12 Gifts for Christmas

by Various

  “In Orchid House, if that’s okay with you. There’s plenty of room there, and I was hoping that—” He turned to nuzzle her neck. “That you wanted lots of babies.”

  Traci pictured Parker with a houseful of brothers and sisters. The image made her dizzy with happiness. She clung to Daniel’s arm, knowing he would make a strong, caring father. “Cherokee babies,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her, pride shining in his eyes.

  She touched his cheek, and when their lips met in a tender kiss, the scent of orchids swirled in the crisp, winter air.

  Traci closed her eyes and thanked Daniel’s angels, the winged ladies of the night, for blessing them with a Christmas love that would last forever.

  The GP’s Christmas Miracle

  Alison Roberts

  About the Author

  ALISON ROBERTS lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. She began her working career as a primary school teacher, but now juggles available working hours between writing and active duty as an ambulance officer. Throwing in a large dose of parenting, housework, gardening and pet-minding keeps life busy, and teenage daughter Becky is responsible for an increasing number of days spent on equestrian pursuits. Finding time for everything can be a challenge, but the rewards make the effort more than worthwhile.

  Look for new novels from Alison in Mills & Boon® Medical Romance™.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ANY red-blooded male would have taken a second look.

  Even one who had absolutely no room for a woman in his life.

  Not that Dr. James Cameron had had much choice about looking at her. He’d virtually walked straight into the woman as she came out through the front doors of the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I really should be watching where I’m going.”

  “No worries.”

  She had an accent that wasn’t local. She was tall and slim and … good grief, simply stunning with those unusually dark blue eyes and wearing figure-hugging jeans and a scarlet jumper. The long, blond plait hanging down the middle of her back reminded him of … someone.

  Or maybe it was the child she was carrying on one hip that seemed vaguely familiar. A small boy with a mop of red-gold curly hair.

  But in this overwhelmingly busy day, James didn’t have even a spare moment to give any further mental energy to the woman and her child. Especially not when he could see a receptionist waving at him with what looked like an urgent message.

  Oddly, the receptionist was looking apologetic by the time he reached the desk. “Dr. Cameron! But I didn’t know you were coming in.”

  “I had to see an elderly patient of mine who broke her hip. And her wrist.”

  “Oh, no! Not another one to slip on this awful ice. I can’t believe this weather. It’s—”

  “Her daughter’s on her way from Edinburgh,” James interrupted before the receptionist could build up steam; he didn’t have the time to waste on idle chitchat. “I said I’d meet her here in reception. Name of Gordon?”

  “I shouldn’t have sent her away. Especially not in this awful weather.”

  “You sent Mrs. Gordon’s daughter away?” He knew he was glaring at the poor receptionist, but he was bone weary. It had been a long and trying day at a time of the year that was difficult for him, both professionally and personally. He could do without further complications, particularly if they’d been caused by a receptionist who was wearing a pair of earrings that were flashing small red-and-green lights.

  Frivolous, happy, Christmassy sort of earrings.

  “No … that woman with the little boy. She was looking for you. I told her you didn’t work here.”

  James glanced over his shoulder but, of course, the woman with the blond plait was long gone. Out past the Christmas tree adorning the foyer of the Royal Infirmary and into the gloom of a Scottish December that was breaking records for the amount of snow and ice.

  “What did she want?” he growled.

  “She didn’t say. Only that it was very important that she found you. Her name was Lucy … something.” The receptionist was trying hard to be helpful. “She had an accent. I think she was from Australia. Or maybe New Zealand. I can never tell the difference.”

  A sense of foreboding came from nowhere and enveloped James Cameron.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Only what she could have found out in the phone book. That you and your father run the medical center in Ballochburn.”

  A twenty-minute drive away in good weather. At least double that on an afternoon like this.

  Who was the woman?

  What did she want from him?

  He might find a message waiting from his answer service when he got home, maybe. Not that he’d be there for a while yet. A middle-aged woman had just come into the foyer and was almost running toward the reception desk.

  “I’m Jean Gordon,” she said, with a stifled sob. “Where’s my mother?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  LUCY Petersen snapped the harness in place on the safety seat in her rental car.

  “Are you cold, sweetheart? Hungry?”

  Big brown eyes watched her but the small boy said nothing. Not that she expected him to. It might only have been twenty-four hours since she’d taken charge of her nephew as his only known relative, but she’d learned that he didn’t talk. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even make a sound when he was crying.

  Just past his second birthday, Jamie was the most beautiful child Lucy had ever seen, but it was heartbreakingly obvious that something had gone very wrong in his short life.

  “He’s never spoken a word,” the nanny had informed her yesterday. “He’s no trouble at all.”

  Lucy stroked the soft curls on Jamie’s head and bent down to give him a kiss. Then she climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine and cranked up the heater. It had started to snow again. The flakes were small but falling thickly.

  What on earth was she doing here?

  Why had it seemed like the right thing to do, to try and locate the man who could well be Jamie’s biological father before she whisked the little boy away to the other side of the world?

  It had all been too much for her, that was why.

  Her life had been derailed by a phone call in the middle of the night from a very angry William—the cardiac surgeon her sister had married just over three years ago. It was such a shocking phone call that she could only remember snatches of it, and they replayed themselves like a broken record in her mind as she drove away from the hospital, programming the GPS in the car to direct her to Ballochburn.

  “She was having an affair …! Of course I had a paternity test done on the boy. He’s not mine. Off partying with her new boyfriend … on his yacht … serves her right she fell overboard and drowned. I’m not raising someone else’s brat… . A week, that’s all you’ve got to claim him, and then I’m calling in social services.”

  “Go through the roundabout,” the GPS said, interrupting her thoughts. “Take the second exit.”

  The arrow was flashing to show a long road ahead. Sir Walter Scott Drive. It was easy to read the illuminated disk of the GPS because it was getting so dark outside. The swirl of tiny snowflakes made visibility dreadful but the surface of the road was still reasonably clear. It wasn’t that much longer to Ballochburn and she’d come too far to give up now. She had to rely on her instincts. What else could she do?

  She’d asked the same sort of question to the angry surgeon that night. What should she do with the baby?

  “Find the man she dumped when she got her claws into me. When she was clearly already pregnant. Scottish lump by the name of James Cameron. Yeah, find him. Why should my life be the only one that your sister messed up?”

  But the two men weren’t the important people in this drama, though, were they? Neither was she. It only took another glance in the rearview mirror to remind Lucy of who really mattered.

  Little Jamie.

  She took i
n the picture he made, with his tilted head and softly pouted lips. He was sound asleep, a red-headed cherub.

  The soft smile that curved her lips lasted only seconds, however. She’d taken her eyes off this narrow road for just long enough to get into trouble. The huge mounds of snow on either side of the tarmac were so deep they obscured stone walls and even hedgerows. They easily disguised a deep ditch.

  She began to veer off the road, the slide of the vehicle so slow it didn’t wake Jamie, but so fast she didn’t know how to avoid going into the ditch. The interior of the car went completely black as it sank beneath the snow. Lucy unclipped her safety belt and tried to open the driver’s door. It was jammed fast. So was the other door.

  By the time she climbed into the backseat, a frightening chill was seeping into the vehicle. The engine stuttered and died, but the GPS was still going.

  “Turn right at the end of the road. You have reached your destination.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HE COULD so easily have missed it.

  If James Cameron hadn’t glanced in his rearview mirror at that precise moment he would only have seen the blinding shine of the snow in his headlights.

  Not the eerie gleam in the total blackness in his wake.

  Oh … God …

  His big four-wheel-drive vehicle had no trouble coming to a halt without skidding on the icy surface. James, however, had quite a lot of trouble moving for several seconds. Still gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he lowered his forehead to rest on them.

  There was no mistaking that glow on the side of the road—the headlights of a buried car. Was he going to find a body in there? A person whose death would haunt Christmastime for someone else forever?

  As the death of his own mother would do for his father and himself?

  He was the last person this should be happening to, James thought grimly as he found the shovel in the back of his vehicle. No, maybe the last was his father, but James ran a very close second. Life wasn’t just an unfair business, it had the ability to be unbearable at times.

  Grimness became an anger that fuelled his efforts. It took scant minutes to empty the side of the ditch and expose the car. He rubbed at a window with his gloved hand and peered inside.

  A pale face stared back. A woman’s face. She was curled up in the rear seat with what looked like a mound of clothing in her arms. James wrenched the door open.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “N-no. J-just v-very c-c-cold.”

  At least she was still shivering. Hypothermia had not reached dangerous levels yet. She was very pale, though and—

  “Good God … it’s you.”

  Lucy was too cold to burst into tears of relief that she and Jamie weren’t about to freeze to death after all. She would have been eternally grateful to anyone who found them. That it was the extraordinarily good-looking man who’d almost bumped into her as she left the hospital was a weird coincidence. He recognized her. Oddly, that gave her a frisson of pleasure.

  Except … he seemed so angry. Dark brows were lowered over equally dark eyes. His deep voice began as a menacing growl and got steadily louder.

  “What the hell are you doing at this time of night on an isolated road in this kind of weather?”

  Lucy hugged the bundle in her arms that was Jamie a little tighter. How dare he shout in front of a child?

  Okay, she’d been stupid, but she’d never driven in snow before. She was a stranger in this country and she was in trouble. Wasn’t this supposed to be the season of goodwill to all?

  And she needed this man’s goodwill. Not that she didn’t think he would rescue them, but surely he could be a bit nicer about it? Somehow, she had to let him know that the small boy in her arms deserved better than she’d managed to give him so far, and certainly a lot better than this man was delivering.

  But she was so cold and frightened even her thoughts were shivering, slipping past and refusing to be caught and turned into words. Moving her lips was impossible, let alone smiling.

  So how on earth could she defuse this man’s anger? Somehow encapsulate Jamie’s need and ask for help?

  “But … it’s … it’s … C-Christmas,” was all she could manage to say.

  The large hands that were reaching for Lucy were gentle enough to be at complete odds with the vehemence in his voice.

  “I don’t do Christmas,” the man snapped. “Come on. It’s time to get out of here.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE house looked as bleak as Lucy was feeling.

  It was a two-storied, square block of granite with the windows as black as the night surrounding them, and about as welcoming as the mass of ancient trees crowding in from all sides.

  For the first time since he had scooped her and Jamie from the backseat of the rental car, the brooding man beside Lucy spoke.

  “Used to be a manse,” he muttered. “My great-grandfather was the local minister.”

  “This is your home?”

  Where his family had lived for generations? For some reason this made Lucy very nervous.

  “Aye.” He came around to the passenger door and wrenched it open. “You and the boy need somewhere warm until we can sort this mess out. My house is a lot closer than the police station in Ballochburn.”

  Somewhere warm turned out to be a kitchen at the back of the house. An old stove was pumping out heat, and the smile of the astonished woman beside it was just as warm. She flapped her hand at the man who was explaining these unexpected, late-night visitors.

  “Och, never mind all that.” She bustled toward Lucy with her arms outstretched. “You must be frozen, pet. Come close to the stove. And you’ve a wee boy? Ahh … isn’t he bonny?”

  “This is Miriam,” the man said with a sigh. “Our housekeeper.”

  Our housekeeper? Did this gruff, Scottish, giant of a man have a wife who could put up with his Grinchlike personality? A man who didn’t do Christmas? He hadn’t even been polite enough to introduce himself yet.

  Lucy sank onto a wooden chair, cuddling Jamie on her lap. She eyed her rescuer, who was now at the other end of this big farmhouse kitchen, reaching for a telephone that was attached to the wall.

  As she studied him, it was impossible not to remember the strength of his hands as he had lifted her and Jamie from that frozen car. How she’d felt as he’d carried them to his own vehicle—astonishingly safe.

  Of course he’d have a wife somewhere. Probably a few children, as well. He’d gone back for the car seat and then taken Jamie from her arms and tucked him into it as though caring for a small child’s safety was the most natural thing in the world for him.

  “You’ll no’ get any joy from that,” Miriam was saying cheerfully to the big man. “Phone’s been out for hours now. Snow on the lines, I expect.” She turned back to Lucy. “I’ve some soup on the stove for you, but what about the wee laddie?”

  Jamie was getting heavy on her lap. His head sagged against her shoulder. She’d kept him warm with every item of clothing she could find and fed him from the supply of snack foods she’d been carrying.

  “He’s fine, I think. Just sleepy.”

  “Let’s tuck him up on the couch. You’ll no’ be going anywhere for a wee while, I’m thinking.”

  The man made a rumbling sound that clearly signaled he wasn’t happy.

  “Get away wi’ you,” Miriam scolded. “We could do wi’ a bit of company in this place, if you ask me. Go and get yourself some soup, lad, and stop your muttering.”

  Surprisingly, he obeyed the instruction as Lucy and the housekeeper made a bed for Jamie on a soft, old couch beneath a window. She saw him filling mugs with soup as she went back to her chair.

  “Where’s my father?” he asked Miriam.

  “In the library.” The tone suggested it was unlikely he’d be anywhere else. The housekeeper’s face creased into anxious lines as she went to pick up one of the mugs. “It’s no’ been a good day, James.”

  James?

 
Lucy’s head swiveled sharply. It couldn’t be the man she was searching for. Surely not. James was a common enough name in Scotland.

  But he was looking straight at her as if expecting something. Holding her gaze with what she could only interpret as … accusation?

  As if he already knew.

  Miriam was coming toward her with a steaming mug in her hands, but the older woman was looking over Lucy’s shoulder, and her face was even more anxious than it had been moments ago.

  “He’s no’ there anymore,” she whispered. “Where’s the wee laddie gone?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HE SHOULDN’T have brought them here.

  It was obvious where the small boy had gone as soon as the adults came out of the kitchen and into the central hallway.

  The door to the library was open.

  Miriam stepped closer to Lucy as if she wanted to protect the younger woman.

  “Stay here,” James growled. “I’ll fetch him.”

  But, of course, they didn’t stay. Both women followed him into the library. A fire was burning low in the grate, and his father was sitting in front of it in the winged leather chair. As he always did these days, for hours.

  But right then he wasn’t staring down at his hands, as James had learned to expect. He was staring at the small boy, who was staring right back. Jamie had his thumb in his mouth and was standing absolutely still, like a small, tousled-haired statue.

  The older man’s head turned slowly.

  “What are these people doing in my house?” He glared at Lucy. “Get out.”

  James saw Lucy’s eyes widen in horror. She raced to snatch her child from harm’s way.

  He rushed to explain. “They were in trouble, Dad. Lucy’s car went into a ditch just down the road.”

  It took Lucy only a heartbeat to realize why the hairs had gone up on the back of her neck at James’s words.