The Maverick's Christmas Baby. Victoria Pade

showing, the take-charge attitude that wasn’t too different than what he’d shown on Wednesday in the blizzard.

      Then he called over his shoulders for his sons to come and put on their coats while he removed the dish towel from his shoulder, slung it over the banister on the staircase behind him and thrust his arms into the largest of the four coats hanging on hooks beside the door.

      “Lead the way...” he suggested to Nina as the boys came to the door like a tiny herd of elephants, their curiosity piqued, as well.

      “Coats!” Dallas ordered a second time, explaining what was happening as the boys put them on and they all joined Nina on the porch.

      “You brought us a Christmas tree?” Robbie exclaimed as they went out to the SUV.

      “I did,” Nina confirmed. “And a few other things that you can help me carry in while your dad and your brothers get the tree down.”

      “I been wantin’ a tree!” Robbie said as if it were a revelation.

      “Now you’ll have one,” Nina said with a laugh.

      Even the oldest boy—Ryder, who had been so solemn on Friday when they’d met—seemed to perk up at the prospect of decorating for Christmas. And the more childish side of middle-son, Jake—who Nina had already realized liked to play it tough—was revealed as the two older boys aided their father in getting the tree unlashed from the roof of the SUV.

      “Go on in and get out of the cold,” Dallas commanded Nina when she and Robbie had taken the sacks from her rear cargo compartment. “The family room is to the left—that’s where we put the tree.”

      Thinking more of the little boy than of herself, Nina did as she’d been told.

      Inside the house, Nina took off her coat and so did Robbie—dropping his on the floor in his excitement to take the sacks into the other room and see what was in them.

      Still in the entry, Nina picked up the child’s coat and replaced it on the hook it had come from. Then she draped her own jacket over the newel post at the foot of the wide staircase that led to the second level of the house rather than taking someone else’s hook.

      She was wearing a turtleneck fisherman’s-knit cable sweater that reached to midthigh of the skinny jeans she had on with her fur-lined, calf-high boots. After making sure the sweater wasn’t bunched up over her rear end, she took the dish towel from where Dallas had set it over the banister and went in the direction Robbie had gone—to the left of the staircase.

      The family room was a wide-open space paneled in a rustic wood, with man-sized leather furniture arranged around the entertainment center and the stone fireplace beside it.

      Nina took the dish towel into the kitchen that was in the rear portion of the same area, separated from it only by a big round table surrounded by eight ladder-backed chairs.

      On the counter beside the sink were four TV dinners with most of their contents left uneaten, and Nina wondered how often Dallas served frozen meals like that, hoping it wasn’t too often. And hoping, too, that the whole household hadn’t been feeling so sad tonight that none of them had felt like eating.

      She left the dish towel folded neatly on the other side of the double sink and went to Robbie to help unload the bags she’d brought, explaining as she took things out what they were intended for.

      “Dad! We have lights and tinsel and ornaments and these sparkly balls and candy canes, and Nina’s gonna make us apple cider to drink while we put the tree up!” Robbie announced when his father and brothers carried the evergreen into the family room.

      “I can see that,” Dallas answered as he leaned the tree against a wall.

      When the other boys were following Dallas’s instructions to take his coat and theirs to hang up, and Robbie was still engrossed in emptying the bags, Nina said in an aside to Dallas, “I brought a bunch of new ornaments in case you didn’t want memories raised with ones you used before....”

      “Good idea. We can decide later what we might want to add and what we might not.”

      The older boys returned then. At Nina’s suggestion Christmas music was turned on as she heated the cider and put it into mugs, and everyone got busy putting up the tree and decorating Dallas’s house.

      Nina half expected Dallas to merely sit on the sofa and watch her and the boys do the decorating, because in the four years she’d been with Leo, that was what he’d done. Christmas spirit seemed to have been something he’d outgrown, and while he’d assured her that he enjoyed the sight of a well-lit tree, he’d refused to exert the energy to actually decorate it.

      But Dallas pitched in and did every bit as much as she did until the room was decorated—not quite as elaborately as Nina’s apartment, but enough so that it looked very festive.

      When all the work was done, Robbie demanded that all the lights be turned off except for the tree lights, and that they all stand back to see how the tree looked in the dark. It looked beautiful, and Nina had the sense that the activity and the addition of the holiday cheer had lifted some of the cloud from the household. If not permanently, then at least for the time being.

      Then Dallas said, “Tomorrow is a school day and you guys are late getting to sleep. Tell Nina thank-you for all of this and then upstairs to showers and pajamas and bed.”

      Ryder and Jake thanked her perfunctorily, but Robbie gave her an impromptu hug around the middle to accompany his expression of gratitude. Then the boys went up the stairs in a thunderous retreat that seemed louder than a mere three kids could cause, and Nina and Dallas were suddenly alone.

      “This was a really, really nice thing you did,” Dallas said when the noise had dwindled to thumps and bumps overhead. He seemed inordinately grateful. As grateful as she’d been for his help during the blizzard. As grateful as if she’d done something for him that he just hadn’t had it in him to do on his own.

      “I wanted to do it,” Nina assured him.

      “Now sit and catch your breath,” he insisted. “I’ll reheat the cider and have another cup with you.”

      Better judgment told Nina to decline, to just head for home. She’d done what she’d come to do and she should just leave.

      But she couldn’t deny herself a few minutes alone with Dallas now that the work was finished and the boys were elsewhere.

      So she sat on the big overstuffed leather sofa across from the Christmas tree that they’d set beside the fireplace.

      She enjoyed the view of her handiwork and how much more cheerful the room looked while Dallas microwaved refills of cider for just the two of them. Then he brought the mugs and joined her.

      Nina was at one end of the long couch, and after handing her the mug he sat on the opposite end. Far, far away.

      Or, at least, that was how it seemed.

      But it was good, Nina told herself. Because even if she was liking that scruff of beard on his face a little too much and thinking that it was sooo sexy, sitting at a distance from each other proved that there was nothing more to this than two relatively new acquaintances sharing a friendly evening together topped off by a cup of cider.

      She took a sip of hers and said, “I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d find when I came out here. You know, a Crawford setting foot on the Traub’s Triple T ranch...”

      “You thought you might be shot on sight?” Dallas joked, gazing at her over his own mug just before he took a drink, too.

      “That’s what Nate thought—he loaded the tree onto the car for me. I gave him grief for saying such a dumb thing, but I have to admit that I was glad when I found someone at the store today who could tell me which place out here was yours so I didn’t have to go to the main house and ask. I sort of figured if I did I’d run into the same kind of wrath from your family that you got from mine.”

      “At least the hospital was