Winter Baby

Congratulations.

The gynecologist had confirmed what the little pink X’s had told Sarah so clearly that night. She was going to have a baby next summer.

But it still seemed unreal. Like a very, very long bad dream. As she entered her apartment, Sarah dropped her purse and her “So You’re Having a Baby” brochure on the coffee table. Then she dropped herself onto the sofa, like a puppet with cut strings.

Her half-focused gaze fell on the table where the mail still lay. She was unable to work up the energy to open it. A few bills, a dozen Christmas cards…

But now she saw that one of the cards was from Uncle Ward. The sight was strangely comforting. She reached for the card, wondering if her uncle had included one of his long letters chronicling the goings-on in his little mountain town. How lovely it would be to escape, even for a few minutes, into his world.

She sat up, wondering how much a flight to upstate New York cost. Uncle Ward and Firefly Glen had been a sanctuary once. Perhaps they could be the same now. She picked up the telephone. Surely somewhere in that gentle valley town, amid all that snowy silence, she could figure out what to do with her life.

Dear Reader,

Home. It’s a small word to mean so much. And yet that one syllable holds the power to inspire writers and poets, philosophers and painters.

But what is it, really? A hundred people will give you a hundred different answers. It’s a house, a city, a parent, a husband, a friend. It’s where you retreat, sick and frightened, and come out brave and well. It’s where you can finally take off your armor, lay down your sword and rest.

Sometimes the treasure of home is handed to you at birth, gift-wrapped with love and laid at the foot of your cradle. Sometimes, though, you have to search for it on your own.

Sarah Lennox, the heroine of Winter Baby, has almost given up searching. The child of a home that was broken and broken again, she has decided that, for her, home is a dream that will never come true. The closest she ever came to knowing that security was one magical summer in Firefly Glen, a tiny town high in the Adirondacks.

So when she finds herself pregnant and alone, that’s where she turns. She needs a peaceful place to hide while she sorts things out.

But instead of being swaddled in solitude and silence, Sarah finds herself instantly caught up in the madness and mayhem and pure sparkling magic that make up Firefly Glen. And somewhere between building ice castles and visiting puppies in the local jail, she finds herself doing the one thing a confused, abandoned, pregnant woman should never do. She falls in love.

And, most surprising of all, she finds a home.

Because when you peel away all the poetry and the philosophy, that’s what home really means—love.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

Winter Baby

Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Renie, with a kiss to put in your hand.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

SARAH LENNOX WASN’T SURPRISED the soufflé fell. It was difficult to focus on creating frothy dinner concoctions when you’d just discovered you were pregnant.

Minutes later, the soufflé began to burn, but she didn’t get up to rescue it. Instead, she sat on the edge of the tub, letting the acrid odor of scorching eggs fill her nose while she stared stupidly at the little pink x on the test strip.

It must be a mistake. It had to be a mistake.

She wasn’t going to have a baby. Not right now. She wasn’t even getting married for another fifty-nine days. And she wouldn’t begin having children until two years after that. That was the plan. The master plan. Ask anyone who knew her. Check any of her diaries since she’d been twelve years old. College. Career. Marriage. Wait two years just to be sure. Then children.

That was the plan. So this…this nonsense had to be a mistake.

But the counter was lined with these little strips, and they all had pink x’s on them. This was the fourth home pregnancy test she’d used tonight.

It was a mistake, all right. But it was her mistake, not the test’s.

The master plan was toast, just like her soufflé. She was definitely, disastrously, terrifyingly pregnant.

In the living room, the stack of Christmas CDs she’d put on an hour ago clicked and shifted and began playing “What Child Is This?” Cute. Very cute. She felt a faint urge to get up and break the CD in two, but she didn’t have the energy to follow through. Apparently shock and horror worked like a tranquilizer dart. She couldn’t move a muscle.

When the doorbell rang, she was confused, momentarily unable to remember whom she’d been expecting. It rang again, then again, short and hard, as if whoever it was didn’t much like waiting.

Her subconscious recognized that irritable ring. Of course. Ed. Her fiancé was coming for dinner. They’d had an 8:00 p.m. date. It was now 8:01, and he didn’t like tardiness. He had a master plan, too—and, if anything, it was even more rigidly scheduled than Sarah’s own. It had been one of the reasons she chose him in the first place. It was definitely one of the reasons she stuck with him, even though lately their relationship had been…a little rocky. Just a tiny bit unsatisfying.

Still, all relationships had their rocky moments. And Ed would make a good husband. She wasn’t the type to run around breaking off engagements. She wasn’t like her mother. When she gave her word, she meant it.

And now she had no choice. She was pregnant with Ed’s child. Pregnant. She made a small gasping sound, as if she couldn’t breathe around the fact.

She stood numbly, instinctively sweeping all the tiny test strips and empty pink boxes into the waste-basket. For a long moment she stared down at the debris, which seemed to represent the bits and pieces of her shattered master plan. How solid could the plan actually have been, she asked herself numbly, if it had been so easily destroyed?

Ed had given up ringing and was knocking now. Sarah actually half smiled at the frustrated annoyance in the sound. Poor Ed. If he didn’t like her being slow to answer the door, he was going to really hate the rest of his evening.

“Good God, what is that smell?” As Sarah opened the door, Ed started to signal his annoyance by one disapproving glance at his watch, but almost immediately his horror at the odor in the apartment superseded everything else. He wrinkled his aristocratic nose into a disgusted twist. “Sarah, for God’s sake. Have you burned dinner?”

“I think so,” she said. And then, because he was looking at her with an expression of complete incredulity, she realized that something else probably needed to be said. She wondered what it was. She felt as if she were speaking a foreign language. “I’m sorry?”

“Me, too,” he agreed curtly. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He sniffed the air again. “Have you turned off the oven?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, trying to remember. “No. I don’t think so.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you all right?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He moved into the kitchen with the assured purpose of a man in charge in his own home. But it wasn’t his home, Sarah thought suddenly. It was her home. Why did he feel that he was in charge?

Because somebody had to be. She obviously would burn the whole apartment complex down if somebody didn’t take over. Already the kitchen was filling with smoke.

After he flicked the thermostat off and determined that dinner was completely ruined, Ed let the oven door slam impatiently. He punched the exhaust fan to High, then returned to the living room, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him. The Christmas CDs were still playing, and the gentle pine scent of her tree fought with the nasty burned smell of dinner.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said again, although she no longer felt very sorry. It was just a soufflé, after all. Why was Ed making such a big deal out of it? His handsome face couldn’t have looked sterner if she had just charbroiled the original copy of the Magna Carta. “Maybe we could order pizza.”

He looked at her silently, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. Sarah felt the beginnings of rebellion stir. Was burning dinner really such a sin? In the early days she had thought Ed’s perfectionism was admirable, a sign that he possessed high standards. He expected a lot from others, but he required a lot of himself, too. For instance, Sarah knew that he would require himself to be a faithful, reliable husband, which was exactly what she wanted. What she needed. She had no intention of repeating her mother’s mistakes.

After Sarah’s father had been caught cheating, when Sarah was only eight, her mother had promptly divorced him. She’d spent the next several decades trying to find a replacement. But she was a rotten judge of men.

Sarah couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been determined to choose more wisely. She wanted someone sensible. Strong. Faithful. Someone with a plan.

Several times during the past few weeks, however, traitorous thoughts had crept in. He had sometimes seemed not admirable, but…pompous. Petty. Dictatorial.

Out of nowhere came a chilling thought. Someday he would turn that expression, that cold, unforgiving blue gaze, upon their child. Over a broken toy, a soiled diaper, a C in math. She felt a quick, primitive burning in her legs, as if they were straining to run somewhere far, far away—somewhere he couldn’t find her. Or the baby.

But this was crazy. It must mean that her hormones were already acting up. She’d better pull herself together, or she’d never find the courage to tell him.

“Chinese. How about Chinese?” Ed liked Chinese food. Maybe he was just hungry. Maybe he’d be less tense after he ate something. She smiled as pleasantly as she could. “My treat.”

“No.” He sighed from the depths of his diaphragm. “Oh, maybe it’s just as well. I really shouldn’t stay very long anyhow. I’ve got a lot to do tonight.”

He gestured toward the sofa, which was decorated with small needlepoint pillows that read “Peace on Earth” and “Joy to the World.”

“Sit down, Sarah,” he said somberly. “I have news.”

“Oh,” she said. She moved the pillows out of the way and sat. She looked up at him, trying to find the man she had fallen in love with, that handsome, twenty-eight-year-old former math teacher whose extraordinary maturity had made him the youngest high school principal in the state of Florida. That worthy man couldn’t have disappeared overnight.

She smiled the best she could. “I have news, too, Ed.”

He sat on the chair opposite her. “Let me go first,” he said. “Mine is very important.” He winced. “Oh, hell. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Somehow, still smiling, she waved away the insult. He’d know soon enough that her news was important, too. Life shattering, in fact. She tried to compose her face to look interested, but her mind couldn’t quite focus on anything except the new truth inside her.

What would he say? How would he feel? How, for that matter, did she feel?

After a moment she realized he wasn’t speaking. She glanced over at him, surprised to see him looking hesitant. Ed was rarely at a loss for words. At Groveland High School, where they both worked—Ed as principal, Sarah as Home Economics teacher—Ed was legendary for his ability to subdue hostile parents. He smothered every complaint under a soothing blanket of verbiage.

He cleared his throat, but still he didn’t begin. He looked around her tiny living room, then stood abruptly. “I can’t breathe in here, with all this smoke. Let’s go outside.”

Sarah felt a new unease trickle through her veins. What was this news that he found so difficult to share? But she followed him out onto the small balcony that overlooked the complex swimming pool. The air was balmy, typical December weather in south Florida. The colored holiday lights looped along nearby balconies blinked rather desperately, as if reassuring themselves that it really was Christmas, in spite of the heat.

Ed went straight to the railing and leaned against it, looking down at the turquoise pool, where several of Sarah’s neighbors were having a keg party. They were all dressed in Santa hats and bathing suits.

Sarah was suddenly eager to postpone whatever Ed had to say. Eager, too, to postpone her own devastating news. “Uncle Ward had hoped we could come spend Christmas with him in Firefly Glen,” she said. “Wouldn’t that have been lovely? White mountains and sleigh rides, and marshmallow roasts, and—”

“And four days snowed in with a bad-tempered, senile old man?” Ed shook his head. “No thanks.”

Sarah stared flatly at the stranger in front of her. “I never said he was senile.”

“Well, he’s almost eighty, isn’t he? Besides, I didn’t have the time, you know that.” Ed turned around, squaring his shoulders as if he had finally come to a decision. “Sarah. Listen.”

She stood very still and waited. A drunken chorus of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” wafted up from the party below, but she could still hear Ed’s fingers drumming against the railing.

“All right,” she said. “I’m listening.”

“They offered me the job, Sarah. The superintendent’s position. I’m going to California.”

She didn’t take her eyes from him. But she had heard the telling pronoun. “I’m” going to California. Not we. “I.”

“Congratulations.” She’d known he was applying for the job, a plum assignment as superintendent of schools in a small, affluent Southern California county. But she hadn’t really believed he’d get it. He was so young. He’d been a principal only a couple of years. But apparently he had wowed them in California, just as he wowed people everywhere, with his good looks, his sharp mind, his glib conversation.

“Sarah, do you understand? I’m going to California. Next month. Maybe sooner.”

“Yes, I understand.” But she didn’t, not really. “Are you saying you think we should postpone the wedding?”

He set his jaw—his square, well-tanned jaw…he really was so incredibly handsome—and licked his lips. “No. I’m saying I think we should call off the wedding.”

“What?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly.

He shook his head. “It’s not working, Sarah. I know you’ve sensed that, too. You must have. It’s just not the same between us. I know we haven’t wanted to admit it, but I don’t see how we can deny it any longer. And now, with me leaving…”

She waited. Her whole body seemed suspended in a weightless, airless space.

He looked annoyed, as if he had expected her to finish the sentence for him. “Well, now, with me leaving, it’s the right time to just admit it isn’t working, don’t you think?”

“What’s not working? What exactly isn’t working?”

He made an impatient noise, as if he felt she were being deliberately dense. “We’re not working. You’ve changed lately, you know that. You’ve been—well, to put it bluntly, Sarah, you’ve been bitchy for months. You criticize everything I do, for God’s sake, at school and at home. And it’s been weeks since you’ve wanted to make love, really wanted to. I know some of it is my fault. I’ve been busy. Preoccupied. Maybe I haven’t been as thoughtful as I should. I know I forgot your birthday.”

She closed her eyes on a small swell of nausea. He hadn’t forgotten her birthday. His florist had. For every major holiday, anniversary or birthday, his florist had a standing order to send her white roses. Ed had never even asked her whether she liked white roses. Which she didn’t.

She hated white roses, especially hothouse ones, which never quite opened and had no real scent. Why hadn’t that told her something, right from the start?

“Anyhow, it’s obviously not going to work. I’m sorry, Sarah. But this seems like the perfect time to make a clean break. Don’t you think so? With me leaving. Next month. Maybe sooner.”

She felt herself trembling with shock. And beneath the shock, but rising…something that felt like anger.

“No, actually, I don’t think so. Remember I said I had news, too? Well, here it is. I’m pregnant, Ed. I’m going to have a baby. Next July.” She smiled tightly. “Maybe sooner.”

For a moment, he reacted as if she had produced a gun and aimed it at his heart. He blinked. His mouth dropped open. He felt blindly with both hands for the metal railing behind him.

But he recovered quickly. He straightened to his manly six-four, a full foot taller than her own height, as if he could intimidate her into withdrawing her accusation by sheer size. He narrowed his eyes, closed his jaw and squeezed the railing so tightly his knuckles grew white.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s simply not possible. I have never had unprotected sex with anyone in my entire life. Never.”

She lifted her chin. “And I have never had sex with anyone but you,” she said. “So obviously we’re part of that small but unlucky percentage for whom the protection wasn’t quite infallible.”

He was shaking his head. “Impossible,” he said firmly. “Simply impossible.” After a moment, his face changed, and he moved toward her, his eyes liquid with a false pity. “Sarah. If this is some pitiful attempt to hold on, to try to keep me from going to California—”

When he got close enough, she slapped him. The sound rang out in a momentary lull in the partying below. Several Santa hats looked up toward her balcony curiously.

Ed rubbed his cheek, which was probably stinging. It was definitely red. “Good God, it’s true.” He looked bewildered. “It’s really true?”

“Yes, you bastard,” she whispered furiously. “Of course it’s true.”

He worried his lower lip, his unfocused gaze darting back and forth unseeingly, as if he were scanning his mind for options. “Well, no need to panic,” he said softly. She knew he was talking more to himself than to her. “It will be all right. There are lots of ways to fix this. It’s not even very expensive anymore.”

For a moment she thought she was going to be sick. Morning sickness already? At night? But then she realized it was pure, unadulterated disgust. Fix this? As if she were a bad bit of plumbing.

“Get out.” She pulled the sliding glass door open behind her with a savage rumble. “Get out of my house, and don’t ever come back.”

“Sarah, calm down.” He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away. “This isn’t the end of the world. Let me help you. At least let me write you a check—”

“Get out.”

He moved through the door, but at the threshold he paused again. He was trying to look concerned, but under that fake expression she glimpsed the truth. He was relieved that she was throwing him out. Relieved that he could scuttle away from the problem and still blame her for being unreasonable.

“I want to help you deal with this,” he said. “I’ll pay for whatever it costs. But remember, I won’t be here for long. I’m heading out to California next month, maybe—”

“I know,” she said. “Maybe sooner. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not soon enough. Or far enough. Now get out.”

A WEEK LATER, the gynecologist confirmed what the little pink x’s had told her so clearly that night. Sarah was going to have a baby next summer. Probably late June or early July. Congratulations.

But it still seemed unreal. Like a very, very long bad dream. As she entered her apartment, Sarah dropped her purse, her mail and her So You’re Having a Baby brochure on the coffee table. Then she dropped herself onto the sofa, like a puppet with cut strings.

Her answering machine was blinking. One call. It was probably Ed, who had left one message every day this week. Each time he said the same thing. “I’ve looked into it, and your insurance will cover the procedure. I’ll write you a check for any out-of-pocket expenses. But you need to hurry, Sarah. The sooner the better, as I’m sure you know.”

She pulled her feet up underneath her and rested her head on the softly upholstered arm, hugging her “Peace on Earth” pillow to her chest. Maybe she ought to call him back. Surely two people who were close enough to create a baby ought to be able to discuss what to do about having done so.

And perhaps Ed didn’t really mean what he was suggesting. He was shocked, just as she was. Maybe even a little frightened, though he’d never admit it. Neither of them was acting quite rationally.

Maybe she should call him. It was only six. He would be at home. His schedule was as familiar to her as her own. She could pick up the telephone right now. Yes, she should probably call, try to talk calmly.

But she didn’t move. She felt suddenly exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. She didn’t want to talk to Ed. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. He had already planned to leave her, she reminded herself. He had already decided he didn’t want her. She felt her mind recoiling, rejecting the overload of emotion.

Her half-focused gaze fell on the coffee table, where the week’s mail still lay where she’d dropped it as she came in every day, unable to work up the energy to open it.

A few bills, a dozen Christmas cards.

But now she saw that one of the cards was from Uncle Ward. His brief return address was written in his familiar arrogant black scrawl: Ward Winters, Winter House, Firefly Glen, NY.

The sight was strangely comforting. She reached for the card, wondering if Uncle Ward had included one of his long, witty letters chronicling—and sometimes sharply satirizing—the goings-on in his little mountain town. How lovely it would be to escape, even for a few minutes, into Uncle Ward’s world.

The envelope was bulky. There was a letter. She settled back to read it, smiling her first real smile all week, suddenly hungry for the sound of her uncle’s voice.

The letter was filled with rich, amusing stories and with vivid, tempting descriptions of the beautiful snowy winter they were having. She came to the end reluctantly.

…And I can’t seem to make anyone see reason about the damned ice festival. Greedy politicians, all puffed up and self-important. I guess I’ll have to take matters into my own hands. But what about you, Sarah? Aren’t you ready for a real winter? Florida! Bah! What do palm trees and cockroaches have to do with Christmas? If your stick-in-the-mud fiancé won’t come, come without him. I’d like that even better, actually. This Ed guy sounds as if his life view is a little constipated.

Sarah caught herself chuckling. Ward was actually her great-uncle, and, while Ed had been wrong to call him senile, he’d been right to call him bad tempered. Ward was crusty and sardonic and demanding, but he was also tough and practical and wise. And entirely right about Ed.

She sat up, wondering how much a flight to Upstate New York cost these days. She didn’t feel quite as exhausted anymore. Maybe a dose of Uncle Ward was just exactly the bracing tonic she needed.

And maybe his quaint and quirky Firefly Glen, with its white mountains, its colorful architecture and its silly, small-town squabbles, was just the sanctuary she needed, too.

Firefly Glen. She had spent one summer there, back when she was thirteen. Her mother and her husband had been fighting through a nasty divorce, and she had been packed off to Uncle Ward while the grownups settled important matters, like who would get possession of the Cadillac and the mutual funds.