The Texan's Christmas

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ulink_6bbf4eeb-d6fa-5781-b5b6-52af168b470d)

The smell of someone’s take-out food filled the crowded elevator, and Nicole Bennett’s stomach clenched in protest. Seafood. Why did it have to be seafood? Her destination was another five stories up, but when the doors parted at the next floor, she seized her chance to escape. Otherwise, she might make the elevator ride very unpleasant for the other passengers.

Taking deep, cleansing breaths, she headed for the stairwell at the end of the hallway. She’d planned not to tell anyone she was pregnant until after the first trimester, but these attacks of nausea might force her hand. She and Adele had dinner reservations in an hour and a half. How was Nicole going to survive the restaurant if she couldn’t stomach food smells?

Every time Nicole thought about sharing her news with Adele Black, she was swamped with conflicting emotions. Her boss had mentored her since Nicole interned at AB Windpower in college. In the past couple of years, when Adele’s cancer made it impossible to carry out her normal responsibilities, Nicole had been her second-in-charge. The two women had grown very close—closer than Nicole had been to any of her foster moms during childhood.

There was no one Nicole wanted to share her joy with more, but motherhood was a complicated subject for Adele. Decades ago, after her postpartum depression had spiraled out of control, Adele had abandoned her own four children. When she’d asked later for visitation rights, her powerful ex-husband had said the kids were better off without her and threatened to ruin her if she ever contacted them. Adele had changed her name and built a company, but she’d never had a family again. Would Nicole’s news be bittersweet for her?

Then again, since the two women were temporarily sharing the apartment Adele kept near AB Windpower’s satellite office in Dallas, maybe hiding the pregnancy wasn’t practical.

Trudging up the next set of stairs, Nicole weighed her decision. As vice president of operations, she had a lot of responsibility. The company had lost a few employees this year, and she didn’t want to cause her mentor stress about being shorthanded during Nicole’s eventual maternity leave. Nicole had hoped to have a couple of new hires in place before she told Adele. Some strong candidates had sent in résumés, but with Christmas right around the corner and holiday plans scheduled, no one wanted to start until after the first of the year.

And can you blame them? What wouldn’t she give for family plans? For eager kids insisting it was time to get up and see what Santa had left, for siblings and cousins and grandparents sipping coffee in their flannel pajamas and robes?

She still had one last flight of stairs to go when the cell phone in her suit jacket buzzed. Probably Adele, trying to figure out what was taking so long. But to Nicole’s surprise, the name that flashed across her screen was Chris Miller.

Happy holidays, Nic! Any chance you have time to talk this week?

She smiled at the coincidence. Calling her former coworker was actually on her to-do list for tomorrow. Last spring, Chris had been Adele’s top choice to run the Dallas office. Life had thrown him some curveballs, though, and in the wake of finding out he was going to be a father, he’d left the company. Maybe his absence was for the best. Nicole didn’t know how she would have been able to face him regularly while keeping Adele’s secret. Through an odd quirk of fate, the woman Chris had recently married was Adele’s oldest daughter.

If this visit to Dallas went the way Nicole hoped, maybe there would no longer be a need for secrecy. She paused on the landing to text him back.

Great minds think alike! Just got to town & was hoping we could all have dinner one night. I’d love to see Lizzie & the baby.

No answer followed. She chalked it up to either his needing to check with Lizzie about details or being interrupted by their newborn. If Nicole didn’t get a response tonight, she’d phone him in the morning. In the meantime...

She pulled out her keycard and opened the door to the suite. “Hello? It’s me.”

Adele moved into view, carrying a bottle and two champagne flutes from the kitchen area into the living room. “About time, dear! I didn’t want to celebrate without you.”

A grin split Nicole’s face. “You got the results?”

Technically, Adele had already been declared cancer-free in San Antonio, but now that she was feeling well enough to travel, she’d wanted a second opinion from a respected specialist in Dallas. It was as if she’d been too afraid to believe she was in remission—as if, perhaps, she didn’t believe she deserved it. Adele had done a lot of soul-searching during her illness. At her sickest, she’d frequently spoken about the four children she’d left behind.

Lizzie, Savannah, Carly and Jet had been raised by their father, oil tycoon and rodeo legend Brock Baron. When Adele had feared she might die without getting a chance to tell her grown daughters and son that she was sorry or that she loved them, Nicole had urged her friend to contact them. Adele had balked, insisting she’d caused them enough pain already. It was too cruel to pop back into their lives just to tell them she was dying and to say goodbye. But perhaps now...

“Is that champagne?” Nicole asked, hesitating in the foyer. “I, uh, haven’t eaten much today. I’m afraid it might go straight to my head. Wouldn’t want to fall asleep on the cab ride to dinner.”

Adele shook her head. “Like I’m going to put alcohol into my body on top of everything else? It’s just fancy juice. But the exhilaration is real.”

Nicole stepped forward to hug her. Despite Adele’s fragile frame—she’d lost a ton of weight during treatment—there was strength in the return embrace. She’s improving every day. Adele’s graying hair was short and thin, and she still tended to sport shadows beneath her eyes, but she looked nice tonight. The red tunic sweater she wore added some pink to her cheeks. She was a spot of festive color amid the neutral decor. It gave Nicole an idea.

“You plan to be in Dallas for at least a couple of weeks, right? What if we...what if we get a Christmas tree?” She felt almost shy making the suggestion. Decorating for Christmas was traditionally a family endeavor.

“A tree?” Adele glanced around the room, as if seeking the perfect place to put one. “Yes, I think so. That’s a lovely idea. We’ll need to buy some ornaments and lights, though.”

“And we’ll have to figure out how to get it up here. I’m sure we can pay for some kind of delivery. I’ll look into options this week,” she volunteered.

“Thank you, dear. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Back at you,” Nicole said, trying not to think about the darkest days when she’d been afraid Adele wouldn’t make it. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. She sometimes wondered, in occasional guilty moments, if she’d decided to have the artificial insemination procedure because she was so aware she might lose the person who mattered the most to her. But she’d assured herself that the decision was not merely a reaction to fear. Nicole had wanted to be a mother as far back as she could remember. Some of her earliest memories were singing to and “feeding” baby dolls.

Granted, she’d thought she would be raising children with a husband, but she was almost thirty and couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone on more than four dates with the same guy. She still hoped to fall in love and marry someday, but it had begun to seem silly to put her dream on hold, waiting for something that may or may not ever happen. She’d always been the kind of person to take initiative.

And sometimes taking initiative meant giving a friend a swift kick in the tush. Accepting her glass of sparkling juice, Nicole said, “Chris Miller texted me on my way up. I’m going to try to see him and Lizzie this week.”

Adele was so still, it didn’t even look as if she were breathing. “Well, naturally. I figured you would.”

Although Adele had refused to contact her children directly during her chemotherapy, she’d sent Nicole to Dallas with a merger proposal between AB Windpower and Baron Energies. Nicole had never believed the industry giant would link themselves with the much smaller alternative energy company, but it had given her the opportunity to meet Lizzie Baron in person, to report back to Adele that her daughter was savvy and kind and on the verge of motherhood herself. During one of Lizzie and Nicole’s meetings, Lizzie had begun cramping and bleeding; it was Nicole who’d driven her to the hospital. Although the women didn’t know each other well, Nicole considered Lizzie a friend.

“And you figured I’d let you in on how they’re doing? Maybe take a few pictures of the baby?” Nicole asked. Despite her loyalty and affection for her boss, she didn’t enjoy feeling like a spy. And she didn’t enjoy lying by omission. “I have a better idea. You should make plans to see them for yourself.”

Reaching blindly behind her, Adele groped for the cream leather sofa and sank onto it. “Surely you don’t think I should call my grown daughter out of the blue and say, ‘Hey, can we grab coffee?’”

“Nothing that glib.” Nicole sat next to her. “Now that your health is better, you should get in touch with them. Adele, you have a second chance. Don’t waste it. I can’t keep stalking them. It’s creepy.”

“It’s not as if I asked you to hide in the shrubbery and watch them through binoculars.” Adele tried to joke about the situation, but her light tone didn’t last long. “What if my reaching out only upsets them? I don’t want to intrude where I’m not welcome. Can you...can you ask Lizzie about me, about whether she’d want to hear from her estranged mother after all this time? I know she doesn’t necessarily speak for all of them, but she’s the oldest. When they were little, her sisters looked up to her. Lizzie might be a good barometer of how they feel.”

Now that Lizzie’s baby was born, conversation about motherhood would be natural. Nicole could ask gentle questions about whether Lizzie missed her own mom. She hoped she’d handle the situation delicately enough; Chris and Lizzie probably weren’t getting a lot of sleep these days. Their emotions could be on edge—to say nothing of Nicole’s own pregnancy mood swings. She’d been a bit of a tomboy growing up and had almost never cried when she fell off a bike or when her foster brothers teased her about being “too short” to play basketball. Yet for the past week, she’d constantly felt on the edge of tears. Was now really the best time to play mediator?

It’s Christmas—the season of miracles. And a miracle may be exactly what Adele and her children needed.

* * *

EVERY TELEVISION CHANNEL seemed intent on reminding the viewer that Christmas was around the corner—classic animated movies, Christmas episodes of popular sitcoms, commercials promising “perfect gifts” for loved ones. Daniel Burke Baron punched the power button on the remote with an internal bah, humbug. Pain made him cranky. While Texas wasn’t known for cold weather, the low temperature tonight was frosty enough to aggravate the lingering ache in his bruised ribs and make his recovering shoulder feel stiffer than normal.

Last month, he’d had surgery after being thrown from a bull in the rodeo ring, and he was damned impatient to get started with physical therapy. He wanted to feel like himself again.

With the television turned off, silence pressed in around him. But it lasted only a moment before a knock resounded through the one-room, remodeled bunkhouse. This building had once been part of a ranch that sold off its acreage to neighboring spreads decades ago. Daniel had wanted something simple, just a comfortable, low-maintenance place to crash when he wasn’t out on the rodeo circuit. It was a few miles from the practice ring and livestock on the Roughneck, his stepfather’s ranch, but lately Daniel had been wondering if he should have struck farther out on his own.

Annoyed with the fresh throbbing in his side when he stood, he answered the door, unsurprised to find his older brother, Jacob.

In lieu of a greeting, Jacob stated the obvious. “You missed Sunday dinner.”

It was traditional for the Baron siblings and step siblings to gather at the ranch on Sunday evenings for a family meal. Those meals had become increasingly crowded lately. Two of his stepsisters had married within the past year. Jet, Carly and Jacob were all engaged. And it wasn’t just spouses or fiancés who’d been added to the mix. Until a few months ago, the only kid under the roof had been Alex, the son of Brock Baron’s third wife. Now the five-year-old was surrounded by new cousins. Daniel had been as stunned as his brother when Jacob discovered in October that he had a toddler son, but in a very short time, Cody had become the center of Jacob’s world.

“Sorry,” Daniel said. “Didn’t quite feel up to it tonight.” If he were being honest with himself, it wasn’t just the shoulder pain that had made him reluctant to go. This was the time of year he always missed his mother the most, and his seasonal melancholy seemed like an ill fit for all the nuptial bliss around the dining room table. Why dampen everyone else’s festive mood?

“Well, Anna sent leftovers.” Jacob held out two Tupperware containers.

Daniel’s mouth lifted in a half grin. He’d always been fond of the housekeeper. She was like him, a member of the household, but not exactly a Baron. Although Brock had adopted Daniel and Jacob after marrying Peggy Burke, he’d never treated them as entirely equal to his real children.

“Thanks. I haven’t actually eaten yet.”

Jacob followed Daniel to the kitchen. “The other reason I stopped by was to let you know I found you a replacement chauffeur for tomorrow.” Ever since Daniel’s accident, Jacob had been driving him to his medical appointments.