Victoria Pade - The Maverick's Christmas Baby

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 trying 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...”