A Baby For Christmas

He’s fighting for them

When Amy Donavan married the town playboy and left Forever, Texas, Connor McCullough wished her well—no matter how much it hurt. He got past it, but never really over it. Now the one that got away is back and needs his help...in more ways than one!

Recently divorced and fleeing her abusive ex-husband, Amy needs a safe place to hide and someone she can trust. And she’s not alone. Her fussy six-month-old son needs sanctuary, too...and Connor is determined to protect them both. It’s not his family, but it’s the family—and the woman—he’s always wanted. So when Amy’s jealous ex tracks her down, hell-bent on reclaiming his “property,” Connor’s ready to fight this time...

“All right,” he said to Amy as he headed toward the door, “then I guess I’ll say good-night and turn in.”

Connor was almost at the threshold when he heard her call after him.

“Connor?“

He turned around quickly, thinking that she had remembered something she needed. “Yes?”

Gratitude was shining in her eyes as she said, “Thank you.”

The two words caused sunshine to filter all through him. He hadn’t felt like that since they were kids in high school.

“My pleasure,” he told her.

The next moment he pulled the door closed behind him and then he was gone.

“Well, we did it, Jamie,” she whispered softly to the child, who was asleep in the nearby cradle. “We escaped. Now all we have to do is figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.”

A Baby for Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award—winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and seventy-five books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To Audrey,

The Best Pet

In The Whole World.

Ten Years Wasn’t Nearly Long Enough.

We All Miss You

More Than Words Can Say.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

It was so quiet, he could literally hear himself breathe.

Maybe he needed to get a dog.

Connor McCullough frowned and shook his head.

That was the thinking of a desperate man, the twenty-eight-year-old rancher told himself. He shouldn’t be desperate. After all, he had earned all this peace and quiet. Lord knew he’d worked hard enough for it over the years.

The only trouble with peace and quiet was that it was, well, too quiet. And peaceful could also be another word for boring.

For the last twenty-eight years, the ranch house he was sitting in had seen more than its share of bustling activity—as well as its share of sorrow. His mother had died here giving birth to Cassidy twenty-three years ago and this was where his father had passed away, as well. The latter had happened a week before he was about to go off to college. The first one in his family to actually go to college.

That dream wound up being temporarily shelved, or so he told himself, because if he had gone off to college, Cody, Cole and Cassidy would have been farmed out to foster homes, most likely separate ones.

So he’d stayed on and the four of them had worked as hard as they could to eke out a living and keep the ranch, his father’s legacy, going.

It definitely hadn’t been easy.

At times it was damn near impossible, but somehow, they’d always wound up managing, thanks to hard work and the kindness of their fellow neighbors in Forever—especially Miss Joan, the redheaded, wisecracking, dour-faced guardian angel who ran the diner that had been, and still was, the small town’s only restaurant.

Looking back, he kind of missed those years. Missed working so hard that he fell into bed, bone tired and asleep before his head had a chance to hit his pillow.

Missed hearing his siblings arguing about whose turn it was to do what chore.

At times, he recalled, it had gotten so noisy, he couldn’t hear himself think.

Well, he certainly could hear himself think now. But all he could really think of was that he missed the arguing. Missed all the sounds of a family living together.

One by one, Cody, then Cassidy and finally Cole had found the one they were supposed to be with and they had all gotten married in what seemed to him to be, now that he looked back, an amazingly short amount of time. All three were now married with kids. And, of course, they were all here every Sunday. Sunday dinners were pure bedlam and he loved it. But in contrast it made the rest of the week feel almost as quiet as a tomb.

At least, that was the way the evenings felt.

Most of the time Rita, his housekeeper, was around. The woman wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, but she did talk on occasion and the sound of her voice took away the oppressive feeling of loneliness.

But Rita had gone to visit her sister in Austin for a few days. He didn’t miss her cooking—although the woman did have a spectacular knack for making everything she put her hand to taste good. What he missed, now that the others were gone, was her company.

Granted that Cole was here during the week, helping him around the ranch, but when six o’clock came, Cole was gone.

Which was as it should be. He wanted his siblings to have families of their own. Wanted them to be happy.

For the last few days, with Rita gone, if he wanted company when the sun went down, he turned on the television set. But somehow, that felt way too artificial to him.

He needed to communicate with something living and breathing. Which was why he’d started entertaining the idea of getting a dog.

Finishing up dinner—Rita had prepared several casseroles for him before she’d left—he began forming a plan. He’d go into town tomorrow and get a cup of coffee—maybe even lunch—at Miss Joan’s and ask her if anyone’s dog had had pups recently. If anyone would know, it would be Miss Joan. The woman was the unofficial source of information for the whole town. He could swear that she had a way of knowing about things before they even happened.

He liked that idea, Connor thought as he took his lone plate from the kitchen table to the sink.

Turning on the hot water and dabbing some liquid hand soap onto the dish, he smiled to himself.

A dog.

Okay, so most of the time he had more than enough to do around the ranch, even with Cole’s added help. But once the sun went down, he could stand to have a pair of soulful brown eyes looking up at him for—

Connor turned off the running water and listened, his dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes. He pushed it back.

Was that knocking he heard?

He gave it to the count of five.

Nothing.

Shrugging, he went back to rinsing off the solitary dish, as well as the knife and fork he’d used. It was the middle of the week, no reason to believe that—

He stopped and turned off the water again, cocking his head toward the front door, the direction of what he perceived was the source of the sound.

This time, rather than just standing and listening to see if he could hear it again, he wiped his hands on the back of his jeans and went to the living room.

No point in wondering whether or not there was anyone knocking on his door when he could just as easily open it and check if there was anyone there.

“You’re a little more than one year away from turning thirty. That’s too young to be hearing things and imagining people on your doorstep,” Connor upbraided himself.

He was definitely going to talk to Miss Joan about getting a dog.

Although he didn’t hear any further knocking, Connor still twisted the doorknob and pulled open the door just to make sure there was no one there so he could put his mind at rest.

He wound up doing the exact opposite.

Chapter Two

There weren’t very many things that could catch Connor McCullough off his guard these days. One of the reasons for that was a great deal had happened in the last year and a half.

Cody had shown up with a newborn whom he’d helped a stranded mother-to-be give birth to in her dilapidated, stalled secondhand car. Not all that long after that, Cassidy had turned up, dripping wet and clutching a baby she’d helped rescue from the river during an unexpected flash flood.

And then Cole had topped both of them when he’d brought home twins who had been left in a basket on the doorstep. He had almost tripped over them when he’d walked out of the bunkhouse one morning.

All in all, Connor would have been the first to say that he didn’t think there was anything that would surprise him anymore.

With that in his mind, he was in no way prepared for what he saw when he swung open his front door to look outside.

A wan, breathless Amy Donavan was standing on his doorstep, holding what looked to be a six-month-old baby in her arms.

For a moment, he thought that he’d somehow managed to fall asleep in the kitchen and was dreaming this, or hallucinating it, or whatever it was called when a man’s mind conjured up an image of the only woman he had ever loved standing on his doorstep, looking utterly helpless and needy.

“Amy?” he asked uncertainly, half expecting the sound of his own voice to wake him up.

Except that it didn’t.

And then his hallucination spoke.

“I’m sorry, Connor. I just didn’t know where else to turn.” Her eyes, those beautiful, mesmerizing blue orbs that he always used to get lost in, were now the eyes of a woman who looked as if she was on a first-name basis with fear. “I’d understand if you don’t want to let me in,” the petite strawberry blonde added hesitantly, already taking a step back from the doorway.

“Maybe you might, but I wouldn’t.” Connor took hold of her elbow and drew her into his house.

Once she was in, Connor closed the door behind her and then did something that he normally didn’t do because he lived in Forever, where everyone trusted everyone else. He locked his front door.

Connor turned to look at the young woman, still stunned that she was actually here.

It had been a little over five years since he had seen her. A little over five years since Amy had left town. At the time, she’d been swept right off her feet and hopelessly in love with Clay Patton. Handsome to a fault, self-assured to the point, many felt, of being cocky, Clay was the town’s “bad boy.” He had a tongue that was dipped in honey and could sweet-talk the feathers off a pair of lovebirds.

When it became clear that Amy was falling for Clay, Connor began to worry about her. Worry about her getting hurt. But Amy seemed to be so genuinely in love and so determined to make things work between Clay and herself, he just couldn’t find it in his heart to stand in her way.

So he didn’t.

He also didn’t tell her how he felt about her.

Instead, he played his part as a steadfast friend, wished her well and told her that if she ever needed him, for any reason at all, all she had to do was pick up a phone and call him. No matter where he was, he’d find her and be there for her.

All this time and she hadn’t called. Instead, she’d come in person.

The Amy Donavan who had left town floating on a cloud and full of dreams was a far cry from the wan, frightened-looking young woman he saw standing in his living room tonight.

Ushering her and her baby over to the sofa, Connor coaxed, “Why don’t you sit down, Amy?”

Very gently, he had her take a seat on the sofa. It was almost like handling someone who was sleepwalking. “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Some tea? Something to eat? Maybe some milk for the baby?”

The word baby seemed to snap her out of the temporary daze that had slipped over her the moment she sat down on the sofa.

“My baby,” she said as if she suddenly realized that she was holding the child in her arms. She pressed the tiny bundle to her chest.

Lord, but Amy appeared incredibly weary, he thought. He was afraid that any moment, Amy’s arms might give way and she’d wind up dropping the baby. “If you’d like to put her—”

“Him,” Amy was quick to correct. “My baby’s a ‘him.’”

“Him,” Connor amended without missing a beat. “If you’d like to put him down, I’ve got a cradle in the back bedroom down here. You could put the baby in there and give your arms a rest,” he told her tactfully.

Connor’s eyes washed over her. In his estimation, Amy seemed beyond exhausted. Not only that, but she looked like she’d lost at least ten, maybe even fifteen, pounds since he’d last seen her. Life with Clay Patton had not been good to her.

She gazed up at him, instantly alert because of the suggestion he’d just made.

“A cradle,” she repeated, coming to the only conclusion she could. “You have a baby.”

Why else would anyone have a cradle? She was stupid to have thought that life had been put on hold for everyone else after she’d left Forever, she admonished herself.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude,” Amy apologized. Holding the baby against her, she was already struggling to her feet. “I just—”

The baby began to whimper.

“No, I don’t have a baby,” Connor assured her as he lightly took hold of her arm and then gently urged her to sit back down on the sofa.

All the fight had been taken out of her long before she’d walked into Connor’s living room. Consequently, when Connor tugged on her arm, she practically collapsed onto the sofa. But she continued tightly holding on to her child.

“I have a cradle,” Connor told her again, then set her mind at ease. “But I don’t have a baby.”

The reason for the cradle was a story for another time. Right now, the immediate problem was getting Amy to tell him what she was doing here after such a long absence. And why she looked so beaten down and frightened.

“I’ll bring the cradle out,” he offered. “You can set the baby down in it and have that cup of tea I promised you. It’ll do you good. And once you’ve finished your tea, you can tell me what this is all about.”

“Connor, you don’t have to...” Amy began, not wanting to make him feel obligated to go out of his way for her.

Rather than stay and argue with her, Connor disappeared into the side bedroom and fetched the cradle he’d mentioned to her. Carrying it out, he placed it on the floor right next to where Amy was sitting.

And then he stood in front of her, his eyes indicating her son.

“May I?” he asked.

Not waiting for an answer, he very gently took the whimpering baby from Amy’s arms. Rather than place him into the crib, Connor held the boy for a moment, gently rocking him and whispering something in the baby’s ear that Amy appeared not to make out even though she had moved to the edge of her seat.

As if by magic, the baby stopped whimpering and fussing. The next second, he was cooing and making happy noises. The boy settled down as Connor placed him into the cradle.

“It’s got runners,” he pointed out to Amy. “So you can rock your son while I get you some tea.”

She did as he told her, all the while staring at the baby in the cradle. Much to her relief, he looked contented. She was amazed at how calm he had become.

“What did you say to him?” she asked. “He hasn’t been this calm in weeks.”

“I just seem to have a knack with babies,” Connor called out from the kitchen. Within a couple of minutes, he walked back in carrying a mug of tea for her. “I guess after all the babies that have been through here, it’s a talent I just developed.”

“All the babies coming through here?” Amy repeated, clearly puzzled. She had no idea what he was talking about.

He realized there was no way she could know what had been going on here recently.

“Long story,” Connor told her, handing Amy the mug and sitting down beside her.

“I like long stories,” Amy said, taking the mug with both hands. The warmth that seeped through as she held it felt oddly comforting.

“And I’ll tell it to you,” the six-foot-tall rancher promised gamely. “Right after you tell me yours.”

She took a long sip of the tea, letting the soothing, hot liquid fortify her. It never occurred to her to put him off. Connor had been her best friend once—and she really needed a friend now.

“Oh, Connor, I don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning is always the best place,” he said kindly. When she looked at him with those same terrified eyes he’d looked into when he’d opened his door to her, he knew she needed his help. And patience. “I’ll start you off,” he said. “What’s this little guy’s name?”

At the reference to her son, Amy seemed to light up a little.

Studying her, Connor could see a little of the old Amy struggling to surface.

“Jamie,” she said, uttering the name almost reverently, as if the baby was the only thing still tethering her to life.

“How old is Jamie?” Connor asked, looking down into the cradle. After returning with tea for Amy, he’d begun gently rocking the boy again. Jamie looked as if he was about to drift off to sleep.

“He just turned six months,” Amy answered fondly.

For the first time, Connor detected a note of pride in her voice. It was easy to see that whatever else was wrong in her life, the baby was clearly the center of her universe.

“Is he Clay’s?” Connor asked.

At the mention of the other man’s name, anger flashed across Amy’s face. “He’s mine,” she said fiercely.

“And Clay’s?” Connor prodded, his question technically still unanswered.

In the five years that Amy had been gone from Forever, the possibility that she had taken up with another man was definitely there. But he knew Amy, knew her like he knew his siblings and himself. Possibly even better. Amy wasn’t the type to go from one man to another. She’d left town with Clay and he was willing to bet that she had remained with Clay—until something had forced her to flee with her baby.

“Yes,” Amy admitted with a great deal of reluctance. The next moment she looked up at Connor and cried, “Oh, Connor, I’ve been such an idiot.”

“We’ve all been there,” he said, doing his best to get her to go easy on herself.

But it was obvious that she wasn’t about to do that. “Not like me.”

He’d never heard her sound so terribly sad before. “Why don’t we talk about that later?” Changing the subject, Connor asked, “When was the last time you ate?”

Amy started to answer, then stopped. She thought for a moment and then, unable to remember, she shook her head, embarrassed.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that ends now,” he informed her. Taking charge—he didn’t know how to do anything else—he rose to his feet. “You stay here and I’ll put something together for you to eat.”

He was already beginning to leave the living room to make good on his promise.

Amy looked at him in surprise. “You cook?”

Connor grinned. “Yeah, but I reheat better.” And then he explained. “My housekeeper, Rita, went to visit her sister in Austin for a few days, but, bless her, she prepared a bunch of casseroles for me before she left. I think she was secretly afraid that I’d wind up subsisting on scrambled eggs three times a day until she got back.”

This, too, was news to Amy. It made her realize even further that a great deal had happened since she had left Forever.

“You have a housekeeper?” she asked in amazement.

“That’s right. You’d left town before Rita came to work for us.”

He watched as Amy flushed at the mention of her having left town. Connor silently upbraided himself for having so carelessly tossed the phrase around. He didn’t want to rub salt into her wounds, especially since he had no way of knowing what those wounds were or just how deep they actually went.

Wanting to distract her, Connor said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me? That way you can talk while I warm up your meal.” He saw the reluctant expression on her face as Amy glanced toward the cradle. “Don’t worry. If Jamie starts to cry, we’ll hear him,” Connor assured her. “The kitchen’s only a few feet away.”

It was all the persuasion she needed to sway her. Although still a little hesitant, Amy rose to her feet and followed Connor into the kitchen.

“When you said your housekeeper came to work for you, you used the word us,” Amy began.

Opening the refrigerator door, he rummaged around. There were still a number of casseroles to choose from, and Rita, bless her, had labeled everything.

“Yeah, I did,” he answered absently.

“By ‘us,’ did you mean your brothers and Cassidy?” Amy asked.

“Yes,” he told her, making his selection. He seemed to recall that turkey was always her favorite. But wanting to be sure he wasn’t mistaken, he asked, “Turkey okay with you?”

“Anything is fine,” she answered, although her smile told him that he had remembered correctly. He took the casserole out and shut the refrigerator again. “So where is everyone?” Amy wanted to know. Then, not wanting to seem as if she was digging into his personal life, she clarified by saying, “Cody, Cole and Cassidy. Are they out?”

Connor laughed softly. “Oh, they’re out, all right. They’re all out on their own.” When he saw the slightly quizzical look on her face, he added, “As in married with kids.”

“Really?” Although her own life had taken that course, somehow, she hadn’t thought of anyone she’d left behind doing that. To discover otherwise was extremely eye-opening.

“Really. All three of them are married. They still live around here and Cole turns up like clockwork five mornings a week to help me with the work on the ranch,” he said. He placed the casserole in the microwave oven and set the timer. “And everyone turns up here on Sundays for dinner. They’d all love to see you.”

Just then, the microwave dinged, signaling that the meal was warm enough, and he opened the door. Taking a towel, he carefully eased the hot dish out onto the counter.

“I doubt that,” she murmured, almost more to herself than to him.

He looked up at her sharply.

“I don’t,” he countered. “And with Jamie by your side,” he went on as he set the individual casserole dish right in front of her on the kitchen table, “you’d fit right in here.”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he saw they had generated tears in her eyes.