The Maverick's Christmas Baby

“You out here joyriding?” Dallas joked, but Nina heard the relief in his tone.

“When the storm hit your mother called the farm where you were delivering hay to find out if you’d left there. They said you had, and since you hadn’t gotten home, she called me.”

Dallas glanced over his shoulder at Nina. “What did I tell you? The thought of being stuck for too long with my three boys got the troops sent out to find me in a hurry.”

Then, back to Gage Christensen, he said. “I have Nina Crawford in here and I think she needs to get to the hospital in Kalispell—the sooner the better....”

So he was clearly more worried about her condition than he’d originally let on.

“Looks to me like I can pull around behind you and push you forward enough to get you going. Then I’ll do the hospital run,” Gage Christensen said.

“Why don’t you get me out of this ditch and just follow us? It’s probably not a great idea to move Nina but I’d like to know we have some backup. And maybe after the storm someone can come out here and get her SUV.”

Nina was surprised that Dallas hadn’t jumped at the opportunity to be off the hook. But she appreciated that he hadn’t, that he still seemed concerned for her.

“Let’s see what we can do,” the sheriff said, returning to his own vehicle.

Turning back to Nina, Dallas grasped her upper arm in one of those big hands and squeezed. “Just relax, we’ll be on the way before you know it,” he said, once more sounding confident.

Nina nodded, relieved that they were going to get out of there.

Then Dallas left, closed the rear door, and came in from the passenger side of the front seat to slide across and restart the engine, turning on the heat again.

It wasn’t long before there was a slight bump to the rear of Dallas’s truck. Then there was the sound of spinning tires and the feel of the truck inching forward until Dallas’s wheels caught enough traction to move onto the road.

“Now we’re cooking,” he said victoriously.

“My purse—I should have my insurance card,” Nina said as it became clear that they actually were going to be able to travel.

“I’ll get it,” he said, coming to a slow stop, then rushing out of the truck’s cab into the storm again to return with her oversize hobo bag and her keys.

“Thank you,” she said when he handed everything to her over the front seat. Then, a bit emotionally, she added, “Thank you for everything today....”

“Let’s just get you to the hospital,” he said, putting the truck into gear and setting off cautiously into the still-blinding blizzard.

Watching the back of his head as he drove, Nina couldn’t help marveling at the fact that she was continuing to be looked after by none other than Dallas Traub.

Personable, kind, caring, strong, reassuring and more handsome than she’d ever realized before, he couldn’t know how glad she was that he hadn’t merely handed her off to the sheriff.

And in that moment she couldn’t help wondering why it was that she was supposed to hate him.

Chapter Two

“Is anyone here for Nina Crawford?”

Dallas got to his feet the moment he heard that. He was in the waiting area for the emergency room of the hospital in Kalispell, where he’d been since arriving with Nina and having her whisked away.

“I’m Dr. Axel,” the woman introduced herself.

Dallas wasn’t sure whether or not to admit he wasn’t family but before he could say anything the woman continued.

“Nina and the baby are doing fine. The pains she was having were the result of hitting the steering wheel, not labor. There’s no indication that she’s about to deliver. We’ve done an ultrasound and the baby looks good, plus Nina is hooked up to a fetal monitor and there are no signs of any kind of distress.”

“Great!” Dallas said, relief ringing clear.

“As I’m sure you know,” the doctor went on, “Nina is at thirty-five weeks so birth at this stage—while inadvisable—would still likely not pose unusual problems for mom or baby should something change suddenly. But with the storm and the difficulties on the roads, getting her back here in a hurry might pose a problem and I’d rather err on the side of safety. So we’re keeping her overnight. That way we can continue to monitor things and watch them both, just in case.”

“Sure.”

“She’s being taken to a room now—if you check with one of the people at the desk they’ll be able to tell you the number.”

Dallas thanked the doctor, then he went to the reception desk, gave Nina’s name and learned what room she’d been taken to.

It was only after he had that information that he wondered if he should stay.

After all, he wasn’t family.

But while Gage Christensen had promised to notify the Crawfords of the accident and tell them Nina’s whereabouts, none of them had arrived yet. Despite the fact that the blizzard had stopped and only a light snow was falling, the roads still weren’t great, so there was no surprise there. And Dallas didn’t like the thought of Nina being alone, even if everything was okay.

So he opted to stay. Just the way he’d opted to stay after getting Nina here, despite the sheriff pointing out that he’d done enough, that there was nothing more he could do now that she was in the hands of the professionals, and that he might as well go home to his own family.

His family—his boys—were being well taken care of by his parents, all of whom he’d talked to while he was in the waiting room. Everything was going on as usual. But for now, without him, Nina had no one.

And he just couldn’t bring himself to leave her.

So he went to the elevator, got in and hit the button for her floor.

The maternity floor.

He knew it well. He’d been there for the birth of each of his three sons. With Laurel...

That memory wrenched his gut. The way countless other memories had during the past year.

The past year of hell...

It just wasn’t easy.

Not waking up to find his wife had left him.

Not raising three kids on his own.

Not dealing with his own anger and grief and sometimes rage and despair.

Not dealing with his sons’ emotions, which were sometimes right on the surface and other times came out so subtly he missed them until it was too late.

Not going on, living in the same town where they’d both grown up, being where almost everything in their life had happened, revisiting places like this hospital, where events had come about that were apparently not as meaningful to his ex-wife as they were to him....

Yeah, hell pretty much described it. And he was just trying to work his way through the emotional muck, in much the same way that Rust Creek Falls was still working its way through the muck left from the flood.