Mistletoe Baby

Her heart rate kicked up suddenly, her pulse pounding in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t hear her own thoughts—not an altogether bad thing considering their dark tone. Her vision swam. What the hell? Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, she hurriedly parked at the curb. Then she waited, taking deep breaths.

Was she being melodramatic, or had she just almost fainted? She’d never passed out in her life. Though her headache remained in full force, her pulse slowed enough that she could walk to Winnie’s front door and ring the bell without worrying that she looked like a deranged escapee from the nearest hospital.

Winnie Brisbane, receptionist for the town veterinarian, was one of the softest-hearted people in the county. Her two lab mixes had been with her for years; a three-legged cat named Arpeggio and a lop-eared rabbit were more recent additions. Winnie had been negotiating with local pet-sitter Brenna Pierce to care for the menagerie when she’d found an abandoned puppy in a November storm. Though she’d placed a poster in the vet’s office, most people were too preoccupied with approaching holiday chaos to take on a gangly puppy with a nervous bladder and no obedience training. By Thanksgiving, Winnie had named the mutt Hildie.

Short of Winnie canceling the cruise she and her cousins had been planning for over a year, having someone house-sit seemed the only sensible solution. Brenna’s client schedule was too full for the constant care a puppy required, not to mention how much the extra professional visits would stretch Winnie’s modest budget. She’d laughingly told Rachel that she’d blown this year’s mad money on cruise wear and was making up for it with peanut-butter-sandwich lunches and macaroni-and-cheese dinners.

“The dogs are officially eating better than I am,” she’d admitted when Rachel offered to puppy-sit.

As Winnie ushered her into the house, Rachel had a twinge of guilt over the woman’s outpouring of gratitude. Though there was no good way to explain it to sweet-natured, freckle-faced Winnie, who blushed when David so much as smiled, Rachel had taken the house-sitting gig for selfish reasons. Tonight it had hit home how impossible it was for her to be under the same roof with her husband and not just because their exchanges deteriorated into sniping or unproductive regrets.

When he’d walked into the kitchen earlier, she’d been overwhelmed, out of the blue, by the sandalwood scent of his shampoo. Her sense of smell seemed abnormally strong, maybe because of the headache. She’d read about people with migraines having heightened sensitivities. Whatever the cause, she’d had a nearly visceral memory of him washing her hair once, the feel of his hands across her scalp, the rich lather of the shampoo, his soapy skin sliding against hers as they leaned together for a kiss, the water sluicing over both their bodies.

“Rachel? Are you okay?”

Good heavens, she’d completely forgotten about Winnie sitting across the table, summarizing pet routines that were written in a spiral notebook.

“Sorry.” Rachel swallowed. “I got a little…overheated for a moment. Can I trouble you for a glass of water?”

Winnie made a sympathetic noise. “Those medications, I expect.”

One of the positives of living in a small town was that people cared—when they asked how you were doing, they wanted an honest answer, not a rote “fine, thanks.” Susan Waide, strongly in favor of becoming a grandmother, had asked for prayer support among her friends at church on David and Rachel’s behalf. The OB’s office staff knew Rachel by name and were all pulling for her. Sometimes, having everyone within shouting distance knowing the details of her life and cheering her on was nice.

This was not one of those times.

So she kept it to herself that she wasn’t even taking the drugs anymore; she’d emptied her last prescription just prior to Halloween. The doctors had warned then that potential long-term dangers of the hormones were starting to outweigh the possibility of conception. They’d broached the subject of in vitro procedures, but she’d decided against it pretty early in the discussion process. It was expensive, offered no guarantees, and frankly, her relationship with David had cooled so much by then that she wondered if it would be fair to bring a baby into their home.

Home. Glad Winnie stood at the sink with her back turned, Rachel surreptitiously wiped away tears. When David had surprised her late in their engagement with the key to the brick house two streets over, she’d thought it was her dream home. Now it stood as a museum of their disappointments and mistakes.

The sooner I get out of that house, the better. She found herself reciting the mantra several times a day. She just wished she could convince herself it was true.

WHEN Rachel returned from Winnie’s, David was hunched over his laptop in the front living room, no doubt working on files for the store. The Waides had owned a supply store in Mistletoe for generations, but it had really grown under David and Zachariah’s partnership. In the spring, Zachariah Waide had gone into partial retirement, handing over the bulk of daily management to his oldest child. David had thrown himself into the job with gusto, seeming happier when he was at the store than he did when he was with her.

Careful not to disturb his work now, Rachel tiptoed past, stealing one undisciplined peek at his chiseled profile, bathed in blue from the monitor’s glow in the darkened room. How many pictures had she taken of that face, trying to capture perfectly on film the strength and character there? It was so unfair. While she’d been mourning the loss of her chic but no longer necessary professional wardrobe and grappling with some unattractive side effects of the medicine, David merely got sexier with each passing day. He’d doubled his jogging regimen, and now that Tanner was back, David was shooting hoops regularly in addition to the community softball he’d always played. He was in the best shape of his adult life, which made her feel even worse that her own body had turned against her.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she got to the guest room at the end of the house and finally exhaled. It was such a pretty room really, the muted pastels in the drapes and matching queen-size comforter off-setting the dark wood of the sleigh bed. A person should feel cheerful here. A person should not obsess over how this room would have made a lovely nursery.

After the miscarriage, Rachel had fallen into the habit of coming here when she couldn’t sleep, just to sit and think, then she’d awake on the bed in the morning. David never said a word about it, so when difficulties between them had reached their zenith, it had been almost a natural transition to adopt this room as her own. She hadn’t actually started moving clothes into the closet and her alarm clock onto the nightstand until after Thanksgiving, when she’d told him she couldn’t do this anymore.

She would miss a lot of things when it came time to leave Mistletoe—friends, the Waides, the chicken-fried steak down at Dixieland Diner—but she would not miss this room. Grabbing the cordless phone, she sat on the mattress. She should return Kate’s call before it got too late.

Her younger sister, who lived with her husband and eleven-month-old daughter just a few miles from Rachel’s parents, picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Rachel. David said you called?”

“Oh, hi!” Kate’s greeting was so effusive that it bordered on a squeal. Odd. The last few times they’d spoken, her sister had been subtly petulant that Rachel wasn’t coming to South Carolina for Christmas. After all, it would be little Alyssa’s first, never mind that Rachel had committed to being in a wedding and was planning to visit home for New Year’s. Rachel had even contemplated getting out of Mistletoe for Thanksgiving, but Kate had gone to her in-laws’ place in Virginia so that they could coo over the grand-baby.

“You sound like you’re in a good mood,” Rachel observed.

“The best! I’m so glad you called back. I’m having lunch with Mom tomorrow, so I’ll talk to her then, but she heard first the last time. I thought it should be your turn.”

Rachel couldn’t help smiling, Kate’s fast-paced prattle reminding her of when they were younger and her sister would burst through the kitchen door with sixty-miles-an-hour news of her day. “My turn for what?”

“Okay, you are officially the very first person in the family to hear this.” Kate giggled. “Well, except for Mike, obviously. He bought the test for me.”

“Test?” Rachel’s stomach dropped. Realization hit. I am the worst sister in the world. She didn’t want to hear this news; she wanted to slam down the phone and curl into the fetal position. Pun not intended.

“We’re expecting again! Alyssa is going to be a big sister. It’s a little sooner than we anticipated—I mean, we just started trying and you never know how long it will…” Kate trailed off in abashed silence.

“Congratulations,” Rachel said. “That’s wonderful.”

“I am so sorry.” Kate sounded horrified. “That was a really insensitive way to put that. I was just so excited—”

“As you should be! And you were right, a woman never does know how long it will take.” Or if it will happen, ever. “Don’t worry. I’d be a lousy person if I weren’t thrilled for you.”

“You’re sure?”

Hell. Once again, tears threatened to well in Rachel’s eyes—what was that, the sixth time today?—but she was determined not to let Fertile Myrtle know. She coughed, trying to keep her voice even. “Absolutely! I owe you a huge congratulatory hug when I see you in January.”

“Yeah, you’ll want to do it then before I get too big to wrap your arms around,” Kate joked.

They talked for a few more minutes, but it was clear that neither one of them was entirely comfortable.

“Oh, dear,” Kate said, interrupting as Rachel answered a question about Lilah’s wedding plans. “That’s Alyssa crying. I’d better go. See you in a few weeks!”

“Right. See you then.” Rachel disconnected, flopped back on the mattress and glared at the ceiling.

Well, at least now when she announced to her parents—who were already baffled as to why she was “wasting” her college degree in a “dinky” North Georgia town—that her marriage had crashed and burned, the Nietermyers would have Kate’s pregnancy as a happy distraction.

Yeah, that made Rachel feel much better.

Chapter Three

Mental note. Rachel squeezed herself behind a kitchen chair for safety. Never, never ask a bunch of animals “Who wants to go for a walk?”

Unless, of course, she wanted to be trampled to death. The two labs were scrambling to reach her, and Hildie was probably waking up the neighborhood, running circles on the tile and barking her head off. Although the dogs enjoyed playing in their own fenced backyard, Winnie had mentioned that walks were a special treat. Bristol and Rembrandt shared a double-dog leash, and in theory, Rachel should be able to walk Hildie with her own leash held in the other hand.

Faced with the challenge of harnessing all this uncoordinated enthusiasm, however, Rachel was suddenly dubious. If she had any common sense, she’d probably be snuggled under the covers; she wasn’t due for work at the print shop for another two and a half hours.

But she hadn’t been asleep anyway. She’d been up three times during the night, probably because the unfamiliar noises of pets in the house kept waking her. Shortly before 6:00 a.m., it had become clear that no matter how exhausted she was, she was awake for the duration.

Awake and cowering behind furniture.

She cleared her throat, hoping to project authority. “Sit. I mean it, you guys. Sit!”

The labs’ collective butts hit the floor, their tails sweeping in noisy arcs. Hildie continued to run in demented circles, woofing happily. Two out of three is close enough. Rachel edged from behind the chair, maintaining stern eye contact while she picked up the leashes. She shrugged into a flannel-lined, double-breasted coat. It was bulky, especially over her blue sweat suit, but it was indisputably soft, as if she were walking around in a much-needed hug.

Though she’d never been a morning person, there was something surprisingly invigorating about stepping outside into the chilly air, watching the sun rise in golden-orange streaks that gilded the clouds. That would make a pretty picture. Even if she hadn’t busted her camera last month, she didn’t exactly have a free hand right now. And the dogs definitely lacked the patience for her to stop and take in picturesque scenes—they were already straining against their leashes.