Marie Ferrarella - A Baby For Christmas

Granted that Cole was here during the week, helping him around the ranch, but when six o’clock came, Cole was gone.

Which was as it should be. He wanted his siblings to have families of their own. Wanted them to be happy.

For the last few days, with Rita gone, if he wanted company when the sun went down, he turned on the television set. But somehow, that felt way too artificial to him.

He needed to communicate with something living and breathing. Which was why he’d started entertaining the idea of getting a dog.

Finishing up dinner—Rita had prepared several casseroles for him before she’d left—he began forming a plan. He’d go into town tomorrow and get a cup of coffee—maybe even lunch—at Miss Joan’s and ask her if anyone’s dog had had pups recently. If anyone would know, it would be Miss Joan. The woman was the unofficial source of information for the whole town. He could swear that she had a way of knowing about things before they even happened.

He liked that idea, Connor thought as he took his lone plate from the kitchen table to the sink.

Turning on the hot water and dabbing some liquid hand soap onto the dish, he smiled to himself.

A dog.

Okay, so most of the time he had more than enough to do around the ranch, even with Cole’s added help. But once the sun went down, he could stand to have a pair of soulful brown eyes looking up at him for—

Connor turned off the running water and listened, his dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes. He pushed it back.

Was that knocking he heard?

He gave it to the count of five.

Nothing.

Shrugging, he went back to rinsing off the solitary dish, as well as the knife and fork he’d used. It was the middle of the week, no reason to believe that—

He stopped and turned off the water again, cocking his head toward the front door, the direction of what he perceived was the source of the sound.

This time, rather than just standing and listening to see if he could hear it again, he wiped his hands on the back of his jeans and went to the living room.

No point in wondering whether or not there was anyone knocking on his door when he could just as easily open it and check if there was anyone there.

“You’re a little more than one year away from turning thirty. That’s too young to be hearing things and imagining people on your doorstep,” Connor upbraided himself.

He was definitely going to talk to Miss Joan about getting a dog.

Although he didn’t hear any further knocking, Connor still twisted the doorknob and pulled open the door just to make sure there was no one there so he could put his mind at rest.

He wound up doing the exact opposite.

Chapter Two

There weren’t very many things that could catch Connor McCullough off his guard these days. One of the reasons for that was a great deal had happened in the last year and a half.

Cody had shown up with a newborn whom he’d helped a stranded mother-to-be give birth to in her dilapidated, stalled secondhand car. Not all that long after that, Cassidy had turned up, dripping wet and clutching a baby she’d helped rescue from the river during an unexpected flash flood.

And then Cole had topped both of them when he’d brought home twins who had been left in a basket on the doorstep. He had almost tripped over them when he’d walked out of the bunkhouse one morning.

All in all, Connor would have been the first to say that he didn’t think there was anything that would surprise him anymore.

With that in his mind, he was in no way prepared for what he saw when he swung open his front door to look outside.

A wan, breathless Amy Donavan was standing on his doorstep, holding what looked to be a six-month-old baby in her arms.

For a moment, he thought that he’d somehow managed to fall asleep in the kitchen and was dreaming this, or hallucinating it, or whatever it was called when a man’s mind conjured up an image of the only woman he had ever loved standing on his doorstep, looking utterly helpless and needy.

“Amy?” he asked uncertainly, half expecting the sound of his own voice to wake him up.

Except that it didn’t.

And then his hallucination spoke.

“I’m sorry, Connor. I just didn’t know where else to turn.” Her eyes, those beautiful, mesmerizing blue orbs that he always used to get lost in, were now the eyes of a woman who looked as if she was on a first-name basis with fear. “I’d understand if you don’t want to let me in,” the petite strawberry blonde added hesitantly, already taking a step back from the doorway.

“Maybe you might, but I wouldn’t.” Connor took hold of her elbow and drew her into his house.

Once she was in, Connor closed the door behind her and then did something that he normally didn’t do because he lived in Forever, where everyone trusted everyone else. He locked his front door.

Connor turned to look at the young woman, still stunned that she was actually here.

It had been a little over five years since he had seen her. A little over five years since Amy had left town. At the time, she’d been swept right off her feet and hopelessly in love with Clay Patton. Handsome to a fault, self-assured to the point, many felt, of being cocky, Clay was the town’s “bad boy.” He had a tongue that was dipped in honey and could sweet-talk the feathers off a pair of lovebirds.

When it became clear that Amy was falling for Clay, Connor began to worry about her. Worry about her getting hurt. But Amy seemed to be so genuinely in love and so determined to make things work between Clay and herself, he just couldn’t find it in his heart to stand in her way.

So he didn’t.

He also didn’t tell her how he felt about her.

Instead, he played his part as a steadfast friend, wished her well and told her that if she ever needed him, for any reason at all, all she had to do was pick up a phone and call him. No matter where he was, he’d find her and be there for her.

All this time and she hadn’t called. Instead, she’d come in person.

The Amy Donavan who had left town floating on a cloud and full of dreams was a far cry from the wan, frightened-looking young woman he saw standing in his living room tonight.

Ushering her and her baby over to the sofa, Connor coaxed, “Why don’t you sit down, Amy?”

Very gently, he had her take a seat on the sofa. It was almost like handling someone who was sleepwalking. “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Some tea? Something to eat? Maybe some milk for the baby?”

The word baby seemed to snap her out of the temporary daze that had slipped over her the moment she sat down on the sofa.

“My baby,” she said as if she suddenly realized that she was holding the child in her arms. She pressed the tiny bundle to her chest.

Lord, but Amy appeared incredibly weary, he thought. He was afraid that any moment, Amy’s arms might give way and she’d wind up dropping the baby. “If you’d like to put her—”

“Him,” Amy was quick to correct. “My baby’s a ‘him.’”

“Him,” Connor amended without missing a beat. “If you’d like to put him down, I’ve got a cradle in the back bedroom down here. You could put the baby in there and give your arms a rest,” he told her tactfully.

Connor’s eyes washed over her. In his estimation, Amy seemed beyond exhausted. Not only that, but she looked like she’d lost at least ten, maybe even fifteen, pounds since he’d last seen her. Life with Clay Patton had not been good to her.

She gazed up at him, instantly alert because of the suggestion he’d just made.

“A cradle,” she repeated, coming to the only conclusion she could. “You have a baby.”

Why else would anyone have a cradle? She was stupid to have thought that life had been put on hold for everyone else after she’d left Forever, she admonished herself.