The Christmas Baby Bonus

What would it be like to be so completely alone? he wondered. Even though his twin brother had died suddenly last January, both his parents were still living and he had aunts and uncles and cousins too numerous to count—even if they weren’t the kinds of people he wanted to necessarily be around. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be so completely on your own.

She reached for her coat and Piers moved behind her to help her shrug it on, then Faye bent to lift her overnight case at the same time he did.

“I’ll take it,” she said firmly. “No point in you having to go back out in the cold.”

Her words made sense but grated on his sense of chivalry. In his world, no woman should ever have to lift a finger let alone her own case. But then again, Faye wasn’t of his world, was she? And she went to great pains to remind him of that. “Thanks for stepping into the breach and doing the house for me,” he said as they hesitated by the door.

Faye gave one last look at the fully decorated great hall—her eyes lingered on the stockings for Piers’s expected guests pinned over the fireplace, at the tree glittering with softly glowing lights and spun-glass ornaments—and actually shuddered.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said with obvious relief.

It was patently clear she couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“Thanks, Faye. I do appreciate it.”

“You’d better,” she warned direly. “I’ve directed the payroll office to give me a large bonus for this one.”

“Double it, you’re worth it,” he countered with another one of his grins that usually turned women to putty in his hands no matter their age—women except for his PA, that was.

“Thank you,” Faye said tightly as she zipped up the front of her coat and pulled up her hood.

He watched as she lifted her overnight case and hoisted the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder.

Piers held the door open for her. “Take care on the driveway and watch out for the drop-off on the side. I know the surface has been graded recently but you can’t be too careful in this weather.”

“Trust me, careful is my middle name.”

“Why is that, Faye?”

She pretended she didn’t hear the question the same way he’d noticed she ignored all his questions that veered into personal territory.

“Enjoy yourself, see you next year,” she said and headed for the main stairs.

Piers watched her trudge down the stairs and across the driveway toward the garage, and closed the front door against the bitter-cold air that swirled around him. He turned and faced the interior of the house. Soon it would be filled with people—friends he’d invited for the holidays. But right now, with Faye gone, the place felt echoingly empty.

* * *

The wind had picked up outside in the past couple of hours and Faye bent over a little as she made her way toward the converted stables where she’d parked her rental SUV. Piers hadn’t seen fit to garage the Range Rover she’d had waiting for him at the airport, she noted with a frown, but had left the vehicle at the bottom of the stairs to the front door. Serve him right if he has to dig it out come morning, she thought.

It would especially serve him right for delivering that blasted megawatt smile in her direction not once but twice in a short space of time. She knew he used it like the weapon it truly was. No, it didn’t make her heart sing and, no, it didn’t do strange things to her downstairs, either. But it could, if she let it.

Faye blinked firmly, as if to rid herself of the mental image of him standing there looking far more tempting than any man should in such a truly awful sweater—good grief, was one sleeve really longer than the other?

Well, none of that mattered now. She was on her way to the airport and then to normality. A flurry of snow whipped against her, sticking wetly to any exposed patches of skin. Had she mentioned how much she hated snow? Faye gritted her teeth and pressed the remote in her pocket that opened the garage door. She scurried into the building that, despite being renovated into a six-stall garage, was still redolent with the lingering scents of hay and horses and a time when things around here were vastly different.

Across the garage she thought she saw a movement and stared into the dark recesses of the far bay before dismissing the notion as a figment of her imagination. Faye opened the trunk of the SUV and hefted her overnight bag into the voluminous space. A bit of a sad analogy for her life when she thought about it—a small, compact, cram-filled object inside an echoing, empty void. But she didn’t think about it. Well, hardly ever. Except at this time of year. Which was exactly why she hated it so much. No matter where she turned she couldn’t escape the pain she kept so conscientiously at bay the rest of the year.

An odd sound from inside the SUV made her stop in her tracks. The hair on the back of her neck prickled and Faye looked around carefully. She could see nothing out of order. No mass murderers loitering in the shadows. No extraterrestrial creatures poised to hunt her down and rip her spine out. Nothing. Correction, nothing but the sudden howl of a massive squall of wind and snow. She really needed to get going before the weather got too rough for her to reach the airport and the subsequent sanity her flight home promised.

Stepping around the SUV to the driver’s door, Faye realized something was perched on her seat. Strange. She didn’t remember leaving anything there when she’d pulled in two days ago, nor had she noticed anything amiss this morning when she’d come out to fit the chains on the tires in readiness to leave. Was this Piers’s idea of a joke? His joy in the festive season saw him insist every year on giving her a gift, which every year she refused to open.

She moved a little closer and realized there were, in fact, two objects. One on her passenger seat, which looked like a large tote of some kind, the other a blanket-covered something-or-other shaped suspiciously like a baby’s car seat. A trickle of foreboding sent a shiver down Faye’s spine.

At the end of the garage, a door to the outside opened and then slammed shut, making her jump. What was going on? Then, from the back of the building, she heard a vehicle start up and drive away. Fast. She raced to the doorway in time to see a flicker of taillights as a small hatchback gunned it down the driveway. What? Who?

From her SUV she heard another sound. One she had no difficulty recognizing. If there was anything that made her more antsy than the festive season, it was miniature people. The sound came again, this time louder and with a great deal more distress.

Even though she’d seen the hatchback leaving, she still looked around, waiting for whomever it was who’d thought it funny to leave a child here to spring out and yell, “Surprise!” But she, and the baby, were alone. “This isn’t funny anymore,” she muttered.

It wasn’t funny to start with, she reminded herself. The blanket covering the car seat began to move as if tiny fists and feet were waving beneath it. A slip of paper pinned to the blanket crackled with the movement. With her heart hammering in her chest, Faye gently tugged the blanket down.

The baby—a boy, she guessed by the blue knitted-woolen hat he wore and the tiny, puffy blue jacket that enveloped him—looked at her with startled eyes. He was completely silent for the length of about a split second before his little face scrunched up and he let loose a giant wail.

Nausea threatened to swamp her. No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening. Every natural instinct in her body urged her to comfort the child, but fear held her back. The very thought of holding that small body to hers, of cupping that small head with the palm of her hand, of inhaling that sweet baby scent—no, she couldn’t do that again.

Faye thought quickly. She had to get the baby inside where it was warm. Babysitting might not be the holiday break Piers had been looking forward to, but he would just have to cope with it. She reached out to jiggle the car seat, hoping the movement might calm the baby down, but he wasn’t having it.

“Sorry, little man,” she said, flipping the blanket back over him to protect him from the elements outside. “But you’re going to have to go undercover until I can get you to the house.”

The paper on the blanket rustled and Faye took a second to rip it free and shove it in her pocket. She could read it later. Right now she had to get the baby where the temperature was not approaching subzero.

Again she wondered who had left the baby there. What kind of homicidal idiot did something like that? In these temperatures, he’d have died all too quickly. Another futile loss in a world full of losses, she thought bleakly. Whoever it was had waited until she’d showed, though, hadn’t they? What would they have done if she’d chosen to stay an extra night? Leave the child at the door and ring the doorbell before hightailing it down the driveway? Who would do something like that?

Whoever it was didn’t matter right now, she reminded herself. She had to get the baby to the house.

Swallowing back the queasiness that assailed her, Faye hooked the tote bag over one shoulder and then hugged the car seat close to her body, her arms wrapped firmly around the edges of the blanket so it wouldn’t fly away in the wind. She scurried across to the house, slipping a little on the driveway in shoes that were better suited to strolling the Santa Monica pier than battling winter in Wyoming, and staggered up the front stairs.

The baby didn’t let up his screaming for one darn second. She didn’t blame him. By the time she reached the front door, she felt like weeping herself. She dropped the tote at her feet and hammered on the thick wooden surface, relieved when the door swung open almost immediately.

“Car trouble?” Piers asked, filling the doorway before stepping aside and gesturing for her to enter.

“No,” she answered. “Baby trouble.”

Two (#u33bf27ae-8255-52e4-b866-2c946453115a)

“Baby trouble?” he repeated, looked stunned.

“That’s what I said. Someone left this in the garage. Here, take it.”

Faye thrust the car seat into his arms and pulled the door closed behind them. Damn his eyes, he’d already started the Christmas carols collection. One thousand, two hundred and forty-seven versions of every carol known to modern man and in six different languages. She knew because she’d had the torturous task of creating the compilation for him. Seriously, could her day get any worse?

Piers looked in horror at the screaming object in his arms. “What is it?”

Faye sighed and rolled her eyes. “I told you. A baby. A boy, I’d guess.”

She reached over and flipped down the blanket, exposing the baby’s red, unhappy face.

Piers looked from the baby to her in bewilderment. “But who...? What...?”