A Baby In His Stocking. Hayley Gardner

answers like that one, Shea returned to her desk, sank into her chair and dropped the candy cane back into the drawer.

      Frowning, she began writing a list of what the baby would need, but she wasn’t really seeing the words. She would have to tell Jared about the baby, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. In a little over a week, she’d be getting a divorce from the man who had turned from the husband of her dreams into someone cool and distant she no longer knew—a change that had started when she’d made the mistake of wanting a baby too soon.

      It wasn’t as if she hadn’t told him before they were married that she wanted children. She had. She’d also told him she dreamed of raising her babies in her own hometown, where they would have traditions and values and a grandpa—her dad—who would love them just as her granddad had loved her. Jared had just nodded and said in a couple of years they might be ready. She’d said she would wait.

      But last December, when her dad admitted to having heart problems, Shea had remembered the way her own granddad had died unexpectedly right in front of her. She’d known then there was no time to waste in starting the perfect life she’d planned. So on Christmas Day she’d asked Jared for a baby.

      He’d said no, he wasn’t ready yet, and that had been the beginning of the end. The more she’d tried to persuade him, the more distant he’d become. Finally, he’d admitted he wasn’t the paternal type and doubted that he would ever be. It was in April, when she told him she wanted to get away by herself for a while to think things over, that he’d announced he was letting her go so she could find someone else who could make her happy with the life and children she wanted so badly.

      They’d remained apart until three months ago, when, on their first wedding anniversary in late September, she’d wanted to at least try a reconciliation. Drawn by need, they’d gotten only as far as the bedroom. The morning after, when she tried to talk to him about children, he’d told her nothing had changed. He was still letting her go. She could fall in love with someone else and have the perfect, fairy-tale life she’d always dreamed of. So she’d filed for divorce.

      He might be letting her go, she thought, but he was crazy if he thought she would ever fall in love again. She had picked the perfect man for herself the first time, dang it, and having it end between them had just hurt too much. Especially now. The love she had felt had finally given her the child she always wanted, but not the man. With a sigh, she stared down at her list and continued writing.

      A slight sound at the door made her look up, expecting to see her little Santa’s helper, or her father, or one of the clerks downstairs. The person she didn’t expect to see was Jared.

      Shea stared at him, trying to gather her wits. He lived an hour away in Topeka—so what in the world was he doing here?

      Shea looked shocked, Jared thought as he stared at her wordlessly. He’d been sent up to her office with a message, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find his voice. The second he’d seen her again, his throat had gone dry and tight. He was dying of thirst and she was water, only he couldn’t partake anymore. He’d given up that right to let her find the happiness she yearned for.

      “How have you been, Shea?” he asked. He knew her father had gone into semiretirement and allowed her to take over the management of the store she loved so much after she’d returned to Quiet Brook last April. “Still running the place?”

      “For now.” Shea could see that Jared was watching her every movement, but she had no idea what thoughts lay behind those dark blue eyes. She never had, she realized suddenly. From the second Jared, a former Quiet Brook cop, had stopped a thief from stealing the store’s receipts and hurting her dad, she’d fallen in love with him, but she’d never really known the man.

      She’d been living the fantasy she’d always dreamed of.

      “What can I do for you, Jared?” she asked, wanting him gone so she could have a peaceful Christmas to recover from the hurt of their breakup.

      “Your father asked me to come get you. Said there’s new trouble at the Santa Station. Seems Santa is sneezing and the Grinch has probably struck again. He needs you down there.”

      “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Shea hastened toward the doorway, expecting him to move out of her way. Perfectly in tune with her movements, he did, letting her slip through, then falling into step beside her. “You should have told me about Dad first thing,” she scolded, all too aware of the riotous feelings his presence was evoking in her body now that she wasn’t ten feet away from him. But she’d be a fool if she gave in to pure lust again. It wouldn’t melt Jared’s ice-cold heart.

      “I didn’t because you seemed preoccupied,” Jared returned. “Just like you seem right now.”

      With the news of the baby, she thought. She gave him a curious glance. He had a dusky five o’clock shadow she’d never seen him wear before. It lent a sexiness to the chiseled lines of his face, a haunted cast to his eyes.

      As he returned her look, she imagined she saw a flicker of vulnerability in his blue gaze. But then it was gone, and she knew it had just been a romantic notion on her part. Jared Burroughs would let himself be vulnerable at the same moment that the Grinch became Santa Claus. He had always been very much in control of his emotions, even when she had walked out on him. He could be warm, she knew that, but there seemed to be some level of feeling that he just wasn’t able to reach.

      “So what’s all this about a Grinch?” Jared asked. “Wasn’t that some Christmas legend?”

      Stepping onto the escalator, Shea grabbed the black grip for balance. “Some prankster has been trying to drive off our store Santas with practical jokes.”

      “Why is having a Santa so important?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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