Their Unexpected Christmas Gift (The Stone Gap Inn Book 3)

by Shirley Jump

  Vivian held up a finger. “I want those files by the end of the day. Get a courier to bring them to me. Uh, the address?” She glanced at Nick.

  “Thirty-two Lakefront Road,” he said.

  “Thirty-two Lakefront Road,” she repeated. “In Stone Gap. I’ll be in tomorrow morning to go over the new discovery.”

  She hung up and tucked the phone into her purse. “Sorry about that. We’re in the middle of an important case, plus have another half dozen in various stages of development, and—” The phone rang again. She peeked at the screen and gave Nick an apologetic smile. “I have to get this. It’s my co-counsel. Can you...?”

  “Sure, sure,” Nick said as if it didn’t bother him at all that she was ignoring her flesh and blood for yet another phone call. Reason number 203 why he shouldn’t kiss this woman again.

  He walked around to the backseat to unbuckle Ellie. She squirmed against his chest when he lifted her out of the car seat. He grabbed the tiny blanket that had been on top of her legs in the truck and wrapped it around her, even though the walk from driveway to house was only a few seconds long. There was a decided nip in the air, a preview taste of the winter to come.

  Once inside, he bumped up the heat a few degrees, glad that Grady had kept paying the utility bills, then set Ellie in the playpen with a couple of stuffed animals and large round plastic rings to play with. She lay on her back, taking more interest in her fingers than anything around her.

  And Nick stood there, realizing that he had gone from helping-out babysitter to single parent in the space of a two-mile drive. If he’d known Vivian was going to be working this much, he would have gone along with the idea of hiring a nanny. Either way, this wasn’t the holiday he had been envisioning when he proposed the two of them move in with him.

  A feeling of dread chased up his spine. All his life, he’d avoided getting involved with workaholic women, because he had seen firsthand how that dedication to the job above everything else hurt a family. He’d seen how his own workaholic tendencies had caused his relationship with Ariel to crumble, and could only be grateful there had been no kids involved to be hurt by it. The endless hours he’d spent working with Carson, while good because he got to spend time with his brother, had almost completely precluded Nick from having a life, and kept him so busy he hadn’t even noticed when his own began to fall apart.

  No matter how beautiful or intriguing Vivian Winthrop was, he would do well to steer clear of falling for a woman who put work ahead of everything else.

  Ten minutes later, Vivian finally came inside. “Gosh, it’s cold outside. Thanks for taking care of all that stuff and getting it into the house. What do you need me to do?”

  “It’s all done.” He scowled. “Ellie is happily playing in the big pink pen, and your bags are in the room upstairs, across from the nursery.”

  “You did it all? Wow. You work fast. I meant to help but—” Her phone rang again, and before she finished the sentence, she was already involved in another conversation. Vivian wandered off to the kitchen, pacing as she spoke.

  Whatever was happening on the other end of the conversation didn’t seem to be going well, which meant Vivian would be tied up for a while. Maybe he was wrong, and maybe her nose to the grindstone was a temporary byproduct of something going wrong in this particular lawsuit. He sure hoped so.

  Nick did a quick assessment of the cabinets and freezer. The fridge had been emptied by a well-meaning neighbor after Ida Mae’s death, but the freezer still held a quartered chicken. He did, however, find a bottle of wine in the cabinet. He set the chicken on the counter to defrost for dinner. He’d have to run to the market later for more supplies.

  “What do you mean they filed a countersuit?” Vivian cursed under her breath. “They think Jerry was responsible? That’s bull. I should have been there in court. Getting the judge to dismiss that would’ve been a slam dunk, Al, and you should have been able to handle it.” She paced the ten feet from the stove to the back door. “No, I’ll write the response tonight. Did you get the deposition yet? Never mind. I’ll handle it myself.” She ended the call and put the phone in her bag. She pulled out her laptop and turned to Nick. “I hate to ask but—”

  Another phone call. Another work emergency. Of course. Red flags were waving in his face like a cape with a bull. “Go ahead, work. I’m good for a little while. I need to go to the grocery store at some point, and we need to get your car. We can do both later.”

  “Sure, sure, I’ll be done by three.” Vivian set up a temporary office at one end of the dining room table. Within an hour, it looked like a complete workplace, filled with files from her bag, notepads strewn with scribbled notes, and sheets she’d printed from Ida Mae’s printer. Nick swore he barely heard her take a breath between phone calls.

  As the clock ticked past three, he stood to the side of the room, holding Ellie as she drank her afternoon bottle, and Vivian kept on working despite her promise to be done by then. Transport all of this a few miles north and he could have been in the Mausoleum. Where everything outside the law ceased to exist to his parents, including their children.

  “What have we gotten ourselves into?” he whispered to Ellie. She just blinked and kept eating.

  Chapter Six

  By Wednesday, they had all settled into a routine. Vivian got up at five and was on the road to the office by six, long before Nick and Ellie woke up. She texted him every day before she left the office at six thirty, and made any needed grocery runs on her way home. Meanwhile, Nick took care of Ellie, the house and made the meals. After dinner, more often than not, Vivian retreated to the dining room to work. If she got to bed before one in the morning, she considered it a good day. She knew she should help more with the household chores and Ellie, but Nick seemed to have it all under control, and she had a workload that seemed to grow by the minute.

  Several times throughout the day, she called and texted Sammie. She’d received one I’m okay, don’t worry, but no other replies. Sammie had dropped off the face of the earth. Vivian realized how little she knew about her sister—she had no idea where Sammie worked or who Sammie’s friends were.

  Maybe she hadn’t been as good of a sister as she’d thought. That troubled her, and nosed at the insecurities Vivian did her best to bury every day.

  She pulled into the driveway of Nick’s grandmother’s house on Wednesday night, and realized she hadn’t been outside during daylight hours in days. She left before the sun rose, returned after the sun had set. The only time she’d spent outside had been going to and from her car in the parking lot. Vivian turned off the sedan and glanced up at the house.

  Two stories tall with a wide front porch, his late grandmother’s home was painted a pale gray with lilac shutters and white trim. Rosebushes sat beneath the windows, with a thick lawn rolling toward the driveway and sidewalk. Far in the background sat Stone Gap Lake, a deep, dark blue oasis ringed by a few year-round homes.

  But it was the golden light framed by the living room windows that drew her attention. Inside the house, she could see Nick, holding Ellie. He’d captured one of her little hands between two fingers and was smiling down at her.

  As Vivian stepped out of the car, she heard music. A country song, Thomas Rhett, maybe, coming from inside the house. She stood in the driveway in the cold air, clutching the box of papers she needed to go through tonight, ignoring the weight of the overstuffed bag on her shoulder and the pain of her heels after a long day, and watched Nick glide around the room with her niece in his arms.

  And felt like a failure.

  Nick made it look so easy. He had from the minute Ellie had dropped into his life. As far as she could tell, every time he picked Ellie up, she calmed down. Every time he changed her diaper, she looked up at him like he was the most adored human on the planet. And every time he held her, she placed her head on his chest and fisted his shirt in her palm, as if she neve
r wanted to let go.

  When Vivian picked up her niece, Ellie cried. When she changed Ellie’s diaper, the baby squirmed and fussed and the tape went askew. When she held Ellie, her niece twisted away and pitched a fit.

  Vivian glanced down at the box in her hands, the files and notes stuffed inside that needed to be looked over tonight. Maybe it was best if she just concentrated on her job. Jerry and his family were counting on her to make it right, to help them get back to normal lives. They needed her.

  Ellie, clearly, did not.

  Vivian turned, opened the rear door of her car and returned the box and her bag to the backseat. She dug out her keys and was about to open the driver’s side door when Nick stepped onto the porch. He had Ellie wrapped in a blanket to keep out the cold. The country song floated in the air between them.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” he said.

  “Actually... I’m not staying.”

  “You’re leaving again already? Why? You just got here. If you want to hold Ellie for a minute—” he held her niece out to her, and as if on cue, Ellie began to scream and protest “—I can put the pasta in—”

  “That’s why I’m leaving, Nick. Because if I hold Ellie, she’s going to scream. If I spend time with her, she’s going to cry. And in the end, she’s only going to want you anyway, so why should I even try?” She shook her head before her damned emotions got ahold of her. Nick had drawn Ellie back to his chest, and in an instant, the infant went back to being happy and content. Even the thought of being with her aunt upset Ellie. How could Vivian be any kind of parent to a kid who hated the sight of her? Nick was a thousand times better at this than she was. “I have a lot of work to do tonight—”

  “You’ve had a lot of work to do every night, Vivian. And every morning. And all day.”

  “It’s my job, Nick. That’s what they pay me to do.” It occurred to her that they sounded like a bickering married couple. When had that happened? When had they gone from strangers to friends to some sort of weird partners?

  “Not to the exclusion of having a life, Vivian. If you ask me, you’re just using the work as an excuse to avoid living. Your sister clearly isn’t the only one who runs away.” He turned on his heel and went back into the house.

  Vivian stood there, fuming in the cold. How dare he tell her how to live her life? To imply she was missing out by being a workaholic? Or that she was running away? Okay, so maybe some of that was true, but as soon as this lawsuit was over...

  She shut the car door, marched up the stairs and into the house, ready to tell Nick off. She stopped in the middle of the hallway. In the last few days, she’d come home, beelined to the kitchen for a quick bite to eat, then rushed to the dining room for a couple hours of work, then took the back staircase up to her room in the wee hours of the morning. She hadn’t had a moment to pause and look at the rest of the house.

  The living room she had been in on Monday, with the couch that was as comfortable as a slice of heaven, was in the process of being transformed. Evergreen garlands wove in and out of fat white pillar candles on the fireplace mantel, and beneath that, a fire burned, safely behind a wrought-iron grate she didn’t remember seeing before. A ceramic miniature Christmas tree with hundreds of tiny lights sat on the end table, and the plain glass bowl on the coffee table was now overflowing with red ribbons and thick pine cones. A pillow-sized fat stuffed Santa sat on the sofa, against a thick afghan printed with a snowy mountain scene. The hallway rug beneath her feet had been switched out for a white-and-blue one imprinted with a holiday scene of children sledding down the long runner.

  The words she’d planned to fling at Nick died in her throat. “When did you do all this?”

  “Over the last couple of days. Whenever Ellie was napping, I’d go up to my grandmother’s attic and unearth some more boxes. I had...something I was supposed to find up there, but then I came across the Christmas decorations and figured it would be nice to put them up. So Ellie and I decorated.”

  Something he was supposed to find in his grandmother’s attic? He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask. She did notice a lone box tucked away in the corner that was marked Nick, but didn’t question it. This whole thing was temporary, a blip in her life, and getting more personal would be a mistake. “Ellie and you decorated?”

  “Yep. I made her do all the heavy lifting while I watched.” He grinned at the baby in his arms. “She’s got quite the eye for mantel design.”

  “The room looks beautiful.” She stowed her purse and keys on the end table, then stepped into the living room and did a slow spin. “It already looks like Christmas.”

  “Well, it will. We still need a tree. A real tree, not some plastic fake one that never sheds a needle.” He waved toward the corner of the room. A few days ago, a small armchair had sat there. Now, the armchair had been moved to flank the sofa, leaving a blank space between the far left front windows and the wall. A stack of boxes labeled Ornaments was sitting on the floor beside the space. “I know this is a temporary situation with the three of us here, but I figured since it was Ellie’s first Christmas, she might like the lights and stuff. She already thinks that Santa on the couch is a toy just for her.”

  Hard-nosed, dedicated, driven Vivian found herself tearing up for the third time in one week. Who was this man? And how did he happen to come into her life—and Ellie’s life—exactly when they needed someone like him?

  “So why don’t you stay here tonight,” Nick said, taking Vivian’s hand and leading her farther into the living room, “and not work, and spend time with your niece and the man who made you fettuccini Alfredo for dinner?”

  His hand felt nice on hers. Warm, safe, dependable. She curled her fingers over his. “You made fettuccini Alfredo? That’s my favorite.”

  “I know. You mentioned it a couple days ago.”

  “And you remembered?” Damn it. Now her throat was thick, and her heart was full of some emotion she didn’t recognize. She’d dated several men over the years, got sort of serious with a couple of them, but not a one could have named her favorite food, the flowers she loved best, or how she took her coffee in the morning. Nick paid attention to details—maybe that was part of the chef in him—and she’d already seen it pay dividends in the way he seemed to have an intuitive sense of what made Ellie happy.

  And apparently, he also had a sense of what made Vivian choke up.

  “Don’t work tonight, Vivian,” he said again, softer this time. “Let’s eat and then go buy a tree, and decorate it tonight. I bet Ellie will love the lights.”

  She thought of the box in her car. Jerry sitting in the office conference room a few months ago and begged her to help them. The hours she and her team had put into this lawsuit already. She’d unearthed almost enough evidence of shoddy workmanship on the part of the manufacturer that she could go to them and hopefully negotiate a settlement and avoid a drawn-out lawsuit for that man and his family. Almost enough. A couple more days of work, and hopefully she’d have a solid argument for a hefty settlement.

  “I have people depending on me,” she said.

  “You have a niece depending on you, too.”

  Vivian looked over at Nick. Ellie was nestled against his shoulder, her wide blue eyes fixed on his shirt. Her fist opened and closed over the soft cotton. “No, Nick. She’s depending on you. And if you ask me, that’s her best bet. Because I’m a lousy mother. And sister.”

  And I’m bailing just like Sammie did, bailing on Ellie, bailing on whatever this thing with Nick is.

  Then she headed out of the house, got back in her car and drove to her apartment in Durham. At least there she wouldn’t feel guilty staying up all night working and catching a nap on the futon in the spare room. And she wouldn’t have to be reminded every time she turned around that she was letting down the one person she had sworn she’d never disappoint.

  * * *

  The next
night, Nick tucked Ellie into bed, made sure her pink bunny footie pajamas were all snapped and that her room was warm enough. She had nodded off a few minutes earlier, about an hour before her regular bedtime, thanks to Nick skipping her usual late-afternoon nap and braving through the grumpiness that came after dinner. Nick headed back downstairs, set the table, then sat down to wait.

  A week ago, he had scowled at the Christmas decorations going up around Stone Gap. He’d considered becoming a hermit until January 1, just to avoid all the cheery greetings and peppy Christmas carols. Then he’d found a baby on the kitchen table, and in the process of caring for her, he’d changed his mind about Christmas. Changed his mind about a lot of things, in fact.

  Maybe he was more of a softie than he’d ever thought. Or maybe he didn’t want to see another kid grow up in a Christmas void, like he had. Either way, he’d decided Ellie deserved a real Christmas—and he wasn’t going to give it to her alone. Vivian had made a promise, and he intended to make sure she kept it.

  Of course, all this was also a good way to avoid the request of his late grandmother. He’d found the box she’d mentioned in her letter, tucked in a corner of the attic. He’d done a cursory glance to find it filled with things from his father’s childhood—baseball glove, stuffed bear, photo albums, a couple books. One of those leather-bound autograph books filled with signatures. Build some common ground with him, his grandmother had written. You have more than you think.

  As far as Nick could see, he had no common ground with his father. He wasn’t ready for another dismissive phone call, so the box sat in the corner of the living room, mocking his procrastination.

  Ten minutes later, Vivian walked in. He heard the clatter of the giant bag she carried being set on the floor, the sigh that accompanied her kicking off her heels, then the soft patter of her bare feet down the hall. She stopped midstep when she saw him sitting at the dining room table. “Nick. You startled me. Sorry I’m so late.”