Hayley Gardner - A Baby In His Stocking

Surely that was obvious, she thought. But since he’d asked, she told him. “Mack and I put some of our money into renovations this year, counting on the normally huge Christmas sales to make up the difference. But without Santa, a lot of families are driving the extra half hour to the mall for the sake of the kids and spending their money there.” She stepped off the escalator. “We can’t let Denton’s get into serious financial trouble, Jared.”

Which was an understatement. They already were. The truth was, Denton’s would go under if it didn’t have a total turnaround in business, and fast And if Denton’s failed, Shea would lose the job that she loved and wanted, needed to keep. She didn’t want her fantasy to fade any more than it already had—for her baby’s sake.

A nd for her father’s, Mack’s, sake, too. The store had been in the family for three generations, four if you counted her, and she didn’t think her father could handle losing it—and neither could she. She needed the store just the way she needed Quiet Brook, the sleepy little town they lived in, to recover from the heartache of her failed marriage.

All too fully aware that Jared was trailing her through the maze of counters and aisle dividers filled with Christmas toys, she just barely missed being hit by a shopping cart when she rounded another holiday display. Stopping suddenly, she felt Jared bump into her from behind.

The physical contact between them left her warm and wishful, two feelings she couldn’t afford to associate with Jared, and she blinked hard as she waited until the customer went by. When she looked up again, Jared was watching her with a frown on his face.

He was sticking to her like gum to the bottom of a shoe, and she didn’t want him to. “My fault,” she said stiffly, through a throat that had seized up tightly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t let my presence put you in a tizzy, Shea. I’ll be gone soon enough.”

“The door is straight down that aisle,” she said, pointing toward it. “I have a Grinch I have to catch.”

A sneeze that had to have blown down at least one wall assaulted Shea’s eardrums, and hurrying once again, she took a shortcut between the branches of two six-foot Christmas trees bedecked with red ribbons and lots of tinsel. A couple of seconds later, Jared muttered behind her, “Who thought up this danged holiday anyway!”

She. didn’t want to turn around, but then she heard the smacking sounds of what were probably, judging from the fact that decorated trees were in the aisle, ornaments hitting the floor.

Let them be the wooden ones, she begged Jared silently, only to hear his lowly uttered, “Damn!”

That did it. Turning to survey the damage, she frowned at Jared. Broad shouldered as he was, his following her through the closely placed trees had caused several ornaments to fall. He was kneeling, trying to hook a wooden rocking horse back into place, a funny, pathetic look on his face that tugged at her heartstrings.

As he leaned down, a branch smacked against his cheek. He shoved it out of the way; it hit him again. Feeling sorry for him, she went to his side and helped put the fallen ornaments back on the tree. Clearing the way, she watched as he pushed himself free with a sigh of relief.

“It’s just not your holiday, is it, Jared?” she quipped, finally letting the tiniest of smiles touch her lips.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m a Fourth-of July type myself. Lots of fireworks.” Reaching up, he trailed his finger along her cheek. “If I remember right, you loved them, too.”

His words and his touch were filled with double meaning, which only confused her. Drawing back, she looked at him with troubled eyes. “Fireworks are the last thing I want around here in the middle of my Christmas,” she told him sadly.

His warm gaze met her eyes.

“As far as I’m concerned,” she added in a manner she hoped would leave no doubt in his mind exactly where they stood, “I’ve sworn off the Fourth of July. No fireworks—not even a sparkler. Never, ever again.”

He stared at her for a long minute. “So why am I here, I wonder?”

She made a gesture of bewilderment. “Dad has some silly last-minute idea of reuniting us?”

“He’d know better than that, wouldn’t he?”

“Would he?” she asked.

The question hung in the air between them until a loud voice boomed from not too far away in the direction she was supposed to be heading.

“No, Mack, sorry,” the deep voice reverberated. “I’m quitting, and no one can stop me.”

“Oh, sheesh,” Shea said, turning her head toward the sound. “That’s our Santa. Dad’s waiting for the cavalry and here I am playing around with you!” Throwing up her hands in disgust, she rushed forward down the aisle, throwing a quick smile down at the same little sandy-haired girl she’d seen earlier as she dodged around her.

“I wouldn’t call what we were doing playing around,” Jared corrected, keeping up. “I remember really playing around with you—and it was a lot more fun than I’ve been having in the past ten minutes.”

With his talking like that, Shea was totally unable to concentrate on the argument Santa was having with her father.

“That’s not fair, Jared,” she told him as they passed the gift-wrapping section. “The minute I get ready to divorce you, you suddenly find your sense of humor again.”

“Missed it, did you?”

Yeah, she had. They used to laugh a lot over little things before last Christmas. After that, well, they’d stopped laughing. The thought made her hurt all over again, and her words came out a little more tersely than she wanted them to.

“Just go away, would you?” They were approaching the double line of children and the few adults who were waiting to see Santa, but who were being treated instead to a show of Santa and her father arguing about Santa’s flying the coop. “I’ve already spent too much time worrying about you when I should have been worrying about Dad. His chest pains are nothing to sneeze at, you know.”

With a suddenness that caught her off guard, Jared’s hand covered her shoulder. She stopped dead in her tracks. His hand felt warm through the wool of her green-and-tinsel-knit pullover, and she missed his touch so much. Not only his touch—everything about him. Having him there when she came home every night. His smiles over coffee in the morning. Loving him.

Gazing up into his eyes, she wished she could have her happy life back again, and for a long minute, Jared looked as if he was wishing that, too. But she knew in her heart they were fooling themselves. Without his loving and being a wonderful father to their child, without his wanting the same things as she did in life, she wouldn’t be happy, and he’d been right to let her go.

“What chest pains, Shea?” he asked quietly.

Her heart twisted. Jared was never effusive about his feelings, but from the solemn way he spoke now, she could sense how fond he was of Mack—and how worried about him he was.

Two ladies with their shopping carts were quickly approaching them, so, grabbing his jacket sleeve, Shea pulled him out of their way and into a side aisle between counters piled high with foil-wrapped Christmas candies and chocolate Santas. She was in a hurry to get to her father, but she thought this was something Jared needed to know.

“Dad started having heart problems a little over a year ago, and he had a scare back in May.” Since she’d already left Jared by then and had been considering filing for the divorce, she hadn’t felt much like turning to Jared at the time even though she had known he would come if she called. “You two have been on a fishing trip or two since then—I’m surprised he never told you.”

“We talk about fish during our fishing trips,” Jared told her. “Not anything personal.”