Baby By Christmas (The McIntyre Men Book 5)

by Maggie Shayne

  “Yes, Logan. Yes.”

  * * *

  Epilogue

  * * *

  Three Months Later

  Allie stood in the middle of a crowded military hangar trying to entertain a baby who’d been ready for a feeding and a nap an hour ago. Eliza Jane had changed a lot in the last three months. She was no longer tiny and fragile. Her face had grown round and her arms and legs were plump instead of scrawny. Allie was still sure there was nothing more precious in all the world.

  She bounced with the baby in her arms. Allie had grown so accustomed to bouncing little Eliza that she found herself bopping up and down even when she wasn’t holding the little girl. She blamed lack of sleep and an abundance of maternal instinct.

  “How much longer?” Allie asked.

  Her sister Angie stood by her side. “I’ve been to tons of military homecoming ceremonies, and the only thing that’s certain is that they’re never the same. Sometimes they keep you waiting for hours and sometimes they’re right on schedule, but no matter what, it always feels like an eternity.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Allie asked. “Is it too much for you?”

  Angie smiled and grabbed the camera that hung around her neck. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”

  The wide-open hanger was decorated with balloons and streamers and signs welcoming family members home. There were people everywhere, but Allie ignored all of it because at that moment, the big double doors opened and soldiers began marching through them. Allie’s breath caught in her throat. She tried to study each individual, to determine which one was her soldier, but they came so quick she barely had time. She scanned the sea of faces, standing in smart-lines, wearing their dress uniforms. She was looking for Logan as the commander talked with pride about the job his soldiers had done.

  She tried to focus on the words, but she was too excited to think. The butterflies in her stomach felt like bats. After three long months of waiting, and talking and texting and Facetiming, she was about to see her husband again, and her heart practically sang. Eliza must have known it, too, because she perked up in Allie’s arms, looking around excitedly, taking in the lights and the people. She let out an ear-splitting yell that broke the relative quiet.

  The commander smiled. “Someone’s impatient,” he said and just like that, he gave the order, and the soldiers were released. Then it was a sea of loved ones making their way to each other, of hugs and kisses and whoops of joy and men picking up women and spinning them in circles.

  Allie scanned the crowd around her, searching for Logan. She turned around, desperate to see the face she’d been dreaming of for the last ninety days. And then there he was, right in front of her. Logan. She ran to him and he wrapped his arms around her and their precious baby. Tears filled her eyes. Logan’s lips found hers and he kissed her. And everything around them vanished, the noise, the crowds. There was nothing but the three of them.

  He gazed at the baby in Allie’s arms. Eliza smiled and let out a happy squeal and Logan laughed. Tears filled his eyes.

  “I’m home,” he said.

  “Not yet, honey. Home is in Big Falls. We’ve got a drive ahead of us.”

  “Home is wherever you are, Allie. It’s wherever both of you are.”

  “It’s wherever the three of us are, together,” Allie told him. And then she kissed him again.

  THE END

  Look for Finding Christmas, another story set in Maggie Shayne’s world of Big Falls, Oklahoma.

  Continue reading for an excerpt from book 1 of The Oklahoma Brands

  The Brands Who Came for Christmas.

  * * *

  The Brands Who Came for Christmas

  * * *

  Maya

  Most people in Big Falls, Oklahoma, thought it must have been a case of immaculate conception when they saw me, Maya Brand—eldest of the notorious Vidalia Brand’s illegitimate brood—with my belly swollen and my ring finger naked.

  Personally, I thought it was more like fate playing a cruel joke. See, all my life, I had struggled to be the one respectable member of my outrageous family. I went to church on Sundays. I volunteered at the nursing home. I wore sensible shoes, for heaven’s sake! I never aspired to notoriety. I just wanted to be normal.

  You know. Normal. I wanted a husband, a home, a family. I wanted to be one of those women who make pot roast for Sunday dinner, and vacuum in pearls while it simmers. I wanted a little log cabin on the hillside behind my family’s farm, with a fenced-in backyard for the kids, and a big front porch. I wanted to sit down in one of the pews on Sunday and not have the three women beside me automatically slide their butts to the other end.

  And it had been starting to happen—before the big disaster blew into town. Bit by bit, I’d felt it happening. The PTA moms and church ladies in town had been slowly, reluctantly, beginning to accept me. To see me as an individual, rather than just another daughter of a bigamist and a barmaid. And it wasn’t that I didn’t love my mother dearly, because I did. I do! I just didn’t want to be like her. I wanted to be like those other women—the ones who were always asked to bake for the church picnic, who did their grocery shopping in heels, and who drove the car pools. The ones who slow-danced with their handsome husbands on anniversaries and holidays, and who took golf or tennis lessons with groups of their friends. They have minivans and housekeepers, manicured lawns and manicured nails, those women.

  What they do not have are mothers who own the local saloon, or sisters who ride motorcycles or pose for fashion magazines in their underwear.

  Still, I was certain my background was something that I could overcome with effort. And, as I said, my efforts had actually been working. Once or twice, one of those other women had smiled back at me in church. The ladies on the pew hadn’t moved so far away, nor quite as quickly, and one of them had even returned my persistent “good morning” one Sunday.

  Things had been going so well! Until that night….

  That night. He ruined everything! Made me into the biggest (literally) and most scandalous member of my entire family! The good people of Big Falls have stopped gossiping about Kara being a jinx—then again, none of her boyfriends have wound up in the hospital from any freak accidents lately, either. They’ve stopped whispering about Edie, who found the success she chased to L.A. when she became a lingerie model for the Vanessa’s Whisper catalogue. Mom just about had kittens over that one. The locals used to speculate on Selene, because of her oddball customs and beliefs. Vegetarianism and Zen and dancing around outdoors when the moon was full, were not big in Big Falls. And Mel used to generate gossip for being too tough for any man, with her motorcycle and her unofficial job as bouncer at the OK Corral. That’s our family’s saloon; the OK Corral. Because we live in Oklahoma. Cute, huh?

  But the point is, no matter how much I wished that my sisters would conform, or that my mother would suddenly cut that wild black hair of hers to a style more fitting for a woman her age, and maybe convert the saloon into a restaurant like that nice Haggerty family a town away—none of their antics did as much damage to my standing in the community as that one night of insanity with that man. That drifter with the eyes that seemed to look right through my clothes. Right through my skin.

  I suppose, if I’m going to tell you about all this, I should probably start with him, and that night.

  See it all started just short of nine months ago….

  * * *

  Caleb

  How was I to know that one night of insanity would change my life forever? I mean, I was respectable, responsible, highly thought of. The Montgomerys of Oklahoma were known far and wide. We had money, and we had power. The name Cain Caleb Montgomery had a long and proud history. My father, Cain Caleb Montgomery II, served two terms as a U.S. senator. His father, Cain Caleb Montgomery I, served five.

  I am, as you have probably guessed by now, Cain Caleb Montgomery III. And already my political career was well underway. I had just stepped down from my sec
ond term as mayor of a medium-sized city. On the day all this insanity began, my entire future was being planned for me. My father and grandfather, and a half dozen other men—men whose faces you would recognize—sat around a large table plotting my run for the U.S. Senate.

  They discussed when and how I would declare my candidacy nine months from now, just a little before New Year’s Day. They discussed what I was going to stand for and what I was going to stand against. They didn’t discuss these things with me, mind you. They discussed them with each other. I was an onlooker. A bystander. They went on, telling me what I was going to wear, eat, and do on my vacations, as I sat there, listening, nodding, and growing more and more uneasy.

  And then they went too far. There we all were, in my father’s drawing room. Eight three-piece suits—seven of them straining at the middle—seated around a long cherry wood table that gleamed like a mirror. The place reeked of expensive leather, expensive whiskey and cigars of questionable origin. And all of a sudden, one of the men said, “Of course, there will be a Mrs. Montgomery by then.”

  “Of course there will!” my father agreed, smiling ear to ear.

  And I sat there with my jaw hanging.

  “Got anyone in mind, son?” A big hand slammed me on the back, and a wrinkled eye winked from behind gold-framed glasses. “No? Great. Even better this way, in fact. We can start from scratch, then.”

  And suddenly they were all talking at once, growing more and more excited all the time.

  “She should be blond. The latest analysis shows that blondes hold a slight edge over brunettes or redheads in public opinion polls.”

  “Of course, there’s always dye.”

  “Medium height. Not too tall.”

  “Yes, and not too short, or she’ll have to wear heels all the time.”

  “And of course, she has to be attractive.”

  “But not too attractive. We don’t want any backlash.”

  “Educated. Not quite as well as you, though, but that goes without saying.”

  “Well versed. She should have a good voice, nice rich tones. None of those squeaky ones. And no gigglers.”

  “Oh, definitely no gigglers!”

  “Sterling reputation. We can’t have any scandals in the family. That’s probably most important of all.”

  “Absolutely. No scandals.”

  “We can run background checks, of course. Just to be sure. And—”

  “Wait a minute.”

  They all fell silent when I finally spoke. Maybe it was because of the tone of my voice, which sounded odd even to me. I placed both my palms on the table and got slowly to my feet. And for the first time in my entire adult life, I let myself wonder if this was what I really wanted. It had been expected of me, planned for me, even from before I was born. Everything all laid out, private school, prep school, college, law school. And I’d gone along with it because, frankly, it had never occurred to me to do otherwise. But was it what I wanted?

  It shocked me to realize I wasn’t sure anymore. I just…wasn’t sure. Giving my head a shake, I just turned and walked out. They all called after me, shouting my name, asking if I was all right. I kept on going. I felt disoriented—as if, for just one instant there, a corner of my world had peeled back, revealing a truth I hadn’t wanted to see or even consider. The fact that there might be more for me out there. Something different. Another choice.

  Anyway, I went out that night looking to escape my name. My reputation. My identity, because I was suddenly questioning whether it was indeed mine. Everyone who knew me, knew me as Cain Caleb Montgomery III. CC-Three for short. Hell, without the name and the heritage, I didn’t even know who I was.

  I shed the suit. Dressed in a pair of jeans I used to wear when I spent summers on my grandfather’s ranch. God, I hadn’t been out there since my college days, and they barely fit anymore. I borrowed the pickup that belonged to our gardener, José. He looked at me oddly when I asked but didn’t refuse.

  And then I just drove.

  Maybe it was fate that made me have that flat tire in Big Falls, Oklahoma, on the eve of Maya Brand’s twenty-ninth birthday. Hell, it had to be fate…because it changed everything from then on. Although I wasn’t completely aware of those changes until some eight and a half months later.

  But really, you have to hear this story from the beginning.

  It all began nine months ago, on the day I began to question everything in my life….

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  April Fools’ Day

  Maya had always been of two minds about working at the saloon. Of course, it wasn’t a five-star restaurant, or even a respectable club. It was where the ordinary folk liked to come to unwind. You would never see the church ladies or the PTA moms on the leather bar stools munching pretzels and sipping beer at the OK Corral. But they didn’t have to see Maya waiting tables to know she worked there. It was a small town.

  Everyone in Big Falls knew she was a barmaid.

  And it probably didn’t do her efforts at becoming respectable much good at all. But the thing was, this was the family business. It put food on the table. And it was an honest business, and one her mother had worked hard to make successful. It meant a lot to Vidalia Brand. And respectability or no, family came first with Maya. Always had. That was the way she’d been raised.

  So she helped out at the OK Corral, just as her sisters did. Well, all except for Edie. Edie was off in L.A. chasing her own dreams. And respectability didn’t seem to be too high on her list.

  Anyway, April Fools’ night started out like any other Saturday night at the Corral. Kara helped in the kitchen, where her frequent accidents were heard but not seen. Selene waited tables, so long as no meat dishes were ordered. Mel tended bar and served as unofficial bouncer. And Maya did most of the cooking, and gave line dancing lessons every Tuesday and Saturday.

  In fact, the only thing that truly set this particular Saturday night apart from any other was that it was Maya’s last Saturday as a twenty-eight-year-old woman. On Sunday, she would turn twenty-nine. And twenty-nine was only twelve months away from thirty. And she was still single, still alone. Still an outcast struggling to make herself acceptable. Still living with her mother and working at the Corral. Still…everything she didn’t want to be. Still a virgin.

  So she was depressed and moody, and she’d sneaked a couple of beers tonight, which was totally unlike her. As a result, she was just the slightest bit off the bubble, as her mother would have put it, as she walked out of the kitchen. Wiping her hands on her apron, she strained her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light in the bar. Dark hardwood walls and floor, gleaming mahogany bar, sound system turned down low for the moment. Just enough to create a soothing twang underlying the constant clink of ice and glasses, the thud of frosted mugs on the bar, and the low murmur of working men in conversation. The light fixtures were small wagon wheels suspended over every table, a bigger one way up in the rafters dead center. Dimmer switches were essential, of course. The only time the lights got turned up to high beam was when they closed the doors to clean up. The row of ceiling fans over the bar whirred softly and tousled her hair when she walked underneath them.

  And then she looked up.

  And he was there.

  He’d just come through the batwing doors from the street outside. He stopped just inside them, and he looked around as if it was his first time at the Corral. And as Maya looked him over, she thought he seemed just about as depressed and moody as she was.

  “Now that looks like a cowboy who’s been rode hard and put away wet one too many times,” Vidalia said near her ear.

  Maya started. She hadn’t even heard her mother come up beside her. And though she tried to send her a disapproving glance for her choice of words, she found it tough to take her eyes off the man. “Who is he?” she asked. “I don’t recognize him.”

  Vidalia shrugged. “I don’t either.”

  He wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t shor
t. Not reed thin or overweight or bursting with muscle. Just an average build. He had dark hair under a battered brown cowboy hat that bore no brand name or markings she could detect. His jeans were faded and tight as sin. His denim shirt was unsnapped and hanging open over a black T-shirt with a single pocket. Even his boots were scuffed and dusty. But none of that was what made her so unable to look away. It was something about his face. His eyes, scanning the bar as if he was looking for something, or someone. There was a quiet sorrow about those eyes. A loneliness. A lost look about the man, and it touched off that nurturing instinct of hers from the moment she saw it.

  She walked closer without even knowing she was doing it, and those lonely eyes fell on her. Blue. They were deep blue. So blue she could see that vivid color even in this low lighting. His lips curved up in a fake smile of greeting, and she forced hers to do the same. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They still looked as sad as the eyes of a motherless pup, and they latched on to hers as if she was his last hope.

  “Can I help you with something?” she asked him at last.

  He shrugged. “Can I get a beer?” he asked.

  “Well now, this is a saloon.” She took his arm for some reason. Kind of the way you’d take hold of a stranger lost in a storm, to lead him home. “Mister, your shirt’s wet through.”

  “That’s because it’s raining outside.”

  “Yes, but when it’s raining outside, most people stay inside.” She took him to a table near the fireplace. It was in the area where the line dancing lessons would be starting up in a little while, but the man was chilled to the bone. He had to be.