Their Precious Christmas Miracle: Mistletoe Baby / In the Spirit of...Christmas / A Baby By Christmas

She made herself wait half an hour, rather than give in to her eager impulse to call him. Instead, she contacted Belle Fulton with some bids she’d put together for the chamber of commerce, then helped May organize a promotional calendar for the coming new year, with seasonally themed discounts and specials. The entire time, David was at the back of her mind, patiently waiting.

Her fingers shook as she dialed the number she knew by heart, and she smiled wryly. Where was the brazen woman who’d slowly stripped for her husband the night before? Had he guessed that when she reached for that first button, part of her had been petrified? It had been so worth it, though. She’d felt glorious, powerful, cherished.

“Waide Supply. David Waide speaking.”

“Hey. This is Rachel Waide speaking.”

She could feel him smile into the phone. “Hey, gorgeous. I was just thinking about you. Of course, that’s because I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left last night.”

“Glad to know I made an impression.” She glanced around, making sure May was busy and out of earshot, then lowered her voice. “So, I was thinking.”

“Go on,” he encouraged. “It worked out really well the last time you called me to share your thoughts.”

She laughed, but the nervousness that had been dogging her expanded sharply in her lungs—like when you take too deep a breath in really cold air. “David, last night was wonderful, but it might have been a bit … premature. We might have moved a little fast.”

“I was really hoping this conversation was going to go differently,” he said, forlorn.

“But I liked the direction we were moving in,” she added. “I thought maybe we could, um, date for a little while? I know, you probably think it sounds stupid, but—”

“It sounds a whole hell of a lot better than losing you,” he said emphatically.

Relief coursed through her. “In that case, I ordered two tickets to the Winter Wonderland Dance. What are you doing Friday night?”

INSTEAD OF falling into the family business, Tanner Waide had struck out on his own. He ran a small but steadily growing bookkeeping service out of his apartment. In fact, despite what Lilah and Tanner conveniently let their parents and guardians believe until after the wedding, David suspected that makeshift office was about the only purpose the apartment served anymore. During work hours, when Lilah was at the school, Tanner could almost always be found here.

David knocked, more relieved than he would have expected when his brother called out, “Just a sec!”

A moment later, the door swung wide. “Dave, hey. Come on in, but watch your step. My lease is up at the end of the month, and it’s a maze of boxes in here.”

“I see that.” The little one-bedroom had never been much to look at, but with so many of Tanner’s personal belongings already packed, the place was dingier than usual. Was this Mistletoe’s answer to a bachelor pad? He shuddered, wondering how close he’d come to a future that looked like this.

“What’s up?” Tanner asked.

David sat on the lumpy orange sofa the landlord had thrown in with the deposit of the first and last month’s rent. “I came by to see if you wanted to grab lunch, but maybe it’s better if we talk where no friendly neighbors can overhear us. I need to ask your help with something.”

“My help? Wow, knock me over with a feather.”

David raised an eyebrow. “Let me know when you’re done making jokes.”

“What makes you think I was joking?” Tanner dumped some haphazardly stacked CDs out of a blue milk crate, flipped it over and sat on the plastic cube. “Don’t keep me in suspense. What do you need?”

Covert help with furniture assembly, but the simple request didn’t spill out.

Instead, David stumbled over the urge to blurt out everything that had happened for the past month and get his brother’s relationship advice now that he’d been gifted with a second chance. But, aside from the fact he and Rachel had agreed not to discuss that with his family, David wasn’t sure he was even capable of that conversation—admitting that he had made such a hash of his marriage that his wife had left.

Why was this so hard? Everyone—Tanner, Ari, their mother—had made it clear they’d be willing to listen, to provide any kind of support that was in their power. Yet, even with a close-knit family, David didn’t make a practice of turning to others for help. By the time he was in fifth grade, he hadn’t needed assistance with homework and by the time he’d hit middle school he’d been earning extra money as a peer tutor. He’d never had his heart broken as a teenager, had never had to worry about finding a job and had been blessed with a college scholarship. Even when it came to the kids’ soccer teams, he was one of the coaches able to manage without an assistant when they didn’t have volunteers. What his mother had said to him a few weeks ago was true: You were the solution finder.

Were being the operative word. He was not only beginning to realize there was nothing wrong with occasionally leaning on others, he suspected that if he didn’t start getting comfortable with that idea, he really might lose Rachel. For good. Besides, he was going to be a father. While he hoped his kid would grow up to be self-sufficient, David wanted to set the most positive example possible—and that didn’t include being too proud to let people who loved him lend a hand.

He waded in slowly. “Things are … awkward with Rachel. Nothing I can’t fix,” he hurried to add, mentally kicking himself for the qualifier. “What I mean is, I think everything will be fine, but we’re in a delicate stage. I worry that a lot of times, my foot ends up in my mouth.”

Tanner laughed. “Been there a time or two myself.”

“I want to make damn sure she knows how much I love her, even if I screw up from time to time. Tanner, you can keep a secret, right? Even from Lilah.”

His brother frowned. “That wouldn’t be my first choice, but for you, yeah.”

“Rachel’s pregnant.” Just saying the words sent adrenaline through him, exhilaration building. “We’re having a baby.”

“All right!” Tanner came off the crate to clap him on the shoulder. “That is the best news I’ve heard since Lilah told me she’d marry me. Congratulations, I am so happy for the two of you.”

“Thanks. We’re thrilled, obviously, but there are a bunch of other emotions under the surface, too.”

“I’m sure.” Tanner sobered. “You guys have been through so much. Is she worried about … well, you know?”

“Losing the baby? Whether they talk about it or not, I figure all expecting mothers probably are a tiny bit scared of that during their first trimester. Multiply Rachel’s ‘tiny’ by a million. The doctors told her last time that it wasn’t uncommon and that an isolated miscarriage didn’t automatically increase the chances of another one, but after the previous disappointments … Last week, during one of those awkward conversations I mentioned, she hit me with the out-of-the-blue announcement that I handled the aftermath wrong. That I wasn’t there for her in the right way and she felt alone.”

Tanner shrugged. “She probably did. No matter how much you love her, that was something she had to suffer through in a way you’ll never experience. I guess the best you can do under those circumstances is be patient, be there for her.”

“Yeah, it sounds so easy when you say it.” David shook his head. “We’re working to make our relationship really solid and now we have this baby coming! I want to do something for Rachel, a special Christmas present, a grand gesture that takes her breath away and shows her how invested I am in our future as a family. The thing is, it’s too big for me to pull off by myself. You’re pretty handy with a hammer and power drill, right?”

“I dragged you marathon shopping, and your favor includes the use of power tools?” Tanner grinned. “Man did I get the better deal.”

RACHEL KNEW it was irrational to splurge on a dress that would probably only fit for the next forty-eight hours, but she didn’t care. While it would still be weeks before people could pass her on the street and tell she was pregnant, her body was definitely changing. Especially her breasts, which had gone up at least a cup size since she’d taken that pregnancy test. The gown she’d chosen for tonight’s dance was a shimmering graphite material that crisscrossed over her chest, accented by a slim band of rhinestones and hematite beading, and made the most of her ample cleavage. It fell away from the bodice in a gracefully flowing skirt that didn’t cling in any unflattering places. A warm but sophisticated black wrap would keep her from freezing when she was outside.

She’d just finished curling her hair when she heard the doorbell promptly at seven. David looked positively yummy in a blue dress shirt, black blazer and slacks.

“Hi.” He smiled down into her eyes, making no attempt to mask the naked hunger in his eyes. “You look stunning.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

It was silly how much energy adolescents expended on being nervous about dates that included hamburgers and a guy they’d only go out with twice before moving on to the next crush. Tonight, Rachel had a date with the man who—if she was very lucky—she might spend the rest of her life with. She couldn’t imagine higher stakes. As a result, she was terrified, especially since she’d previously assumed all of her dating experiences were behind her.

“By the way,” he said as he helped drape her wrap over her shoulders, “I’m having something delivered here on Monday. I’ll be here to wait for it, if that’s okay with you. It’s during work hours, so I shouldn’t be in your way.”

“You have every right to be here. It’s your house,” she pointed out.

He opened his mouth and she could see that he wanted to correct her: our house. She wanted that, too, not just a house, but a loving home for them and their child. Something of that magnitude was worth working for, even if it took a little time and renewed efforts.

Once they were in the car, she asked, “So, with the Wonderland dance being a town tradition, did you take dates there back in school?”

“Sort of.”

Intrigued by the hint of laughter in his tone, she waited for more. “Explanation?”

“Well, you know how crowded it always is. I’d go with a girl, we’d make sure to casually bump into her parents and my parents exactly once, then we’d fade into the crush. And spend the rest of the night necking at Mistletoe Cove.”

“I’m shocked at you. A boy with your sterling reputation exploiting a charity event for the chance to make out with girls?”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. In fact …” He slanted a tempting sidelong glance in her direction.

“I don’t think so.” She wasn’t sure she could stop with necking. “Slowly, remember? No turbo boosters.”

“You sure?” His voice dropped to a cajoling octave. “I’d let you be in the driver’s seat.”

“I’ll bet. As I recall, you quite liked that last time.”

His grin flashed in the darkness. “So did you.”

Heat zinged through her. David Waide was flirting with her! The sensation was just as heady now as when they’d first met. More so. Then, she’d simply been a woman in her twenties pondering where to go next with her life, and he’d been a very cute guy who’d seemed empathetic. Now, she knew them both better, had seen the promise of how good they could be together and had looked into the abyss of how it could all go wrong.

“Rach?”

Her voice came out huskier than usual. “I think we’d better stick to well-populated areas tonight.”

“You’re undoubtedly right.”

But he sounded every bit as depressed about the decision as she was, which cheered her considerably.

FOLLOWING a wonderful date Friday evening—ending in steamy kisses on the doorstep because Rachel hadn’t trusted their combined willpower if she invited David in—came a night out with the girls.

Since both Lilah and Tanner had agreed they didn’t want to be out partying the night before their wedding, they were holding their bachelor and bachelorette parties the weekend prior to the ceremony. Much to Lilah’s relief, Arianne’s talk of a wild and crazy bash had been slightly exaggerated. Still, they did drive toward Atlanta to an upscale club that featured male dancers and really, really cute waiters. One of Lilah and Quinn’s colleagues at the school had a minivan that seated eight, so the entire bridal party and three teachers piled in to ride together. Vonda suggested before they left Mistletoe that the women draw straws to pick a designated driver—Rachel drew admiring praise and friends for life when she volunteered.

Once at the nightclub, Vonda suggested they hit the dance floor. “Ever since the hip replacement of ‘05, I’ve been a new woman!”

“Okay, but first Lilah has to put on her veil,” Arianne insisted. It was a joyfully tacky affair with blinking neon lights and a cellophane-wrapped green condom that looked like an oversize circular jewel in the center of the headband.

A good sport, Lilah slid it on her head to the sounds of her friends laughing and clapping.

Rachel leaned in, keeping her voice to a whisper. “Make sure that thing accidentally falls off on the dance floor, and I’ll accidentally trample the heck out of it. Sadly, I’ll have to throw it away. Inevitable party casualty.”

“Don’t tell Ari,” Lilah whispered back, “but you are definitely going to be my favorite sister-in-law.”

The club was having a retro-themed night, and Rachel had a great time joking with her friends and belting out the lyrics to songs from Abba, Blondie and Barry White, but it didn’t quite compare to the night before, dancing to more staid holiday selections in David’s arms. Lilah unknowingly echoed that sentiment later while they stood at the bar and waited for a couple of glasses of cold water.

“Having fun?” Rachel asked.

“A blast. Although having that one dancer come to our table …”

Rachel grinned. “Vonda certainly seemed to like him.”

“I think everyone’s having fun, and Arianne did a good job planning something naughty without completely destroying my comfort zone. I mean, the dancer was hot, I admit.” Lilah fanned herself with one of the small square napkins. “Seriously hot. Still, the only guy I want getting that close to me is Tanner.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Rachel assured her. All I want for Christmas is David.

Chapter Fourteen

“Have I mentioned how much I appreciate this?” David asked, studying the planks in front of him and matching them with the diagram in the instructions.

On the other side of the room where he was assembling a matching bookshelf, Tanner wiped a sleeve across his sweaty brow. “Happy to help. Although I gotta admit, it’s not how I pictured spending my Christmas Eve. I was planning on letting Lilah catch me beneath the mistletoe. A lot.”

Both Lilah and Rachel were currently sleeping at Susan and Zachariah’s. The Waide tradition was that the whole family gathered there for Christmas Eve and dove into presents first thing in the morning, just as they did when they were kids. Because David had told everyone he shouldn’t leave the puppy alone all night, the women were having a slumber party in Arianne’s old room and the guys would rejoin them around sunrise. But he’d been serious about not leaving Hildie alone all night—she was camped outside the doorway, gnawing on a chew toy and regarding their progress with friendly curiosity.

David dismissed his brother’s lascivious hopes. “Despite whatever you had in mind, Mom was planning on making sure the two of you slept in separate rooms until after the wedding—”

“Three more days!”

“—so look at this as a way to burn off your physical frustration in the meantime.”

“I’ve long passed physical frustration and am headed into physical exhaustion,” his brother groused good-naturedly. “Moving the guest room furniture into the garage and all this stuff out of the garage … You really think Rachel will be surprised? I’d do anything in the world for Lilah, but she would have found the boxes by now. She has present radar. She stumbles over things I’ve hidden away even when she’s not purposely looking for them. Trying to keep her from finding her engagement ring early was a comedy of errors.”

David shook his head. “Rachel rarely ever goes into the garage, especially in the winter.” The space was too cramped for them to park cars inside, and had become little more than a storage facility for lawn and maintenance tools—it had been the perfect spot to hide the boxes for a few days. Even if Rachel had ventured out for a better look, she would have seen a neatly stacked row of cardboard, all taped up and full of parts and pieces that required assembly.

He grinned at all they’d managed to accomplish in just one night, trying to imagine her face when he showed her. “For future reference, Tanner, I owe you a beer.”

“Ha! I was thinking a keg.” But his brother was smiling, too. “As long as Rachel loves it, that’s enough for me.”

David couldn’t agree more. This was going to be the best Christmas ever.

RACHEL FELT warm and contentedly cocooned in the dreams she’d been having, but her senses were starting to provide solid motivation for waking up, too. The alluring scent of baking cinnamon rolls, for instance. And she was aware of the gentlest, coaxing pressure … She returned the light kiss as she opened her eyes, waking in David’s embrace.

He sat on the bed, smiling. “Merry Christmas.”

She sleepily returned the smile, then remembered where she was and glanced around. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Arianne’s helping Mom with breakfast, which is nearly ready, and I think Tanner dragged Lilah off in search of mistletoe. He was pitiful last night. The way he carried on, you’d think they were separated for weeks on end instead of a few hours.”

Rachel stretched, grinning nostalgically. “I remember the days before our wedding when I was sleeping under the same roof as my parents, only I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking of you.”

“Yeah?” David stroked his hand over her face. “What kind of thoughts?”

“Hey!” Arianne called from the hallway. “If all you happy couples think you’re gonna get fed, I demand help in the kitchen.”

Pulling herself into a sitting position, Rachel laughed. “Your sister is really going to have to learn to be assertive and ask for what she wants.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard, being the baby of the family and a girl,” David deadpanned. “Tanner and I probably sheltered her too much. I blame myself for her crippling shyness.”

Rachel was still shaking her head and chuckling when she walked away to brush her teeth. She smiled at her own reflection in the mirror. Hard to believe that cheerful, beautiful woman was really her. If anyone had asked her a month ago, she would have said this was her last holiday with the Waide family, probably her last holiday as a Waide. She would have expected it to be tinged with melancholy if not outright grim. She’d never been so thrilled to be so wrong.

The biggest improvement might be her and David trying to reconnect, but it wasn’t the only improvement.

In weeks past, she’d been trying to decide if she could be truly happy here, in a slow-paced job and in a small community where people would probably always see her first and foremost as David’s wife with no real picture of who she’d been before. But after calling South Carolina last night to wish her own family happy holidays and hearing how stressed they all sounded—Kate having only returned to her job from maternity leave a few months ago and now worried about balancing her career with two small children, Rachel’s father still pushing himself as hard as ever and refusing to consider retirement, her mother still obsessing over office politics (“First it was the sexism and having to prove myself among the Boys’ Club, now it’s making sure these new young girls they hire don’t make the rest of us obsolete”)… Well, it was easy to remember why Rachel had dropped out of that particular rat race and sought the sanctuary of this sleepy town.

Folks in Mistletoe might be overly interested in her life, but it was by and large legitimate interest, not just judging her by her portfolio or whether she was on track for a promotion. Rachel had never truly disliked her job at the print shop. She’d just started overanalyzing it because she’d wanted to feel that she was in control of something, because she’d so desperately needed to be excited about something in her life. But both her parents had tried to find their satisfaction at the office for years, and neither seemed to have succeeded.

She patted her tummy, looking down. “And then there’s you.” She could not wait to see everyone’s faces when she and David made the announcement later.

When she finally joined the others in the kitchen, Tanner harassed her about women taking a long time in the bathroom, and Arianne playfully accused her of ducking breakfast chores. Only David glanced at her with worry, raising an eyebrow in silent question and miming being queasy. It took her a moment to figure out what he was doing, and she laughed at how ridiculous he looked. She’d unintentionally discovered that her competitive husband would probably be lousy at charades.

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