Baby Christmas
Page 1
“Just another Marzinski Christmas.”
Joe came in the back door and let it slam behind him. “Never a dull moment.”
“They think I’m your girlfriend,” Rachel hissed through her teeth as she sliced vegetables for Christmas dinner. She was peeved that his entire family thought there was something between her and Joe.
“So what?”
How could he make light of the situation? “Joe, you’ll have to set things straight. It’s—”
“I’m having too much fun,” he said with a roguish quirk of his eyebrows. “Besides, what’s the harm?”
“I just met you last night!” Rachel sputtered.
“Well, we did sleep together.”
Rachel almost gasped but it turned into a gulp. She looked around the room to see if any of his family had heard. “That—We—All we did was sleep!” She wanted to wipe that silly grin off Joe’s face. “I was tired because of the baby, and you were supposed to wake me up.”
“Next time,” Joe said, suddenly serious as he closed in on her, “I will.”
Dear Reader,
Harlequin American Romance is celebrating the holidays with four wonderful books for you to treasure all season long, starting with the latest installment in the RETURN TO TYLER series. Bestselling author Judy Christenberry charms us with her delightful story of a sought-after bachelor who finds himself falling for a single mother and longing to become part of her Patchwork Family.
In Pamela Browning’s Baby Christmas, soon after a department store Santa urges a lovely woman to make a wish on Christmas Eve, she finds a baby on her doorstep and meets a handsome handyman. To win custody of her nephew, a loving aunt decides her only resource is to pretend to be engaged to a Daddy, M.D. Don’t miss this engaging story from Jacqueline Diamond.
Rounding out the month is Harlequin American Romance’s innovative story, Turin Expectations by Kara Lennox. In this engaging volume, identical twin sisters pledge to become mothers—with or without husbands—by their thirtieth birthday. As the baby hunt heats up, the sisters unexpectedly find love with two gorgeous half brothers.
I hope you enjoy all our romance novels this month. All of us at Harlequin Books wish you a wonderful holiday season!
Melissa Jeglinski
Associate Senior Editor Harlequin American Romance
BABY CHRISTMAS
Pamela Browning
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pamela Browning is the award-winning author of thirty romance novels—many of which appeared on numerous bestseller lists. Her books consistently win high ratings from reviewers and readers alike. She makes her home in North Carolina.
Books by Pamela Browning
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
101—CHERISHED BEGINNINGS
116—HANDYMAN SPECIAL
123—THROUGH EYES OF LOVE
131—INTERIOR DESIGNS
140—EVER SINCE EVE
150—FOREVER IS A LONG TIME
170—TO TOUCH THE STARS
181—THE FLUTTERBY PRINCESS
194—ICE CRYSTALS
227—KISSES IN THE RAIN
237—SIMPLE GIFTS
241—FLY AWAY
245—HARVEST HOME
287—FEATHERS IN THE WIND
297—UNTIL SPRING
354—HUMBLE PIE
384—A MAN WORTH LOVING
420—FOR AULD LANG SYNE
439—SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS
451—MORGAN’S CHILD
516—MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY
565—THE WORLD’S LAST BACHELOR
600—ANGEL’S BABY
632—LOVER’S LEAP
786—RSVP…BABY
818—THAT’S OUR BABY!
854—BABY CHRISTMAS
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Prologue
December 24
“And what do you want for Christmas, little girl?”
Rachel nudged the package of printer paper toward the jovial Santa who was manning the cash register at the discount store and said blankly, “Excuse me?”
He raised bushy white eyebrows and looked faintly apologetic. “I guess I want to know why a nice girl like you is out buying office supplies tonight instead of at home with the special people in your life.” His eyes were a warm, twinkly blue, and he had a birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon high on his cheekbone.
Rachel’s heart sank, but she was instantly comforted by the certain knowledge that he couldn’t know her secret. No one in the small island resort town of Coquina Beach, Florida, knew. Nevertheless her mouth went dry.
“I—” She didn’t know what to say.
The Santa studied her face intently for a moment. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said. He dragged the package of paper across the electronic scanner and popped the drawer of the cash register.
Rachel fumbled in her purse and handed him a twenty-dollar bill. It was all she could do not to burst into tears.
He dropped the change into her outstretched hand, and she picked up the package.
“Make a wish,” he said suddenly.
Rachel, whose mind was a million miles away, pulled herself back to reality. She wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly.
“What?”
“Make a wish. Any wish.” He was staring at her in a way that made her think he could see to the bottom of her soul.
She mustered a comeback. “You’re joking, right?”
He didn’t crack a smile. He only gazed at her with an intensity that might have frightened her if his overall demeanor hadn’t been one of kindness and compassion.
“Who are you?” Rachel said, the words catching in her throat.
“It doesn’t matter. But make a wish and it will be granted.”
Rachel couldn’t breathe. She felt caught up in something that she didn’t understand, and the beating of wings brushed against her heart, and the singing of angels filled her ears. Or was it only her blood pounding and Christmas carols playing over the store loudspeaker?
Before the Santa could say another word, Rachel fled. But because she believed that wishes sometimes came true, she made the wish anyway.
I wish I had a reason to celebrate Christmas again.
Of course she knew she was only being foolish. Christmas was over for her. It had ended with a fire on Christmas Eve four years ago, and it would never come again.
Chapter One
Yes, Rachel was alone. And yes, she minded it. But, she reflected as she pulled herself together after the strange encounter with the Santa at the cash register, soon she would be back at work.
Work. It was her solace and her lifeline. It was the only thing, she sometimes thought, that kept her going.
As she slid out of her car in the parking lot of the Elysian Towers condominium, Rachel couldn’t help hearing the strains of a Christmas carol wafting on the balmy tropical breeze. She ignored it. By holing up in Mimi’s apartment, she’d somehow thought that she would be able to escape reminders of the season. That’s why she’d agreed to house-sit for her globetrotting grandmother when Mimi decided to go gadding about the Orient.
Thinking about this, Rachel rounded the corner of the Nativity scene near the front portico. The manger was brilliantly spotlighted to showcase the details of the plaster representations of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, incredibly lifelike statues.
“‘The cattle ar
e lowing, the poor baby wakes.
The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes—’”
“Wah!”
Rachel stopped dead in her tracks. That noise sounded like a baby’s cry, and it—
“Wah! Wah! Waaah…”
It was a baby’s cry. And it was coming from the manger.
“‘I love thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky,
And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.’”
Incredibly, above the side of the wooden cradle a tiny fist flailed in the air.
Rachel looked to the right; she looked to the left. Not a creature was stirring, not even a—well, anything. No one was in the parking lot. No one was driving past.
She tiptoed closer to the scene. She peeked into the manger. And there, amazingly, lay a tiny pink-and-white baby wrapped in a nondescript cotton flannel blanket.
A real baby. Not a plaster baby like the one Rachel had seen there this afternoon. But a real, live, honest-to-goodness baby!
Insects batted against the spotlight. A breeze, fresh with salt spray from the nearby ocean, ruffled palm fronds overhead. The baby stopped crying and snuffled. Then it sneezed.
The sneeze galvanized Rachel into action. She bounded over the low hedge of flowering ixoras separating grass from sidewalk and knelt beside the manger in utter disbelief. The baby, wide-eyed and silent now in its bed of straw, stared into her face. It had fat rosy cheeks and a captivating fluff of golden hair combed into a peak on the top of its head. She could have sworn that the baby smiled.
Rachel still didn’t know why a real baby would be part of the Nativity scene. And she didn’t care. She dropped the package she was carrying. Slowly, reverently, she slipped her hands under the baby’s soft warm body and lifted it out of the manger. The baby smelled sweetly of talcum powder. And it sighed and settled against her breast as if it belonged there.
The weight of the child in her arms felt right somehow. Rachel had always considered herself born to be a mother, and it had been so long since she had held a baby. So heartbreakingly, miserably long.
“LOOK! I…I…I just found a baby in the manger!” Rachel blurted as she burst into the lobby of the building.
An angel seemed to be hovering over the bank of elevators. It looked as lifelike as the piaster figures on the lawn.
Stunned, Rachel blinked her eyes and saw belatedly that this wasn’t an angel at all. It was a man, a handsome man who was balancing ever so precariously atop a ladder. He was tall and muscular with an appealingly open face, and he wore a blue chambray shirt and jeans so soft that they clung in all the right places. A leather tool belt was slung low on his narrow hips, and his dark, rugged good looks would have totally captured her attention if the baby hadn’t started to whimper.
“You found a baby, did you? Well, so did the three wise guys,” the man said. It was only after he spoke that it registered with Rachel that water was gushing out of the ceiling above the ladder and that much of the lobby was awash in four inches of water. As her mind grappled with this additional oddity, the flow from overhead slowed to a trickle and then a steady drip.
The man on the ladder observed the plink, plink, plink for a moment and then began to descend slowly, confidently, with an air of self-command. Interested eyes looked Rachel over; she realized that she must look a fright with her hair teased by the coastal humidity into a frivolous mass of curls around her face, and she was wearing her oldest shorts and sandals. But she couldn’t worry now about the way she looked, not with the baby in her arms. The baby stopped whimpering and hiccuped.
Rachel thought she’d better explain. “I came in from the parking lot—I had to run to the store to buy printer paper because I suddenly remembered that tomorrow is Christmas Day and nothing will be open—and I was walking past the Nativity scene and I heard a baby crying. And then I saw it move. And I thought, ‘A plaster baby isn’t supposed to move’ or something like that, and when I went and looked, it…it smiled at me!”
The man remained calmer than Rachel thought he had a right to be under the circumstances. His eyes focused on her face. They were an arresting silvery color, the irises as pale as water and rimmed in gray, and they crinkled appealingly at the edges. They were regarding her with a slightly incredulous expression. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for being perplexed, astonished and amazed. She certainly was.
“Who could have left a real baby in the Nativity scene?” Rachel wondered, on the verge of becoming even more distraught. Before the man could reply, a head wearing a baseball cap backward appeared around the door from the utility area.
“Hey, boss,” said the man whose head it was, “I’ve turned off the water upstairs, so now all we have to do is—um, is anything wrong?”
Silver Eyes leaned against the ladder and thrust his thumbs through his belt loops as he surveyed the scene. “Well, Andy, it’s Christmas Eve, water is raining from the ceiling, and this lady insists that she found a live baby in a manger. Why would you think there’s anything wrong?”
“Yeah, I see your point.” The man disappeared around the corner.
Indignation supplanted the shock and numbness that Rachel had been feeling ever since she first saw the baby. She didn’t know who Silver Eyes was, but he must be uncaring and unfeeling not to sympathize with the baby’s plight. Certainly he was unhelpful.
Rachel drew a deep breath and willed herself to be calm. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on here? When I left, there was no water in the lobby. When I left, carolers were going from floor to floor singing Christmas songs. It was normal around here when I left. And,” she said, focusing on Silver Eyes, “where’s Sherman?” Sherman was the doorman. He should have been manning the lobby desk.
“Sherman hightailed it into the manager’s office with a committee of residents to telephone the condo manager. Excuse me, but I’d better introduce myself. I’m Joe Marzinski, president of Condo Crisis Control. Sherman called my company when a bathroom upstairs starting pouring water down four floors into the lobby.”
Just seeing the lobby’s lovely turquoise-and-coral-print chairs rising above the flood like islands in a stream was enough to make Rachel feel depressed. “I’m Rachel Hirsch. I live here, and I was hoping Sherman could suggest what to do about this baby,” she said. She felt perilously near tears for the second time that night.
“He’ll be back. Why don’t you—”
She couldn’t take this man’s lackadaisical attitude for one more moment. “Why don’t you be more helpful?” she snapped. She couldn’t help it; she was losing patience.
Joe Marzinski, who, she noticed, was wearing heavy and presumably waterproof boots, sloshed toward her.
He studied the baby coolly and judiciously, pursing his well-sculpted lips, but even though he was looking at the baby, he sent out vibrations to clue her in that he was aware of her in a particularly avid way. She was certainly aware of him. Vitality radiated from him, and energy, and something far more potent. Although he was looking at the baby, she was sure that he had noticed the shortness of her khaki shorts, the unbuttoned top button of her simple red jersey, and the fact that she wore almost no makeup. She wished suddenly and irrelevantly that she’d dabbed on a bit of lipstick for her late-night foray to the store.
“It’s a pretty baby,” he said.
“What’s a pretty baby?” demanded a strident voice.
“Behold, the condo committee,” Joe Marzinski said under his breath.
They were friends of her grandmother’s from the community theater group, and they all lived in this building. Rachel privately called them the Theatrical Threesome. Gladys Rink, seventy years old but lithe and suntanned from spending hours on the tennis court, waded out of the manager’s office. She was barefoot. Right behind her was Ivan O’Toole, a white-haired elderly man who was steadfastly clutching a copy of the condominium bylaws. Accompanying them was Ynez Garcia, her salt-and-pepper hair held fast in pink foam-rubber curlers, the corners of her mouth turned down in h
er typical woebegone expression. Sherman, the doorman, who followed, gave a worldly wise roll of his eyeballs and did one of his notably stealthy disappearing acts out the door to the utility area.
Mrs. Rink immediately spotted the baby in Rachel’s arms and indulged in a quick double take. “Where did that come from?” she snapped.
“I found it in the Nativity scene. In the manger,” Rachel said.
“Oh, great. As if we didn’t have enough trouble around here tonight.”
Mr. O’Toole waved the condominium bylaws a mere two inches from Rachel’s nose and quoted verbatim from the text. “‘No children shall be allowed to abide within the Elysian Towers condominium unaccompanied by their parents. Children must be accompanied by adults at all times when using the swimming pool, and children—’”
“Oh, Ivan, I don’t think this baby is old enough to use the swimming pool, do you?” said Mrs. Rink impatiently.
Mrs. Garcia, who had remained quiet while gazing reverently into the baby’s small face, broke into a beatific and rare smile. “A baby arrives on Christmas Eve. It is a miracle! A miracle from God!”
Mr. O’Toole bent to roll up his pants legs, presumably so he wouldn’t ruin his new suit. “The baby may be a miracle, all right, but I’m certainly not capable of walking on water, and who’s supposed to be cleaning up this mess, anyway?” he said.
Joe stepped forward. “We’ve turned off the water at the source, and my clean-up team is on the job. If you’ll all go to your apartments, I’m sure we’ll be able to set things straight in no time.” With an air of forbearance, which was not lost on Rachel, he shepherded the disgruntled committee members toward the elevator and guided them inside. The last thing Rachel heard as the elevator doors closed was Ynez Garcia saying, “It’s a miracle, I tell you! A Christmas miracle!”
Joe Marzinski indulged in an audible sigh of relief. Into the subsequent hollow silence punctuated only by the drip, drip of water from the ceiling, Rachel said plaintively, “But what am I going to do about the baby?”