Their Precious Christmas Miracle: Mistletoe Baby / In the Spirit of...Christmas / A Baby By Christmas

“—so look at this as a way to burn off your physical frustration in the meantime.”

“I’ve long passed physical frustration and am headed into physical exhaustion,” his brother groused good-naturedly. “Moving the guest room furniture into the garage and all this stuff out of the garage … You really think Rachel will be surprised? I’d do anything in the world for Lilah, but she would have found the boxes by now. She has present radar. She stumbles over things I’ve hidden away even when she’s not purposely looking for them. Trying to keep her from finding her engagement ring early was a comedy of errors.”

David shook his head. “Rachel rarely ever goes into the garage, especially in the winter.” The space was too cramped for them to park cars inside, and had become little more than a storage facility for lawn and maintenance tools—it had been the perfect spot to hide the boxes for a few days. Even if Rachel had ventured out for a better look, she would have seen a neatly stacked row of cardboard, all taped up and full of parts and pieces that required assembly.

He grinned at all they’d managed to accomplish in just one night, trying to imagine her face when he showed her. “For future reference, Tanner, I owe you a beer.”

“Ha! I was thinking a keg.” But his brother was smiling, too. “As long as Rachel loves it, that’s enough for me.”

David couldn’t agree more. This was going to be the best Christmas ever.

RACHEL FELT warm and contentedly cocooned in the dreams she’d been having, but her senses were starting to provide solid motivation for waking up, too. The alluring scent of baking cinnamon rolls, for instance. And she was aware of the gentlest, coaxing pressure … She returned the light kiss as she opened her eyes, waking in David’s embrace.

He sat on the bed, smiling. “Merry Christmas.”

She sleepily returned the smile, then remembered where she was and glanced around. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Arianne’s helping Mom with breakfast, which is nearly ready, and I think Tanner dragged Lilah off in search of mistletoe. He was pitiful last night. The way he carried on, you’d think they were separated for weeks on end instead of a few hours.”

Rachel stretched, grinning nostalgically. “I remember the days before our wedding when I was sleeping under the same roof as my parents, only I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking of you.”

“Yeah?” David stroked his hand over her face. “What kind of thoughts?”

“Hey!” Arianne called from the hallway. “If all you happy couples think you’re gonna get fed, I demand help in the kitchen.”

Pulling herself into a sitting position, Rachel laughed. “Your sister is really going to have to learn to be assertive and ask for what she wants.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard, being the baby of the family and a girl,” David deadpanned. “Tanner and I probably sheltered her too much. I blame myself for her crippling shyness.”

Rachel was still shaking her head and chuckling when she walked away to brush her teeth. She smiled at her own reflection in the mirror. Hard to believe that cheerful, beautiful woman was really her. If anyone had asked her a month ago, she would have said this was her last holiday with the Waide family, probably her last holiday as a Waide. She would have expected it to be tinged with melancholy if not outright grim. She’d never been so thrilled to be so wrong.

The biggest improvement might be her and David trying to reconnect, but it wasn’t the only improvement.

In weeks past, she’d been trying to decide if she could be truly happy here, in a slow-paced job and in a small community where people would probably always see her first and foremost as David’s wife with no real picture of who she’d been before. But after calling South Carolina last night to wish her own family happy holidays and hearing how stressed they all sounded—Kate having only returned to her job from maternity leave a few months ago and now worried about balancing her career with two small children, Rachel’s father still pushing himself as hard as ever and refusing to consider retirement, her mother still obsessing over office politics (“First it was the sexism and having to prove myself among the Boys’ Club, now it’s making sure these new young girls they hire don’t make the rest of us obsolete”)… Well, it was easy to remember why Rachel had dropped out of that particular rat race and sought the sanctuary of this sleepy town.

Folks in Mistletoe might be overly interested in her life, but it was by and large legitimate interest, not just judging her by her portfolio or whether she was on track for a promotion. Rachel had never truly disliked her job at the print shop. She’d just started overanalyzing it because she’d wanted to feel that she was in control of something, because she’d so desperately needed to be excited about something in her life. But both her parents had tried to find their satisfaction at the office for years, and neither seemed to have succeeded.

She patted her tummy, looking down. “And then there’s you.” She could not wait to see everyone’s faces when she and David made the announcement later.

When she finally joined the others in the kitchen, Tanner harassed her about women taking a long time in the bathroom, and Arianne playfully accused her of ducking breakfast chores. Only David glanced at her with worry, raising an eyebrow in silent question and miming being queasy. It took her a moment to figure out what he was doing, and she laughed at how ridiculous he looked. She’d unintentionally discovered that her competitive husband would probably be lousy at charades.