by Caro Carson
“Have fun.” Madison grinned and headed toward Main Street Yarn while Felicity’s face went warm again.
The awkward truth of the matter was that Madison and her husband were 100 percent correct. There had definitely been sparks between Felicity and Wade at the wedding last month—so many sparks that Felicity had been grateful for the dozen or so firefighters in attendance. In the back of her mind, she’d almost hoped that once she moved to Lovestruck, something would come of those sparks.
But moving day happened to fall on the morning after Wade delivered the baby and, well...
She couldn’t go there. Felicity’s new life in Lovestruck came with a strict anti-baby policy, even if those babies were on the periphery. It was a matter of self-preservation. The only exceptions were Emma and Ella, Jack and Madison’s twins, because she couldn’t exactly avoid her best friend’s stepdaughters. She could, however, avoid Wade Ericson and his baby-saving aura.
Except for now.
“Hey, Felicity.” Wade’s mouth curved into a lazy grin she felt down to the tips of her toes.
“Wade,” she said primly, and then frowned once she managed to drag her gaze away from his chiseled features and flirty dimples long enough to realize he wasn’t dressed in anything remotely resembling Biblical garb.
He was dressed in his regulation dark blue LFD T-shirt and cargo pants, which had the annoying effect of reminding Felicity that he was a bona fide hero. Equally annoying—the apparent firefighter fashion code that required the sleeves of his T-shirt to intimately hug every bulge of his rock-hard biceps. It was snowing, for heaven’s sake. Shouldn’t he be wearing a coat? Or better yet, a drab brown robe?
“Where’s your costume?” she blurted, feeling ridiculous all of a sudden in her virginal attire.
“It’s at the station. I got stuck on a call for a medical assist and came straight from the hospital.”
Of course you did, thought Felicity. She wondered if the medical assist involved an infant, but she didn’t dare ask.
“I didn’t want to be late picking you up.” He strode to the passenger’s side of the car in three easy strides and held the door open for her. “Do you mind if we swing by and get my costume on the way?”
“Sounds great.” She aimed for a beatific smile, but it quickly turned awkward as she tried to scoop miles and miles of blue silk into her arms so she could climb into the car.
So much for looking angelic.
Wade laughed, deliciously low. “Here, let me help.”
He gathered an armful of fabric trailing the ground behind her, and Felicity did her best not to stare. Why did a vision of herself as a bride and Wade helping her with the train of her Vera Wang suddenly flash in her mind? Good gravy, indeed.
“Here you go,” he said, gently placing the blue silk onto the seat of the car beside her. “All tucked in.”
Then he reached across her to fasten her seat belt, and Felicity didn’t dare breathe.
But it was too late. She could feel his warmth, and his swoony firefighter scent—reminiscent of a campfire under a snowy starlit sky—was already making her head spin.
Too close. Way too close.
She muttered a thank-you and closed her eyes until she heard the car door shut.
“Thank you, by the way,” Wade said as he climbed behind the wheel.
Felicity felt herself frown. “For what, exactly?”
“For not asking if my medical assist involved delivering another baby.”
At first Felicity thought it was a joke, but the serious set of his jaw told her otherwise. “Is all the attention getting to be too much?”
“Not exactly, it’s just...” Wade shook his head as they headed toward the firehouse at the far end of Main. “I don’t know. It’s not something I want to keep dwelling on, that’s all.”
“I understand,” she said, a little too quickly. “No baby talk tonight, I promise.”
He turned to smile at her, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Interesting. Wade seemed different, for lack of a better word. Ordinarily, he was all easy charm and flirty banter. But, if he didn’t want to dwell on baby-related conversation, she was all for it.
“Here we are.” He shifted the vehicle into Park in front of the firehouse and glanced at Felicity’s costume filling up most of the space in the floorboard. Then his mouth hitched into a half grin that made him look much more like the old Wade who’d lowered her into an over-the-top dip on the dance floor at Jack and Madison’s reception. “Given your billowy robes, do you want to just stay here while I run in and change real quick?”
She nodded. “That would be a definite yes.”
“I’ll be Bethlehem-ready and back in a flash.” He winked, and it seemed to float deliciously through her.
How was she going to do this for the entire festival? Thank goodness there would soon be a number of live sheep between them to serve as a buffer.
She took a deep breath and toyed with the gold locket she always wore on a chain around her neck. Everything was going to be fine. The Joseph costume would probably work wonders in helping her forget about Wade’s biceps. But, just as she was beginning to feel the tiniest bit confident about the coming hours, a sharp rap on the car window caught her off guard.
She gasped, heart hammering. And when she swiveled her head to see who’d knocked on her window, her surprise crystalized into panic.
A young girl stood on the other side of the glass—she couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old. She wore a long puffer coat that gave the impression of being part winter attire and part security blanket, and the pink knit hat on her head had a fuzzy pompon on top. It fluttered in the icy Vermont wind. But Felicity couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the bundle in the girl’s arms.
A baby.
The infant was so tiny, so delicate. It looked like a newborn. What was a baby this fragile doing out in the cold?
Felicity fumbled with the controls but couldn’t get the window open, so she opened the car door and tumbled outside in a pile of blue silk. Only then did she notice the tears streaming down the teenager’s face.
“Are you okay?” Felicity asked, and a terrible fear began to swirl low in her belly.
Please don’t let this be what I think it is.
The girl sniffed. “I need you to take my baby.”
Felicity swallowed hard, panic beating its frantic wings against her rib cage. She’d heard of this kind of thing before—the Safe Haven law, which allowed parents who were unable to care for their children to anonymously leave them at a designated place like a hospital or police station.
Or firehouse, she thought, glancing at the building where Wade had just vanished inside. Her gaze darted to the apparatus bay, hoping against hope that another firefighter would notice what was happening and come rushing to her aid. But the bay was empty, and then she remembered that the fire department was always a big part of the Christmas festival. They were probably all already down at the town square, passing out candy canes from atop fire engines wrapped in twinkle lights.
“Um, why don’t you let me go get someone to help you?” Felicity said, trying her best to calm the tremor in her voice. The girl seemed frightened to death. “There’s a fireman right inside. I’m sure he’ll know what to do.”
“No! No way. He might recognize me. Google said I could leave the baby here and someone could adopt him and give him a real home. I don’t even have to leave my name.” The girl waved a hand at Felicity’s costume. “And look at you. You’re the Virgin Mary, right? It’s like a sign.”
It wasn’t. It couldn’t be, but the girl seemed so desperate, and Felicity was beginning to worry about what might happen if she didn’t take the baby. “I want to help you. I do. Please just let me get a firefighter...”
The girl thrust the whimpering infant toward Felicity. “P
lease. I would’ve just dropped the baby off at the doorstep, but I didn’t want to leave him alone in the cold. Please just take him and give him to the fireman.”
Leave the baby out in the cold?
Just the mention of that dangerous possibility had Felicity reaching for the child and holding him tight against her chest. He mewed like a kitten, so tiny, so fragile, and at that very first contact with his soft little body, time seemed to stop. The snowflakes drifting down from above danced in aching slow motion. The sounds of the Christmas festival down the street faded into background noise. All Felicity seemed to hear was the infant’s tiny puffs of breath and the beat of his sad little heart, crashing wildly against hers. She felt herself start to shiver, and she knew without a doubt it had nothing to do with the cold.
Felicity took a deep breath as her mothering instincts came back in full force. Muscle memory was a wondrous thing—as much as she wanted to resist the sweet, unfortunate child, she knew just how to hold him to warm his chilled little body. He stopped whimpering and burrowed into her embrace. She bit down hard on her bottom lip to keep herself from crying.
Hold it together.
“Are you sure you don’t want to leave your name, in case you change your...” Felicity looked up, and her voice fell away.
The girl was already gone. She’d left nothing behind with her newborn child except a trail of scattered footprints in the snow.
“It’s okay,” Felicity whispered against the baby’s downy head. “Everything is going to be okay.”
But she wasn’t altogether sure if she was talking to the baby or to herself. She rocked back and forth in an effort to soothe them both, and when Wade called her name, the sound was like music to her ears—the sweetest Christmas carol she’d ever heard.
“Felicity?” He stopped dead in his tracks, his brown robes whipping in the wind as every last bit of color drained from his face. “Is that...”
She nodded, and hot tears spilled down her cheeks. “A baby.”
A Christmas child.
Copyright © 2020 by Teri Wilson
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ISBN-13: 9781488070280
For This Christmas Only
Copyright © 2020 by Caroline Phipps
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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