An Unplanned Christmas

by Lizzie Shane

  “Rachel.”

  Cam’s distinctive voice rasped through the speakers and she shivered, pulling into the parking spot in front of her storage locker. “Cam.”

  “I know you said we’d talk in a couple days, but I couldn’t wait.”

  “No, this is good,” she assured him, trying to convince herself at the same time. “I was making myself nuts wondering…”

  “I want to be part of her life, Rache.”

  She closed her eyes against the sincerity—and the nickname. “I know,” she whispered. But that was a thousand times scarier than if he’d wanted nothing to do with them. She couldn’t deny him access, but she was so freaking scared to trust him. Sofie was her everything.

  “So what are we going to do?” she said, louder, since he could probably barely hear her through the car’s sound system.

  “It’s all about her now,” he said. “So we make it work. I’d like to see her again, as soon as possible. And I want her to meet my family. You both should. Maybe just a few of them to start, but we have a lot of Christmas gatherings and I’d love for her to get to know her cousins. Maybe even bring her to Christmas Eve dinner—”

  “Cam.” Her heartbeat was too loud again, the momentum of his words scaring her senseless. It was too much too fast.

  “Sorry,” he rasped. “One thing at a time?”

  “Yeah,” she murmured.

  Of course he would want to take Sofie places—but even the thought of her baby going to an innocuous holiday gathering was pushing her panic button. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Cam with Sofie, but she just…if he took her, she wouldn’t know where she was. She always knew where Sofie was. Even when she was with her mom or Yaya. She couldn’t exactly fit Sofie with a tracking device every time she handed her over to Cam—though if someone hadn’t already invented Baby Lo-Jack, they really should.

  But he was right. They had to start somewhere. And the sooner the better since she knew she’d only make herself sick with dread until he saw Sofie again.

  Her gaze landed on the storage locker in front of her. “We were going to put up a Christmas tree with Sofie tonight. If you want to come by and…”

  “I’d love that,” he answered, before she could figure out what the and might be.

  “Good.” Rachel nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. Her gaze flicked to the console and the unfamiliar number there. “Is this your new number?”

  “It’s my sister’s,” he admitted after a slight hesitation. “I wasn’t sure if you’d still blocked mine.”

  She cringed. Because she had still blocked his number. “I’ll unblock it,” she promised. “Do you want to come by after dinner? Say six-thirty or seven? We eat pretty early with Sofie.”

  “Sure. I’ll see you then.”

  “Great,” she mumbled, already regretting the invitation—but Cam was saying goodbye and disconnecting the call and all she could do was load the Christmas decorations into her car and hope for the best.

  Chapter Nine

  The man was amazing with Sofie.

  Patient. Encouraging. Goofy enough to make her giggle.

  Rachel watched as Cam lifted Sofie up to place an ornament on the tree and had to resist the urge to snatch her daughter out of his arms. Not because he was doing anything wrong, but because he was doing it so effortlessly right. And it was driving her a little crazy.

  The image of Cam she’d built in her head since finding out he was married was of a selfish player. The kind of man who could never put another person’s need above his own. The kind of man who was disgusted by diapers and snot and always a little awkward with children.

  This Cam was nothing like that.

  He was gentle and sweet, and so careful with Sofie that Rachel couldn’t even be annoyed with him. He was a freaking natural—and instead of being grateful, she couldn’t stop being jealous that Sofie had taken to him so completely. She was giggling and clapping and declaring, “Nen!”—her version of again—every time they hung another ornament in the wrong place on the tree.

  They were doing it all wrong—and it was taking all of Rachel’s willpower not to say anything. She’d been putting this tree up for the last ten years and she knew the ornaments, knew exactly where they needed to go so the most special ones were on clear display and everything was perfectly spaced. There was a system. And Cam and Sofie were blowing that system to hell, giggling all the way.

  It was unsettling, the wrongness scraping along her nerves like sandpaper.

  Though it was possible it was guilt and jealousy making her feel like an exposed wire on a faulty strand of Christmas lights. Guilt that she might have been so wrong about him and jealousy that it all seemed to come so easily to him.

  He’d already completely charmed her mother and grandmother—which really shouldn’t have been possible. They were supposed to be on her side, and providing a buffer between her and Cam. She’d worried they would be bothered that she’d invited Cam to invade their family time. They always put up the tree together. But barely ten minutes after Cam arrived her mother declared that they were out of tinsel and couldn’t possibly put the tree up without it. Before Rachel could argue that they forgot the tinsel half the time anyway, Andie had rushed off to the store to get some.

  Rachel hadn’t been suspicious until Yaya had decreed that decorating the tree required cocoa and defected to the kitchen to unearth the perfect cocoa recipe she was sure she’d hidden there somewhere. The apartment was small enough that Yaya could probably still hear every word they said in the living room, but she was too far away for Rachel to use her as a human shield and Rachel was starting to suspect her mother and grandmother had conspired to give her time alone with Cam and Sofie.

  Which wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all. She’d wanted to get to know him again at a safe distance. Let him into their life bit by bit.

  And yes, a small, petty part of her had wanted him to be on the outside, had wanted him to see that Sofie had a great family without him and that none of them needed him.

  This was better, obviously. It was better for Sofie if he fit right into their family like a missing puzzle piece. But it was making her feel a little unhinged and she was selfishly regretting inviting him to come tonight.

  Especially when Cam and Sofie picked up the godawful ugly Elvis Santa ornament and put it right front and center.

  She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to comment on the ornaments that were out of place—she could just fix them later—but when Cam turned away from the tree with Sofie in his arms, he caught her watching him.

  His smile shifted, becoming less generally happy and more specifically aimed at her, and taking on a teasing edge, as if he could sense how much the haphazard ornament placement was bothering her. His eyes crinkled at the edges, a knowing light appearing in them—and Rachel was suddenly, viscerally reminded of how it had felt to have him smile at her like that. As if they had a secret, and the secret was how crazy he was about her.

  Her breath quickened, her knees wobbling at the sight of this man holding her daughter in the crook of his arm so naturally—until she forcibly squashed the little whisper of chemistry trying to take hold. Things were already complicated enough without her remembering why she was attracted to him.

  Rachel turned away, her glance catching on the clock which was—thank God—already showing seven forty-five. “I should get Sofie ready for bed. If she stays up too late it upsets her whole schedule.”

  “Can I help?”

  She turned back, ready to tell him that wouldn’t be necessary, ready to bristle and remind him that she’d been doing it on her own for the last year and a half—but the expression on his face stopped her.

  It was cautious. Earnest. He stood there, beside the Christmas tree, cuddling their daughter in his arms, looking like he wasn’t ready for her to be taken away, and Rachel’s heart melted a little around the frostiest edges.

  “Please?” he added
.

  She couldn’t say no. Damn it.

  Rachel pressed her lips together and nodded without a word. Cam’s face lit and she swallowed hard before calling to Yaya that they were putting Sofie to bed. “Bath time, baby!” she told her daughter, pointedly not looking at the man holding her.

  Sofie threw out her arms and lunged from Cam’s arms into Rachel’s. She caught the baby’s solid weight, relieved that Sofie wasn’t resisting bedtime. The last thing she needed was Cam watching and judging as she had to deal with a toddler tantrum.

  She led the way into the bedroom she shared with Sofie. Self-consciousness swamped her as she tried not to look at the double bed, or the hamper overflowing with laundry. She didn’t know which made this experience more awkward—the awareness she had of him as a man, or the anxiety that he was watching and judging her every move as a mother.

  She’d never had him in her space before, back in that stupid September. She’d always met him at restaurants or at his place, hyperaware of the stark difference between their lifestyles. Her little one bedroom apartment had hardly been able to compare to his sprawling four-thousand square foot luxury condo.

  Did he still have that condo? He must have sold it when he moved to LA. Though wherever he was staying now was undoubtedly equally luxurious.

  He didn’t belong here, taking up too much space in her cramped little bedroom with her Target furniture.

  She grabbed a set of rainbow footie pajamas and a fresh diaper from the drawers beneath the changing table and carried them into the attached bathroom, Cam trailing behind her, his sheer bulk making him impossible to ignore.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  It was automatic to say nothing, but she caught the word before it could get out. “Run water for the bath while I get her ready?”

  Cam nodded instantly, moving toward the tub. He picked up the pink Sesame Street bubble bath. “Bubbles?”

  “Bub!” Sofie declared enthusiastically.

  “Um, just a few. She loves them, but she tries to eat them.”

  “Do you do that?” Cam asked Sofie with a grin. “My mom said I used to try to eat dish soap. I guess you come by it naturally.”

  The reality hit Rachel in that moment. While talking about her baby eating soap of all things, the realization shuddered through her that this wasn’t just one night to get through.

  Cam was Sofie’s father. His genes were the reason she tried to eat soap. And he wasn’t going anywhere. Unless he got bored with the whole fatherhood thing—but that didn’t seem like Cam. Not with the way he was looking at Sofie like everything she did was magical.

  Rachel focused on the baby, trying to ignore the panic rabbits now ricocheting around the inside of her brain.

  The bathwater was the perfect depth and temperature, with the perfect amount of bubbles. Because of course he was effortlessly perfect.

  “Is it all right?” Cam asked as she tested it and Rachel’s chest tightened at the look in his eyes—as if getting the bathwater right was the most important thing in the world at that moment.

  “It’s great,” she murmured, her voice unaccountably choked. She cleared her throat, lifting Sofie into the tub.

  “Bob!” she squealed, slapping her hands on the water and instantly lifting the bubbles that clung to her fingers to her mouth.

  “Do you want to get Bob the Duck?” Rachel nodded toward the bath toy and Cam grinned.

  “Bob?” he asked as he reached for the bright blue rubber duck. He crouched down beside her at the edge of the tub, extending the toy.

  “He bobs,” Rachel explained, blushing as their shoulders brushed. Sofie smacked Bob beneath the surface, watching him bob up. She ran the washcloth over the baby’s shoulders as Cam continued to entertain Sofie, making sound effects as he motored Bob around the bathwater. Like a freaking natural. “Where did you get so good with kids?”

  “Lots of nieces and nephews,” Cam explained, in between motorboat noises. “I have three sisters. All with kids.”

  Rachel tried to smother the self-consciousness that rose up as she rinsed Sofie and lifted her out of the bath and swathed her in a towel. “Do you want to…?” She nodded toward the pajamas and the diaper she’d laid out.

  “Yeah?” Cam beamed as if she’d just offered him a winning lottery ticket and reached for Sofie. “Come here, sweet girl.”

  Rachel hadn’t known anything about kids before Sofie was born. She’d had to figure everything out as she went, with her mother, Yaya, and Google as her only advisors. Of course Cam was comfortable with Sofie. He’d had practice.

  She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted him to flail nervously like she had at first until he made it look so damn easy, putting Sofie’s fresh diaper on her and fitting her squirming limbs into the pajamas like he’d done it a thousand times.

  The man was freaking Super Dad. And it was giving her a complex.

  She hadn’t been prepared for Cam to swoop back into her life. Hadn’t been prepared for him to be anything other than the villain she’d cast him as in her mind in self-defense for the last two years. And she certainly hadn’t been prepared for him to actually want to be a dad. And not just the kind of dad who played with the kids and then handed them back to Mom. The kind of dad who wanted to do bath time and bed time.

  Though maybe once the novelty wore off he wouldn’t anymore. But what if this really was the kind of relationship he wanted? Could she trust it? Could she trust him?

  She’d done that once before. She’d stepped outside of her usual cautious comfort zone and believed in him—and he’d been married the entire time. Even if he had been getting a divorce, even if there had been extenuating circumstances, he should have told her. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken it well, but it couldn’t have been any worse than being blindsided like she had been.

  Maybe she should have let him explain—but how many times had her father talked his way back into her mother’s good graces? Cam was charming—and she hadn’t wanted to be her mother.

  But now…were things different? Did he really want to be a dad?

  She wasn’t ready for any of this. The Wonder Dad routine was too good to be true. And she was braced for the other shoe to drop.

  Chapter Ten

  Cam stared in the bathroom mirror and silently commanded himself to get his shit together. All night he’d felt like his world was breaking apart and reshaping with a new center. It wasn’t theoretical anymore. He was a father. And he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

  He didn’t know the baby’s routine. He hadn’t known which bedtime story was her favorite. Or what the name of her favorite bath toy was. Or which stuffed animal she needed to kiss on the nose before she would go to sleep.

  He didn’t know any of those things about his nieces or nephews either. He hadn’t needed to in order to be a good uncle, but this was different. This wasn’t uncle territory. This was daddy territory and he was hopelessly out of his depth.

  Rachel was a good mom. He’d never known this side of her, and he was starting to think they hadn’t really known one another at all. They’d just enjoyed one another, playing together. Sure, they’d had a few serious conversations—enough that he felt like he understood her, understood why she was such a planner—but there were so many things they didn’t know about one another. He’d always thought there would be more time for the serious stuff. And then she’d been gone. And now the serious stuff was here without warning.

  This was a whole new ball game. She was a mom. He was trying to figure out how to be a dad. And neither of them seemed to know how to talk to one another.

  Cam washed his hands and splashed cold water on his face, hoping to clear his head. He’d retreated to the bathroom after Sofie had fallen asleep in her crib—in part to gather his thoughts, but also in an attempt to keep Rachel from instantly kicking him out now that his excuse for being here was asleep. They still had so much to say to one another, though he had no ide
a where to start.

  He wasn’t ready for any of this. But sometimes your shot at the majors came before you were ready for it and you had to play your best and hope that it was enough to keep you in the game…and not psych yourself out and ruin your hope of ever getting another shot again if you got kicked back down to the minors. He’d perfected the art of projecting confidence and pretending he had it all under control.

  “You’ve got this,” he reminded his reflection—and headed back out into the living room.

  The apartment was tiny. It was hard to imagine three adults and a toddler all lived here. The space probably would have felt even more claustrophobic if it hadn’t been so ruthlessly organized. There was a place for everything—and he could see Rachel’s influence in every tidy little shelf and cubby.

  When he came back into the living room, the doors to the other bedrooms were conspicuously closed and Rachel’s mother and grandmother had made themselves scarce again. Rachel was standing at the tree, putting up the last ornaments. Or, to be more accurate, fixing them. As he watched, she plucked an ornament he’d put up off the tree and moved it to a lower branch, her movements quick and sure.

  Cam suppressed a smile. It had been driving her crazy earlier, watching him haphazardly hang ornaments all over her tree. He was amazed she’d managed to restrain herself from fixing them this long. She moved two more ornaments and took a step back to study her work.

  “Better?”

  She jumped and whirled toward him, a rosy glow rising to her cheeks. “Sorry, I just…”

  “Couldn’t stand it anymore?” He smiled and she took another step away from the tree, as if to stop herself from continuing to tweak it.

  “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, and he thought she meant about moving the ornaments until she continued. “For not telling you before. Though if you’d told me the truth about your marital status—” She bit off the words. “Anyway I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. For not telling you about Erika. I wanted to—”

  She shook her head, interrupting, “We need to move past that. For Sofie.”