Their Unexpected Christmas Gift (The Stone Gap Inn Book 3) Read online

  Vivian wiped away the bit of sauce that had ended up on her chin. Without his help. Bummer.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually such a mess when I eat. I’m just really hungry and this is really good.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I rarely have an audience for my food. Most of the time I’m in the kitchen cleaning up while the guests are eating.”

  In the space of time it took him to speak those few sentences, Vivian had wolfed down two more bites. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast and didn’t realize I was starving until now.”

  He chuckled. “You missed lunch? I would have gnawed off my arm by now.”

  She shrugged. “I very rarely eat during the day. When I do, it’s a few quick bites at my desk. My days get so crazy busy that I forget.”

  He chuckled. “Honey, if you’re forgetting to eat, then you’re eating really boring food.”

  The honey hung in the air between them. It had slipped out of him, that Southern word that peppered almost every sentence down here in North Carolina and had invaded his own vocabulary now that he was back home. Vivian stared at him for a second, then dipped her head to take another bite. The memory of the feel of his lips against hers flitted through her mind, and she quickly changed the subject. “So, you’re a chef instead of an IT guy. I get that. Sort of. More fulfilling and all that. But how did you end up here?”

  “I grew up in Stone Gap, at least some of the time. My grandmother had a house in town, and my brothers and I were always pestering our parents to let us visit. We ended up here about once a month and if we were lucky, a week in the summer. Her house sits on Stone Gap Lake and was a thousand times better than the Mausoleum.”

  “The Mausoleum?”

  “My parents have this monstrosity of a house with marble pillars and a lawn bigger than the state of Rhode Island, on a couple hundred acres up in Raleigh, where they work. The house was so damned big, we had to use an intercom system to find each other. My parents hated noise and so the house was almost always silent. Hence, the Mausoleum.”

  “We had very different childhoods,” she said. “I don’t think I lived anywhere quiet until I got a place on my own. Maybe that’s why I still live alone.”

  Which implied no husband or live-in boyfriend. Why Nick cared, he couldn’t say. Except that he couldn’t forget kissing her or how much he wanted to do exactly that all over again. “I’ve lived with or near my brothers my entire life, until I came back to Stone Gap. Worked with them, ate dinner with them...we sort of became a tribe when we were younger, and that didn’t change as adults.”

  “Until now.” She speared a thick piece of chicken. “Why?”

  “My life plans detoured.” He took a sip of water and sat back, allowing the generous helping of food he’d just consumed to settle a bit. “I was dating this woman at work for a couple years. I planned to ask her to marry me, and to spend the week after Christmas in Jamaica to celebrate. Turns out she already had plans of her own—to dump me and go on vacation with my right-hand man and former best friend.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You can say that again. I was working so many hours, nose to the grindstone and all that, that I never even noticed the two of them had started hanging out more, finding reasons to talk to each other at work. The day after my would-be proposal turned into a breakup, my grandmother died. I came down here for the funeral and never went back.”

  “It’s like a bad country song.” A hint of a smile played on her lips. “Don’t tell me you drive a pickup too?”

  He laughed. “Actually, I do. But only because it’s practical. Not because it carries my hunting rifles and Labrador.”

  A wider smile swung across her face. “This is good.”

  “You already said that. Twice.”

  “I meant the conversation. I forgot what it’s like to talk to a normal person.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. “Meaning someone other than a lawyer?”

  She nodded. “All we do is argue.”

  So true. Nick had heard more hushed arguments between his parents in his house growing up than he’d heard conversations between them. On the upside, they were more interested in tearing into each other than yelling at their kids. On the downside, the reason seemed to be that they didn’t much care about their kids at all. Not even enough to yell. His parents had rarely plugged in, hardly been a part of the boys’ lives. Except for the time she’d worked, Vivian had surprised him by being far more engaged with him, dinner and the baby—more or less—than he’d expected. He’d held a firm no-dating-lawyers stance most of his life, but now, he considered easing that restriction.

  Insane. She was only here for a couple days at the most. They weren’t dating. This was just a shared meal in the kitchen. And there was a baby between them. Literally and figuratively.

  “Tell that to my parents, will you?” Nick shook his head. “They never seemed to figure out how to talk to any of us boys, or each other, for that matter. Of course, we were also major disappointments because not a single one of us went into the law.”

  Nick almost had, being the one who’d tried the hardest to please his impossible-to-please parents. He’d lasted a little over a month in law school. One torturous, hellacious month of reading about tortes and case histories and evidentiary procedures before he bailed and lied to his parents for the next six months.

  “I bet the guests at the Stone Gap Inn are really glad you didn’t go into law. I know I am.” She polished off her last bite, leaving the plate almost as clean as it had been when it came out of the dishwasher. “Is everything you make this delicious?”

  He shrugged. “I think so. I mean, I just cook what I like to eat.” That’s how he’d always approached food—by instinct. He had the culinary degree, but he also regularly made it up as he went along. He seasoned by sense, rather than by exact measurements.

  “Well, I’m eating whatever morsels are left in the pan and not being one bit shy about it.” She rose.

  At the same time, Nick got to his feet. “Let me,” he said, putting his hand out for her plate. Their twin movements caused a quick, light collision. The plate wavered in her hands, almost toppled, before Nick caught it. Simultaneously, Vivian reached for his arm to steady herself.

  Her lips parted in surprise and her eyes widened. “I... I’m sorry.”

  “It’s my fault. Let me...” His voice trailed off as his mind went blank. It took a second for his hand to make the connection with his brain. “Uh, get you another helping.”

  “Thank you.” Vivian dropped back into her chair, quickly, then whipped out her cell phone and busied herself with reading texts. The lightness disappeared from her features, replaced by the stern concentration of a workaholic.

  If anything reminded Nick of what he didn’t want, it was that.

  Chapter Five

  From the day she was born, Vivian Winthrop had spent every waking hour focused on excelling. When she was little, and living at home with a mother slipping deeper and deeper into an alcohol and painkiller addiction, Vivian had worried over every single detail. Maybe if the beds were made and the house was clean and the dishes done, her mother wouldn’t drink so often and yell so much. Maybe if she brought home perfect grades, her mother would notice and take her daughter to the park as a reward. Then maybe they could become a real family, like the ones she saw at school, with parents who scooped their kids into tight hugs in the parking lot after class let out. Maybe she could have a mom who marveled at the crafts and cookies from the Brownie meetings Vivian often had to miss because she had no way to get home afterward.

  But the sparkling plates and hospital corners never earned a single word of praise. The A+ papers never got hung on the refrigerator. Every day, her mother retreated deeper and deeper into the shadows of her room and the solace she found in those wine bottles and the pills
, until the state came in and decided Vivian and Sammie would be better off living with strangers. Every single time she and her sister were moved to another house, the cycle started all over again. Let me be perfect, she’d think, and then maybe my mom will miss me enough to try harder, and she’ll come get me.

  A psychologist would probably say she was trying to bring order to a chaotic life, but that quest for perfectionism had become an ingrained trait and made her a very successful lawyer. Vivian turned in every brief early, had the most organized office of any of the partners and dived into each case as if the fate of the world rested on the verdict. Meticulous, organized, perfect in every aspect of her life.

  Until this weekend. Until Sammie up and ran away, leaving Ellie on the kitchen table. And leaving Vivian with the one thing she couldn’t manage perfectly.

  A baby.

  And on top of that, the brief for the client she needed to write and file by Tuesday morning needed one more polish, the case law research was waiting on her review, and the emails she needed to return were multiplying like bunnies.

  And Ellie was fussing and squirming, and on the verge of tears. She wasn’t the only one.

  “Come on, Ellie, please help me out. You know I suck at this,” Vivian said to her niece as she tried to change diaper number two. “If you could just, say, not move for thirty seconds, maybe I can get this diaper on and then you’d be happy and I could work. Please?”

  Ellie just twisted back and forth, her cries getting stronger by the second. She was much like her mother, all piss and vinegar, and anxious to see the world. Vivian thought babies this young slept all the time. Apparently, Ellie didn’t get the memo.

  Vivian slipped the new diaper back under the baby’s butt for the fourth time, then taped one side in place and tried to quickly flick out and affix the other piece of tape. At the same time, Ellie moved, balling up her fists, crunching her legs to her stomach. The tape landed askew, and showed a gap between the diaper and Ellie’s left leg. Vivian already knew—as did her pantsuit—what happened when the diaper wasn’t firmly in place, so she unstuck the tape, tried again, darting past Ellie’s complaining and twisting, and wham, fourth time was the close-enough charm.

  “Phew. I need a vacation after that.” Vivian dropped onto the bed and rolled Ellie toward her. She tried to give Ellie the rest of her bottle, but the baby just shook her head. She had her lips pressed together and the tears were starting again, dissolving into cries.

  “Here, Ellie. Let’s finish your supper.” She nuzzled the bottle against Ellie’s lips.

  Again, no luck. Wasn’t she supposed to be hungry? Ellie hadn’t finished the bottle earlier, and Vivian was pretty sure she was supposed to. Was Vivian feeding her wrong? Was there a wrong way to put a bottle in a baby’s mouth?

  “Ellie, come on, please.” Again, Ellie refused and her cries yielded to screams. “Come on, honey. Take this, and we’ll get your pj’s on, then go to sleep.” Vivian tried to say it all in the happy-mommy voice that Nick used. As soon as she said it, Vivian realized she should have saved herself some effort and put the borrowed baby pajamas on right after changing Ellie, instead of re-dressing her in today’s pink onesie.

  Ellie kept screaming, and as she did, her chubby fist waved, her fingers opening and closing around a hunk of Vivian’s hair. Ellie pulled, and Vivian was sure she’d just earned a bald spot. “Ouch! Hey, honey, don’t do that to Auntie Viv. Since you’re not hungry, and I changed your diaper, you must be sleepy, right?”

  The baby’s blue eyes were wide open, without a hint of sleepiness. Vivian, on the other hand, felt like she could sleep for a week.

  “Umm...let’s go for a walk. Maybe that will calm you down.” Vivian fastened her hair into a messy ponytail on top of her head, then picked up Ellie and paced the room. Holding the baby still felt weird and unnatural, and Vivian was pretty sure she was doing it wrong. When Sammie picked up Ellie, her daughter nestled into her neck. But when Vivian held her niece, Ellie remained stiff and separate.

  Ellie’s long, drawn-out wails were going to wake up the elderly man staying in the room down the hall, if they hadn’t already. When Vivian booked the weekend away at the B and B, she’d been caught in some delusion about a drawn-out overnight party with her sister, the kind of late-night gabfest they’d had when they were young. Adding the surprise of Ellie into the mix had meant everything revolved around the baby. Which was okay, because Ellie was adorable—from a distance and to everyone else in the inn, it seemed—and Sammie seemed to be a good mother. But in the end, Viv had retreated to her comfort zone of working while Sammie took care of the baby.

  Why Sammie had ever thought Vivian would make a better mother than her, she’d never know. Sammie had that natural connection—not to mention three months of experience. Sammie was the one who could intuit Ellie’s every need. Whereas Vivian felt as lost as she had on her first day of law school. At least there, she’d had professors and books to consult. In this small room, she had only Ellie and some fumbled one-handed Google searches on her phone.

  “How about this?” Vivian yanked the pacifier out of the diaper bag, pressed it to Ellie’s lips, but again the baby squirmed and cried and refused to open her mouth. How terrible were Vivian’s maternal instincts if she couldn’t even get her niece to take a pacifier? Wasn’t that basic stuff?

  “What were you thinking, Sammie?” she said to the room, to the air, to all the miles between her and her irresponsible sister. Vivian sighed, tucked the pacifier into the pocket of her sweats, then grabbed the half-empty formula bottle and headed downstairs. Maybe in the kitchen, Ellie’s cries would be muffled enough to not disturb the other guest.

  Or Nick.

  She’d been thinking about that man altogether too much when she should be thinking about work. Before, she could always keep work running in her mind while she did any other task. Maybe it was the quaint town or maybe it was the addition of the baby, or maybe, just maybe, it was that kiss she’d been unable to forget, but for the past few hours, Nick Jackson had lingered at the edge of her every thought.

  A single light burned over the kitchen sink, casting a golden glow over the stove, the kitchen table, the white tile. Just a few hours ago, Vivian had been sitting at that same table, enjoying what might have been the best meal of her life, with one of the most handsome men she’d ever dined with. Nick had an easy comfortableness about him, in the way he moved and talked, and especially in the way he kissed.

  Ellie buried her face in Vivian’s shoulder and kept on crying. A reminder that Vivian would do well to focus on her niece and not on a man who was a temporary detour in a life that had been planned since she’d gone to college and decided the best way to avoid being disappointed by relationships was to not have them.

  Vivian bounced Ellie in her arms, but the baby only got more upset, balling up her fists and waving them in her aunt’s face. Vivian paced around the kitchen island, whispering shh-shh in Ellie’s ear. She cried louder. Vivian offered the pacifier again; Ellie spit it back out. And cried more.

  Vivian dropped onto one of the bar stools, clutched her niece to her chest and wondered if crying was contagious, because she was doing it now, too.

  “Need some help?”

  Nick was standing in the doorway at the other end of the kitchen, clad in a pair of flannel pajama pants and nothing else. His chest was bare, muscular and, even in the middle of her despair, Vivian noticed. “She won’t stop crying,” she said, swiping away her own tears before Nick got close enough to see them. “It took me seven hundred tries to get her diaper on right. Both times. I think I’m feeding her wrong, and I think she might starve, because she barely ate, and she isn’t sleeping, and what if I’m screwing her up and—”

  Nick crossed the room in three quick strides, and covered her hand with his. “Shh,” he said, just as she had with Ellie a moment before. “She’s three months old. It takes years to
screw up a kid.”

  That made Vivian laugh a little. “True.”

  “Maybe it’s just tough on Ellie to have all these changes in her life, and that’s why she’s so grumpy.”

  Vivian glanced down at her squirming, unhappy niece. She thought of her sister and herself, and how they’d acted out after yet another change, another home. They’d been much older than Ellie, but perhaps the feelings of disquiet, of frustration, were the same for babies. “You think so?”

  “Babies like structure,” Nick said. “They like schedules. It helps them learn that their world is predictable, and gives them a strong foundation.”

  Was this the same man who’d called her a babynapper earlier today? The same one who had seemed as clueless as she felt? “Where did you learn that?”

  Nick shrugged. “I read a little tonight. I couldn’t sleep, and I figured if I read some stuff about babies, maybe I could be more help to you. You know, if you wanted the help.”

  “That is—” she sniffled and tried not to show the wave of relief that filled her “—the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s nothing.”

  There it was again, the word honey. It rolled off his tongue so easily, and melted her resolve to steer clear of this temporary man. It also made fresh tears well in her eyes. It had to be the hours of trying to be a mom to a child who wasn’t hers, of struggling to succeed at something and failing so badly, or maybe just the holiday decorations all around town making her maudlin, but hearing that Nick had read up on baby care in his spare time just to help her made her cry even harder.

  “Here, let me take her,” he said, gently tugging Ellie out of her arms. “Looks like you might need the binkie more.”

  That made Vivian laugh again, and stopped the flow of tears. She swiped at her eyes and drew in a deep breath. It was a few seconds before she noticed that Ellie had stopped crying, too. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Nick said. He was swaying left to right, as easy as a swing in a spring breeze, Ellie cradled in his arms. When he tried the bottle and she refused it, he set the bottle on the counter, hefted Ellie over one shoulder, and began to pat her back and rub it in circles at the same time. Ellie let out a loud, long burp, then settled into Nick’s arm in contentment. When he tried the bottle again, she took it in with greedy slurps, and in minutes the bottle was drained.