She’d given up on Christmas miracles, until one landed on his doorstep

Vivian Winthrop is a brilliant lawyer, but family has never been on her to-do list. Until her baby niece is left at the Stone Gap Inn on Christmas Eve. Vivian is thrust into the role of mommy, a challenge she’s completely unprepared for! Luckily, chef Nick Jackson is a natural with little Ellie. And if being near him stirs up delicious—and unexpected—feelings? Maybe a little Christmas magic could turn their holiday fling into something a little more permanent…

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author SHIRLEY JUMP spends her days writing romance so she can avoid the towering stack of dirty dishes, eat copious amounts of chocolate and reward herself with trips to the shopping centre. Visit her website at shirleyjump.com for author news and a book list, and follow her at Facebook.com/shirleyjump.author for giveaways and deep discussions about important things like chocolate and shoes.

Also by Shirley Jump

The Family He Didn’t Expect

The Firefighter’s Family SecretThe Tycoon’s ProposalThe Instant Family ManThe Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

The Christmas Baby SurpriseThe Matchmaker’s Happy EndingMistletoe Kisses with the BillionaireReturn of the Last McKennaHow the Playboy Got Serious

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Their Unexpected Christmas Gift

Shirley Jump

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09180-0

THEIR UNEXPECTED CHRISTMAS GIFT

© 2019 Shirley Kawa-Jump, LLC

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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To a Christmas I will never forget, with the man

who makes every day better than the one before.

Here’s to many, many more!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!

Nick Jackson stood under the banner draped across the center of Main Street in Stone Gap, and debated sign sabotage. The entire town was in the process of getting decked out for Christmas. Elves—or rather, Department of Public Works employees in silly costumes festooned with bells—were on stepladders, draping garland over the street lamps. Shopkeepers were pasting images of fat Santas and fake snowflakes in their windows. Others were piping holiday tunes from their sound systems a full three days before the first day of December.

When Nick was young, he’d loved Christmas as much as any other kid, even though his parents hadn’t been the traditional kind who woke up at dawn and had a pajamas-on-the-couch Christmas morning. They’d believed in dignified holidays, with practical gifts like suits and calculators. But for a kid of three, or five, or seven, the world still held magic and promise, and anything could happen. By the time he hit middle school, Nick had given up on miracles.

Until then, Nick had woken up at the crack of dawn every Christmas morning, then dragged his brothers Carson and Grady out of bed. He’d sat on the stool at the kitchen bar, fidgety and anxious and dreaming of finding something cool under the elegant, professionally decorated Christmas tree, like a race car or a skateboard. The three boys would wait through an interminable breakfast served by the cook, who shuffled around the kitchen and grumbled under her breath about being underpaid to make pancakes on a holiday morning.

Then their parents would wake, and there’d be a quiet, five-minute exchange of whatever sensible present had been chosen for the boys. Books, savings bonds, dress shoes. No Legos. No remote control cars. As holiday after holiday passed, and Nick began to realize there would never be one of those cozy family-by-the-fireplace scenes in the Jackson household, he’d told himself that when he was grown and out of his parents’ house, his life would be different. He’d have the white picket fence, the Labrador and he’d flip pancakes for his kids himself every Sunday morning. He’d dreamed of that first Christmas, with all its perfection of a lazy morning by the tree. He’d even started filling in the image with his girlfriend, Ariel, and had been on the verge of proposing—up until she’d dumped him for his best friend.

The next day, Nick had hopped a plane to Stone Gap, North Carolina, to bury his grandmother and figure out what the hell to do next. After the funeral, he’d found out that Grandma Ida Mae had left Grady the house, and Nick and Carson each a nice sum of money. So he quit his job and stayed in Stone Gap, without a mustard seed of an idea of what he was going to do next. He had an inheritance to rely on once he decided, but that came with a few strings that Nick hadn’t wanted to tackle yet.

After a month of scotch and self-pity. Della Barlow, owner and main chef at the Stone Gap Inn, got sick and left the kitchen understaffed. Nick had ended up taking her place temporarily, pinch hitting for Della and winning over the guests with his béchamel lasagna and lighter-than-air pancakes. By the end of that week, Nick had finally figured out what he wanted to do with his life at thirty.

He could have gone for another job in IT—he was certainly qualified for it, after several years working with his brother Carson at Tech Analysts. Somehow he’d slipped into a life of building computer security systems and analyzing hacker threats. Actually, it wasn’t a somehow—Nick remembered the exact day he’d hung up his apron and toque and called Carson. The fight with his father, the confrontation when Richard Jackson found out his son had been lying about law school for over a semester.

The job with Carson was always supposed to be a temporary measure, a stopgap, until Nick could save enough to go out on his own as a chef. One year had turned into two, had turned into four, and then he’d met Ariel, and leaving seemed like a bad idea. His cooking skills had gotten rusty, and he’d started to think he was too old to start over with a pipe dream. Until he’d found himself in the kitchen of the Stone Gap Inn. As the whisk turned wine and flour into a velvety sauce, his love of food returned. After she returned from being out sick, Della had offered him a job and Nick Jackson had had a purpose again, at least until he was done avoiding his life.

For now, he would be content to avoid the holiday season. He just wasn’t quick enough.

“Hey, Nick! I forgot to say have a Merry Christmas!” Matty Gibson, the owner of Matty’s Market, stepped out of the shop and gave Nick a wave. He was a tall guy, lean and lanky and with a balding dome hidden beneath a faded Atlanta Braves hat. Nick had heard that Matty had made it to the major leagues when he was only twenty, then tore his rotator cuff with a windup pitch that first spring training and had to leave before he played an actual pro game. He’d come back home to Stone Gap and eventually took over his father’s grocery store downtown.

Nick worked up a smile of sorts. Could it at least be December before everyone started in on the holiday celebration? “Yeah, you too.”

“So what are you making with all that stuff?” Matty nodded toward the paper sack. “I can’t remember the last time anyone bought one of them jars of artichokes. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten an artichoke, jarred or otherwise. I only ordered them because Sadie down at the Clip ’n Curl said they’re her favorite, and well, have you seen Sadie?”

Pretty much everyone in Stone Gap knew Matty had a crush on the owner of the hair salon. He’d asked her out twice, but she’d said no both times. As Matty told it, he had a bit of a reputation as a player, and Sadie wanted a steady man with a future. No amount of convincing had made Sadie change her mind so far about Matty’s reliability as a boyfriend, but that didn’t dissuade him one bit.

“I’m making a braised chicken with artichokes and cherry tomatoes,” Nick said. “Nothing fancy.”

Matty laughed. “Well, you use words like braised, and it sure sounds fancy. You have company coming or something?”

“Nope. Just me. There’s no one staying at the inn tonight, so this is my dinner.” He hadn’t made any real friends in Stone Gap, just a lot of acquaintances. And that list included no one that he knew well enough to invite over to his room at the back of the inn. So tonight it was just him and the artichokes.

“Lot of work for one person.” Matty shook his head. “Me, I usually just throw in a frozen pizza, kick my feet up and watch the game. These days, that’s all I can do is watch the game.” His gaze went to the distance, then he shook it off. “Anyway, you enjoy. See you around.”

Nick said goodbye, then stuffed the bag of groceries in the cab of his truck. As he pulled away from downtown, he noticed the temperature had dropped since this morning, with winter taking as firm a hold as it could in North Carolina. It rarely got cold enough for snow, which was just fine with Nick. He’d had more than enough of below freezing temperatures when he lived up north. Plus, adding snow would just put the cap on Holly Jolly and he didn’t need that.

Nick parked behind the inn, where a single door led into the kitchen, and his room, just to the left of the airy, sunny space. He supposed he could have texted and asked Grady, who had been the one to inherit the two-story, if he could live at their grandmother’s now-empty house, but it had been easier to just stay here at the inn and settle into the small space that didn’t hold any memories or connections to anyone else in his life. Bah humbug.

Okay, so yeah, maybe he sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge. All the more reason to just stick to his own company until at least January 1. Keep his head down, be alone and avoid human contact as much as possible.

Especially contact with his family. Grandma Ida Mae had left Nick a note in the package containing her will. A note he had read and set aside. What she wanted was too much to ask right now. Maybe ever.

An hour later, he’d stowed the groceries, done the few dishes from that morning and straightened the pillows in the front room. After a busy week for Thanksgiving, the renovated antebellum house was almost empty for the next two weeks, and then the Christmas rush began. Della had taken the opportunity to go away for a few days, leaving Mavis Beacham, her business partner, and Nick in charge of the inn.

As far as Nick knew, the only people currently staying at the inn were one elderly man who was visiting his daughter and grandchildren in town and two women who had shown up with a baby early yesterday. A blonde and a brunette, around his age. The brunette he’d only glimpsed a couple times, but she was one of those stunningly beautiful women whose presence lingered long after she left the room.

Nick hadn’t talked to them, and they hadn’t been social either, asking that their meals be left outside their door, and except for the occasional cry from the baby, the women had been pretty quiet. He made a mental note to ask the women if the baby needed any special foods. He assumed it was still drinking formula or whatever, but considering all that he knew about kids could be written on a grain of rice, Nick figured it didn’t hurt to ask. There was some age when babies graduated to stuff like mashed bananas, right? Maybe the kid had already hit that milestone.

He had a couple hours until it was time to start his dinner. The women had asked for a late checkout today, and Mr. Grissom had already left to spend the afternoon and dinner with his family, which left Nick alone at the inn. Mavis would be in tomorrow morning, and they’d talk about the week’s plan after breakfast. He liked that his life had settled into a routine of meals, cooking, cleaning, then rinse and repeat.

Nick stepped into the shower in the tiny bathroom attached to his room. The hot water eased the tension in his shoulders. By the time he turned off the tap, he was fit to be good company for himself. Just as he was stepping out of the shower, he heard a sound from the kitchen. It wasn’t uncommon for guests to stop in and help themselves to a snack—free run of the kitchen was included in the price of the room—so the sound didn’t worry him. He slipped on some jeans, threw on a T-shirt and thought he heard the front door of the inn shut with a soft snick, then the crunch of car tires on the crushed shell drive.

Nick took a few more minutes to comb his hair and tidy the bathroom before he ambled out to the kitchen. As he did, he heard a soft sound that began to grow louder by the second. It took him a moment to figure out that it was crying. And that the sound was coming from a small white basket sitting on the kitchen table, flanked by salt and pepper on one side and a cheery flower-patterned place mat on the other.

Correction—a white basket with a pink blanket and underneath the blanket…

A crying baby. An honest to God, miniature human. On the kitchen table. On a Sunday afternoon.

He hadn’t seen the baby the women had checked in with yesterday—he had heard it cry only once in a while and had gotten a description secondhand from Mavis, who’d pronounced the baby the “cutest thing in the whole county,” but he assumed it had to be that baby. It wasn’t like babies rained down from the sky. At least, not in North Carolina.

But there was no one else in the kitchen. No one down the hall. No one at all.

He remembered the sound of the front door, the tires on the curved drive. He lingered in the kitchen, a few feet away, and waited. Surely they’d be right back.

But the door didn’t open. The baby kept on crying. Not an ear-piercing wail, but more of a stunned, snarfling cry.

“Hey!” Nick called out to the emptiness. “Your baby is here!”

No answer. He grabbed the basket, holding it as delicately as a nuclear bomb, and dashed down the hall. He called up the stairs. “Hey, uh…ladies?” If Mavis had told him their names, he’d already forgotten them. “You forgot the kid.”

Nick ran up the stairs, two at a time. His footsteps echoed in the empty house. He stopped at the Charlotte room, where he knew the women were staying, and knocked on the closed door. The door, which hadn’t been shut entirely, swung open with a soft creak. “Um, just letting you know that your kid is downstairs. And seems…upset? Hungry? Wet? I don’t know, but you should probably check on…um…her.” Given the pink blanket, he figured “her” was probably a safe guess.

Silence. Nick peeked around the door, but saw nothing. Just the empty room. Which was pretty odd since he’d seen them check in with two sets of luggage.

It seemed pretty unlikely that they’d checked out and forgotten both a bag and a baby, no matter how much of a rush they were in. He returned downstairs, half expecting to see one of the women in the kitchen, apologizing and looking for the kid. But there was only the baby in the basket with him—crying louder now.

He bent down and tugged back the edge of the blanket. “Hey, there. What are you doing here?”

Even crying, she was a cute baby. Pink in her chubby cheeks, bright blue eyes and a flutter of blond curls on her head. Not that Nick had a lot of babies to compare this one to. In fact, the last time he’d been this close to a baby had been at his cousin Deanna’s house three years ago on Easter, with his aunt Madge hovering over her “miracle” grandbaby like a helicopter. And even then, he hadn’t gotten close enough to do much more than say congratulations, and back away before anyone got any ideas about making him do something like actually hold the baby.

“Stay here a sec,” he said to the baby, who ignored him and kept on crying. Nick made a fast perimeter of the downstairs of the inn—living room, eat-in porch, dining room, den, then bathrooms one and two. No one else was inside the house. Just him and the baby.

“Where are your parents?” he asked the baby. No answer. Not that he really expected one. “Okay, then what am I supposed to do with you?”

Mavis’s phone went straight to voice mail. Della didn’t answer her phone either, but he didn’t expect her to because she and her husband were on a cruise or something. The inn had a computer registry for guests—in Della’s locked office. Mavis normally left the keys behind, but a quick glance at the hook in the pantry told him that she’d forgotten to do that today. So he moved on to his last resort. It took four rings before his mother picked up, her voice all breezy and cheery. The country club voice, as false as the Astroturf on the putting green of the back patio of the club. “Hello, Nicholas!”

“Mom, I…have a problem.”

“I’m just heading into court. Can’t it wait?” The friendly golf-course tones yielded to annoyance and impatience. Nick already regretted making the call, but it had seemed like the right choice. Find a baby on the kitchen table, call the woman who was biologically connected to you and therefore supposedly equipped for this kind of thing. Not that this was the kind of situation that had a guidebook.

He glanced down at the baby again. She’d stopped crying, thank goodness. But at some point she was going to start again, or need to be fed, or changed, or, well, raised into an adult. All things outside of Nick’s capabilities. “Uh, no. This is kind of an urgent problem.”

“Well, could you call your father or one of your brothers? Actually, your father is doing a deposition and I have this trial—”

“Mom, someone left a baby on my kitchen table and I don’t know what to do with it.” And his father wasn’t talking to him, something his mother conveniently forgot whenever she wanted to pass the buck.

A long moment of silence. “Tell me this is a joke, Nicholas. What did you do? Did you impregnate some girl?”

He scowled. He should have known better. His mother lacked the maternal gene. The thought of her showing motherly concern for a stranger’s baby was almost laughable, since the closest she could come to showing concern for her own son was to blame him for all of his problems. Some things never changed. She’d been the least maternal person he’d ever known, and had treated all three of her sons like mini-mes to their father, grooming the three of them to go into the family business of law. To achieve those goals, he and his brothers had been provided with nannies and maids and drivers and tutors, but when Nick had chosen a different path for himself, any hints of warmth or concern for him had vanished. What had made him think his mother would suddenly change in the course of a phone call? “I didn’t do anything, Mom. Never mind. Sorry I interrupted you.”

“Nick, if you truly have a baby there, call the fire department or something. Legally, you shouldn’t touch that child because you could be sued if anything happens. The fire department will know what to do. There are safe haven laws—”

As always, Catherine Jackson went back to the comfort zone of the law. She was right, but that didn’t mean he liked the option. “Yeah, thanks, Mom, I’ll do that.” Nick hung up, tucked his phone in his pocket, then paced his kitchen for a while. The baby stared up at him from her place in the basket, all wide-eyed and curious.

What was he going to do? He supposed he could call Colton Barlow down at the fire station and have him get the baby, the way his mother had instructed. But handing a baby off to someone he only sort of knew, especially at Christmas, seemed so wrong, so…cold. Surely the whole thing had just been a mistake and the women would be back right away.

The baby’s eyes began to water.

Oh God. She was going to start crying again. He poked around the blanket, careful not to disturb the infant, looking for a pacifier or a bottle—anything. All he saw in the basket was the baby and the blanket. The baby stared at him, ever closer to tears. “Hey, sorry. Just checking for a tag or something. Even Paddington Bear had one of those.”

But the baby didn’t. No supplies. No identification, at least not that he could see in his cursory look. No “if lost, return to” information. The baby started snarfling again and balled up her hands. Don’t cry, please don’t cry. “Kid, I don’t have anything for you. I don’t even know what to do with you.”

The snarfle gave way to a hiccup, then a wail. She waved her hands and kicked her feet, dislodging the blanket, revealing pink socks over tiny feet and baby lambs marching across the baby’s onesie.

“Oh, hell.” He reached down and grabbed the baby. She was heavier than he’d expected, denser, and when he picked her up, she stopped crying and stared at him. “Well, hey there.”

The baby blinked. Her eyes welled, and her cheeks reddened. Nick turned her to the right and did a sniff test. Nothing. Thank God. If there’d been a diaper situation, the kid would have been out of luck. She’d come with no instructions and no supplies. Maybe he should google baby care or something.

Then he saw the corner of a piece of paper, tucked under the blanket at the bottom of the basket. With one hand, he fished it out and unfolded it. In neat, cursive script, the note said: “Please take care of Ellie as well as you took care of me. I know she’ll have a good home with you. Love, Sammie.”

Sammie. That was the name of one of the women, he remembered now. Who was the other one with her? Something with a V. Or maybe a K. Damn it. He couldn’t remember.

“Ellie?” he said. The baby blinked at him. “Where’s your mom or moms or aunt or whoever it was that brought you here?”

Ellie was holding her head up on her own, which was a good thing, he knew that much. It meant she wasn’t brand-new, but also not old enough to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so if he didn’t figure something out soon, he was going to have to decide what—and how—to feed her.

“Kid, do you have teeth yet?”

The baby began to whimper. Nick brought her to his shoulder and began to rub her back in a circle. He’d seen someone do that in a movie once, and it seemed the kind of thing someone did to calm a baby down. Within seconds, it worked. The baby stopped crying, but then she did something worse.

She curled against Nick, fisted her hand in the collar of his shirt…and cooed.

“I’m not parent material, kid.” Big blue eyes met his. Damn. He’d always been a sucker for blue eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.”

She kept on staring at him, nonplussed. As babies went, she was pretty cool. And she smelled like strawberries and bananas, all sweet and innocent. Damn. “What am I going to do with you?”

Just then, the front door opened and the brunette who had checked in yesterday walked into the inn. About damned time.

Nick kept the baby against his chest, grabbed the basket with his other hand and hurried down the hall. With each step, his aggravation with the woman grew. It had been irresponsible as hell to leave a kid alone and drive off, even if she had come back just a few minutes later. At the last second, he put the baby back in the basket, then picked it up and carried it with him. If this woman was the kind of mother who forgot her kid on a kitchen table, maybe he shouldn’t give her back without asking a few questions. Or calling the cops. “About time you came back, lady. You—”

“Why were you holding Ellie? Where’s Sammie?”

Some of his anger derailed as soon as he was face-to-face with the woman. She was just that beautiful in her tailored navy suit and heels. She had her hair back in a bun at her nape, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. She had one fist on her hip, a circle of keys hanging from her finger and an oversize boxy purse in the other hand. For someone with a baby that he guesstimated wasn’t more than a couple months old, this woman looked really, really great.

“Where is she? How am I supposed to know?”

Nick grabbed the basket and headed down the hall to the kitchen and set the baby back on the table. “If you’re the kind of person who can’t keep track of your girlfriend or sister or whoever Sammie is, not to mention your kid, I’m not giving the baby back to you.”

The woman ignored him. She barreled past Nick and crossed to the basket before Nick could react. “Ellie! Are you okay?” She pulled back the blanket, counting fingers and toes, acting all concerned.

Nick wasn’t buying it. He yanked the basket up and out of the woman’s reach. “What kind of mother are you, anyway? And who said you can even touch her? I should call the cops. I found her abandoned on the kitchen table in this basket. Anyone could have walked in and taken her, you know.”

The woman put her hands out. “Thank you for taking care of her. Now, if I could just have the basket—”

Nick should have slammed the door in the woman’s face or something. But he’d been all discombobulated by the baby on the table, and the sneaking suspicion that he was missing part of the story here. “I’m not letting you leave here with this baby. In fact, I’m calling the cops right now.” He unlocked the cell and started pressing numbers. “I’ve seen Dateline, you know.”

“I’m not the baby’s mother—”

“All the more reason for me to call the cops, babynapper.”

“I’m her aunt. My sister, Sammie, is the irresponsible one.” She gave the baby a smile, but stayed a solid three feet away. “Ellie knows, doesn’t she? I’m your auntie Viv.”

Nick tucked his phone away. The two women were sisters, and the baby was this woman’s niece. Made sense, but still didn’t explain why the baby got left on the kitchen table. “Well, I want to see some ID.”

The woman smiled. Holy hell, she had a beautiful smile. Wide and with a slightly higher lift on one side than the other. There was a tiny gap between her front teeth that Nick might have found endearing under other circumstances. “An ID? For Ellie? I don’t think they hand out licenses to three-month-olds.”

Three months old. Barely a person, which caused a roar of protectiveness in Nick. “Not for her. For you. Prove you’re this kid’s aunt.”

“I can’t. I mean, it’s not like I run around with an ID saying I’ve got a niece. A niece I have only known about for twenty-four hours.” She sighed. “I checked in yesterday, and you saw me then. Mavis checked my license and took my credit card, and…” Her voice trailed off. She opened her purse, took out her wallet and cursed. “Damn it, Sammie. She must have taken my AmEx when I was in the shower.”

“You still have to pay for the room.” The words felt way too weak as soon as they left his mouth. This was his biggest threat? After Sammie or Viv—a nice name for a woman like her, as if it was short for vivacious—had left the baby behind?

“Of course I will.” She sighed, tucked her wallet away, then put out her hands again. “Give me the baby.”

So maybe she was the aunt. It all seemed plausible. Her sister was clearly an irresponsible parent. What assurance did he have that this woman would be a better caretaker? Viv looked like a responsible human, but then again…didn’t most people? Either way, she was still a stranger, and this kid wasn’t old enough to talk, so Nick felt like he had to do some kind of due diligence. “Well, I can’t let you leave with her, not until I know for sure that you’re her aunt and that you’re capable of taking decent care of her.”

Viv crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere without Ellie.”

They were caught in a standoff. And Nick wasn’t going to budge. He looked down at the baby, at those big blue eyes that were so trusting and innocent, and knew he couldn’t let the kid down. He’d found her, after all, and like a lost puppy, he was tasked with making sure wherever she went from here was safe and warm and good. The kid—Ellie, he told himself—had started to grow on him, damn it, and until he could figure out the right thing to do—

He did the only thing he could think of. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

Chapter Two

Vivian stood in a stranger’s kitchen, sitting beside Sammie’s biggest screw-up yet. Not Ellie, of course. The baby was precious and innocent, and smelled like bananas and everything that made Vivian uncomfortable.

If there were two people who shouldn’t be mothers, it was either of the Winthrop girls. Viv, whose entire life revolved around her career, and Sammie, her irresponsible younger sister who had dropped out of high school and run away more times than Viv could count. Sammie considered laws to be nothing more than a loose guideline to life, didn’t believe in self-control or apparently birth control, and had left her three-month-old on the kitchen table of the inn when Vivian drove to a meeting in Durham that afternoon, then told Vivian by text.

Stupidity of the highest degree.

Vivian shouldn’t be surprised. Sammie had never been what people would consider accountable. For anything. She wasn’t Vivian’s half sister—the daughter of boyfriend number seven or eight, who took Sammie to his mother’s house after they broke up, then brought her back and dropped her off when Sammie was nine and “too much of a handful.” From that first day when she’d found Sammie crying and alone, clutching a well-worn stuffed bear, Vivian had vowed to protect the girl.

The two of them had huddled in Vivian’s bed, clutching each other and made a solemn vow—they would never leave each other. Never. And when they grew up, they would be good moms to their children and pick good dads.

Vivian had tried her best to keep those promises for as long as she could. There had been no kids for her—there hadn’t even been any potential baby daddies—but she’d tried to stick close to Sammie, even as the two of them had ended up shuffled through the system like they were candy bars in a snack machine. She’d tried to steer Sammie toward college, or at least a trade, but Sammie had balked at any restrictions, and at eighteen, jetted off on her own, popping in once in a while to drop a bombshell—or, in this case, a practically brand-new baby—into Vivian’s lap.

There were days when Vivian was pretty sure she was from another planet. Unlike her mother and Sammie, Vivian had a degree, a career, an apartment and a predictable, responsible life. She’d made a conscious decision not to settle down, not to have kids and to stick to her comfort zone—the law. When she was fourteen, she’d made that crazy promise with Sammie to be a good mother, but at thirty, Vivian knew better. She wasn’t mother material. Not even close. So best to avoid all that hearth and home stuff and stick to her career. Except now here she was in a town she hadn’t lived in for at least fifteen years, with a baby she didn’t know, wondering why she kept cleaning up after Sammie.

This weekend was supposed to be all about bonding, about spending time with Sammie after more than a year since the last time they’d seen each other. Then Sammie had showed up at the inn with a baby in a basket, and said, “Surprise!” to Vivian, and everything had changed.

Vivian knew she should be resentful. But all she had to do was take one look at Ellie’s precious sweet face, and she knew why she’d dropped everything and broken the land-speed record this afternoon to rush back to Stone Gap when Sammie texted: I can’t handle it. I’m sorry. I left Ellie at the inn. Please take care of her. The little girl hadn’t done anything wrong except be born to a mother who wasn’t ready.

Sammie’s drop and disappear act had created a massive problem for Vivian, though. She couldn’t take care of a baby. Not just because she had neither a single mothering instinct nor any practical experience. Vivian had a demanding job. The law firm where she worked called her the “Results Queen” for good reason. There was a trial to prepare for and an apartment in Durham in the middle of renovations. Meanwhile, a baby required around the clock care. Vivian would have to hire a nanny and find a place that wasn’t swarming with construction workers for the nanny and Ellie to stay, which would mean one more stranger in Ellie’s short life.

“Want some coffee?”

She’d almost forgotten the man was there until he spoke. On an ordinary day, Viv would have noticed a man who looked like that. Tall, lean, dark-haired, with a smile that went on for days, and dark eyes the color of a good espresso. He’d been terribly protective of Ellie, which had frustrated Viv but also kind of endeared him to her. Even now, he hovered over her and the baby, clearly worried and not at all sure that Vivian could be trusted.

“I’d love some.” She’d had an emergency meeting this afternoon that she’d tried to get out of, because she’d promised Sammie a weekend together. So she’d zipped up to make a quick appearance at the office, and just as quickly turned around again when the text from her sister came in, and all hell broke loose. Now Viv was going to have to come up with a plan for Ellie between here and Monday morning. “And thanks for the dinner invitation, but I really need to get back on the road.”

“With the kid?”

“Well, I obviously can’t leave her here,” Vivian said as she got to her feet. Maybe she could get an Uber with a car seat, then come back for her own car later. Or call a friend to pick her up. Except she had no friends who weren’t as career-driven as she was, and all of them lived at least an hour away. And right now, she was feeling pretty lost about what to do, a position Vivian didn’t like being in. The man across from her, though, seemed cool and collected, and good with Ellie. “I… I don’t even know your name.” Why had she even said that? She didn’t need to know his name. It had nothing to do with her getting back to Durham. She should be leaving, now.

“My name is Nick,” he said. “Nick Jackson. There. Now I’m not a stranger.”

The joke made her smile a tiny bit. Inside, her confidence shook like a sapling in the wind. How was she going to handle Ellie and work? And how would she know what to do if Ellie cried or needed something? Vivian knew her way around a courtroom, but not around an infant.

“I’m Vivian Winthrop. I’m a civil litigator, and Sammie is my irresponsible sort-of-sister who abandoned her baby here. I invited her to the inn for a weekend away and to spend some time with her. Sammie showed up with a baby I didn’t know she even had, and then disappeared. Which is typical for her. She’s been doing it since she and I were in foster care together.”

“Foster care?” He arched a brow. Clearly, those words had put her back in the reluctant to trust her column.

“Sammie and I had a…difficult childhood with a mother who was…unreliable at best. It’s just been the two of us most of our lives.” Vivian fiddled with the handle on her coffee cup, avoiding Nick’s gaze. That was about all she wanted to say about that. The less she thought about her childhood, the better. “Anyway, didn’t you say something about dinner?”

He grinned. “So you’re staying now? I take it you trust me now a little?”

“Well, I’m kind of hungry.” She returned his smile and realized it had been a long time since she’d smiled. Her entire career was about being serious, a determined and stubborn bobcat in the courtroom and a moneymaker for the office. She’d risen quickly at Veritas Law based on that reputation, and had won several multimillion-dollar judgments and settlements against major corporations.

Her latest case, though, was more personal. A chance meeting with a man who was working nights as a janitor in the building revealed an injury that had nearly cost him everything. Jerry Higgins used to be a machine operator in a cannery, until a new piece of equipment with a faulty release switch had crushed his arm. The equipment manufacturer refused to cover Jerry’s medical bills after the cannery’s insurance company decided the equipment was at fault, not the cannery, which had left Jerry bankrupt. It was a step outside the usual lawsuits she worked, where one behemoth sued another, but it was also the first case she’d had in a long time that made her feel good.

Ever since she’d met Jerry, Vivian had slept, ate and lived that lawsuit. Even now, she could feel the need to get back to work. To finish that brief she needed to file, and schedule the next few depositions. Jerry, his wife and his children were counting on her to make it right.

Then she glanced over at Ellie, so innocent, so helpless in that wicker basket, and knew she couldn’t go anywhere, at least not until she figured something out for her niece. Vivian might not be mommy material, but she was going to make sure Ellie was cared for. She’d need to call the office day care program and figure out a way to live amid the current chaos of her apartment before she tracked Sammie down. Right now, on top of her already unwieldy and bloated to-do list, “calling the day care” seemed like a Herculean task.

And besides, it was Sunday. She had only a few hours before the clock ticked over to Monday and her life got crazy again. But first, there was dinner with this man who seemed calm and strong, two things Viv wasn’t feeling at all. Surely she had enough time to eat.

“I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in…forever,” Vivian said. “My apartment is under construction right now, not that I ever get in the kitchen and cook. So whatever you were making sounds good to me.”

“Well then let me show you what you’ve been missing.” Nick got to his feet and started pulling ingredients out of the refrigerator and a paper bag on the counter. Just then, Ellie started to cry, her fists rising above the blanket and waving in the air. The cries pierced the quiet of the kitchen, demanding, insistent.

Vivian rose and paced the small kitchen. Ellie kept on crying. “Uh, what’s wrong with her?”

Nick looked as clueless as Vivian felt. “I don’t know. She probably needs a diaper change or some food or something,” he said. “Do you have any of that?”

Vivian gave him an are-you-kidding-me look. “Yeah. I have all of that in my briefcase in the car. Of course I don’t have any of that stuff. I’m not a mom, and Sammie didn’t send me a grocery list when she texted me. She just said Ellie was here and she had left.”

And Vivian had come running, as always. Bailing Sammie out. Again.

“Didn’t she have one of those bag things?”

Vivian brightened. “She did have a shopping bag with some formula and a couple diapers. Let me see what she left behind.” She ran upstairs and returned a moment later with the nearly empty bag. “One diaper and a mostly empty can of formula. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem like enough.” She sighed. Once again, Sammie had left her older sister to pick up the pieces.

“I know someone who might have some extra baby stuff.” Nick picked up his cell and dialed a number. He tucked the phone against his shoulder, started chopping some onions and gestured to Vivian to pick up the baby, whose cry had turned into a wail. “Hey, Mac, it’s Nick Jackson. I was wondering if you had some diapers and what do you call it…?”

Damned if Vivian knew. She stood beside the table, hesitant, while Ellie kept on crying. Pick up the baby? What if she did it wrong? What if that only made the crying—which was reaching police siren levels—worse?

Vivian tried tucking the blanket tighter—wasn’t there something about burritoing a baby that soothed them?—and it didn’t work. She tried sh-sh-shushing Ellie, and the cries only got louder and stronger.

Nick put a finger in one ear. “Yeah, formula. Bottles. Whatever a…” He turned and raised a questioning eyebrow in Vivian’s direction.

“Three-month-old,” she reminded him. That answer she had, but not much else. Ask her stats—born at three twenty in the morning, six pounds, three ounces, twenty inches long—and she could fill in the blanks. But quiz her on what age a baby started real food or how to change a diaper, and she’d fail in an instant.

The closest she’d gotten to Ellie before this minute was admiring her as Sammie held her. And that was as close as Vivian had intended to get. Until Sammie screwed up again.

“…a three-month-old baby. No, not mine, Mac. It’s a long story.” Nick paused a minute, then gave Vivian another pick-up-the-baby nod. “Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it.” He hung up and tucked the phone in his pocket. “Mac will be by in a little while.”

“Mac?” Ellie kept on crying. Vivian kept on standing there, hesitating.

What was wrong with her? If this had been a court case, she wouldn’t have paused for a breath. But then, in a courtroom, she always knew exactly what to do. In those wooden rooms, Vivian was at home. While Nick’s comfort zone was the kitchen, hers was in that space between the judge’s bench and the plaintiff’s table. She could deliver a one-hour closing summary to a jury of twelve strangers, but when it came to a single three-month-old…

Well, that was different.

“Della Barlow’s son. Della’s the co-owner of this place, along with Mavis—you haven’t met Della because she’s on vacation right now.” Nick walked past her, picked up Ellie and swung her against his chest, as if he did this every day. A second later, Ellie plopped her thumb in her mouth and her cries dropped to whimpers.

Vivian decided to act as if a strange man calming her niece was not at all unusual. Except a part of Viv felt like a failure. Weren’t aunts supposed to be able to handle this kind of thing?

“The Barlows are a great family, in case you’re worried. I’ve been the chef at the inn for about a month now, and I’ve met all of them.” Nick had started swaying, a movement that seemed unconscious, and Ellie’s eyes began to shut.

“Really?” Vivian felt a little jealous of her niece. Right now, Vivian was in that odd place between uncomfortable and unconfident, and could sure use someone else to soothe her own worries.

“You’re so good with her,” Vivian said.

“This is about the extent of my parenting abilities. So don’t ask me to change a diaper or make a bottle.” He chuckled.

If he asked her how to do either of those things, she wouldn’t have an answer either. So she changed the subject. “So what are you making me for dinner, Chef Nick?”

“Braised chicken with cherry tomatoes and artichokes.” He kept on swaying with Ellie.

“That sounds amazing. You made the eggs benedict we had this morning, right? Those were incredible. Most of the time I’m eating popcorn or a sandwich grabbed on the run.”

“That’s no way to live. I think food is one of the greatest pleasures in life.”

The way he said that made her a little weak in the knees. Which was insane. Vivian was a practical woman, not one of those who swooned or got caught up in romantic notions. No, that was Sammie, who was the believer in fairy tales and Prince Charmings, no matter how many times she got burned by guys who were more frog than prince—unemployed scam artists who wanted a free ride and a few bedroom benefits.

“Oh my God. Ellie’s asleep,” Vivian whispered. “How did you do that so easily?”

“I don’t know. I just went with my instincts.”

Maybe Vivian was lacking the necessary strands of DNA because she had no instincts for babies. Not so much as a blip of an idea when it came to making Ellie happy. Late last night, after Sammie and Ellie had fallen asleep, Vivian had stayed up ordering from some baby website, shipping everything from the “new mom gift suggestions” list she’d found there straight to Sammie’s apartment. Baby outfits, blankets and a stroller that cost more than a small bus—because buying things was the only way Vivian could handle being an aunt.

Nick headed toward the kitchen table. Ellie stirred and let out a whimper. “Damn. I have to put her down to cook, but I’m afraid of waking her up.”

“We can put the basket in the living room, so the noise from cooking doesn’t bother her. She’ll sleep better there.”

“I don’t know if we should leave her alone, though.” Nick kept on swaying. He glanced at the chicken on the counter, then the basket, then his gaze swiveled back to Vivian. Damn, he had nice eyes. And a nice smile. “I’m good with having her in the living room, but I think you should stay with her. Just in case.”

That would give Vivian some time to check her phone, go over some emails and maybe kick off her shoes for a second. Then, after dinner, she could call a car seat–equipped Uber, get on the road with Ellie, and come up with a plan.

Because standing in this handsome man’s kitchen, mesmerized by the way he calmed a baby to sleep, was sending her mind down an entirely wrong path.

Chapter Three

Nick was not a softie. Nope. Not one bit. And the sight of Vivian curled against a pillow, asleep, did not affect him one bit.

She was a beautiful woman, with dark hair that had partly escaped the tight, complicated knot at the base of her neck, big blue eyes that reminded him of the Atlantic Ocean a few miles away, and legs that went on for days. Her black heels sat on the floor, twin soldiers nestled against each other. The basket with the baby was on the carpet below where Vivian’s head rested, Ellie snoring lightly in the dim room, and one of Vivian’s hands resting protectively on the top of the basket.

If the circumstances had been different, this would have been his image of a perfect family. Mom asleep on the sofa, baby nearby, dinner simmering on the stove. But all of this was an illusion—a very temporary one at that. They weren’t his family. They weren’t his anything. After the meal, she’d be gone, and so would the baby.

He wasn’t going to lie. The thought disappointed him a little. Maybe it was all those years of growing up in a house as sterile and emotionless as a roll of paper towels. Or maybe it was the holiday season nipping at his emotions, with the added bit of sentimentality being back in Stone Gap with his grandmother’s house and all its memories a couple miles away. But a part of him wanted this moment to last.

Vivian stirred, blinked, then jerked upright. A detailed list and pile of neatly labeled folders slid from her lap. He could see a planner open and marked with a dozen checkmarks and color-coded tasks. Earlier, he’d heard her making calls, each one devoid of small talk and focused only on whatever document or information she was requesting. It was only when she’d fallen asleep that he’d seen the vulnerable, soft side of the driven attorney. “I’m sorry I fell asleep. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s no big deal. You had a hell of a day. All three of us did.” The kid was still asleep, tiny and angelic in the white basket. As far as kids went, he kind of liked this one. She was easy to hold, easy to care for and easy to fall for. “I didn’t want to wake you, but Mac’s going to be here in a minute.”

“Oh, yes, good.” She got to her feet, smoothed her skirt, then pressed a hand to her hair.

“That bun thing is pretty much done.” Nick grinned. “Beyond repair.”

Vivian pulled out the pins that held the remains of the complicated-looking knot in place, sending her hair tumbling past her shoulders. Holy hell. Letting her hair down gave Vivian an unfettered quality.

Sexy. Tempting.

She twisted the hair, then tucked it back into the bun and pinned it in place again. Nick tried not to let his disappointment show.

This woman had efficiency down to a science. He suspected if he told her you can’t do that, she’d say hold my martini and watch me. If she even let loose enough to drink a martini. She was as locked up—literally—as a summer cottage in the winter.

Vivian had said she was a corporate lawyer. He should have guessed that, from the severe suit and the practical heels and the references to a briefcase. If there was any kind of woman he didn’t want in his life, it was a lawyer. Didn’t matter what she looked like with her hair down.

His parents thought their law degrees gave them license to argue everything to death, put their careers ahead of their children time and time again. They had been there for their firm more than for anyone who’d ever needed them. Their marriage had been strained, and even at its best, they’d acted more like roommates than lovers. If that was life with a lawyer, he didn’t want any part of it.

A soft knock sounded on the door. Nick hesitated for a second, still caught in the thoughts of Vivian with her hair down, then jerked himself back to the present and opened the door. Mac stepped inside, followed by Savannah. Their baby was nestled in a thing that looked like a backpack, affixed to Savannah’s chest.

Mac and Savannah had been married for a couple of years, but they were the kind of couple that still held hands in public and gave each other secret smiles. Nick had to admit that their tendency for PDA had grown on him.

“Oh my. Is that her? I just want a peek at your cutie, Nick,” Savannah said as she hurried past him and beelined to the kid.

He raised his hands and backed up. “Her name’s Ellie. And she’s not my baby.”

Savannah had already reached Ellie. She smiled at the sleeping baby, then looked at Nick, then Vivian. “Your daughter is lovely.”

“Oh, she’s not mine either,” Vivian said.

Mac chuckled. “Don’t tell me you stole a baby, Nick.”

“It’s complicated,” he said. Explaining it would sound crazy, for sure. Woman leaves baby on kitchen table, her irate sister shows up and stays for dinner. “Did you bring the stuff?”

God, it sounded like he was making a drug deal, not a baby supplies pickup.

“Yep.” Mac swung a padded bag off his shoulder and left it on the hall table. Bright yellow giraffes and zebras cavorted on the outside of the vinyl bag. “Savannah and I got an extra diaper bag thing at her shower, so we filled it up with stuff you might need. Diapers, wipes, rash cream, formula, bottles—”

“Whoa, whoa. We’re not invading Normandy here. I just have the kid for a few hours.”

Savannah shot her husband a confused look. “Are you babysitting? Why don’t you have any stuff?”

“It’s a long story,” Vivian and Nick said at the same time.

“Okaaaayyy,” Mac said. “Well, we have a Mommy and Me thing to get to. And yes, I have become that dad.” Mac glanced at his wife, then his baby, with such obvious love it almost hurt Nick to see the emotion. “Let us know if you need anything else.”

Mac and Savannah said goodbye, then headed back out the door. Nick supposed he should have invited them to stay for dinner, but considering his dinner for one had already morphed into dinner for two, he wasn’t sure he had enough food.

Though there was something to be said for having a full house. Nick had been in a decidedly deep self-pity slump ever since the thing with his ex-girlfriend, and having people here—not just inn guests that he dodged, but people he actually interacted with—was…nice. Nicer than he’d expected.

Maybe he should do what his grandmother asked and go see his father. Bring him that box that Ida Mae had left for her son. It’ll do you good to work things out with your father, his grandmother had written. And for him to realize what’s important before it’s too late.

Nick hadn’t even gone to the house to find the box, never mind picked up the phone. His father had made a fast, almost silent appearance at the funeral, exchanging maybe a dozen words with Nick’s brothers, and none with Nick. Which was par for the course for the last ten years. Ever since the day he realized Nick had blown half his law school tuition on cooking school. He could still see his father walking away in disgust. Why you would try to make a living out of something as foolish as cooking, I’ll never know. You’re a disappointment to me.

He turned away from the door, and pushed the thoughts of the past from his head. It might have taken him ten years, but he was finally making a living at his dream job. Albeit, not the kind of money he’d made working with Carson, but not chump change, either. And he was happy.

Wasn’t he?

“What is all this stuff?” Vivian peered inside the bag. With just her and the sleeping baby in the house, the inn had never felt so intimate before. “It’s just a baby, right? Aren’t they supposed to be easy?”

Nick chuckled. “I may not know anything about kids, but one thing I’m sure of, is that babies are complicated. Not as complicated as women but close.”

Vivian parked a fist on her hip. “Women are complicated?”

He liked seeing this spark in her. This, Nick suspected, was the Vivian with her hair down. Unrestricted. Spontaneous. Intriguing. “Not all women.”

“Then what kind of women are you talking about?” Vivian arched a brow. A half smile played at the edge of her lips.

Damn, she was beautiful. Interesting. He moved closer to her. She was wearing a perfume that lured him in—dark, deep, sexy. Like a garden after the sunset. Ellie went on sleeping, and the house went on being quiet and a world of just the two of them. “Women like you. With your practical heels and your suit and your bun.”

“That’s how I dress for work. What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s very…businesslike. Why are you working so hard to hide that you’re beautiful?”

“You…” She swallowed. Her eyes widened, and the tough bravado dropped away. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“Oh come on, I can’t be the first man to say that to you.” Surely a woman like her had dozens of men lined up and eager for a chance to spend time with her. She was smart, confident and gorgeous. A trifecta.

“I… I don’t date much.” For the first time since he’d met her, Vivian looked embarrassed, unsure. “Nor do the men I work with ever say anything like that. Probably because I’m winning more cases than them, but still.”

He laughed. “I bet you’re a barracuda in court. I saw the battle strategy you had on the legal pad back there. Clearly, that’s your comfort zone.”

“It’s that obvious?” Her cheeks flushed.

“Yep. When Ellie was crying earlier, you looked like you’d rather have a stroke than pick her up.”

Vivian laughed. Damn, she had a nice laugh, too. Too bad she worked in the one field he gave a wide berth to. In his experience, lawyers had a tendency to argue and control, two things that never really worked well with Nick.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to babies,” she said.

The soft admission made him forget all his reservations for a moment. She looked so beautiful right now, with her hair once again escaping the restraints of the pins, and the questions in her face. He knew what it was like to doubt yourself, to wonder if you were doing the right thing. And maybe it was just the kindred spirit he saw in her, or maybe it was something more, but Nick shifted closer to Vivian. “There,” he said. “Was that so hard?”

“Was what so hard?”

“Opening up. Letting that hyperconfident facade drop.” He smiled at her. “You really should do that more often.”

“Maybe…” Her gaze met his and held. “Maybe I will.”

Nick leaned closer, almost close enough to touch…and then Viv leaned in the rest of the way, bringing their lips together. Slow, easy, sweet, his lips meeting hers with a gentle pressure that begged her to let him in, let him know her. His hand reached up to cup the back of her head, to capture the stray brown locks that had escaped the bun. He kissed her, tenderly, leisurely—

And Viv started to cry.

Chapter Four

Vivian never betrayed weakness. Doing that meant certain death in the courtroom. She prided herself on keeping her emotions on a tight leash. It was part of what made her a formidable opponent. But the second she and Nick kissed it was like a dam had burst, and the tears that rarely showed in her eyes began falling.

This man—a total stranger—had seen a part of her that no one ever saw. The unsure, hesitant, out of her element Vivian, who had to ask for help. And despite that, he’d called her beautiful and been drawn to her enough for them to kiss.

She broke away from Nick and took several steps back. He was still six feet of tall, dark, handsome and tempting as hell. She swiped at her eyes, and tried to still her hammering heart with a deep breath. What is wrong with me?

There was nothing wrong with the kiss—that had been phenomenal. Tender, slow and easy, as if she was a dessert he wanted to savor. The scent of the food he’d been cooking—buttery and as warm and comforting as an early-fall day—lingered in the space between them. She had the most insane urge to put her head on his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she said, the words giving her a moment to center herself, bring her heart and mind back to the world of common sense. A world where she didn’t feel completely overwhelmed by a three-month-old and a dark-haired man with espresso eyes who called her beautiful. “I don’t normally cry.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I thought…” He shook his head and managed to look both embarrassed and contrite at the same time. “Argh. I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s not that. I didn’t cry because we kissed. I cried because…” Because you saw a side of me I never let anyone see. Because you reminded me of what I’ve put to the side time and time again in my life. Because for a brief second, I was caught in a different world. She didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, she resorted to a half-truth. “I’m stressed. I just…for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do.”

She sighed and dropped onto the sofa. Easier to do that than to look at Nick and wish he would kiss her again. Maybe she’d been working too much or maybe it had been the you’re beautiful, or the fact that she was so far out of her comfort zone with Ellie it might as well be another planet, but right now, Vivian felt as vulnerable as a fawn in an open meadow. That was not a place she liked to be. The walls she had erected decades ago crumbled a little, and everything inside her was trying to shore them up again, but it was like bracing against a tidal wave with a piece of cardboard.

Ellie had woken and was staring up at Vivian with that “do something, Aunt Viv” look. What could Vivian do? She was in such deep water that she was sure she’d drown and screw this up. Ellie needed a mother, not an aunt who was more comfortable with a deposition than a diaper. “I have a new client who is depending on me to go after this shoddy equipment manufacturer. I need to prepare for a potential trial, which means hours and hours and late nights and weekends of work. My apartment is in the middle of a total renovation. I don’t have room or time for a baby. But I don’t want to hire a stranger to watch Ellie, because…” She shook her head. Where were all these tears coming from? What was wrong with her?

Nick sat beside her. “Because what?” he asked, his voice soft, gentle. And another chink in those walls opened.

“Because Sammie and I spent our lives with strangers and we swore that when we grew up, we would never do that to our kids.” The words came out in a whisper, words that edged along the secrets Vivian had kept close to her heart all her life. The vulnerabilities she hid behind the suits and the heels and the attitude.

Her childhood had been spent moving from one house to another, as her mother got sober, fell off the wagon, got sober again, a hamster wheel of changes. Some foster homes had been great, others had bordered on nightmarish. There’d been people who had refused to feed her unless she finished an endless list of chores. Foster parents who believed a belt was the best means of communication. Families she loved and said goodbye to before she could spend more than a handful of weeks there, the happiness she’d had with them just a fleeting mirage. Living her life out of grocery sacks and someone’s worn, discarded luggage. Long before the roller coaster of foster care began, Vivian had taken one look at Sammie, so thin and scared and frail, and vowed to be the one person her little sister could depend on, the one person who would never leave her. It had taken a lot of fighting with the system and the rules, but Viv had done her best to keep her promise, until she’d graduated high school and gone on to college. She’d made the mistake of thinking Sammie would be okay once she was out on her own. Viv had been wrong.

Maybe it was being in this town again, in the same place where Viv had learned to roller skate and where she’d found out she hated beets but loved pancakes for dinner on Thursday nights that had her emotions running high.

“Then don’t do it. Don’t hire a stranger.”

She glanced at Nick. “What are you talking about? I have to do my job, and I can’t just leave Ellie home alone with the cabinet installers. Yes, they’re strangers, but there’s a day care at the office. It’s not like she’s going to be alone.”

“Stay here tonight. Let me help you.”

Let me help you. Four words that Vivian had never before admitted she needed to hear. She glanced at her niece, at the pile of baby things that could have been a pile of books written in Greek for all she knew about them, and then back at Nick. “What time is dinner?”

Nick had made a lot of meals in his lifetime. So many, he’d lost count a long time ago. There was something about being in the kitchen, measuring and stirring and tasting, that centered him. As soon as he started cooking the rest of the world dropped away. Every single time.

Until he’d invited Vivian to stay for dinner, in his space, at his table. She wasn’t even in the kitchen right now—she’d kept the baby in the living room to feed the baby some formula—which meant Nick should have been able to concentrate on the artichoke and tomato sauce.

Instead, as the chicken cooked in the braising liquid of wine and broth, he found himself listening to the sounds of Vivian talking to the baby in the other room. Her soft voice, nearly a whisper, captivated him. His mind kept straying from the recipe—memorized because he had made the dish a thousand times—so much that he ended up searching the internet for the ingredients list and forgetting what he had just searched a minute later.

She distracted him. And that couldn’t be a good thing.

“Smells good.”

He damned near cut his thumb off when he swiveled at the sound of her voice. Vivian was standing in the doorway, with the baby back in the basket. When he’d peeked in earlier, he saw that she hadn’t held Ellie to feed her; instead she’d sat beside the basket with the bottle. He vaguely knew that babies had to burp after they ate, but how to make that happen…he had no idea. And clearly neither did she. Given the amount of “yucks” he’d heard as she changed Ellie’s diaper, she was clueless with that as he was, too. He got the feeling that Vivian was about as comfortable with a baby as she would be with a hand grenade. Not that he was much more of a parental figure, so he had no room to talk. “Thanks. It was one of my grandmother’s recipes.”

Yeah, all cool, no betraying the little hiccup in his chest just then.

Vivian came into the kitchen and gestured toward the maple table. “Mind if I work a little and watch you cook?”

“Sure.” He rarely had company in the kitchen because when the inn was fully booked, both Della and Mavis were busy with the guests and general housekeeping. When the inn was empty, there was no one around to check in on him while he cooked. And the last time he’d had a beautiful woman in his kitchen—

Well, it had been a while.

His ex-girlfriend Ariel hadn’t come to his place that often, and he hadn’t offered to cook for her more than a handful of times. After a busy day at the office, it was easier just to stop at a restaurant, grab a bite, then go back to her place for a few hours. He rarely slept over, and Ariel had rarely invited him. Now that he thought about it, their relationship had seemed to be more one of convenience than anything else. No fireworks, no surprises, nothing but moving from one expected step to the next.

Well, until he received the totally unexpected, blindsiding news about Jason. But looking back now, after the anger had dissipated, his strongest emotion was a whole lot of relief that he hadn’t created a messy, legal mistake by marrying her. With his parents, he’d seen firsthand what an unhappy marriage looked like—the chill in every conversation, the tight lips, the great pains to avoid physical contact. Not what Nick wanted for his future at all.

Which reminded him yet again that lawyer Vivian wasn’t someone for him to consider for anything beyond dinner tonight. She’d already told him in no uncertain terms that she placed a high priority on her career. Like his parents, her job consumed her life. Hours and hours of work, weeks and weeks of preparation. The kind of single-minded workaholic tendencies Nick steered clear of, especially when associated with a law degree.

Vivian sat down at the table, with Ellie in her basket on the seat beside her. As if to prove his thoughts true, Vivian set the almost empty bottle on the table, then pulled out her enormous black leather planner and her laptop. For a long time, there was only the sound of her fingers on the keyboard and the soft coos of the baby.

After a while, Vivian sat back, stretched and glanced over at Nick. “So, how’s the chicken coming along?”

He shrugged. “Since I’m making it for two after buying ingredients for one, I added some fresh linguini I made yesterday.” He scooped a ladleful of starchy pasta water out of the pot, then stirred it into the artichoke sauce, which began to thicken, velvety and rich.

“You make your own pasta? I can barely boil water.”

He picked up the pasta pot and crossed to the sink to drain it, then set the cooked pasta aside. “It’s not that hard. It’s almost…therapeutic to make pasta and bread. All that kneading is very zen.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “If there’s one thing I could use, it’s a little zen.”

She did seem very uptight, as if she was held together with steel wires. That had been him, two months ago, when he was working with Carson and hating his job. “Growing up as the child of two lawyers, I know that lawyering is stressful. My parents operated on short fuses, still do. My brother Grady runs his own company, and my other brother and I used to provide tech support. None of us went into the family business, so my dad thinks we’re all failures, except Grady because he has a lot of zeros in his paycheck. I thought my job was stressful, but Grady’s was ten times worse. He was a working advertisement for avoiding that kind of thing.”

He hadn’t strung together that many words at one time in weeks. What was wrong with him? Pouring out his life story to a woman—a lawyer—who he barely knew? In his experience, nothing warm and fuzzy ever came out of a lawyer.

“And now you’re cooking?”

The lilt on the end of her voice made it sound like she thought he’d taken a step down the career ladder. And yes, he had in terms of salary and benefits, but his days were far less tense and most mornings, he rolled out of bed, his mind whirring with menus and ingredients and purpose instead of dread and tension. “It’s where I’m happy. I think.”

“You think?”

He used metal tongs to toss the pasta and sauce together. A quick taste, and then a dash of salt, and the meal was done. He grabbed two white plates out of the cabinet and set a fat twirl of pasta in the center, topped it with slices of chicken and a smattering of vegetables, then added sliced homemade bread on the side.

All to avoid answering that question of whether he was happy or not. The answer was complicated, and Nick didn’t feel like explaining anything complicated right now.

“Dinner is served.” He laid the plate before her with a little flourish, then handed her a rolled napkin with silverware tucked inside. “I can carry the baby upstairs, if you want to eat in your room again.”

A part of him hoped she’d say yes, and leave him to his kitchen and his solitude. And another crazy part hoped she stayed and ate with him.

“Oh, well, I wasn’t planning to eat in my room. I know I did before, but that was so I could visit with my sister, which really meant working a lot while she napped.” Vivian frowned, then the placid face was back, erasing any emotion. “If it’s okay, I’d like to stay here. I could use some company. I so rarely have any while I eat, and it’s been a hell of a day.”

Nick didn’t eat with the guests. He’d grown to prefer his meals alone, or occasionally taken with Della or Mavis. He’d flick on the television in his room and let some mindless sitcom or movie he’d seen a hundred times fill the silence. That way he could mope and stew, and not have to answer any questions about why he was or wasn’t happy. Or dwell on why he was still avoiding his grandmother’s last request.

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