by Deb Kastner
Countdown to a Christmas Baby
After Vivian Grainger buys him at the town’s charity bachelor auction, Nick McKenna feels obligated to provide his carpentry skills. He’ll help the bubbly blonde construct her dream spa and beauty shop in time for Christmas—but the burly cowboy won’t be sticking around. When he realizes Vivian is pregnant, though, everything changes. Seeing the joy she brings to everyone around her despite the difficulties she’s overcome, it’s clear to Nick that Vivian—and her child—are what’s missing from his life. As they build her dream shop together, Nick will do his best to build a path to Vivian’s heart.
“Call me crazy, but I’m actually feeling relieved now.”
“Relieved? How are you relieved? Because the prank wasn’t aimed at you?”
“No. Because you weren’t the one who was the instigator. For a while there I thought maybe you really disliked me, or at least that you didn’t want me opening the spa. I want to make sure you’re sticking around this time because you see the potential in what I’m doing and not because of some misplaced sense of obligation. That stupid auction means nothing. You know that, right?”
Nick glanced over at Vivian. She was such a striking woman, with her golden hair silhouetted against the moonlight in the dark cab, that his breath snagged in his throat. He wasn’t certain he was staying for all the right reasons…definitely not for the genuine motives Vivian was suggesting.
No—he was starting to think he was sticking around for the wrong reasons. He was feeling all muddled up inside his head. Confused. Part of him felt like bolting. And yet he couldn’t even consider walking away.
Award-winning author Deb Kastner writes stories of faith, family and community in a small-town Western setting. Deb’s books contain sigh-worthy heroes and strong heroines facing obstacles that draw them closer to each other and the Lord. She lives in Colorado with her husband and is blessed with three daughters and two grandchildren. She enjoys spoiling her grandkids, movies, music (The Texas Tenors!), singing in the church choir and exploring Colorado on horseback.
Books by Deb Kastner
Love Inspired
Cowboy Country
Yuletide Baby
The Cowboy’s Forever Family
The Cowboy’s Surprise Baby
The Cowboy’s Twins
Mistletoe Daddy
Lone Star Cowboy League
A Daddy for Her Triplets
Email Order Brides
Phoebe’s Groom
The Doctor’s Secret Son
The Nanny’s Twin Blessings
Meeting Mr. Right
Serendipity Sweethearts
The Soldier’s Sweetheart
Her Valentine Sheriff
Redeeming the Rancher
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MISTLETOE DADDY
Deb Kastner
Through Him then, let us continually offer God
a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips
that confess His name. Do not neglect to
do good and to share what you have;
God is pleased with sacrifices of that kind.
—Hebrews 13:15–16
For Isabella and Anthony, who show by
your innocent faith what it really means
to make loving sacrifices to the Lord.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Her Christmas Family Wish by Lois Richer
Chapter One
“Texas men are built like bricks and so good lookin’, don’t you think? Especially these here McKenna boys,” elderly Jo Spencer crowed. The cheerful crowd gathered on the community green for the first annual Bachelors and Baskets auction clapped their agreement.
Jo swept her arm, gesturing from the top of Nick’s black cowboy hat down to the toes of his boots. “Just feast your eyes on this handsome guy.”
Vivian Grainger was definitely looking, though feasting wouldn’t have been the word she would have used.
Critically assessing would be more accurate. She was trying to decide if Nick McKenna was the right man for the construction contractor job she had to fill. After all, that’s what made this auction different from most of the ones she’d heard of before. The organizers weren’t auctioning off dates with the men who had volunteered. Even the married men were auctioning themselves off for charity. Instead, the men agreed to perform some task or chore for the women who “bought” them. One of Nick’s brothers, Slade, had been the first man auctioned off, and when his wife, Laney, won him, she’d announced that he’d be doing dishes and laundry for a month. In turn, the ladies offered a picnic lunch for their winning bid—hence the Bachelors and Baskets theme.
Vivian could handle her own dishes and laundry, but building construction was out of her skill set. Was Nick up for the job? She knew he was a rancher by trade, but from what she’d heard around town, he had major skills in carpentry and remodeling. Vivian needed to shave costs wherever she could but didn’t want to sacrifice on quality, since her shop would be her main career focus for the rest of her working life.
“You think his brothers Slade and Jax have muscles?” Jo asked with a delighted cackle. The auction had been Jo’s brainchild in the first place, a way to help raise funds for a new long-term care facility and senior center for Serendipity, so naturally she was emceeing the event. And she was clearly taking great delight in parading all these handsome men across her platform.
Jo prodded Nick’s biceps with an appreciative whistle that made a dash of color rise to the poor man’s face—or at least as much of his face as Vivian could see under his dark layer of scruffy whiskers. Viv’s fingers itched to grab a pair of shears and a straight razor and clean him up a bit, if nothing else so she could see what she was really buying. She smothered a chuckle.
“Nick here is the biggest, brawniest of the three McKennas, and let me tell you, that’s really saying something.”
Indeed, it was, Viv thought with a smirk. All three McKenna brothers stood head and shoulders over most of the other men in Serendipity, and with Nick’s deeply tanned, unshaven face and thick black hair long enough to brush the collar of his blue-checked Western shirt, he looked more like a mountain man than a rancher. What really made him stand out were his blue eyes, a pop of color against a background of darkness.
Not that she noticed.
Vivian flipped open her notepad and yanked out the pencil that was holding her bun together, causing a waterfall of straight bleached-blond hair to cascade down her shoulders. If a person looked close enough they might see the thinnest stripe of bright pink on a strand of hair on the right, Vivian’s little gift to herself to make her stand out from her identical twin sister, Alexis. Viv had always been the wilder of the two, and even now Alexis was settled down with a husband while Vivian...
Wasn’t. And she wasn’t going to acknowledge the twinge in her gut whenever she thought about it, either.
She threw her head to the side to brush her hair off of her face and eyed the list she’d made in anticipation of the auction. She immediately checked off several items, just as she’d known she would. She’d narrowed down the list of potential candidates from the list of eligible bachelors that had been posted at Cup O’ Jo’s Café a week before the auction. Nick was currently at the top of her inventory list.
Strong?
Yes, Nick McKenna was pure, lean, unadulterated muscle. There was not an inch of flab on his whole body. She scratched through that requirement. Nick didn’t even need to flex his powerful biceps for them to ripple underneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. Tall and broad-shouldered, Vivian guessed that he stood around six foot four and weighed a good 220 pounds at least. Those beefy arms of his were practically bigger than her waist—or at least, her prepregnancy midsection. At three months along, her once-tiny tummy was now starting to swell with new life.
She laid a protective hand over her abdomen. She wouldn’t be able to hide her secret from the public much longer, which was exactly why she needed help to get her business up and running, and the sooner, the better. In this day and age a single mother didn’t stand out as much as she once would have, but even if no one else judged her, it made a difference to her. She had betrayed everything she had once believed in, even when she knew it was wrong. She was ashamed to return to her hometown unmarried and pregnant, but with no way to provide for her baby, she’d had no other choice.
Creating a successful business, proving she could make a good life for her and her child, would hopefully show the folks she knew and loved that she meant to make her life right with God. From this point forward, there was no way to go but up.
But was Nick the right one to help her?
She’d been told he was good with a hammer. His ability to remodel was the most important qualification she required and it was the reason Nick was at the top of her list. She’d asked around town and had discovered he’d not only overseen the remodeling of his mother’s house but had built from the ground up two adjacent cabins on his ranch land for himself and one of his brothers.
He knew construction and carpentry, which was just what she needed.
It was not one of her conditions that he be handsome...
Jo seemed to think that was the most important prerequisite in a man—any man. Vivian chuckled under her breath and tapped the eraser against her bottom lip thoughtfully as she evaluated the man standing square-shouldered on the auction block, his expression grim but confident.
No, Nick wasn’t handsome. Not in the classic sense of the word, anyway. Still, Vivian had to wonder why Serendipity’s single ladies weren’t bidding up a storm on him right now. He wasn’t Vivian’s type, by any means, but if a woman liked the rugged-cowboy look—and she knew that many in Serendipity did—he fit the bill perfectly.
Granted, he could do with a haircut and a shave, which was both amusing and ironic, given the project she had in mind for him to help her build.
A beauty salon and spa. She couldn’t help but smile to herself.
She knew that many of the single women in the crowd intended to bid on attractive, unattached bachelors not for help with projects, but for love’s sake, or at least the possibility of it. But dating and falling in love was the farthest thing from Vivian’s mind.
It didn’t matter to her at all that Nick wasn’t classically handsome. His attractiveness, or lack of, wasn’t even on her list, and with good reason.
She wanted nothing—nothing—to do with men, handsome or otherwise. She’d been burned to a crisp in her last relationship. Her ex-boyfriend, Derrick, wouldn’t even acknowledge that the baby she now carried was his, rejecting both her and their precious offspring.
It was no wonder she didn’t trust men as far as she could throw them. Hopefully Nick wasn’t looking for a relationship through participating in the auction, because if her bid won he would be sadly disappointed if he was. Viv’s thoughts were purely business oriented. That her money was going to fund a good cause—the town senior center—made her investment all the more worthwhile.
Her intention was to try and save a few dollars by not having to hire a professional contractor. Instead, she would use a skillful amateur who knew what he was doing and could get the job done as quickly and easily as possible.
“Which of you lovely young ladies out there is going to open their purses for this fine fellow?” Jo urged when no one jumped forward to bid on Nick. “Shame on you. What’s taking you so long?”
Viv paused and swallowed hard, wondering if she really wanted to do this. She only knew Nick in passing—but that was enough to know he had a reputation for being as surly as the grizzly bear he resembled if you caught him in a bad mood. And based on that scowl on his face, he was in a lousy mood right now. Did she really want to inflict that on herself?
She could turn around and walk away from this auction right now and hire a professional to do the work on her salon—someone from out of town who wouldn’t know or judge her—but with all the extra expenses of having a newborn, she needed to save money every way she could. She squeezed her eyes shut and raised her hand.
“Three hundred dollars.” She grimaced when her voice came out high and squeaky.
She’d planned to bid low to start, expecting there to be other ladies throwing their hats into the loop. She wasn’t sure what a bachelor like Nick would go for, but three hundred seemed a reasonable guess. She had five hundred dollars in her pocket and was prepared to bid higher, but she was still having second thoughts about bidding for Nick at all. Maybe she needed to rethink this and select someone less intimidating. There was something about Nick that unnerved her.
Deciding she wouldn’t bid any higher, she waited for another woman to raise the stakes and let her off the hook. Surely Nick was worth more than she’d offered. Someone truly interested in him would be sure to bid more. She held her breath.
And waited.
It was so silent she could have heard a barrette drop. She slowly counted to ten, but no one else spoke up.
Which meant she was stuck with Nick, whether she wanted to be or not.
Vivian briefly considered backing out of her bid, but she didn’t want to make a big production out of this. The last thing she wanted was to call extra attention to herself, and she didn’t want to embarrass Nick. It wasn’t his fault she was feeling wishy-washy.
She’d made her choice and, for better or for worse, she was going to stick with it. She shouldn’t second-guess herself. This was a better option than hiring a professional. And while there were other men on the docket she could have bid for instead, Nick had the best credentials for what she needed, so Nick it would be.
“Are you serious?” Nick asked the crowd when no one piped up with a higher amount. He gestured with his fingers, encouraging further bids. “Somebody? Anybody?”
Clearly he expected the women in the crowd to be clamoring for his time and attention. How conceited was that? And what was so wrong with her that he wanted to get bids from anybody else? Viv didn’t know whether or not she should be offended, but frankly, the way he was acting hurt her feelings. He was practically begging for anyone else besides her to bid on him.
Was she really that bad?
Then again, it could be that he was just trying to make more money for the senior center. She considered that notion for a moment and then tossed it aside, going back to her conclusion that he had a big ego to go along with that big head of his. He probably thought the ladies ought to be crawling all over themselves with the opportunity to win him in an auction.
Vivian scoffed. If that was what he was waiting for, it looked as if it was going to be a long time in coming. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Do I hear three-fifty?” Jo asked. This time she didn’t wait long for someone e
lse to chime in, not that it seemed like anyone would. “No? Your loss, ladies, and a big win for Miss Vivian Grainger. Welcome back to town, Viv, by the way.”
Vivian smiled and waved her thanks. For the welcome. Not for the win.
Jo raised her gavel.
Nick frowned.
“Going once. Going twice.” The gavel swept down and landed solidly on the podium. “Sold to Vivian Grainger for three hundred dollars.”
The crowd clapped politely but Vivian noticed they were more subdued than they had been with previous entries, especially when it came to the single ladies in town who Vivian had expected to be her biggest competition. Either she hadn’t bid high enough or Nick had ticked off a lot of women. Another thought occurred to her. Could the lack of enthusiasm be because of him? Her bid wasn’t any less than others had made, but she hadn’t overextended, either. She could have easily been outbid, if Nick were the trophy he seemed to think he was.
She’d been in middle school when he’d attended high school. He was five years older than her, so it wasn’t as if they ran in the same circles. She remembered him being popular, especially with the girls, but he’d never put much effort into his social relationships. He’d always appeared more interested in working his ranch and spending time with his family than in participating in school and community activities.
Apparently some things hadn’t changed.
Viv met the gaze of her twin sister, one of the few who knew of Viv’s pregnancy. Alexis twirled her hand in the air as if holding a lasso, reminding Vivian that her part in this crazy town event wasn’t going to be finished when she handed over her money. Alexis, seated in front of the platform with a fishing tackle box for a cash register, was collecting the money from the winning bids, so Viv inched her way forward through the thick crowd to reach her sister.
Vivian wasn’t thrilled about what was expected of her next. Jo Spencer and her crazy ideas. Roping the cowboy was a silly gesture concocted to amuse the crowd. Alexis handed her a rope with which she was supposed to lasso her “win.”
