman like her, as if it was short for vivacious—had left the baby behind?

“Of course I will.” She sighed, tucked her wallet away, then put out her hands again. “Give me the baby.”

So maybe she was the aunt. It all seemed plausible. Her sister was clearly an irresponsible parent. What assurance did he have that this woman would be a better caretaker? Viv looked like a responsible human, but then again…didn’t most people? Either way, she was still a stranger, and this kid wasn’t old enough to talk, so Nick felt like he had to do some kind of due diligence. “Well, I can’t let you leave with her, not until I know for sure that you’re her aunt and that you’re capable of taking decent care of her.”

Viv crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere without Ellie.”

They were caught in a standoff. And Nick wasn’t going to budge. He looked down at the baby, at those big blue eyes that were so trusting and innocent, and knew he couldn’t let the kid down. He’d found her, after all, and like a lost puppy, he was tasked with making sure wherever she went from here was safe and warm and good. The kid—Ellie, he told himself—had started to grow on him, damn it, and until he could figure out the right thing to do—

He did the only thing he could think of. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

Chapter Two (#ufbb9c6d9-e3f2-54fc-9457-436bbc1364d1)