A Baby In His Stocking. Hayley Gardner

Friend or no friend, he was putting his foot down.

      Someone tugged on the back of his jacket. Turning, he had to drop his gaze way down to look into the blue eyes of a little girl, maybe five years old, one of the kids whom he’d seen in Denton’s earlier that day. Her denim jacket looked a size too small and was much too thin for the weather outside. Her look of poverty reminded him of his past and made him even more eager to escape the store, which seemed to be bringing back too many memories for comfort ever since he’d set foot inside it.

      “Yeah?” he asked, glancing around at the almost empty aisles. Didn’t the kid have a mother?

      “I know where Santa is.”

      “Yeah, okay.” Jared knew that story. “The North Pole.”

      “Honest. I know where the real Santa is.”

      “Whatever you say.” He began to sweat. Even with his time on the force, he’d never quite gotten used to dealing with children. But before he could walk away, she latched onto his jacket with a grip that surprised him.

      “You want me to take you to Santa? Then you can tell Mrs. Burroughs where he is, and she can ask him to sit at the Santa Station, and then she’ll be happy. I saw her almost cry before.”

      Oh, that was just what he didn’t need to hear. He’d counted on Shea’s return to Quiet Brook making her happy—something she hadn’t been toward the end with him. The fact that she still wasn’t content was unsettling as hell because he still cared. He still cared a whole lot, and he knew the mental picture of her crying would come back to haunt him in the lonely hours of the night—it already had once or twice.

      “Can you come see Santa with me?” The little sandy-haired girl smiled up at him with cajoling eyes.

      The cold insides of Jared’s heart started melting. “No,” he said, careful to keep his tone soft as he gently disengaged her fingers from his jacket. “I can’t come with you anywhere. That wouldn’t be a good idea. You should go and find your mom and not talk to strangers.”

      “But it’s okay to talk to you,” she said earnestly, dropping her hand to her side. “Santa said you were once a nice boy—you just grew up wrong.”

      Raking his fingers through his thick brown hair as he stood there, Jared tried to figure out what exactly was going on. A stranger dressed up like Santa Claus talking to a little girl about him—and getting the information right? He decided he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to get that involved with the child, the Santa Claus, or with Shea for that matter. What he wanted was to get out of her store where he could practically smell the ginger of her perfume every time he walked down an aisle.

      “I don’t want to see Santa,” he told the child firmly. “Run along and find your mother, okay?”

      “You sure?”

      “Positive.” With a wave, he turned and started walking away.

      The girl was probably just lonely, he supposed. Her friends must have run off and she had no one to play with. But still, it wasn’t good that she was inviting complete strangers to take her someplace...not even in a small town that was quiet and peaceful most of the time.

      Sighing, knowing he wouldn’t rest that evening unless he was sure she had someone to watch over her, Jared began to scan the aisles, looking for the little girl in the thin denim jacket. But she seemed to have disappeared.

      At the service desk, he told the clerk about the child. She claimed not to have noticed any young girls by themselves. Everyone else he asked in the front and rear of the store said practically the same thing. Finally, he came to the conclusion the girl must have gone home, even though by the strange looks he’d been getting as he asked after her, he was starting to believe she didn’t exist. That she was a little fairy of some sort, in a fairy-tale town.

      But he didn’t believe in fairy tales. Swearing under his breath, Jared headed toward the front again, passing the deserted Santa Station on his way out. Seeing it reminded him of Shea and her efforts to keep the Santa there. Apparently, she had lost. That didn’t bode well. She lived for Christmas, and with the store in trouble, this wasn’t looking to be a good one. He was used to that, but he knew it was going to be a disaster for Shea. He didn’t want that for her. Not along with their divorce in just over a week. But he couldn’t do a thing to help her. Not one damned thing.

      Five minutes later, he was in his truck, driving toward Mack’s, his face tight with tension. Their marriage probably could have been salvaged if he’d given in about having a baby, but he couldn’t do that to a kid. He’d been an only child and his father had been a bitter, remote man. All Jared knew about fatherhood was what he’d learned from his own, and that wouldn’t be nearly enough. It hadn’t been for him.

      From his mother’s death at childbirth, Jared had been brought up on the family farm. The only love he’d ever known was from his Aunt Ruthie, who came most days to cook and clean. But when he was nine, she’d died of some illness—he couldn’t remember what.

      What he did recall, vividly, was clinging to her in the hospital, begging her not to leave him, that he didn’t want to be left alone with his father, with no one to love him. Seconds later, his father had pulled him away with a look of fear and sadness on his face that Jared had never forgotten because he had put it there by his words. And his father had said something that he still remembered.

      “I’m sorry, boy. I did the best I knew how for you.”

      After that, Jared had never mentioned anything about not wanting to be with his father again, and in return, his father had continued to practically ignore him. After a while, he guessed he had just stopped caring whether he had love in his life. Maybe he thought his father’s remoteness was love. It was all he knew.

      And all he could give a child.

      He’d done all right alone, and would again. He’d put himself through college with scholarships, and by the time he was twenty had his degree and a job on the Quiet Brook police force. He’d kept mainly to himself for years, dating occasionally, but mostly living without love and emotion, until that fateful day when he’d gone into Denton’s, saved Mack’s payroll and his life—and met Shea.

      When he married her, he’d known that she was too much the sweet princess in a fairy tale and he’d been too much an emotional pauper for them to ever make it together. But he’d wanted, for once, to feel like the prince, so he’d ignored all his inner warnings that their relationship would never last, that he couldn’t give her what she needed most. He shouldn’t have. He’d only hurt her. For himself, he didn’t care, but the last thing he wanted to do was hurt the one woman who had loved him for a while with all her heart.

      After parking his truck, he got out and walked up the steps to Mack’s door, where he paused to steel himself against seeing Shea again. He was doing the right thing by letting her go, he reminded himself. Without him, she could find someone who would make her happy and give her the family and the small-town life she craved. He just had to remind himself not to feel anything when he was around her, to revert back to the loner he’d always been.

      Ready, he rapped on the front door. Mack answered it and led him into the study. Shea was sitting in the window seat, framed by Christmas decorations of holly and ivy. The house smelled of cinnamon and sugar and...Shea.

      He found himself staring at her again, even though he knew better. Tendrils of her long black hair waved softly around her face, framing it as her eyes met his with an evergreen warmth that always filled his body with the familiar heat of longing. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that would ever change. He wanted her. He always would.

      Her lips parted as she began to speak, but Mack beat her to it, his tone jovial. “Jared, thank you for coming.”

      “You said it was urgent,” Jared reminded him, finally tearing his gaze away from Shea. “So what can I do for you, Mack?”

      Seeing Jared standing there, rigid as a wooden soldier, Shea knew she had to carry through with the semblance of