The Christmas Baby Bonus

“My thoughts exactly,” Faye replied. “I don’t know who, or what, left him behind. Although I suspect it was possibly the person I caught a glimpse of speeding away in a car down the driveway. For the record, no, I did not get the license plate number. Look, I have to leave him with you, I’m running late. Oh, by the way, he came with a note.” She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out the crumpled paper and squinted at the handwriting before putting the note on top of the blanket. “Looks like it’s addressed to you. Have fun,” she said firmly and turned to leave.

“You can’t leave me with this,” Piers protested.

“I can and I will. I’m off the clock, remember. Seriously, if you can’t cope, just call up someone from Jackson Hole. I’m sure there’ll be any number of people willing to assist you. I can’t miss my flight. I have to go.”

“I’ll double your salary. Triple it!”

Faye shook her head and resolutely turned to the door. There wasn’t enough money in the world to make her stay. With the baby’s wails ringing in her ears and a look of abject horror on her playboy boss’s face firmly embedded in her mind, she went outside.

Faye hadn’t realized she was shaking until the door closed at her back. The baby’s cries even made it through the heavy wood. Faye blinked away her own tears. She. Would. Not. Cry. Ignoring her need to provide comfort might rank up there with the hardest things she’d ever done, but at least this way no one would get hurt—especially not her. Piers had resources at his disposal; there were people constantly ready to jump at his beck and call. And if all else failed, there was always Google.

Stiffening her spine, she headed to the garage, got into her SUV and started down the drive. It might only be four in the afternoon, but with the storm it was already gloomy out. Despite the snow tires and the chains, nothing could get her used to the sensation of driving on a snow-and-ice-covered road. Nothing quite overcame that sickening, all-encompassing sense of dread that struck her every time the tires began to lose purchase—nothing quite managed to hold off the memories that came flooding back in that moment. Nothing, except perhaps the overpowering sense of reprieve when the all-wheel-drive kicked in and she knew she wasn’t going to suffer a repeat of that night.

And then, as always, came the guilt. Survivor’s guilt they called it. Thirteen years later and it still felt a lot more like punishment. It was part of why she’d chosen to live in Southern California rather than her hometown in Michigan or anyplace that got snow and ice in winter. It didn’t make the memories go away, but sunshine had a way of blurring them over time.

The sturdy SUV rocked under the onslaught of the wind and Faye’s fingers wrapped tight around the steering wheel. She should have left ages ago. Waiting a couple extra hours at the airport would have been infinitely preferable to this.

“Relax,” she told herself. “You’ve got this.”

Another gust rocked the vehicle and it slid a little in the icy conditions. Faye’s heart rate picked up a few notches and beneath her coat she felt perspiration begin to form in her armpits and under her breasts. Damn snow. Damn Piers. Damn Christmas.

And then it happened. A pine tree on the side of the road just ahead toppled across the road in front of her. Faye jammed on the brakes and tried to steer to the side, but it was too late—there was no way she could avoid the impact. The airbag deployed in her face with a shotgun-like boom, shoving her back into her seat. The air around her filled with fine dust that almost looked like smoke, making her cough, and an acrid scent like gunpowder filled her nostrils.

Memories flooded into her mind. Of screams, of the scent of blood and gasoline, of the heat and flare of flames and then of pain and loss and the end of everything she’d ever known. Faye shook uncontrollably and struggled to get out of the SUV. It took her a while to realize she still had her seat belt on.

“I’m okay,” she said shakily, willing it to be true. “I’m okay.”

She took a swift inventory of her limbs, her face. A quick glance in the rearview mirror confirmed she had what looked like gravel rash on her face from the airbag. It was minor in the grand scheme of things, she told herself. It could have been so much worse. At least this time she was alone.

Faye searched the foot well for her handbag and pulled out her cell phone. She needed to call for help, but the lack of bars on her screen made it clear there was no reception—not even enough for an emergency call.

With a groan of frustration, she hitched her bag crosswise over her body and pushed the door open. It took some effort as one of the front panels had jammed up against the door frame, but eventually she got it open wide enough to squeeze through.

She surveyed the damage. There was no way this vehicle was going anywhere anytime soon, and unless she could climb over the fallen tree and make it down the rest of the driveway and somehow hail a cab at the bottom of the mountain, she was very definitely going to miss her flight.

She weighed her options and looked toward the house, not so terribly far away, where light blazed from the downstairs’ windows and the trees outside twinkled with Christmas lights. Then she looked back down—over the tree with its massive girth, the snowdrifts on one side of the driveway and the sheer drop on the other.

She had only one choice.

* * *

Piers stared incredulously at the closed front door. She’d actually done it. She’d left him with a screaming baby and no idea of what to do. He’d fire her on the spot, if he didn’t need her so damn much. Faye basically ran his life with Swiss precision. On the rare occasions something went off the rails, she was always there to right things. Except for now.

Piers looked at the squalling baby in the car seat and set it on the floor. Darn kid was loud.

He figured out how to extricate the little human from his bindings and picked him up, instinctively resting the baby against his chest and patting him on the bottom. To his amazement, the little tyke began to settle. And nuzzle, as if he was seeking something Piers was pretty sure he was incapable of providing.

Before the little guy could work himself up to more tears, Piers bent, lifted the tote his traitorous PA had dropped on the floor and carried it and the baby through to the kitchen.

Sure enough, when he managed to one-handedly wrangle the thing open, he found a premixed baby bottle in a cooler sleeve.

“Right, now what?” he asked the infant in his arms. “You guys like this stuff warm, don’t you?”

He vaguely remembered hearing somewhere that heating formula in a microwave was a no-no and right now he knew that standing the bottle in a pot of warm water and waiting for it to heat wouldn’t be quick enough for him or for the baby. On cue, the baby began to fret. His little hands curled into tight fists that clutched at Piers’s sweater impatiently and he banged his little face against Piers’ neck.

“Okay, okay. I’m new at this. You’re just going to have to be patient a while longer.”

With an air of desperation, Piers continued to check the voluminous tote—taking everything out and laying it on the broad slab of granite that was his kitchen counter.

The tote reminded him of Mary Poppins’s magical bag with the amount of stuff it held—a tin of formula along with a massive stash of disposable diapers and a couple of sets of clothing. In the bottom of the bag he found a contraption that looked like it would hold a baby bottle. He checked the side and huffed a massive sigh of relief on discovering it was a bottle warmer. Four to six minutes, according to the directions, and the demanding tyrant in his arms could be fed.

“Okay, buddy, here we go. Let’s get this warmed up for you,” Piers muttered to his ungrateful audience, who’d had enough of waiting and screwed up his face again before letting out a massive wail.

Piers frantically jiggled the baby while following the directions to warm the bottle. It was undoubtedly the longest four minutes of his life. The baby banged his forehead against Piers’s neck again. Oh, hell, he was hot. Did he have a fever? Piers felt the child’s forehead with one of his big hands. A bit too warm, yes, but not feverish. He hoped. Maybe he just needed to get out of that jacket. But how on earth was Piers going to manage that? Feeling about as clumsy as if attempting to disrobe the baby while wearing oven gloves, Piers carefully wrestled the baby out of the jacket.

“There we go, buddy. Mission accomplished.”

The baby rewarded him with a demanding bellow of frustration, reminding Piers that the time had to be up for warming the bottle. He lifted the bottle, gave it a good shake, tested it on his wrist and then offered it to the baby. Poor mite must have been starving; he took to the bottle as if his life depended on it. And it did, Piers realized. And right now this little life depended on him, too.

So where on earth had he come from?

Remembering the note Faye had left with him, Piers walked to the entrance of the house and shifted the blanket until he found the crumpled piece of paper. Carefully balancing the baby and bottle with one hand, he went to sit in the main room and read the note.

Dear Mr. Luckman,

It’s time you took responsibility for your actions. You’ve ignored all my attempts to contact you so far. Maybe this will make you sit up and take notice. His name is Casey, he was born on September 10 and he’s your son. I relinquish all rights to him. I never wanted him in the first place, but he deserves to know his father. Do not try to find me.

There was an indecipherable signature scrawled along the bottom. Piers read the note again and flipped the single sheet over to see if the author had left a name on the other side. There was nothing.

His son? Impossible. Well, perhaps not completely impossible, but about as highly unlikely as growing a market garden on the moon. He was meticulous about protection in all his relationships. Accidents like this did not happen to him. Or at least they hadn’t, until now.

Piers did the mental math and figured, if he was the child’s father, he had to have met the baby’s mother around the New Year. He was always in Jackson Hole from before Christmas until early January and hosted his usual festivities around the twenty-fourth and on the thirty-first. But he’d been between girlfriends at the time and he certainly didn’t remember sleeping with anyone.

The baby had slowed down on the bottle and he stared up at Piers with very solemn brown eyes. Eyes that were very much like Piers’s own. His son? Could it somehow be true? Even as he mentally rejected the idea, he began to feel a connection to the infant in his arms. A connection that was surely as unfeasible as the idea that he was responsible for this tiny life.

The bottle was empty and Piers removed it from the baby’s mouth. So now what?

Casey looked blissed out on the formula, the expression on his face making Piers smile as the baby blew a milky bubble. In seconds the infant was asleep. Piers laid the kid down on the couch and packed some pillows around him like a soft fortress. Then he got to his feet and reached for his phone. Someone in town had to know where the baby belonged. Because as cute as Casey was, he surely didn’t belong to him.

He dialed the number for one of the café and bar joints in town, a place where the locals gathered to gossip by day and party and occasionally fight by night. If anyone knew anything about a new baby in town, it would be these guys. Except the call didn’t go through. He checked the screen—no reception. He reached for the landline only to discover it was out of action, too.

“Damn,” Piers cursed on a heavy sigh.

The storm had clearly grown a lot worse while he was occupied with his unexpected guest. Maybe he should go and check on the backup generator. He was just about to do so when he heard a knocking at the front door. Puzzled, as he wasn’t expecting any of his guests for a few more days yet, he went across to open it.

“Faye? What happened to you?”

His eyes roamed her face as he took her arm and led her inside toward the warmth of the fireplace. She was pale and she had a large red mark on her face, like a mild gravel rash or something, and she shivered uncontrollably. Her jacket, which was fine for show but obviously useless in actual snowy conditions, was sodden, as were the jeans she wore, and her sneakers made a squelching sound on the floor tiles.