THE MAVERICK'S CHRISTMAS BABY

by Victoria Pade

  Ryder reached far back on the counter for the tray of Christmas goodies and slid it forward while Dallas poured his juice.

  As they ate iced cut-out cookies, Ryder said, “This has been a pretty good Christmas.”

  He sounded surprised by that, which confirmed what had seemed to be the case—that the ten-year-old hadn’t been looking forward to this holiday. Understandable, under the circumstances.

  “It was tomorrow when Mom left last year,” Ryder said then, as if Dallas might not realize that.

  “I know,” Dallas said.

  “And her not bein’ here this year made it kind of...not much fun...”

  “I know,” Dallas repeated sympathetically. “It’s hard. I know you guys miss her.”

  “Do you?”

  “I did,” Dallas confided. “Then I just got pretty sad. And mad. And in kind of a bad mood I couldn’t get out of.”

  Ryder nodded his head knowingly. “But Nina made some of the things better. It was fun when she brought the Christmas tree and helped decorate it. And the rest of the stuff we did with her. She’s, like...you know, kind of happier than mom was.”

  Dallas wasn’t sure what to say to that. Should he talk about Laurel’s unhappiness and discontent with her life? Should he explain that Ryder and Jake and Robbie weren’t to blame? Should he get into all of that now, on Christmas morning?

  It just didn’t seem as though he should. It was a subject he obviously needed to address, but not right there and then. And likely not with Ryder alone.

  So he said, “Yeah, I think Nina is a happier person than your mom. Some people are, you know? We’re all just different—look at you and Jake and Robbie. There are things about you that are the same but there’s a lot about you that’s different from your brothers.”

  “I don’t play jokes like Jake, and Robbie’s a baby,” Ryder summed up the only differences he seemed to see.

  “Well, that’s one way to look at it. But maybe because you’re closer to being a man you take things more seriously, too. That could make you seem a little less happy than Jake or a little more mature than Robbie,” Dallas offered, hoping to put some sort of positive spin on Ryder’s introversion and his more obvious sorrow at the loss of his mother.

  Ryder shrugged. “We all like Nina, though,” he said. “When she’s around...I don’t know, I guess maybe because she’s happier than mom was, we’re happier then, too.”

  “I know she makes me feel better,” Dallas admitted, realizing just how true that was. How true it had been since that day in the blizzard. “But I’m glad to hear that she makes you guys feel better, too.”

  “I think Robbie wants her to be our new mom,” Ryder said as if he wasn’t sure he should say that, the same way he hadn’t been sure he should say he’d looked at the presents around the tree.

  “I don’t think moms are like shoes—you don’t just get new ones.”

  “Yeah. But you can get second ones. Lots of kids have stepmoms or stepdads—that’s what those are. Like Uncle Clay and Aunt Antonia—Uncle Clay is Lucy’s stepfather and Aunt Antonia is Bennett’s stepmom,” he explained, as if Dallas had somehow missed that fact. “But they’re a real family.”

  “True,” Dallas said.

  “Maybe Nina might not be so bad for that.”

  High praise coming from Ryder.

  And for some reason, Dallas appreciated that stamp of approval.

  But all he did was ruffle his son’s hair and say, “Well, today is Christmas and let’s just enjoy that for now, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Ryder agreed, showing some restrained enthusiasm.”

  Robbie charged into the kitchen just then. “There you guys are! Santa came! When can we open presents?”

  “We have to wait—”

  “No more waiting,” Ellie Traub said wearily, coming up behind Robbie. “He has us all up. Just pour out cups of that coffee I smell, and we can get this show on the road.”

  * * *

  Christmas morning was the best kind of chaos. It was a houseful of family injected with the delight of children—Dallas’s three boys, and his brother Clay’s small son, Bennett, and Clay’s stepdaughter, baby Lucy.

  After the melee of gift opening Dallas’s mother headed up breakfast preparations, putting everyone to work.

  Dallas sneaked away then to call Nina, to wish her a Merry Christmas and make sure she was doing all right, that there hadn’t been any ill-effects from their night together.

  Just as she was assuring him she was fine, Jake found him and Dallas was forced to cut the call short.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay,” Nina said. “Go and have Christmas morning with your boys!”

  “I’ll see you soon,” he said, thinking that it couldn’t be soon enough.

  “See you soon,” Nina echoed, and he thought she just might sound as if she felt the same way.

  When it was ready, breakfast was shared with everyone sitting around the expanded dining room table.

  Disagreements that had arisen between the brothers recently and in times gone by were put aside for the holiday, and breakfast was accompanied by laughing and joking and teasing, and reminiscing about Christmases past in the Traub family.

  Even though they’d all been together at Thanksgiving, Dallas knew that a part of why they’d all made sure to come together again for Christmas was for him and the boys, to help distract them from thoughts of Laurel and the anniversary of her leaving. And he appreciated that.

  But he also knew that another part of communing over both holidays was that the damage, destruction and disruption caused by Rust Creek’s flood had shaken everyone up in one way or another. It had left them all with a need to come together, to regroup and touch home base, to be reassured that there was still that place and those people to go home to.

  When breakfast was over and the mess cleaned, everyone went their separate ways to visit other friends and family.

  Dallas took the boys and all their gifts home for a few hours of playing with their new things before he oversaw three baths, washed three heads of hair and dispatched his sons to dress for Christmas dinner back at their grandparents’ house.

  The Christmas dinner that they would go and pick Nina up for...

  “Get a move on—no messing around,” he commanded his sons, because he felt as though he’d been without her for far, far too long already today, and he couldn’t wait to get to her, to see her again, to have her by his side.

  He showered, shampooed and shaved to get ready, too, then dressed in a pair of tan corduroy pants and an espresso-colored polo sweater, wishing that there had been a way of including Nina all day long. Because, as good as the day had been, he’d still missed her more than he thought it was possible to miss anyone.

  “Come on, boys—I need to see how you look before we go and we need to go,” he called as he left his own room and headed downstairs.

  The sound of his three sons tussling to get out of their shared room and down the steps was familiar. And then there they were in the entryway, dressed in the slacks he’d set out for them.

  But none of them had on the sweaters he’d also decided they should wear.

  Instead, each of them wore the shirt he’d bought and pretended had come from their mother.

  “Oh...” Dallas said when he first saw them.

  “We wanted to wear Mom’s shirts,” Robbie announced proudly.

  So they really had needed to believe that she’d thought of them.

  It stabbed Dallas through the heart and at the same time made him grateful to Nina for having come up with the idea.

  “Is that okay?” Ryder asked, sounding tentative but hopeful.

  “Sure it is,” Dallas answered without hesitation.

  “Ryder says just ’cuz she sent ’em doesn’t mean sh
e’s comin’ back—like it said on the tags,” Robbie informed him.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Dallas confirmed.

  “But she didn’t forget us like we’re nothin’, either,” Jake said.

  “You guys are not nothing. You’re not nothing at all. You’re great kids,” Dallas assured them, hating that that’s what their mother had caused them to feel and needing to bear hug them all together right then, for his own sake if not for theirs.

  They barely suffered his hug before wiggling free.

  “And we wanted to look nice for Nina,” Robbie added then.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Dallas said.

  “’Cuz she helped us have this Christmas,” his youngest pointed out matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, she did.” And they’d never know to what extent she’d helped them have this Christmas. But something swelled in his heart for her, just the same.

  “So let’s go get ’er,” Jake said, as if he didn’t know why they were wasting time.

  “Yeah, let’s,” Dallas said, thinking that, once they did, he wasn’t sure how he was going to let go of her again.

  Ever.

  * * *

  Nina spoke to her mother on the phone to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Laura Crawford was still feeling just fine, convinced that she’d had what the rest of the family had the month before, so was at no risk of getting it. But she again told Nina to stay away, assuring her they would have Christmas when the bug was gone.

  So Nina spent the day putting the final touches on the nursery. And thinking about Dallas more than about her coming baby because she was still in the rosy glow of the night they’d spent together.

  Once the nursery was in order, she showered and got ready for Christmas dinner with the Traubs.

  She wore a black velvet jumper, cut just A-line enough to camouflage what Dallas liked to call her baby bump, over a high-necked white blouse. Black tights and a simple pair of black patent-leather Mary Janes finished the Christmassy and very prim look that belied the not-at-all-prim memories she kept having about the night before. Memories that inspired desire to spring to life again as if it hadn’t been quenched, twice.

  “Last night was supposed to take care of that,” she lectured herself as she brushed out her hair and left it loose, then applied blush, mascara, just a hint of eye shadow and a little lip gloss.

  But rather than squelching those cravings for Dallas, being with him had only added fuel to the fire.

  And when she heard a knock on the door to her apartment that told her he was there, squelching anything went by the wayside as she rushed just to get to see him again.

  “Merry Christmas!” he greeted her for the second time that day when she opened the door.

  “Merry Christmas,” Nina answered, just as jovially.

  Then he produced a sprig of mistletoe from behind his back, held it over her head and grinned.

  “We have to behave,” she warned, speaking as much to herself as to him.

  “I know,” he agreed, ignoring it all anyway as he stepped over her threshold, wrapped his nonmistletoe-bearing arm around her to pull her to him and kissed her soundly.

  “Now that’s what I needed,” he breathed when the kiss ended. “Well, the beginning of it, anyway. Too bad the boys are down in the truck...”

  Or, Nina knew, she and Dallas would have ended up in bed again despite her resolve that last night be their only night together.

  And while she told herself this was the perfect opportunity to let him know her intentions, her mind was already wandering to that night.

  After dinner.

  To the possibility that the boys wouldn’t tag along when he brought her home...

  Then it wouldn’t only be a one-night stand, she reasoned, knowing she was just looking for an excuse.

  But they had a dinner to get to and his sons were waiting, and after he kissed her again he let go of her and held her coat for her to slip into.

  The ride to the Triple T ranch was filled with all three boys talking about what they’d received for Christmas.

  “And these shirts,” Robbie pointed out, holding open his coat to display what he was wearing. “Our mom sent ’em to us.”

  Nina glanced at Dallas, who smiled gratefully at her. Then she said, “Let me see yours, Ryder and Jake.”

  They showed them off, just as pleased as the youngest Traub had, breaking Nina’s heart yet again to see how thrilled they were to have what they believed were gifts from their mother.

  “Oh, yeah, those are really nice shirts,” she decreed, glad that Robbie moved on right away to telling her about the deluxe neon alien invasion spaceship he’d also received.

  “We took all our new stuff to our house, but I brought that back with us so I could show you.”

  “Oh, good, I’ve been wanting to see one of those,” Nina told him just as they arrived at the elder Traubs’ home.

  Except for Nina, Christmas dinner was only family, and Dallas’s parents and siblings welcomed her once again with open arms.

  The meal began with squash soup with a dollop of crème fraiche and a sprinkling of crispy fried pancetta on top. That was followed by a giant prime rib roast, cooked to perfection, garlic mashed potatoes, a mélange of vegetables in butter sauce, a green salad, a fruit ambrosia and homemade rolls.

  Dessert was to be a seven-layer chocolate cake, but just as they were getting to that Nina felt a little odd and excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  Luckily she made it just in time, so that when her water broke it wasn’t on one of the Traub’s dining room chairs.

  With her pulse racing, she cleaned herself up, then slipped out of the bathroom. Robbie was nearby, and that seemed like a godsend when a surprisingly strong pain began to build.

  “Would you go get your dad for me, please?” she managed to ask the little boy before the pain doubled her over.

  Dallas was there just as it did. “Oh-oh,” he breathed when he saw her leaning against the bathroom door frame.

  Nina nodded through the pain, and when it was over she said, “My water broke and I think...I think I’m going to have this baby now.”

  “No thinking about it, sweetheart. You are.”

  * * *

  Nina hadn’t thought that she would ever be as grateful to Dallas as she had been through the blizzard. But from the moment of that first contraction, she was.

  He took over again the way he had that day and before she knew it, he’d called to tell her family what was happening, and that he would take care of everything, and she was in his truck being raced to the hospital in Kalispell.

  Along the way he kept things light, he talked her through pains that were intense, regular and started at ten minutes apart. He joked with her; he reassured her that everything was going to be all right.

  And he swore that nothing was going to pry him away from her side until that baby was born.

  The tales Nina had heard about many first babies requiring long hours of labor were the complete opposite of her experience. As soon as they reached the hospital in Kalispell the doctor in the emergency room examined her and she was rushed to a delivery room while the nursing staff hurried Dallas into a surgical gown and booties.

  Then he was ushered in to sit at her head, where he kept her hair out of her eyes and helped her raise up when she needed to push, all the while being referred to as “Dad” since there was no chance to explain that he wasn’t the father of her baby.

  And after hors d’oeuvres at six o’clock, dinner at seven and missing dessert at eight, at 10:10 on Christmas night—gripping Dallas’s hand in a bone-crushing grip—Nina delivered a five-pound, nine-ounce healthy baby girl, who brought tears to her mother’s eyes the moment her new daughter was placed in her arms.

  And, Nina thought, she broug
ht a suspicious glimmer of moisture to Dallas’s eyes, too...

  Chapter Eleven

  “Good morning, little Noelle,” Dallas whispered to the tiny bundle he was holding.

  The sun was just coming up on the day after Christmas and he could hear the sounds of the hospital beginning its morning routine.

  But inside that room all was quiet.

  Nina was sleeping exhaustedly, the way she had been since she’d been taken from delivery to the maternity ward and finally finished what it involved to be admitted and settled into her room.

  But when her daughter—whom Nina had spontaneously named Noelle in honor of the Christmas birth—had stirred in her own hospital bassinet beside her mother’s bed, Dallas had picked her up, hoping to buy Nina a little more sleep.

  Noelle was small, but pink and perfect, with just a smattering of hair the color of Nina’s. And gazing down at her made him smile.

  “You’re a beauty, like your mama,” he told her in that same, almost inaudible whisper. “But you must be tired, too, so why don’t you go back to sleep for a little while?”

  As if obeying, the newborn balled up her fists under her chin, closed her eyes and did just that, making Dallas smile all over again.

  But he didn’t put her back in her bassinet. He continued to hold her, to look down at her. To marvel at the wonders of new life.

  And to feel things for her that he had no right to feel.

  Weary and sleep-deprived himself, he glanced at Nina.

  Still sleeping. And she was a beauty—it struck him all over again.

  Actually, it struck him almost every time he looked at her. And what he felt for her washed through him with the force of the flood that had nearly leveled Rust Creek Falls.

  He’d told her he would stay by her side through the delivery, but he hadn’t left her side yet, despite her telling him he could. And not because he thought it was the right thing to do, like when he’d brought her here after their near-collision in the blizzard.

  No, he’d stayed by her side because that was where he wanted to be. So much that nothing could have torn him away from it while Noelle was being born. So much that he couldn’t even tear himself away the rest of the night, either. Away from Nina or away from Noelle.