Their Unexpected Christmas Gift

Then he saw the corner of a piece of paper, tucked under the blanket at the bottom of the basket. With one hand, he fished it out and unfolded it. In neat, cursive script, the note said: “Please take care of Ellie as well as you took care of me. I know she’ll have a good home with you. Love, Sammie.”

Sammie. That was the name of one of the women, he remembered now. Who was the other one with her? Something with a V. Or maybe a K. Damn it. He couldn’t remember.

“Ellie?” he said. The baby blinked at him. “Where’s your mom or moms or aunt or whoever it was that brought you here?”

Ellie was holding her head up on her own, which was a good thing, he knew that much. It meant she wasn’t brand-new, but also not old enough to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so if he didn’t figure something out soon, he was going to have to decide what—and how—to feed her.

“Kid, do you have teeth yet?”

The baby began to whimper. Nick brought her to his shoulder and began to rub her back in a circle. He’d seen someone do that in a movie once, and it seemed the kind of thing someone did to calm a baby down. Within seconds, it worked. The baby stopped crying, but then she did something worse.

She curled against Nick, fisted her hand in the collar of his shirt…and cooed.

“I’m not parent material, kid.” Big blue eyes met his. Damn. He’d always been a sucker for blue eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.”

She kept on staring at him, nonplussed. As babies went, she was pretty cool. And she smelled like strawberries and bananas, all sweet and innocent. Damn. “What am I going to do with you?”

Just then, the front door opened and the brunette who had checked in yesterday walked into the inn. About damned time.

Nick kept the baby against his chest, grabbed the basket with his other hand and hurried down the hall. With each step, his aggravation with the woman grew. It had been irresponsible as hell to leave a kid alone and drive off, even if she had come back just a few minutes later. At the last second, he put the baby back in the basket, then picked it up and carried it with him. If this woman was the kind of mother who forgot her kid on a kitchen table, maybe he shouldn’t give her back without asking a few questions. Or calling the cops. “About time you came back, lady. You—”

“Why were you holding Ellie? Where’s Sammie?”

Some of his anger derailed as soon as he was face-to-face with the woman. She was just that beautiful in her tailored navy suit and heels. She had her hair back in a bun at her nape, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. She had one fist on her hip, a circle of keys hanging from her finger and an oversize boxy purse in the other hand. For someone with a baby that he guesstimated wasn’t more than a couple months old, this woman looked really, really great.

“Where is she? How am I supposed to know?”

Nick grabbed the basket and headed down the hall to the kitchen and set the baby back on the table. “If you’re the kind of person who can’t keep track of your girlfriend or sister or whoever Sammie is, not to mention your kid, I’m not giving the baby back to you.”

The woman ignored him. She barreled past Nick and crossed to the basket before Nick could react. “Ellie! Are you okay?” She pulled back the blanket, counting fingers and toes, acting all concerned.

Nick wasn’t buying it. He yanked the basket up and out of the woman’s reach. “What kind of mother are you, anyway? And who said you can even touch her? I should call the cops. I found her abandoned on the kitchen table in this basket. Anyone could have walked in and taken her, you know.”

The woman put her hands out. “Thank you for taking care of her. Now, if I could just have the basket—”

Nick should have slammed the door in the woman’s face or something. But he’d been all discombobulated by the baby on the table, and the sneaking suspicion that he was missing part of the story here. “I’m not letting you leave here with this baby. In fact, I’m calling the cops right now.” He unlocked the cell and started pressing numbers. “I’ve seen Dateline, you know.”

“I’m not the baby’s mother—”

“All the more reason for me to call the cops, babynapper.”

“I’m her aunt. My sister, Sammie, is the irresponsible one.” She gave the baby a smile, but stayed a solid three feet away. “Ellie knows, doesn’t she? I’m your auntie Viv.”

Nick tucked his phone away. The two women were sisters, and the baby was this woman’s niece. Made sense, but still didn’t explain why the baby got left on the kitchen table. “Well, I want to see some ID.”

The woman smiled. Holy hell, she had a beautiful smile. Wide and with a slightly higher lift on one side than the other. There was a tiny gap between her front teeth that Nick might have found endearing under other circumstances. “An ID? For Ellie? I don’t think they hand out licenses to three-month-olds.”

Three months old. Barely a person, which caused a roar of protectiveness in Nick. “Not for her. For you. Prove you’re this kid’s aunt.”

“I can’t. I mean, it’s not like I run around with an ID saying I’ve got a niece. A niece I have only known about for twenty-four hours.” She sighed. “I checked in yesterday, and you saw me then. Mavis checked my license and took my credit card, and…” Her voice trailed off. She opened her purse, took out her wallet and cursed. “Damn it, Sammie. She must have taken my AmEx when I was in the shower.”

“You still have to pay for the room.” The words felt way too weak as soon as they left his mouth. This was his biggest threat? After Sammie or Viv—a nice name for a woman like her, as if it was short for vivacious—had left the baby behind?

“Of course I will.” She sighed, tucked her wallet away, then put out her hands again. “Give me the baby.”

So maybe she was the aunt. It all seemed plausible. Her sister was clearly an irresponsible parent. What assurance did he have that this woman would be a better caretaker? Viv looked like a responsible human, but then again…didn’t most people? Either way, she was still a stranger, and this kid wasn’t old enough to talk, so Nick felt like he had to do some kind of due diligence. “Well, I can’t let you leave with her, not until I know for sure that you’re her aunt and that you’re capable of taking decent care of her.”

Viv crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere without Ellie.”

They were caught in a standoff. And Nick wasn’t going to budge. He looked down at the baby, at those big blue eyes that were so trusting and innocent, and knew he couldn’t let the kid down. He’d found her, after all, and like a lost puppy, he was tasked with making sure wherever she went from here was safe and warm and good. The kid—Ellie, he told himself—had started to grow on him, damn it, and until he could figure out the right thing to do—

He did the only thing he could think of. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

Chapter Two

Vivian stood in a stranger’s kitchen, sitting beside Sammie’s biggest screw-up yet. Not Ellie, of course. The baby was precious and innocent, and smelled like bananas and everything that made Vivian uncomfortable.

If there were two people who shouldn’t be mothers, it was either of the Winthrop girls. Viv, whose entire life revolved around her career, and Sammie, her irresponsible younger sister who had dropped out of high school and run away more times than Viv could count. Sammie considered laws to be nothing more than a loose guideline to life, didn’t believe in self-control or apparently birth control, and had left her three-month-old on the kitchen table of the inn when Vivian drove to a meeting in Durham that afternoon, then told Vivian by text.

Stupidity of the highest degree.

Vivian shouldn’t be surprised. Sammie had never been what people would consider accountable. For anything. She wasn’t Vivian’s half sister—the daughter of boyfriend number seven or eight, who took Sammie to his mother’s house after they broke up, then brought her back and dropped her off when Sammie was nine and “too much of a handful.” From that first day when she’d found Sammie crying and alone, clutching a well-worn stuffed bear, Vivian had vowed to protect the girl.

The two of them had huddled in Vivian’s bed, clutching each other and made a solemn vow—they would never leave each other. Never. And when they grew up, they would be good moms to their children and pick good dads.

Vivian had tried her best to keep those promises for as long as she could. There had been no kids for her—there hadn’t even been any potential baby daddies—but she’d tried to stick close to Sammie, even as the two of them had ended up shuffled through the system like they were candy bars in a snack machine. She’d tried to steer Sammie toward college, or at least a trade, but Sammie had balked at any restrictions, and at eighteen, jetted off on her own, popping in once in a while to drop a bombshell—or, in this case, a practically brand-new baby—into Vivian’s lap.

There were days when Vivian was pretty sure she was from another planet. Unlike her mother and Sammie, Vivian had a degree, a career, an apartment and a predictable, responsible life. She’d made a conscious decision not to settle down, not to have kids and to stick to her comfort zone—the law. When she was fourteen, she’d made that crazy promise with Sammie to be a good mother, but at thirty, Vivian knew better. She wasn’t mother material. Not even close. So best to avoid all that hearth and home stuff and stick to her career. Except now here she was in a town she hadn’t lived in for at least fifteen years, with a baby she didn’t know, wondering why she kept cleaning up after Sammie.

This weekend was supposed to be all about bonding, about spending time with Sammie after more than a year since the last time they’d seen each other. Then Sammie had showed up at the inn with a baby in a basket, and said, “Surprise!” to Vivian, and everything had changed.

Vivian knew she should be resentful. But all she had to do was take one look at Ellie’s precious sweet face, and she knew why she’d dropped everything and broken the land-speed record this afternoon to rush back to Stone Gap when Sammie texted: I can’t handle it. I’m sorry. I left Ellie at the inn. Please take care of her. The little girl hadn’t done anything wrong except be born to a mother who wasn’t ready.

Sammie’s drop and disappear act had created a massive problem for Vivian, though. She couldn’t take care of a baby. Not just because she had neither a single mothering instinct nor any practical experience. Vivian had a demanding job. The law firm where she worked called her the “Results Queen” for good reason. There was a trial to prepare for and an apartment in Durham in the middle of renovations. Meanwhile, a baby required around the clock care. Vivian would have to hire a nanny and find a place that wasn’t swarming with construction workers for the nanny and Ellie to stay, which would mean one more stranger in Ellie’s short life.

“Want some coffee?”

She’d almost forgotten the man was there until he spoke. On an ordinary day, Viv would have noticed a man who looked like that. Tall, lean, dark-haired, with a smile that went on for days, and dark eyes the color of a good espresso. He’d been terribly protective of Ellie, which had frustrated Viv but also kind of endeared him to her. Even now, he hovered over her and the baby, clearly worried and not at all sure that Vivian could be trusted.

“I’d love some.” She’d had an emergency meeting this afternoon that she’d tried to get out of, because she’d promised Sammie a weekend together. So she’d zipped up to make a quick appearance at the office, and just as quickly turned around again when the text from her sister came in, and all hell broke loose. Now Viv was going to have to come up with a plan for Ellie between here and Monday morning. “And thanks for the dinner invitation, but I really need to get back on the road.”

“With the kid?”

“Well, I obviously can’t leave her here,” Vivian said as she got to her feet. Maybe she could get an Uber with a car seat, then come back for her own car later. Or call a friend to pick her up. Except she had no friends who weren’t as career-driven as she was, and all of them lived at least an hour away. And right now, she was feeling pretty lost about what to do, a position Vivian didn’t like being in. The man across from her, though, seemed cool and collected, and good with Ellie. “I… I don’t even know your name.” Why had she even said that? She didn’t need to know his name. It had nothing to do with her getting back to Durham. She should be leaving, now.

“My name is Nick,” he said. “Nick Jackson. There. Now I’m not a stranger.”

The joke made her smile a tiny bit. Inside, her confidence shook like a sapling in the wind. How was she going to handle Ellie and work? And how would she know what to do if Ellie cried or needed something? Vivian knew her way around a courtroom, but not around an infant.

“I’m Vivian Winthrop. I’m a civil litigator, and Sammie is my irresponsible sort-of-sister who abandoned her baby here. I invited her to the inn for a weekend away and to spend some time with her. Sammie showed up with a baby I didn’t know she even had, and then disappeared. Which is typical for her. She’s been doing it since she and I were in foster care together.”

“Foster care?” He arched a brow. Clearly, those words had put her back in the reluctant to trust her column.

“Sammie and I had a…difficult childhood with a mother who was…unreliable at best. It’s just been the two of us most of our lives.” Vivian fiddled with the handle on her coffee cup, avoiding Nick’s gaze. That was about all she wanted to say about that. The less she thought about her childhood, the better. “Anyway, didn’t you say something about dinner?”

He grinned. “So you’re staying now? I take it you trust me now a little?”

“Well, I’m kind of hungry.” She returned his smile and realized it had been a long time since she’d smiled. Her entire career was about being serious, a determined and stubborn bobcat in the courtroom and a moneymaker for the office. She’d risen quickly at Veritas Law based on that reputation, and had won several multimillion-dollar judgments and settlements against major corporations.

Her latest case, though, was more personal. A chance meeting with a man who was working nights as a janitor in the building revealed an injury that had nearly cost him everything. Jerry Higgins used to be a machine operator in a cannery, until a new piece of equipment with a faulty release switch had crushed his arm. The equipment manufacturer refused to cover Jerry’s medical bills after the cannery’s insurance company decided the equipment was at fault, not the cannery, which had left Jerry bankrupt. It was a step outside the usual lawsuits she worked, where one behemoth sued another, but it was also the first case she’d had in a long time that made her feel good.

Ever since she’d met Jerry, Vivian had slept, ate and lived that lawsuit. Even now, she could feel the need to get back to work. To finish that brief she needed to file, and schedule the next few depositions. Jerry, his wife and his children were counting on her to make it right.

Then she glanced over at Ellie, so innocent, so helpless in that wicker basket, and knew she couldn’t go anywhere, at least not until she figured something out for her niece. Vivian might not be mommy material, but she was going to make sure Ellie was cared for. She’d need to call the office day care program and figure out a way to live amid the current chaos of her apartment before she tracked Sammie down. Right now, on top of her already unwieldy and bloated to-do list, “calling the day care” seemed like a Herculean task.

And besides, it was Sunday. She had only a few hours before the clock ticked over to Monday and her life got crazy again. But first, there was dinner with this man who seemed calm and strong, two things Viv wasn’t feeling at all. Surely she had enough time to eat.

“I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in…forever,” Vivian said. “My apartment is under construction right now, not that I ever get in the kitchen and cook. So whatever you were making sounds good to me.”

“Well then let me show you what you’ve been missing.” Nick got to his feet and started pulling ingredients out of the refrigerator and a paper bag on the counter. Just then, Ellie started to cry, her fists rising above the blanket and waving in the air. The cries pierced the quiet of the kitchen, demanding, insistent.

Vivian rose and paced the small kitchen. Ellie kept on crying. “Uh, what’s wrong with her?”

Nick looked as clueless as Vivian felt. “I don’t know. She probably needs a diaper change or some food or something,” he said. “Do you have any of that?”

Vivian gave him an are-you-kidding-me look. “Yeah. I have all of that in my briefcase in the car. Of course I don’t have any of that stuff. I’m not a mom, and Sammie didn’t send me a grocery list when she texted me. She just said Ellie was here and she had left.”

And Vivian had come running, as always. Bailing Sammie out. Again.

“Didn’t she have one of those bag things?”

Vivian brightened. “She did have a shopping bag with some formula and a couple diapers. Let me see what she left behind.” She ran upstairs and returned a moment later with the nearly empty bag. “One diaper and a mostly empty can of formula. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem like enough.” She sighed. Once again, Sammie had left her older sister to pick up the pieces.

“I know someone who might have some extra baby stuff.” Nick picked up his cell and dialed a number. He tucked the phone against his shoulder, started chopping some onions and gestured to Vivian to pick up the baby, whose cry had turned into a wail. “Hey, Mac, it’s Nick Jackson. I was wondering if you had some diapers and what do you call it…?”

Damned if Vivian knew. She stood beside the table, hesitant, while Ellie kept on crying. Pick up the baby? What if she did it wrong? What if that only made the crying—which was reaching police siren levels—worse?

Vivian tried tucking the blanket tighter—wasn’t there something about burritoing a baby that soothed them?—and it didn’t work. She tried sh-sh-shushing Ellie, and the cries only got louder and stronger.

Nick put a finger in one ear. “Yeah, formula. Bottles. Whatever a…” He turned and raised a questioning eyebrow in Vivian’s direction.

“Three-month-old,” she reminded him. That answer she had, but not much else. Ask her stats—born at three twenty in the morning, six pounds, three ounces, twenty inches long—and she could fill in the blanks. But quiz her on what age a baby started real food or how to change a diaper, and she’d fail in an instant.

The closest she’d gotten to Ellie before this minute was admiring her as Sammie held her. And that was as close as Vivian had intended to get. Until Sammie screwed up again.

“…a three-month-old baby. No, not mine, Mac. It’s a long story.” Nick paused a minute, then gave Vivian another pick-up-the-baby nod. “Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it.” He hung up and tucked the phone in his pocket. “Mac will be by in a little while.”

“Mac?” Ellie kept on crying. Vivian kept on standing there, hesitating.

What was wrong with her? If this had been a court case, she wouldn’t have paused for a breath. But then, in a courtroom, she always knew exactly what to do. In those wooden rooms, Vivian was at home. While Nick’s comfort zone was the kitchen, hers was in that space between the judge’s bench and the plaintiff’s table. She could deliver a one-hour closing summary to a jury of twelve strangers, but when it came to a single three-month-old…

Well, that was different.

“Della Barlow’s son. Della’s the co-owner of this place, along with Mavis—you haven’t met Della because she’s on vacation right now.” Nick walked past her, picked up Ellie and swung her against his chest, as if he did this every day. A second later, Ellie plopped her thumb in her mouth and her cries dropped to whimpers.

Vivian decided to act as if a strange man calming her niece was not at all unusual. Except a part of Viv felt like a failure. Weren’t aunts supposed to be able to handle this kind of thing?

“The Barlows are a great family, in case you’re worried. I’ve been the chef at the inn for about a month now, and I’ve met all of them.” Nick had started swaying, a movement that seemed unconscious, and Ellie’s eyes began to shut.

“Really?” Vivian felt a little jealous of her niece. Right now, Vivian was in that odd place between uncomfortable and unconfident, and could sure use someone else to soothe her own worries.

“You’re so good with her,” Vivian said.

“This is about the extent of my parenting abilities. So don’t ask me to change a diaper or make a bottle.” He chuckled.

If he asked her how to do either of those things, she wouldn’t have an answer either. So she changed the subject. “So what are you making me for dinner, Chef Nick?”

“Braised chicken with cherry tomatoes and artichokes.” He kept on swaying with Ellie.

“That sounds amazing. You made the eggs benedict we had this morning, right? Those were incredible. Most of the time I’m eating popcorn or a sandwich grabbed on the run.”

“That’s no way to live. I think food is one of the greatest pleasures in life.”

The way he said that made her a little weak in the knees. Which was insane. Vivian was a practical woman, not one of those who swooned or got caught up in romantic notions. No, that was Sammie, who was the believer in fairy tales and Prince Charmings, no matter how many times she got burned by guys who were more frog than prince—unemployed scam artists who wanted a free ride and a few bedroom benefits.

“Oh my God. Ellie’s asleep,” Vivian whispered. “How did you do that so easily?”

“I don’t know. I just went with my instincts.”

Maybe Vivian was lacking the necessary strands of DNA because she had no instincts for babies. Not so much as a blip of an idea when it came to making Ellie happy. Late last night, after Sammie and Ellie had fallen asleep, Vivian had stayed up ordering from some baby website, shipping everything from the “new mom gift suggestions” list she’d found there straight to Sammie’s apartment. Baby outfits, blankets and a stroller that cost more than a small bus—because buying things was the only way Vivian could handle being an aunt.

Nick headed toward the kitchen table. Ellie stirred and let out a whimper. “Damn. I have to put her down to cook, but I’m afraid of waking her up.”

“We can put the basket in the living room, so the noise from cooking doesn’t bother her. She’ll sleep better there.”

“I don’t know if we should leave her alone, though.” Nick kept on swaying. He glanced at the chicken on the counter, then the basket, then his gaze swiveled back to Vivian. Damn, he had nice eyes. And a nice smile. “I’m good with having her in the living room, but I think you should stay with her. Just in case.”

That would give Vivian some time to check her phone, go over some emails and maybe kick off her shoes for a second. Then, after dinner, she could call a car seat–equipped Uber, get on the road with Ellie, and come up with a plan.

Because standing in this handsome man’s kitchen, mesmerized by the way he calmed a baby to sleep, was sending her mind down an entirely wrong path.

Chapter Three

Nick was not a softie. Nope. Not one bit. And the sight of Vivian curled against a pillow, asleep, did not affect him one bit.

She was a beautiful woman, with dark hair that had partly escaped the tight, complicated knot at the base of her neck, big blue eyes that reminded him of the Atlantic Ocean a few miles away, and legs that went on for days. Her black heels sat on the floor, twin soldiers nestled against each other. The basket with the baby was on the carpet below where Vivian’s head rested, Ellie snoring lightly in the dim room, and one of Vivian’s hands resting protectively on the top of the basket.