THE MAVERICK'S CHRISTMAS BABY

by Victoria Pade

  Then the boys followed Dallas’s instructions to put on their coats, to mind their grandparents and go right to bed when they got home, and goodbyes were said.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow night,” Ellie Traub told Nina as she left, drawing a surprised glance from Bob.

  Then, in the process of urging their grandsons to the door, Nina heard Ellie Traub answer that surprise. “He’s better, Bob, and I’m glad for whatever or whoever did it.”

  * * *

  “Sooo...I’m thinking that a perk of hanging out with the owner is that maybe I could do a little last-minute Christmas shopping even though the store is closed...” Dallas suggested hopefully, as he opened his truck’s passenger door for Nina to get out.

  Conversation on the drive from the church to Nina’s apartment had been about the funny points of the Christmas program, so this was a change of subject.

  “Oh, really...” Nina responded.

  “Not that the biggest perk isn’t just getting to hang out with you,” he claimed. “But tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I have a million things to do, and I still need a few stocking stuffers for the boys. I was just thinking that here we are—”

  “Right above all those things in the store,” Nina finished for him as she unlocked the outside door to her apartment and went in, turning on lights as she did.

  “Unless going down there after hours will trigger an alarm system or security cameras will record it and alert the sheriff to come running or something...”

  “I can bypass the security system, and we don’t have cameras. Maybe next year, but not yet,” Nina told him as they took off their coats.

  Tonight she was wearing a longish wraparound gray sweater over slim-leg jeans with knee-high black boots whose three-inch heels she knew her obstetrician wouldn’t have approved of. But, pregnant or not, she had no intention of looking dowdy—a fact that seemed to be more and more of an issue whenever she was dressing to see Dallas.

  Dallas, who looked fabulous in a heavyweight tan field sweater and jeans that showed off a great rear end.

  Something she knew she shouldn’t have noticed.

  “So, if we can bypass the security system and there aren’t any cameras to record my special treatment...” he said, as if he were proposing being cat burglars, wiggling his eyebrows provocatively at the same time. “What do you say?”

  “I suppose that, since I really liked getting a taste of what it will be like to be a parent at my kid’s school Christmas program, I can reciprocate with a little extra store access.” Nina conceded what she would have agreed to, in any event, just because it was Dallas asking.

  “Then fire up a cash register and let’s do it!” he said enthusiastically, making Nina laugh at him.

  The panel that controlled the alarm system was on the second floor at the top of the steps that led down to the store. She punched in the code and then turned on half of the store lights. “We don’t want to make it look like I’m open for business or, believe me, we’ll have people knocking on the door and wanting to come in,” she explained.

  “Okay, then. You keep a lookout while I shop and I’ll keep a lookout while you ring me up. Anyone comes to the door or the windows and we both go down,” he said, again in cat-burglar mode.

  “Deal,” Nina agreed as they went into the dimly lit store.

  While Dallas browsed, Nina lurked behind a partition, peeking out periodically to watch the front of the store and at the same time taking cans of pumpkin from a box to stack for the next day.

  “Have you had any word from Laurel?” Nina asked, while Dallas picked out three yoyos and moved on to other small games intended to be stocking stuffers.

  “My ex? No, not a peep,” Dallas answered.

  “Not a card or a letter? No gifts for the boys?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I guess something could still come tomorrow. Mail will be delivered and so will packages,” Nina said, hoping that the mother of Dallas’s children wouldn’t let this oh-so-important holiday go by without acknowledging those kids.

  “I think, since each of their birthdays came and went this year without anything from her, they know better than to expect something now.”

  “Oh, that’s right...” Nina said, recalling that he’d told her Laurel had let each of the boys’ birthdays pass unacknowledged. Even so, it didn’t seem any less awful for Ryder, Jake and Robbie’s mother not to send them Christmas gifts.

  “Still,” she said, “they’re little kids. There’s got to be some tiny bit of hope, deep down, that she’ll do something. And then when—if—she doesn’t, it will put a damper on things for them.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dallas said, somewhat grimly, picking out three stocking-stuffer-size footballs. “I guess I like to think they’ve forgotten about her, that they don’t care, and since they haven’t said anything it makes it easier on me, but—”

  “You know they do care.”

  “Yeah...” Dallas said reflectively. “Sure they do. Robbie trying to get her his school picture shows they haven’t forgotten her—no matter how I’d like to delude myself.”

  “Have you thought of wrapping something up for them and putting her name on it so they think she sent them something?”

  Dallas stopped sorting through tiny puzzle boxes to look at her. “Huh...” he mused. “No, that didn’t occur to me. Do you think I should?”

  Nina hadn’t actually put any thought into it before she’d said it, but now she did. “I don’t know...” she said. “I can’t imagine that you want to do anything that makes her look good when she’s done such awful things and hasn’t bothered with those kids herself. But would it be good for them to believe she thought about them?”

  “Or would it be raising false hopes?”

  “Do you think they don’t hope every day that she’ll come back?” Nina asked, verbally tiptoeing.

  Dallas had chosen three puzzles, but he paused before putting them into the basket he was carrying, clearly considering that question, too. “I suppose they might,” he conceded. “I did for a while, at first. Even with the cheating and how tough things had been...there was probably about a month where I even thought I saw her just about everywhere I looked, as if she might show up around the next corner. I never talked about it, but, yeah, the boys probably did the same thing. Except where I came to grips with the fact that she wasn’t coming back, it makes sense that they might just wish she would show up again.”

  That was such a sad thought. And Nina could tell by the frown etched into Dallas’s square brow that he thought so, too.

  Then he said, “I don’t know if Ryder would actually believe it. Or even Jake.”

  “But they’d try because they’d want to...” Nina said in a voice barely above a whisper, wondering if she was pressuring him. Hoping not. “You could write on the tags that she still won’t be coming back, but that she just wanted them to have something—maybe that would help keep their hopes from being raised. But at least they’d feel remembered—”

  “Even if they aren’t,” Dallas muttered.

  Nina thought she’d said enough. And since Dallas seemed to be thinking about the whole issue, she left him to that.

  Then he said, “I’m not putting her name on anything so great they’ll like it better than what I bought them.”

  Nina suppressed a smile at that hint of stubbornness. “You could get them shirts. Shirts are kind of a mom thing. But not exciting to little boys.”

  Dallas didn’t say anything, but Nina saw him move from the part of the store where the stocking stuffers were displayed to a table of boys’ wear.

  “There’s not a part of me that wants to make her look good,” he confessed, even as he picked out three shirts in varying sizes and colors. “But she’s their damn mother, and it’s Christmas, and I don’t want
them feeling any worse than they probably already do because it was this time last year when she left. If the chance to believe their mother remembered them helps any...well, I guess it’s worth it.”

  Nina joined him to take three boxes from the shelf below the display. “Let me wrap them in some of the paper we have here so they won’t be wrapped in what their other presents are in—it would be a dead giveaway.”

  Dallas nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

  Nina knew what he was doing wasn’t easy for him. That it wasn’t something he could do wholeheartedly, but that for the sake of his sons he was burying his own resentments, and she admired that. Him. So much that she couldn’t keep herself from reaching a hand to his arm for a squeeze of support for his selflessness. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do or not, but you’re a good dad for doing it.”

  “It was you who came up with it,” he said. “And thanks for that, too,” he added with a genuine smile. “Thanks for thinking of my boys. Of what might help them get through this.”

  Nina almost said they just made a good team but stopped short, reminding herself that she and Dallas weren’t a team. That they couldn’t be. Even though she liked the feel of his arm in her hand so much she never wanted to let go...

  “I’ll scan these and wrap them while you finish shopping,” she said instead, forcing herself to take her hand away from his bulging biceps.

  “Thanks for everything you’ve done,” he added. “I’m not sure I would have gotten through this holiday without you...”

  “You’d have done fine,” Nina demurred.

  Still keeping an eye on the front windows and door, she stayed as much out of sight as she could, and by the time she had three nicely wrapped shirt boxes, Dallas was finished with his shopping and ready for her to check him out.

  Or, at least, to check out the items he was purchasing. She was trying not to check him out, despite the fact that her gaze kept drifting to him and getting stuck on him. Taking in every tiny detail. Liking it all...

  The guy was just terrific-looking and it seemed impossible for her not to notice.

  Terrific-looking and sooo sexy...

  And that muscular arm she’d felt in his sweater sleeve had been big and rock-solid and—

  And she’d decided this morning that it certainly must be pregnancy hormones that were putting her into overdrive when it came to Dallas, and that she wasn’t going to be at the mercy of something like that.

  So checking out his items was the only checking out she was going to do!

  When she’d accomplished her task Dallas took his bag and they headed for the steps. But just as they reached them they heard voices from outside the front door.

  “Are they open?” one voice asked.

  “Some of the lights are on...”

  Dallas dropped his bag, grabbed Nina and spun her around behind the wall that partitioned off a corridor to the employees’ break room.

  “Do you think they saw us?” Nina asked from where Dallas had her pinned to the wall.

  “I don’t know. They’re trying the door. I didn’t recognize them, though, did you?”

  “No. Probably out-of-towners visiting somebody for the holidays.”

  “Let’s just lay low for a few minutes,” Dallas suggested. “Eventually they’ll give up.”

  Nina laughed. “Or I could just holler out that we’re closed...”

  “And risk a story that will make us feel bad if we don’t open up?” he asked, as if it were life or death. “Besides,” he added with that lopsided smile of his, “this is so much more fun.”

  There was insinuation in his voice, making it clear that their position was the fun part. And certainly Nina couldn’t find any fault in being backed up against a wall by him, the clean woodsy scent of his cologne going to her head and his superbly handsome face just inches above her...

  “And since you’re shielding me with your body I’m protected from grenade attacks, too,” she joked in a feeble attempt to hint that he should move, at least trying to alter things.

  But Dallas merely countered with, “Can’t be too careful.” And he didn’t move. Instead he peered down into her eyes, grinning, making it clear that he liked it right where they were.

  “You’re so beautiful...” he whispered.

  “Sure I am,” she answered, making light of it. “Eight-and-a-half-months pregnant, and I’ve never looked better.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I do know that little basketball belly you’re sporting doesn’t take anything away from those big brown eyes, or that peaches-and-cream skin, or that hair that’s like...that’s like heaven...” He brushed the tip of her nose with the tip of his. “And I also know that it doesn’t take away from the fact that when I’m with you I feel like a new man.”

  He looked into her eyes again with pure warmth in his. And a glint that told her what was coming.

  His arms were already around her, his head was already tilted in her direction and their mouths were mere inches apart. And when he closed those inches to kiss her, Nina just naturally tipped her chin up and met him halfway.

  Somehow, it had come to seem as if being with him wasn’t complete until he kissed her, and once he started, she couldn’t make herself stop it. She just loved kissing him so much....

  Mouths and tongues knew the dance well by then, and there was no hesitation, no inhibition, just really, really good kissing, and kissing and more kissing.

  Nina’s eyes were closed and it didn’t matter to her where they were. It only mattered that Dallas was holding her, that her own hands were fanned out across his wide shoulders, that they dropped down to the biceps she wanted another feel of, massaging and gripping muscles that barely gave way beneath her strongest grasp.

  The kissing grew more fevered, and breaths came deeper, heavier, thrusting Nina’s breasts into contact with Dallas’s chest.

  Her nipples were taut little diamonds. And so, so sensitive. More now than they’d ever been before. More, at that moment, than she could ever have believed possible, so that just that much contact brought them alive.

  She didn’t know if it was the extra fullness that her breasts had now, too, but they felt as if they were ready to burst from her bra. The bra that—the same way she wouldn’t concede to flat shoes—hadn’t yet been replaced with maternity bras. A bigger size, yes. But still lacy and lovely, and suddenly feeling much too confining.

  Dallas’s hands were on her back, rubbing and massaging divinely, and doing there what she was doing to his arms. What she suddenly wanted desperately to feel on her breasts.

  She sent her hands to travel to his neck, to his nape, then up to comb her fingers through his hair as kissing became even more sensual, as tongues chased each other, and darted and thrust with intent.

  Nina pressed her front more firmly to his—and then she felt Dallas insinuate a hand under the back of her sweater...

  It took everything she had not to cry out, yes! Yes! Yes!

  But all she did was give a more sensual twist of her tongue, and ease back the tiniest bit to provide enough room for his hand, even as deep breaths brought her chest to his like ocean waves to the shore, receding and returning lest he forget...

  His other hand, massive and strong, callused, joined the first under her sweater, on her bare back. A rancher’s hands, they coursed upward, working her shoulders for a few minutes before one of them drifted down. To the outer side of her breast.

  She moaned her encouragement, almost dying inside for want of having him just get there.

  And then he finally did—he drew his hand around to take her breast in it.

  A quiet purr of pleasure rumbled in her throat, but it wasn’t complete. Because that stupid, stupid bra was there! Keeping her from having what she really wanted.

  And she just c
ouldn’t stand it. Not a single minute longer.

  Almost on their own, her hands dropped from the back of Dallas’s head, reached behind her and unhooked the bra...

  A split second later she could hardly believe what she’d done.

  But suddenly Dallas was kissing her in a way she’d never been kissed before, plundering her mouth with more sexual fervor than she thought a kiss could have. And both of his hands were on both of her breasts. His bare hands on her bare breasts. And that was all that mattered.

  Never had she known anything to feel as fabulously intense. Every sensation, every tiny nuance was heightened. Every stroke, every knead, every tug, every caress, every squeeze. Every gentle pinch and roll of her nipples between his fingertips. Every feather-stroke brush against the very crest. Every supreme touch.

  And the moan that answered it all came from depths she didn’t even know she had.

  As one hand shared time with each breast, his other hand returned to her back, splaying there to brace her for the full impact of what he was doing to breasts that couldn’t get enough of him, and Nina began to wonder what it would be like to have his mouth on them instead...

  Then Dallas pulled her in tighter, as if he just couldn’t get enough of her. And that basketball-size belly he’d mentioned earlier came up against him...

  Nothing about that gave him even the slightest pause.

  But it was different for Nina.

  It reminded her that she wasn’t in a shape she’d ever been in before. And while she’d reveled in each change her baby had brought to her body, a jolt of self-consciousness hit her then, stopping her a little short.

  Dallas sensed it instantly, and everything did pause then.

  His hands stopped all movement. He ended their kissing. And concern was in his voice when he whispered, “Are you okay?”

  This time her moan was bereft.

  “I’m okay, but...I just...I just think maybe we’d better stop...”

  She’d been staring into his throat when she said that, and now she tilted her head enough to look up into his face. His oh-so-handsome face that she’d come to adore, that held the expression of a man who’d been as lost in what they’d been sharing as she had been.