A Baby In His Stocking (Harlequin Treasury 1990's)

by Hayley Gardner

  On everything.

  And she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to take what she had and make a joyous season out of it that lasted a lifetime. And what she had was Jared. She needed to fight for him, show him she valued him above everything. Convince him that she and their baby were going to be fine with the one man who loved them in his own way more than anything else in the world.

  “Molly!” she called more loudly, feeling a renewed strength. She was going to look just a few more minutes for the little girl, then she was going to trust that the child wasn’t there. After that she was going to drive to Topeka and beg Jared to take her back no matter what she had to do.

  Carefully treading past the swing set, Shea heard what she thought was a faint cry for help but might only have been a gust of icy wind. She called Molly’s name once more but heard nothing in response.

  Her imagination. She wanted the child to be found so much she was hearing her voice. Blinking fiercely against the snow, she walked a few more steps past the seesaws to check the gully on the far side of the park. Just in case.

  And that’s when she heard the voice again—one tiny cry for help, and then another one.

  Having spent a lot of afternoons in that park in her childhood, ingrained instinct told Shea to stop at the point where she otherwise might have fallen down the six-foot slide into the gully, which was in reality a wide drainage ditch walled by dirt.

  She swiftly unwrapped her muffler and called, “Honey, it’s Shea! Where are you?”

  “Down here,” Molly cried weakly. “I hurt my foot” She let out a whimper, then added, “When I fell.”

  In the circle of light from her flashlight, Shea spotted the girl halfway down the side. “Sweetie, the whole town has been looking for you. I have to go call your mama, then I’ll come down there and sit with you.” She hoped the phones were working again. If they weren’t, she would have to go down the block to get to the nearest house.

  “No! Please don’t leave. I’m scared,” Molly said, starting to cry. “I’m cold.”

  “Honey, it’s going to be all right,” Shea reassured her, although she wasn’t too certain about that herself. “I’ll come down and give you the flashlight and then I’ll go the car. It’s not going to take very long, I promise.”

  Sitting very carefully, refusing to worry about the possibility of falling herself, Shea dug her heels into the snow and made her way down a half-dozen feet of hill. When she got to Molly, the little girl promptly snuggled up against her and wrapped her arms around her waist.

  “Don’t leave. Please don’t leave. Santa’s coming. You’ve got to be here.”

  Shea gently pried the child away from her, took the muffler from around her own neck and wrapped the little girl’s head with it. They were partially protected from the wind in the gully, but somehow the snow seemed heavier there. And Molly was shivering badly.

  “Santa? How do you know?”

  “I wrote him a letter and put it in the special place under the Santa Box where Santa told me to leave it when he was here. When I checked later, it was gone, I told him to come to the park so I could tell him my Christmas wish ‘cause Mommy said I couldn’t see him anymore ’cause he left town.”

  “Why didn’t you just write him the wish in the letter?”

  Molly shook her head and buried her face against Shea. “I wanted to talk to him. ‘Cause he left without saying goodbye, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me or nothing.” Her voice, already quiet, had grown softer and softer as she snuggled against Shea. “But I’m all right, ’cause you’re here now, and Santa’s coming.”

  That wasn’t the way it was, Shea wanted to tell the child. They could get frostbitten or some other horrible thing if they remained down in the gully much longer, assuming Molly wasn’t already, and at the worst... She didn’t even want to think of that.

  She dared not.

  Huddled there with Molly, she tried to drum up some Christmas spirit, but she couldn’t.

  She had none left.

  Cursing, sure he’d seen the damned park somewhere on the street near the church where their imperfect tree had ended up, Jared cut his engine in front of the church, got out and walked back toward the oorner, letting the cold air give him strength. Crossing, he continued to walk past the houses with Christmas lights aglow through the windows, his fear for Molly and Shea growing with every step.

  He’d made good time, but it was after eleven at night. Shea should have been home. But not even Lucy Millstone’s old sedan had been parked in the Dentons’ driveway. In fact, the Dentons’ garage door had been left open, making him figure that Shea had gone somewhere in a hurry.

  And that scared him to death.

  Stop a catastrophe, Molly’s Santa had said. How would the old man know what was going on—unless...?

  No, he told himself sternly. That Santa Claus actually existed was just too crazy a notion to consider. Trudging through the snow, he sank knee-deep into drifts, but he kept going farther, down the opposite side of the long street where he hadn’t driven earlier. He wasn’t going to stop. Not till he found her. Shea.

  A fierce longing catapulted through him. He had to get Shea back. His world wouldn’t be right without her in it. She was like the missing piece of the puzzle that was him. He didn’t even know what he was thinking anymore—he just knew that every inch of him wanted her safe in his arms. The feeling had been growing in intensity all during the ride to Quiet Brook, and now his need for her had become too painful to ignore.

  He glided over a small icy patch onto a street and climbed back up another curb, then forward a few more feet...and that’s when he saw it. Shea’s car. And to his left was a half acre of cleared land nestled between the corner on one side and woods on the other. The park.

  Scanning the area with his flashlight, he saw nothing except the swings and seesaws and some climbing contraption. The park went farther back than he’d thought, the distance of a whole block, maybe more. Near the trees, he squinted, thinking he saw the land dipping a little, but he wasn’t sure.

  That was when he saw the stream of gentle light that seemed to point right to a spot on the earth, illuminating the now-dancing snowflakes. The light wavered briefly, then went out. It took him a few breathless seconds before he realized the light hadn’t come from heaven downward, but rather from someone’s flashlight, upward. Shea’s flashlight. It had to be.

  His heart in his throat, he hurried toward the spot where he’d seen the light, praying for the first time since he’d been a child. He’d never felt a longing as intense as this one, never in his whole life.

  Love.

  It had to be.

  If it wasn’t, it was the closest he thought he would ever come. He was truly feeling it again—at least he thought so. The intensity of it drove him forward, toward the gully, toward his other half.

  The wind died down as he neared the spot, and the snowflakes let up until they disappeared altogether. He could hear Shea talking. Her soft voice drew him like a magnet, his heart pounding.

  “Can you move your foot at all?” Shea asked. A couple seconds later, Jared heard a tiny gasp. “Okay, then I have to climb back up and call for help. Molly, sweetheart, I have no choice.”

  “Don’t want you to. Santa will come.”

  They both sounded like they would make it to morning, and Jared breathed a sigh of relief. As he approached the incline, he slowed down so he wouldn’t slip himself and heard Shea say, “Molly, I can’t argue with you now. Santa probably didn’t get your letter and he probably won’t come. You have to remember that life isn’t a fairy tale.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Jared called over the side so they both could hear, but he was speaking mainly to Shea. “And neither do you.” With his flashlight pointed near them, he could see Shea’s eyes widen in pure shock. “Smile, ladies,” he said, grinning at Shea. “’Cause Santa is here.”

  A frighteningly pale Molly smiled weakly up at him, then turned her trusting gaze
back on Shea. “See, told ya he’d come.”

  Crunching through ice, Jared half stepped, half skidded down the slope. Once he was braced against falling, he handed his flashlight to Shea, stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around Molly. He didn’t even feel the cold, not with the warmth and love shining on him from Shea’s eyes.

  “Who’s hurt?” he asked.

  “Molly’s ankle, I think,” Shea told him.

  He reached over and cupped Shea’s cheek tenderly, surrounding it with his warmth. “How about you?”

  “I’ll be all right,” she whispered. “Now that you’re back.”

  He grinned. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  She hesitated. “But how did you know where we were?”

  Jared knew that Molly should be taken to the doctor’s without delay. But something inside him told him that any kind of hurry might alarm the child, so he grinned down at Molly and was relieved when she smiled back up at him. In perfect unison, they said the answer together. “Santa.”

  Molly giggled weakly. “I was going to ask Santa to send Jared back here to town ’cause I missed him, and you missed him, and he makes a funny Santa Claus.”

  “I make a funny Santa.” Jared hoisted Molly into his arms. “Gee, is this the thanks I get for saving you?”

  Giggling again, Molly nestled against him, just as she had against Shea. “Only how did Santa know what my wish was?”

  “Oh, I’d say Santa knows what’s in everyone’s heart,” Jared told her earnestly. “In fact, he told me if I came and saved you, I would get everything I ever wanted for Christmas.”

  “Will you?”

  “That depends,” he said, looking down as Shea started to get up. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

  Rising carefully, Shea moved the light so she could see his face. “I think Jared will get every single thing he wants for Christmas. All he’ll have to do is ask.”

  Molly had a sprained ankle, but, just as she had sworn to Jared, Shea suffered no ill effects from exposure. Two hours after Jared had rescued them from the snowy slope, she was snuggled in Jared’s arms on the couch downstairs in her father’s home, fully clothed and smiling about Mack’s stern warning that they couldn’t share a bed until they were married again. Jared had filled her in about his visit from Santa, but she still could hardly believe it.

  She went up on her elbow to gaze at him. A soft light from one corner of the room lit his dark features. She’d never loved him more than she had the second he’d shown up on that hillside because he’d been worried about the fate of a child.

  Her holiday hero.

  “Do you think it was Molly’s homeless Santa from the Shelter?”

  “You never know,” he said, sounding like he might.

  Propped up on the pillows, Jared grinned at her. “Does it matter who he was?”

  “I guess it is more fun to just believe.” And it made her happy, too. “He brought you back to me, which is all that matters anyway. But I’m surprised you didn’t just call and send someone to the park.”

  “I tried. Phones were out.” He ran his finger down the lock of her hair to where it lay on her shoulder. “That guy—Santa—said you might be headed for a catastrophe. I knew I had to come.”

  His fingertips drew swirls on the top of her collarbone, sending heat into the far reaches of her body. Reaching up, she drew his head down and kissed him, melting back into the pillows. His hand caressed her rib cage and came to rest on top of their growing child.

  “I want to stay, Shea,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “I realized. on the way over that I was never going to make it without you. That something deep inside me longed for you so badly I couldn’t stand it. That if I was ever going to know love, it was going to be because of you.”

  “That already sounds like love,” Shea told him, her fingers stroking through the hair at his temple. “It really truly does.”

  “It took being scared out of my mind to feel it again.”

  “Again?”

  “Last time I remember feeling that way, it was when my aunt died and it seemed like I was all alone in the world. I don’t think I let myself feel anything again after that.” He cupped the side of her head. “I certainly don’t want our baby to ever go through something like that. At least if we’re together, maybe we can convince him his dad loves him the best way he knows how.”

  “Oh, Jared,” she whispered. “You do want our baby?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Playing Santa showed me kids aren’t as scary as I thought. I mean, it’s not that hard to keep them happy.”

  “They just want love, like anyone else.” She stroked the side of his face, delighting in the feel of his growing whiskers. “Besides, they come in handy. If the kids hadn’t needed a Santa, Dad would never have sent for you, and Molly wouldn’t have met you and written to Santa and we might never have gotten together again.”

  “You have a point.” His hand inched down and crept under the bottom of her sweater. “Are you sure I have to sleep down here? I don’t want to let you out of my arms.”

  She gave him a wide grin. “Mack’s been like a father to you. Are you sure you want to break his house rules?”

  He pressed against her hip. “What do you think?”

  Tensing her muscles against him, she grinned back. “I think it’s time to give you your Christmas present.”

  He groaned as she pushed herself off the couch. Then, looking resigned, he maneuvered until he was lying flat on his back against the bed pillows Shea had brought for him and waited for her. Disappearing around the corner, she was back in a flash with a present wrapped in blue-and-silver paper and topped by a matching bow. Smiling from ear to ear, she put it on his chest.

  “That’s your, what, fourth present to me?” Jared said. “But I haven’t gotten you anything—yet.”

  “You gave me our baby, remember?” Sitting on the floor next to him, she leaned over and kissed him again. As he cupped her head and moved sideways, his present slid onto the floor next to her. Laughing, she picked it up and handed it to him. “Open it.”

  “I still say we should wait for Christmas morning.”

  “Trust me, Jared,” she said, about to burst with anticipation. “You want to open this now.”

  So he did, tearing off the wrapping paper and lifting the lid from the box. Inside were torn pieces of a paper that looked like it might have once been a document Confused, he picked one up and read it, then picked up two more, read them and quickly put together what she bad given him—figuratively, that was. He didn’t really want to literally put the pieces back together. They were the divorce papers.

  “You didn’t go through with it?”

  She shook her head. “I went to the courthouse dreading the whole idea, and when you didn’t show up, something told me to back out. Your lawyer said something about mailing you a letter because you’d told him not to call.” She took the box, placed it on the floor and gave it a little shove out of the way, then leaned over him. Her heart was filled with a love for him unlike anything she’d ever felt before. “We’re still married, Jared—in the eyes of the law and one very strict father with house rules left over from the fifties. So what do you think?”

  He gave her a very wide grin. “I think that you give the very best Christmas gifts in the whole world.” He stood up, then lifted her up into his arms in one fell swoop. “Now let’s see what Santa can conjure up for you, okay?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I think that would be...a fairy-tale ending to this Christmas story, don’t you?”

  His remark was lost in their kiss.

  Epilogue

  Exactly one year later

  “Erin says Santa Claus is downstairs and she wants to go see him with both of us.”

  Shea looked up at the doorway to her office at Denton’s to see Jared standing there, his serious, dark blue eyes intent on her, with their six-month-old daughter resting against his shoulder.

  “And ho
w would you know that?” Shea let out a peal of light laughter, and Erin’s eyes flitted toward her.

  “I dunno,” Jared said. “Last Christmas, when I played Santa, the kids must have taught me.” He closed the distance between them and handed Erin to Shea. “I didn’t even realize it until Erin was about a month old and I started understanding every word she said.”

  Shea grinned. “And why am I finding this out only now?”

  “What?” Jared asked, trying to look totally serious. “She didn’t tell you?”

  She laughed again, tickled by the way Jared was teasing her, and nuzzled her cheek against Erin’s. “Okay, baby girl. Let’s go downstairs and see Santa.” She moved out from behind her desk and walked toward the door. “Thanks for walking her around so I could finish up, Jared. I know you must be as tired as I am.”

  “Wouldn’t have missed a chance to chat with my baby before she snoozes,” Jared said, picking up Erin’s diaper bag and turning off the office light.

  Holding her baby close, Shea gazed at her husband. Jared had found a suite in an office building near the mall so he’d be closer to Quiet Brook, where they now lived in an older rambling home near the park. Shea had returned to the store in October, with Erin staying half a day with her at the office and half a day with her new grandma, Lucy Millstone, who had married Mack and now was a stay-at-home mom. Shea couldn’t have been happier about the marriage. Not just because of her father, but because it meant that she’d have Molly for a sister while Erin would have a grandmother and an aunt—a family. A whole family, with a wonderful dad who loved her enough to hear what she said when she didn’t say a word.

  Jared stayed close behind her the whole way down, and she thanked her stars for the Christmas miracle that had come to Quiet Brook one year ago that night on a snowy bank.

  As they approached the Santa Station, Shea saw Santa stashing his hat under the chair as he sat there, alone, waiting. Someone had put the Santa and Elf on Break sign out, which would explain the lack of children in line even though the store was bustling. Telling herself to remember to flip the sign after the baby visited with Santa, Shea walked up the ramp with her daughter, Jared right behind.