THE MAVERICK'S CHRISTMAS BABY

by Victoria Pade

  But, oh, she wished this particular Traub would come back....

  She considered yanking on the rope just to get him to, but she didn’t let herself. They needed help and if there was any chance that he might find cell reception she couldn’t cut that short.

  But soon, come back soon....

  Then, as if in answer to her silent plea, the rear passenger door opened and there he was.

  She also didn’t understand why the way he looked registered in that instant, but she was struck by how tall and capable-looking he was. She guessed him to be about six foot three inches of broad-shouldered, Western masculinity.

  But it wasn’t merely his size that impressed her. He was remarkably handsome—something else that she’d never noticed in all the times they must have crossed paths around Rust Creek Falls.

  Nina knew all the Traubs in general, but she’d never really noted much about them in any kind of detail. Now it struck her that Dallas really did have rugged good looks with a squarish forehead, a nose that was a bit hooked, but in a dashing sort of way, lips that were full and almost lush, and striking blue eyes that had enough of a hint of gray to add more depth than she’d ever have attributed to a Traub.

  “Did you get a call out?” she asked as he extracted the end of the rope through the window, tossed the re-coiled mass into the truck bed again and then climbed into the backseat with her, closing the door and the window after himself.

  “No,” he said. “We’re really in a dead zone out here. But don’t worry about it. Somebody will come looking for us. My folks are stuck at home with my three boys—believe me, before too long they’ll start to wonder where I am.” Then he switched gears and asked, “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay....” Nina answered uncertainly.

  “Any more pains?”

  “One,” she admitted.

  “And how about heat? Think we can turn it off for a little while?”

  “Sure. If you’re warm enough.”

  He stood to lean over the front seat to reach the key, and Nina found herself sneaking a glance at him from that angle.

  He was wearing jeans that hugged an impressive derriere and thick thighs, and she knew she had no business taking note of any of that.

  Then the engine went off and he sat back down, turning toward her and perching on the very edge of the seat so he could pull down the rear cushion as he said, “There should be a blanket in here...”

  He produced a heavy plaid blanket from the compartment hidden behind the seat.

  “You’re probably not going to like this, but we’ll both stay warmer if we share the blanket and some body heat,” he said then.

  “It’s okay,” Nina agreed, knowing he was right.

  And not totally hating the idea of having him close beside her or of sharing the blanket with him. But she didn’t analyze that.

  Opening the heavy emergency blanket, he set it over Nina and reached across her to tuck it in on her other side.

  Then he sat near enough to share the warmth he exuded and laid it across himself, too.

  “You’re sure you feel better sitting up?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “If something changes and you need to lie down just let me know....”

  “I will,” Nina said.

  She did slump a little more into the blanket, though. And somehow that brought her a bit closer to him, too. But he didn’t seem to mind that she was slightly tucked to his side and it seemed as though it might be insulting if she moved away again, so she pretended that she didn’t notice.

  “So...” he said when she was settled, turning his head toward her and looking down at her. “You’re Nina Crawford, right? You run the General Store in town?”

  Apparently Dallas Traub wasn’t any clearer about the details of his Crawford rivals than Nina was about the Traubs. And since they’d never had any one-on-one, face-to-face contact before this, Nina was even surprised that he knew her name.

  “I’m Nina, right. And yes, I run the store.” The store that the Traubs rarely frequented, making it well-known that they chose to do their shopping in nearby Kalispell rather than give business to the Crawfords.

  “I’m Dallas—in case you didn’t know....”

  “You live on your family’s ranch—the Triple T, right?”

  “I do work on the ranch, but I have my own house on the property. I’m divorced, and with three boys—Ryder, who’s ten, Jake, eight, and Robbie, who just turned six a couple of weeks ago.”

  “And you have custody of them?” Nina asked, recalling that no one was too sure what had happened to his marriage, but that it had ended about this time last year. Gossip had been rampant and she remembered thinking that, since he was a Traub, his wife had probably just wised up. Nina hadn’t found it so easy to understand why his ex-wife had left her kids behind, though.

  Now, appreciating the way Dallas had been caring for her, appreciating the effort he was putting into distracting her by making conversation, how just plain kind and friendly he was being toward her, she had less understanding of his wife’s leaving him, too.

  “Yep, it’s all me, all the time...” he said somewhat forlornly and without any of the confidence he’d shown in every other way since he’d opened her car door. “Not that my family isn’t good about helping out—they are. But still—”

  “You’re the Number One in Charge. Of three kids.”

  “And there’s nothing easy about being a single parent,” he said, clearly feeling the weight of it. His gaze went for a split second in the direction of her middle. “I guess I don’t know many specifics about the Crawfords,” he said then. “I probably know the most about your brother Nate now, just from the election for mayor—”

  “Since he was running against your brother Collin and lost,” Nina pointed out.

  “But I don’t think I knew you were married or pregnant....”

  “Pregnant, not married. Never have been.”

  “But you were with someone weren’t you? Leo Steadler? He did some work for us a couple of years back and—”

  “I was with Leo for four years.” Four years that had led only to disappointment.

  “But he left town, didn’t he?”

  Nina could hear the confusion and suspicions that were mounting. “He did.”

  “Rather than stepping up?”

  There was outrage in that that made Nina smile. “The baby isn’t Leo’s.”

  “Oh.”

  She smiled again, having a pretty good idea what he was filling in the blanks with. The same things her own family had assumed—first that the baby was Leo’s, then that she’d had some kind of rebound fling that had resulted in an unwanted pregnancy.

  But they were all wrong. And since she wasn’t ashamed of the choice she’d made and had been perfectly honest with everyone else, she decided to be perfectly honest now, even with Dallas Traub.

  “After four wasted years with Leo, when it ended I decided I wasn’t going to wait for another man to come along.” And make more empty promises of someday. “There was no telling how long it might take to meet someone—”

  “If ever,” he muttered as if he held absolutely no optimism when it came to finding a soul mate.

  “And then what?” Nina went on. “What if I used up another year or two or three or four and found myself right where I was after Leo? I’d just be older and I still wouldn’t have the baby I’ve always wanted. The family. And sometimes you just have to go after what you want, regardless of what anyone else thinks. So I took some time off, went to a sperm bank in Denver without telling my family—”

  “You just did that on your own?”

  “I did,” Nina said with all the conviction she’d felt then still in her voice. “I didn’t see the point in sitting through people tr
ying to talk me out of it, so I just did it. And, voilà! The magic of modern medicine—I’m having the baby I want, on my own.”

  Looking up at him, Nina watched him nod slowly, ruminatively, his well-shaped eyebrows arching over those gray-tinged blue eyes. “Wow,” he said, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her. “My family is very big on marriage and would freak out over something like that. How did yours take it?”

  “They freaked out,” Nina confirmed. “But when the dust settled...” She shrugged. “I’ve always been my own person and strong-willed and...well, hard to stop once I put my mind to something. My family has just sort of gotten used to that. And a baby? That’s a good thing. So after the initial shock, they got on board.”

  “I’d say that was a good thing, otherwise having a baby on your own might be kind of an overwhelming proposition.”

  “But I just didn’t want to wait anymore.”

  “You seem kind of young for the clock to be ticking loud enough to go that route.”

  “That was something my family said. I’m twenty-five, so sure, my age isn’t an issue. Except that I’ve always wanted to have kids fairly young, in my twenties. I don’t know how old you are, but if you have a ten-year-old, that’s probably about when you got started, isn’t it?”

  “I’m thirty-four, so yeah. Ryder was born when I was twenty-four.”

  “And that means that you have the chance to be around to see your kids at forty, at fifty or sixty. To know your grandchildren and maybe even your great-grandchildren. That’s how I want it, too. Family is the most important thing to me. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what life is about.”

  “But isn’t it about doing all that with a partner?” he asked, still sounding baffled.

  “Ideally. But look at you—there are no guarantees that even if you start out with a partner you’ll end up with one.”

  “Yeah...” he conceded a bit dourly. “It’s just...single-parenthood is a tough road. I’m never sure whether or not I might be dropping the ball in some way. Especially lately...”

  Nina was curious about that, but out of the blue a pain more severe than any she’d felt yet hit her, pulling her away from the back of the seat.

  Dallas sat up just as quickly, angled toward her and put an arm around her from behind.

  “It’s okay,” he said in that deep masculine voice that she was finding tremendously soothing. “Just ride it out. Don’t fight it. Breathe...”

  She tried to do all of that, but this pain was sharp. She closed her eyes against it and the renewed fear that came with it.

  “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 kno
w 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.