THE MAVERICK'S CHRISTMAS BABY

by Victoria Pade

  But still, she felt compelled to make the phone call.

  It required a few other calls to friends to get Dallas’s cell phone number, but she finally did. When she dialed it he answered right away.

  The sound of that deep, deep voice filled her with something she couldn’t explain. Something warm and satisfying.

  But she ignored the response and said, “Dallas? This is Nina Crawford.”

  He laughed. “You’re the only Nina I know. Hi!” he added, sounding happy to hear from her. Which was somewhat of a relief because it had crossed her mind that, now that they weren’t in dire straits, things between them might return to the normal state of affairs. At least, normal for their families.

  “I’ve been thinking and thinking about you—how are you?” he asked immediately and in a tone that held only friendliness.

  “I’m really good,” she said. “I got home yesterday and can’t work until tomorrow. But I feel fine and I would be downstairs doing everything I usually do right now if not for doctor’s orders.”

  “Downstairs? In your store?”

  “That’s where I work,” she answered with a laugh.

  “I’m there now.”

  He was just downstairs?

  Knowing he was that nearby sent a sense of elation through her. Strange as it seemed...

  “I live in the apartment above the store,” she informed him. “Want to come and see for yourself that—thanks to you—I’m faring very well?”

  Nina had no idea where that had come from. It was nothing but impulse.

  But Dallas didn’t hesitate before he said, “I’d like that! How do I get there?”

  “Go to the back of the store. There’s a staircase behind Women’s Sleepwear and Intimates—”

  “The boys will love that,” he said facetiously. Then he added, “Oh, I didn’t think about that. My boys are with me. Maybe we shouldn’t come up—”

  “I’m kid-friendly,” she assured. Then she laughed again. “I’d better be.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind? And that you’re well enough?”

  “I’m sure. Come on up.”

  That was all the convincing it took for him to say eagerly, “Be right there.”

  Hanging up, Nina knew that it was absurd to be as excited as she was by the fact that she was about to get to see Dallas again right now.

  But that’s the way it was.

  She was excited enough to make a quick detour to the nearest mirror to make sure her hair didn’t need brushing and to hurriedly apply a little mascara and blush.

  She was wearing jeans and a red turtleneck sweater that was long enough and just loose enough to accommodate her not-too-large belly. And while she was shoeless, her socks were red-and-green argyle for the holiday so she stayed in her stocking feet to open the door.

  Dallas was there when she did, his fisted hand ready to knock.

  “Whoa,” he said, stopping short so she didn’t get the knock in the face.

  Nina couldn’t help grinning at that first glimpse of him. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing boots, jeans and that same suede coat over a plaid flannel shirt with the collar button open to expose a white T-shirt underneath it.

  Rugged, masculine, rock-solid and drop-dead gorgeous—so her mind hadn’t built him up to be more than he actually was, she thought. She’d been wondering if that might be the case.

  “Come in! Take off your coats,” she invited, stepping aside.

  Dallas crossed the threshold, trailed by three boys of varying heights, all of them younger versions of him, with the same blue eyes hazed with gray, the same heads of thick brown hair, the same bone structure.

  “This is Ryder.” He began the introductions with a hand on the head of the tallest as they all removed their coats. “And Jake.” Clearly the middle child. “And Robbie—”

  “I just got to be six and I go to kinnergarten,” Robbie announced.

  “Then I’ll bet your teacher is Willa Christensen,” Nina said.

  “No. It’s my aunt Willa but in school I need to call her Mrs. Traub. Like me, Robbie Traub. But she’s not my mom, she’s my aunt since she married my Uncle Collin.”

  “Ah, that’s right. I guess I sort of forgot that Willa married your brother,” Nina said to Dallas.

  “Lookit all this Christmas stuff! Lookit that tree!” Robbie said then, wasting no time moving into Nina’s apartment to survey her many Christmas decorations.

  “It is pretty festive in here,” Dallas agreed.

  “I love Christmas,” Nina said before focusing on the other two boys, who were staying near to their father. “So Robbie is six. You’re eight, Jake? And Ryder, you’re ten, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jake confirmed while Ryder said nothing at all.

  “Well, come on in. You can have a look around, too, if you want. There’s a dish of candy canes and taffy—if it’s all right with your dad you can help yourselves. And how would you all like some hot chocolate and Christmas cookies?”

  “I would!” Robbie answered first.

  “Me, too,” Jake seconded.

  Ryder merely shrugged his concession just before Dallas said, “What do you say?”

  “I would, please,” Robbie amended.

  “Me, too, please.” Jake added some attitude while a simple “Please” was muttered by Ryder as the older boys joined the younger in looking around and ultimately being drawn to the train that circled the tree skirt.

  “Does this work?” Jake asked.

  “It does. The switch is on the side of the station house,” Nina answered, closing the door behind them all.

  “Watch what you’re doing,” Dallas warned his sons.

  “It’s okay,” Nina told him. “They can’t hurt anything. Like I said, kid-friendly.”

  She led the way into the kitchen portion of the big open room that included a fair-sized kitchen and dining area separated from the large living room by an island counter.

  “This is a nice place. I didn’t even know it was up here,” Dallas said as Nina set about heating milk and adding cocoa and broken chocolate bars.

  “It’s where the first Crawfords in Rust Creek Falls lived when they started the store. A lot of us have taken advantage of it over the years. You can’t beat the commute to work,” she joked.

  “You’ll bring your baby home here?”

  “I will. There are two bedrooms—the nursery is almost ready, I just have a few finishing touches to put on it. And living up here after the baby is born—even before I’ve actually gone back to work—will let me still oversee some things. Then when I can get back to business as usual, I’ll have a nanny or a sitter here with the baby, but I’ll be able to carry a baby monitor with me to listen in and I’ll also be able to come up as many times a day as I want or need to.”

  “Handy,” he agreed.

  “I think it will be.”

  “And is this still going to be a house of sugar when you have your own kid?” he asked as she set iced cookies out on a plate and then brought the pan of hot chocolate from the stove.

  He was teasing her again and it struck her that there was already some familiarity in it. Familiarity she liked...

  “It’s Christmas,” she defended. “And the middle of the afternoon—I’m sure they had lunch and dinner is far enough away that this won’t spoil their appetites.”

  “And they’ll be so wired they won’t have to ride home in the truck, they’ll be able to run behind it,” he joked before advising, “Give them all half cups of hot chocolate.”

  “Killjoy,” Nina accused playfully. And slightly flirtatiously, though she didn’t know where that had come from....

  “Oh, so you’ve heard about how glum I’ve been the past year,” he joked back, smiling that crooked smile that lifte
d one side of his agile-looking mouth higher than the other.

  His eyes were intent on her, and the humor allowed them to share a moment that told Nina she wasn’t alone in whatever it was she’d been feeling about him as her rescuer. That, regardless of the old feud between their families, things between the two of them were different now even if they were no longer in dire straits.

  It pleased her. A lot.

  Dallas took two mugs of hot chocolate in each of his big, capable hands, leaving Nina to carry the fifth and the plate of cookies into the living room. They set everything on her oval oak coffee table and the boys gathered around it, sitting on the floor while Nina and Dallas sat on her overstuffed black-and-gray buffalo-checked sofa.

  After the boys tasted their hot chocolate and each took a cookie, Robbie looked to his father and said, “When are we gonna put up our tree?”

  “You don’t have a tree yet?” Nina asked, surprised.

  “Dad’s been too busy,” Jake answered, disappointment and complaint ringing in his tone as the three boys carried their cookies and hot chocolate with them and went back to playing with the train.

  “Busy and not much in the mood,” Dallas confessed, quietly enough for the boys not to be able to hear.

  “Scrooge,” she teased him the same way.

  “I’m not usually,” he admitted, his voice still low and echoing with sorrow. “But this year...I don’t know. It’s felt all year like this family has been left sort of in shreds and I’m not quite sure how to sew it back together again. Or if I’m even up to it.”

  “Kids need their holidays kept, no matter what,” Nina insisted.

  But she couldn’t be too hard on him, considering that this was the anniversary of the end of his marriage and it couldn’t be an easy time for him.

  So rather than criticizing any more, she decided to fall back on the reason she’d contacted him in the first place.

  “I called because I wanted to thank you again for helping me on Wednesday,” she said, setting her own cup of hot chocolate on the coffee table and breaking off a section of a bell-shaped cookie. “I also wanted to apologize for the way my family treated you at the hospital.”

  “I’m sure they were worried and upset about you and the baby—”

  Robbie overheard that and perked up to look at them over his shoulder. “You’re gonna have a baby? I thought you just liked beer.”

  Confused, Nina looked from the youngest Traub to Dallas and found Dallas grimacing. “We met an old friend of mine earlier today. He was a lot heavier than the last time I saw him and I razzed him about his beer belly.”

  “Ah...” Nina said.

  “But you,” Dallas went on in a hurry, obviously doing damage control. “It doesn’t seem like you’ve gained an ounce anywhere but baby—you really look...well, beautiful...”

  It sounded as if he genuinely meant that—not like the gratuitous things that often came with people talking about her pregnancy. And that, too, pleased Nina. And when their eyes met once again, when she really could see that he didn’t find anything about her condition off-putting at all, and when Nina had the feeling that there was suddenly no one else in the world but the two of them, it made her all warm inside.

  But there were other people in the world, in the room, in fact. His kids.

  And just then Ryder said, “I need to get to Tyler’s.”

  Dallas seemed to draw up short, as if he, too, had been lost in that moment between them and was jolted out of it by his eldest son’s reminder.

  “His friend Tyler is having a sleepover,” Dallas explained. “And I still need to pick up a few things downstairs—our houses and the main barns were spared by the flood but some of the outbuildings and lean-tos had some damage. I thought we’d fixed everything but the blizzard showed us more weak spots, and I came for some lumber and some nails.” He paused, smiled slyly, then said, “And I figured if I came here rather than going to Kalispell I’d get the chance to ask how you’re doing...”

  “I’m doing fabulously,” she answered as if he’d asked her.

  The sly smile widened to a grin that lit up his handsome face.

  “I told Tyler I’d be at his house by now,” Ryder persisted.

  Dallas rolled his eyes but allowed his attention to be dragged away. “Okay, cups to the kitchen,” he ordered in a tone that sounded reluctant.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Nina said.

  “Not a chance.” Dallas overruled her, even cleaning up after her by taking her hot chocolate mug, too, and leaving her to merely follow behind them all with the cookie plate.

  Once the cups were rinsed and in the sink, and coats were replaced, Nina went with them to the apartment door, opening it for them.

  The boys immediately went out and headed for the stairs.

  “Wait for me right there,” Dallas warned as he lingered with Nina.

  Then he glanced at her again with the same look in his blue eyes that had been there when he’d told her she was beautiful. “I’m really glad to see that you’re okay. Better than okay.”

  “It’s all thanks to you,” she told him.

  He flashed that one-sided smile again. “All me, huh? Doctors, the hospital—none of that had anything to do with it?”

  “They just did the checkup. It was you who got me through the worst. And then took heat from my family for it.”

  “Just happy to help,” he said as if he meant that, too.

  “I owe you....”

  “Nah. You don’t owe me anything.”

  Nina merely smiled. “I’m glad you came up today.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Dad!” Ryder chastised from the top of the stairs.

  “In a minute,” Dallas said without taking his eyes off Nina. He was clearly reluctant to leave. “Guess I better go. Take care of yourself. And that baby,” he advised.

  “I will,” she agreed.

  Then he had no choice but to go, and Nina leaned out of her apartment door so she could watch him join his sons, so she could watch the four of them descend the steps.

  And all the while she was still smiling to herself.

  Because she’d thought of a much, much better thank-you gift than a fruit basket.

  A gift that would put her in the company of Dallas Traub one more time.

  Chapter Three

  “You have to be kidding. You want me to tie a Christmas tree to the top of your SUV so you can surprise some Traubs with it?”

  It was after five on Sunday. Nate had dropped by the store just before closing and Nina had asked her brother to do her a favor so the teenager who was running the Christmas tree lot didn’t have to stay late to do it.

  “Dallas needs a tree,” she told Nate matter-of-factly. “And it’s the least I can do after Wednesday. It’s a thank-you Christmas tree.”

  “Thanks for running you off the road and nearly killing you?”

  “I pulled out in front of him,” Nina repeated what she’d said to her family numerous times since the near-collision. “I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

  “You wouldn’t have ended up in a ditch.”

  “Nathan!” Nina said in a louder voice, attempting to get through to her brother. “Dallas Traub saved me and my baby!”

  Okay, maybe that was somewhat of an exaggeration, but in the thick of things on Wednesday, Dallas had felt like a lifesaver.

  “I want to repay him with this Christmas tree,” she insisted.

  “We don’t owe any Traub anything,” Nate said, scowling at her.

  “I owe Dallas,” Nina said firmly and succinctly.

  She’d always been a strong, independent person who acted on her own instincts and answered whatever beliefs, desires or drives she might have, even if they went against
popular opinion. Like having this baby on her own. And like giving Dallas and his boys a Christmas tree whether anyone in her stubborn family approved or not.

  “If you’re bound and determined to give a Traub a tree then have it delivered,” her brother reasoned. “Why do you have to take it out to him yourself?”

  “I want to take it out to him myself,” she said defensively, trying not to think about just how much she wanted to do this herself. “He inconvenienced himself and even put himself in danger by taking me into Kalispell during a blizzard when he could have just let the sheriff do it and gone home to his own family. Delivering my gift in person is only right.”

  Which she believed.

  But she also couldn’t stop thinking about Dallas and wanting to see him again—that was a strong part of her determination to do the delivery herself, too.

  Of course, she told herself that now that she’d met Dallas’s kids, now that she knew Dallas was having trouble getting into the holiday spirit those kids deserved—the holiday spirit that every kid deserved—it just seemed appropriate that she step up and provide it. In her time of need, Dallas had come to the rescue. Now, in this small way, maybe she could come to his.

  And getting to spend a little time with him in the process was inconsequential and meaningless—that was what she kept telling herself.

  “Some Traub will probably shoot you on sight when you drive onto their property,” Nate said.

  Nina rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the Wild West anymore. Besides, I’ve been asking around at the store yesterday and today to get an idea of the actual arrangement of the houses at the Triple T ranch. Dallas and his boys have their own place that sits on one of the borders of the ranch. I can get to it from a side road without going any farther onto the property.”

  “He’s still likely to shoot you,” Nathan muttered. Her brother’s grumblings about angry Traubs were so ridiculous they made Nina laugh. Regardless of the conflicts between the Crawford family and the Traub family, her own current feelings about Dallas—and his sons—didn’t hold any animosity. And she was reasonably certain that Dallas didn’t bear her ill will at this point, either.