The Maverick's Christmas Baby

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “It’ll all be okay.”

Then she felt him press his lips to her temple in a sweet, tender, bolstering kiss that she knew had to have been a purely involuntary reaction of his own when he didn’t know what else to say to her.

The pain disappeared as fast as it had come on, and Nina wilted.

The fact that she wilted against Dallas Traub was also not something she thought about before it just seemed to happen.

But he held her as if it were something he’d done a million times before, and it seemed perfectly natural for her head to rest against his chest.

“There was a long time between pains,” Nina said when she was able. “I thought they’d stopped.”

“It’s good that they aren’t coming with any kind of regularity. Real labor is like clockwork. Maybe these are just muscle spasms.”

The baby had been moving and kicking normally as they were talking so it didn’t seem as if it was in distress, but still, there was nothing heartening about the situation.

“But you know,” Dallas said in a lighter vein. “If I end up delivering this guy you’ll have to name him after me—Dallas Traub Crawford.”

That did make Nina laugh. “Both of our families would freak out over that,” she said. “And I haven’t let them tell me if the baby is a boy or a girl—I want to be surprised.”

“The name still works even if it’s a girl.”

“Dallas Crawford.” Nina tried it on for size and then laughed again. “Let’s see...first I had to convince everyone that Leo isn’t the father, that I actually had artificial insemination. Then we’ll throw you into the mix? I can just imagine the rumors.”

“Rust Creek’d be talking about it for years.”

“And both of our families would probably stop speaking to us for consorting with the enemy.”

“Seems possible,” Dallas agreed with a laugh of his own.

Headlights suddenly appeared through the snow, coming from the direction of town, and within moments a vehicle pulled up beside them.

“What did I tell you? Help has arrived,” Dallas said.

Nina sat up and away from him, regretting the loss of his arm around her when he let go of her and turned to open the door.

Gage Christensen, the local sheriff, was standing just outside.

“You out here joyriding?” Dallas joked, but Nina heard the relief in his tone.

“When the storm hit your mother called the farm where you were delivering hay to find out if you’d left there. They said you had, and since you hadn’t gotten home, she called me.”

Dallas glanced over his shoulder at Nina. “What did I tell you? The thought of being stuck for too long with my three boys got the troops sent out to find me in a hurry.”

Then, back to Gage Christensen, he said. “I have Nina Crawford in here and I think she needs to get to the hospital in Kalispell—the sooner the better....”

So he was clearly more worried about her condition than he’d originally let on.

“Looks to me like I can pull around behind you and push you forward enough to get you going. Then I’ll do the hospital run,” Gage Christensen said.

“Why don’t you get me out of this ditch and just follow us? It’s probably not a great idea to move Nina but I’d like to know we have some backup. And maybe after the storm someone can come out here and get her SUV.”

Nina was surprised that Dallas hadn’t jumped at the opportunity to be off the hook. But she appreciated that he hadn’t, that he still seemed concerned for her.

“Let’s see what we can do,” the sheriff said, returning to his own vehicle.

Turning back to Nina, Dallas grasped her upper arm in one of those big hands and squeezed. “Just relax, we’ll be on the way before you know it,” he said, once more sounding confident.

Nina nodded, relieved that they were going to get out of there.

Then Dallas left, closed the rear door, and came in from the passenger side of the front seat to slide across and restart the engine, turning on the heat again.

It wasn’t long before there was a slight bump to the rear of Dallas’s truck. Then there was the sound of spinning tires and the feel of the truck inching forward until Dallas’s wheels caught enough traction to move onto the road.

“Now we’re cooking,” he said victoriously.

“My purse—I should have my insurance card,” Nina said as it became clear that they actually were going to be able to travel.

“I’ll get it,” he said, coming to a slow stop, then rushing out of the truck’s cab into the storm again to return with her oversize hobo bag and her keys.

“Thank you,” she said when he handed everything to her over the front seat. Then, a bit emotionally, she added, “Thank you for everything today....”

“Let’s just get you to the hospital,” he said, putting the truck into gear and setting off cautiously into the still-blinding blizzard.

Watching the back of his head as he drove, Nina couldn’t help marveling at the fact that she was continuing to be looked after by none other than Dallas Traub.

Personable, kind, caring, strong, reassuring and more handsome than she’d ever realized before, he couldn’t know how glad she was that he hadn’t merely handed her off to the sheriff.

And in that moment she couldn’t help wondering why it was that she was supposed to hate him.

Chapter Two

“Is anyone here for Nina Crawford?”

Dallas got to his feet the moment he heard that. He was in the waiting area for the emergency room of the hospital in Kalispell, where he’d been since arriving with Nina and having her whisked away.

“I’m Dr. Axel,” the woman introduced herself.

Dallas wasn’t sure whether or not to admit he wasn’t family but before he could say anything the woman continued.

“Nina and the baby are doing fine. The pains she was having were the result of hitting the steering wheel, not labor. There’s no indication that she’s about to deliver. We’ve done an ultrasound and the baby looks good, plus Nina is hooked up to a fetal monitor and there are no signs of any kind of distress.”

“Great!” Dallas said, relief ringing clear.

“As I’m sure you know,” the doctor went on, “Nina is at thirty-five weeks so birth at this stage—while inadvisable—would still likely not pose unusual problems for mom or baby should something change suddenly. But with the storm and the difficulties on the roads, getting her back here in a hurry might pose a problem and I’d rather err on the side of safety. So we’re keeping her overnight. That way we can continue to monitor things and watch them both, just in case.”

“Sure.”

“She’s being taken to a room now—if you check with one of the people at the desk they’ll be able to tell you the number.”

Dallas thanked the doctor, then he went to the reception desk, gave Nina’s name and learned what room she’d been taken to.

It was only after he had that information that he wondered if he should stay.

After all, he wasn’t family.

But while Gage Christensen had promised to notify the Crawfords of the accident and tell them Nina’s whereabouts, none of them had arrived yet. Despite the fact that the blizzard had stopped and only a light snow was falling, the roads still weren’t great, so there was no surprise there. And Dallas didn’t like the thought of Nina being alone, even if everything was okay.

So he opted to stay. Just the way he’d opted to stay after getting Nina here, despite the sheriff pointing out that he’d done enough, that there was nothing more he could do now that she was in the hands of the professionals, and that he might as well go home to his own family.

His family—his boys—were being well taken care of by his parents, all of whom he’d talked to while he was in the waiting room. Everything was going on as usual. But for now, without him, Nina had no one.

And he just couldn’t bring himself to leave her.

So he went to the elevator, got in and hit the button for her floor.

The maternity floor.

He knew it well. He’d been there for the birth of each of his three sons. With Laurel...

That memory wrenched his gut. The way countless other memories had during the past year.

The past year of hell...

It just wasn’t easy.

Not waking up to find his wife had left him.

Not raising three kids on his own.

Not dealing with his own anger and grief and sometimes rage and despair.

Not dealing with his sons’ emotions, which were sometimes right on the surface and other times came out so subtly he missed them until it was too late.

Not going on, living in the same town where they’d both grown up, being where almost everything in their life had happened, revisiting places like this hospital, where events had come about that were apparently not as meaningful to his ex-wife as they were to him....

Yeah, hell pretty much described it. And he was just trying to work his way through the emotional muck, in much the same way that Rust Creek Falls was still working its way through the muck left from the flood.

But he had confidence that Rust Creek Falls would get through its reconstruction and come out on the other end. He still wasn’t altogether sure about himself. Or about Ryder or Jake or Robbie.

When the elevator arrived on the maternity floor, he found Nina’s room without a problem and breathed a sigh of relief. It was a private room on a different corridor than where new mothers were located.

If he’d had to walk into one of the same rooms Laurel had been in with any of the boys he didn’t know if he could have done it. He could only push himself so far, even though he was doing his damnedest to get out of this hell he’d been in since Laurel had left.

Just pretend you’re okay even if you aren’t—that was what he’d decided he had to do. And maybe if he pretended he wasn’t buried under the blues, he’d finally start to actually see daylight again.

But one way or another, he’d already made an early New Year’s resolution—he was determined to spare his family and friends any more of what he’d been wallowing in for the past twelve months. No more telling everyone to beware of love, to avoid relationships. No more being the naysayer as he watched people couple up. He’d at least keep his mouth shut.

The door from the corridor was open and the curtain around the bed was only partially drawn so he could see that Nina was asleep, and he reconsidered staying once again. After the day they’d had she was probably exhausted and she could well sleep until her family got there, or even until morning.

But he really, really didn’t want to go yet. Just in case.

So he went silently to the visitor’s chair and sat down, settling in to study Nina rather than thinking more about the other times he’d been on the maternity floor or about the misery of this past year.

Nina Crawford...

Jeez, she was beautiful.

Her long, shiny hair was the color of chestnuts and it fanned out like silk on the pillow.

Her skin was pure porcelain.

Her nose was perfect, thin and sleek, and just slightly pointed at the end.

Her mouth was petal-pink, her lips just lush enough to make a man want to kiss them.

Her face was finely boned with a chin that was well-defined, cheekbones that were high and sculpted, and a brow that was straight and not too high, not too narrow.

And even though her eyes were closed and her long, thick lashes dusted her cheeks, he had a vivid recollection of just how big and brown they were—doelike and sparkling, they were the dark, rich color of coffee.

Yep, beautiful. Exquisitely, delicately beautiful.

Without the doctor telling him, he would have never guessed that she was as far along as she was. By now, with all three of the boys, Laurel had not looked the way Nina did. Not that he hadn’t thought Laurel was beautiful, because he had.

He was a man of nature, and he’d genuinely thought the entire process had that feel to it—natural and as beautiful as a sunrise evolving out of the dark of night.

But the more weight his ex-wife had gained, the more unhappy she’d become. Even more unhappy than she’d been during the rest of the marriage she’d never really been happy in....

Laurel was the last thing he wanted to think about, though, so he sealed off the memory and focused on Nina, who honestly did make true the adage about pregnant women glowing.

Or maybe that was just the way she looked all the time....

Since he’d never noticed her before, he couldn’t actually be the judge.

Although sitting there now, studying her, he wondered why he’d never noticed her before. How could anyone who looked the way she did have gone unnoticed?

She was only twenty-five—that was probably a factor because she was too young for him to have paid attention to. Plus he’d been so involved with his marriage—first in the early throes of love, and then trying to save it—that he hadn’t really paid attention to any other females. And even as an adult, Nina’s being a Crawford just automatically clumped her together with the rest of her family, who had all been cast under the shadow of contempt. Put it all together and he supposed that he’d just been blind to her.

But he wasn’t blind to her anymore.

At that moment he was sorry he wasn’t sitting as close to her as he’d been in the backseat of his truck. With the blanket over the two of them. With his arm around her—the way it had been when he’d put it there without even thinking about it.

The same way he’d kissed her without even thinking about it....

A Crawford. He’d kissed a Crawford.

A pregnant Crawford.

This had been a very strange day....

But still, thinking about it, here he was wishing he was back there. Stuck in a blizzard. At risk of having to deliver that baby.

Because it had somehow been nice there like that. With her.

It had been the best time he’d had in a very, very long while....

Okay, maybe he’d lost it. The best time he’d had in a long time, and it had been in that situation, with a Crawford?

That was crazy.

And yet, true...

Because she was something, this Nina Crawford.

Even under the worst circumstances, out there stuck in the snow, there had still been something positive and affirming about her. Strong. He’d known she was worried and scared, and even in the face of that she hadn’t bemoaned anything, she’d held her head high about making the choice she’d made to have that baby on her own, and she was just...

Something.

Something a whole lot better than he’d been for the past year since his divorce.

Something a whole lot better than the cranky naysayer he sometimes felt as though he’d turned into.

She was a positive force. He was a negative one.

Figured. The Crawfords and the Traubs—oil and water. That was how they’d always been. How they always would be. Except that he and Nina hadn’t been oil and water today.

Not that that meant anything. Or mattered.

Even if she wasn’t a Crawford, he thought, she was still only twenty-five and pregnant, while he was thirty-four and had three kids. Nothing about any of that put them on the same page. And people who weren’t on the same page couldn’t—or at least shouldn’t—come together. He’d learned that the hard way with Laurel.

Not that what had gone on today was anything like he and Nina Crawford coming together, he told himself when his own thoughts alarmed him a little.

He just felt responsible for her for the moment. Because he was the other party involved in the near-collision that had put her in the hospital.

There wasn’t any more to it than that.

If he could just stop recalling every minute of being alone with her in his backseat.

“Dallas Traub? What are you doing here?”

Now that was a Crawford that Dallas recognized.

“Nate,” Dallas answered in a whisper, glancing up to find Nina’s brother Nathan Crawford in the doorway with their parents—Todd and Laura, who had also been front and center through the recent mayoral election in support of their son—who had lost the race to Dallas’s brother, Collin.

Dallas stood instantly to face them. “Didn’t Gage tell you what happened?” he whispered, both in response and as a signal to keep voices low.

“He said Nina went off the road and had to be brought here. He didn’t say anything about you,” the matriarch of the Crawford family whispered back harshly, obviously having taken the cue.

But the attempt to keep things quiet was already too late because from the bed Nina said, “Stop. Dallas isn’t to blame. It was all my fault. I couldn’t see him coming until it was too late and I’d pulled out in front of him. We both swerved to keep from crashing.”

“Still bad enough. What are you doing here now?” Todd Crawford demanded.

“Daddy, Dallas has been great!” Nina informed her father. “He took care of me until the sheriff got there and even then he didn’t let Gage move me, and he had Gage follow us to make sure we got here all right. And here he is, even now!”

Dr. Axel joined the group then and Nina seemed to seize the sudden presence of the obstetrician as help in mediating, because she said, “Hi, Dr. Axel. Could you maybe take my family out in the hallway and let them know what’s going on with the baby?”

The doctor did as requested, herding the other Crawfords from the room.

“Thought I needed to be rescued, did you?” Dallas said with a laugh, moving to stand directly at the foot of the bed.

“Three against one—bad odds,” she answered, sounding groggy and worn-out.

“I didn’t want to leave you by yourself,” Dallas explained his continuing presence.

“That was thoughtful.” She gestured in the direction her family had gone. “I’m sorry that was your reward for being so nice.”

“No big deal,” he assured her, finding that what was feeling like a big deal to him was the idea that he was going to have to leave her now....

“Everything with you and the baby is fine, you know that, right?” he said then.

“I do. I’m giving you credit for that.”

“Nah. I didn’t do anything.”

“You did—”

“I’m just glad you and the baby are okay.”

“And that you didn’t have to deliver it,” Nina said with a smile that let him know she was teasing him.

“That, too,” he agreed, laughing in return and basking in the warmth of that smile that he liked more than seemed possible.

“Is it still snowing?” she asked then.

“It is, but the wind stopped so it isn’t as bad out there.”

“You should get home, then. To your boys.”

Dallas nodded. He did need to get home. He just couldn’t figure out why he was so reluctant to leave Nina. Nina Crawford, he reminded himself, as if that would help. “I suppose your family can take over from here.”

“They will. And everything is okay anyway, so there isn’t really anything to take over. I’ll lie in this bed and get waited on tonight, then go home tomorrow.”

Again Dallas nodded, lingering. “I’m sorry for all of this. That it happened,” he said, although that wasn’t strictly the case. He was sorry for what had happened. Just not for the time he’d had with her after it had happened.

“I’m sorry, too,” Nina said. “I’m sure you had better plans today than to end up stuck on the side of a road in a blizzard thinking you might have to turn your backseat into a delivery room, and then sitting at this hospital for the past four hours.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve had worse days,” he declared with a laugh.

The reappearance of her family and the doctor at the door made it clear that he had to go whether he liked it or not. “Anyway, since you’re in good hands, I’ll head for home.”

“Thank you,” Nina said in a tone that had some intimacy to it.

“Anytime,” he answered with humor.

“Be careful going back.”

“I will be,” he promised.

And that was that.

But for another moment Dallas stayed there, still finding it oddly difficult to leave. To walk out and put this day behind him. To sever the connection that somehow seemed to have formed between them through the adversity they’d shared. To return to the way things had been before—to barely being aware that Nina Crawford existed.

He had to go, though. What else was he going to do? Especially when her family and doctor all came to stand around her bed, the Crawfords’ scorn for him thick in the air as they pretended he was invisible.

He stole one last glance at Nina, whose big brown eyes met his, who gave him a smile that spoke of the connection they’d made, if only for a little while today. Then he raised a palm to her in a goodbye wave and finally did manage to leave.

Wishing—for no reason he understood—that a lot of things might be different.

And realizing only as he got back on the elevator to go down to the lobby that for just a little while with her he hadn’t felt so bad....

* * *

By Friday, Nina was home in her small apartment above the General Store and feeling good again. Better than ever, in fact. But she was still following doctor’s orders not to return to work until Saturday.

Her mother had been hovering. Laura Crawford had even spent Thursday night with Nina. But over lunch Friday afternoon, when Laura was still there and giving no indication of leaving, Nina had convinced her that everything was back to normal, and that Laura should go home.

Once she had and Nina was alone, her thoughts turned to Dallas Traub.

Since Wednesday’s near-collision she’d been finding it nearly impossible not to think about him and had used the presence of family to distract herself. But, finally left to her own devices, she couldn’t seem to think about anything but the swaggeringly sexy, blue-eyed Traub with the great head of hair who had taken such kind and tender care of her.

She wanted to thank him again for everything he’d done on Wednesday.

That was all there was to her constant thoughts of him, she told herself. And it was reasonable to want to express her gratitude.

After all, not only had he put aside whatever petty differences their families had, but he’d gone out of his way for her at every juncture.

Until her family had arrived and been rude to him.

And even then he’d been calm and courteous. He’d absorbed their scorn and contempt with aplomb and without dishing out any of his own before he’d gone on his way.

She owed him more than gratitude, she decided.

But thanking him again was a start, in order to let him know just how much she appreciated everything.

And if she also felt the need to hear his voice again and make some kind—any kind—of contact with him?

Maybe it was an odd phenomenon where a person developed a sense of kinship with their rescuer.

That seemed possible.

It seemed more possible than any kind of alternative. Like wanting contact with him because she was attracted to him....

How crazy would that be? she asked herself.

Attracted to someone when she was eight months pregnant?

Attracted to a Traub?

Completely crazy, that’s how crazy it would be.

And even more crazy still when she factored in his age.

That was the frosting on the cake.

Dallas was nine years older than she was, so even if she wasn’t pregnant, and even if he wasn’t a Traub, his age alone was enough for her to steer completely clear of him.

Leo had been ten years older than she was, and Nina had had enough of the disadvantages that came with a relationship with a wide gap in ages. Enough of accommodating and adapting and making all the adjustments because that age seemed to bring with it the privilege of some kind of seniority.

And Leo hadn’t had kids.

Dallas Traub did. Three of them.

Kids only increased the need for any woman who got involved with him to be accommodating.

Involved?

She didn’t know why Dallas Traub and involvement had even come in the same thought. Of course she wasn’t and would never get involved with him!