Marie Ferrarella - A Baby For Christmas

But Amy shook her head. She did not want to risk possibly getting on the woman’s bad side. “That’s okay. She’s just looking out for you.”

“Stay here a day and she’ll be looking out for you, as well,” Connor promised. “She might seem gruff, but she’s really good with kids.”

“Right now, I’ll settle for her just being good with coffee,” Amy said.

“You’re about to have your wish come true.” He could smell the coffee brewing even before he crossed the threshold to the kitchen.

“Ah, so you are finally here,” Rita declared. Her back was to them. It was as if she could sense their presence. “Good. The coffee is ready and so is your breakfast.” She nodded at the two place settings on the table, then turned around and crossed to Amy. “Here, give him to me.”

“That’s all right. I can hold him while I eat,” Amy said.

“But you can eat better if I hold him,” Rita informed her in a firm voice. Putting out her hands, she waited for the baby to be transferred to her. “Do not worry. I do not drop children.”

Feeling somewhat uneasy, Amy surrendered Jamie to the housekeeper. The moment that she did, she watched in fascination as a smile blossomed on the woman’s otherwise stern face, instantly transforming her.

Rita began cooing something to the baby in Spanish, and then she looked up, sparing Amy a glance. “Eat before it gets cold,” she ordered.

“You heard the lady.” Connor ushered Amy into a chair. “Breakfast is a lot better warm—and so is Rita,” he added with a whisper.

Amy suppressed a laugh as she sat down, feeling a little more at ease. Maybe, she thought, she’d been right to come here after all.

Chapter Five

“Hey, Connor, whose car is that parked out in front of the house?” Cole McCullough asked as he made his way through the living room into the kitchen.

The second-oldest McCullough brother stopped dead when he saw the answer to his question sitting at the kitchen table, having breakfast across from his brother.

“Amy?” Cole said uncertainly.

Not quite sure how he would react to seeing her there with Connor, Amy forced a smile to her lips as she greeted Connor’s brother.

“Hello, Cole. How are you?” she asked politely.

Stunned, Cole blinked. Connor didn’t usually have company. Certainly not at this hour in the morning and certainly not someone who had eloped five years ago. He half expected her to disappear.

But she didn’t.

“I’m great,” he told her, then repeated, “Just great.”

Cole had no idea what to say to the woman he knew had left town with Connor’s heart unwittingly packed away in her suitcase. Connor never talked about it, but he didn’t have to. He, Cody and Cassidy all knew how Connor felt about Amy. How he’d felt about her ever since they were kids. Although he had devoted himself to raising them and keeping the ranch going, they all knew that Connor was in love with Amy.

But because of them and all his obligations, Connor never had a chance to act on it. And then Clay Patton had set his sights on her, scooped her up and left town. Cole, like the rest of his family, just assumed that the story had ended there.

Apparently not, he thought, looking at Amy.

Cole finally got back the use of his tongue. “Are you here for a visit?” he asked her. He glanced at Connor for help. He needed to be bailed out before he wound up unintentionally putting his foot in his mouth.

“Amy’s considering moving back to Forever,” Connor replied quietly, deliberately keeping the situation open-ended for her.

“You are here just in time, Mr. Cole,” Rita announced as she came into the kitchen, holding Amy’s son in her capable arms.

Surprised to see that the housekeeper had returned early, Cole was even more surprised to see that Rita was holding a baby in her arms and feeding that same baby with a bottle.

“Welcome back, Rita,” Cole said, greeting the woman. “I take it that you don’t mean I’m just in time for breakfast, do you?”

Impatience creased the woman’s already furrowed brow. “You can have some coffee if you wish and then you can help Mr. Connor bring down the crib from the attic.”

“The one we just put back up there a couple of months ago?” he asked, looking quizzically at Connor.

It felt as if that crib, used for each of the babies who had been here—not to mention that it had once been Cassidy’s when she was a baby—had more mileage on it than his truck did.

“That would be the one,” Connor confirmed. “And it was closer to almost four months ago,” he reminded his brother. “That was when you and Stacy moved into the old McNally place and bought the twins separate cribs of their own.”

Amy still couldn’t picture Cole as a father, much less as the father of two. “You have twins?” she asked him.

But Cole appeared more interested in what was going on at the moment than history, especially his own past.

“I take it that’s your baby,” he said, nodding at the baby the housekeeper was holding.

“You found out my secret, Mr. Cole,” Rita said, her solemn expression remaining unchanged. “I was jealous of all of you with your babies, so I decided to have one of my own.”

She looked so perfectly serious, for a moment Cole didn’t know if the housekeeper was joking or if the woman had actually made off with someone’s baby for some reason she had yet to reveal.

Cole glanced at his brother again. “She’s kidding, right?”

“Yes, genius, she’s kidding,” Connor said. “The baby belongs to Amy and Amy will be staying here for a while.” He glanced in her direction, secretly waiting for her contradiction.

“Just until I figure out what I’m going to do,” Amy added quickly. She didn’t want to come across like a mooch. “Connor was nice enough to put us up.”

“Hey, you don’t have to explain anything to me. I’m the one who came home with twins one morning,” he told Amy with a laugh.

She was still trying to sort that all out. There’d been a great deal of information flying at her since she’d walked in yesterday. “Then the twins you mentioned aren’t yours?”

“Well,” Cole said, “they are now because we adopted them.”

“‘We’?” Confused, Amy looked at Connor, for some reason thinking Cole was referring to his brother and himself when he used the pronoun.

“He means Stacy,” Connor explained.

“Stacy and I got married,” Cole added in an attempt to lessen some of the confusion. “You remember Stacy Rowe from school, don’t you? She came back to Forever.”

“I didn’t know she was gone,” Amy confessed. It felt as if her head was spinning as she tried to sort out the information that was coming at her at what she felt was lightning speed.

“That’s right,” Cole recalled. “You’d already left town with—” Catching himself just in time, Connor’s brother rephrased his statement. “You’d already left Forever before Stacy did.”

Rita grunted, signaling an end to the present discussion. “Why don’t you two let the poor girl finish her breakfast in peace?” Rita suggested forcefully. “You can use that extra energy of yours to get the crib down from the attic and bring it into the nursery,” she told the two brothers, referring to the room next to the bedroom that Stacy had used before she had married Cole.

“Ah, I’ve missed those dulcet tones of yours these last few days,” Cole told her as he walked by the housekeeper.

Rita’s jet-black eyebrows narrowed as she fixed the younger man with a glare. “You are just lucky I am holding this baby, Mr. Cole, or I would box your ears.”

“C’mon, Connor,” Cole urged his brother. “Let’s go get the crib before she puts that baby down and makes good on her threat.”