The Christmas Baby Surprise. Shirley Jump

he’d never noticed. Or listened. “Maybe we should have bought a fixer-upper instead of built a house. Then you could have had projects all the time.”

      “You still have that honey-do list, don’t you?”

      She shook her head. “I gave it to Bob. The contractor you hired to do the renovations on the kitchen? He’s taking care of all those things while I’m gone.”

      “Oh, that’s good.” He sounded disappointed.

      A part of her wanted to believe that if she went back to New York right now, Cole would take up that honey-do list and insist on being home more often, being there, being with her. But the sensible part of her knew this time at the inn was a temporary reprieve. The problems in their marriage ran deeper than a remodeling project. Instead, it would be better, and smarter, to use this time together as a way to forge their future together. Their real future, not a fantasy one.

      “Cole...” She paused, laying her hands in her lap, her appetite for the snack cake gone. “I think we should sell the house. I don’t need one that big, and you aren’t living there anymore and...”

      “Let’s wait,” he said. “Give it some time—”

      “We’ve been separated six months, and really, a divorce is just a formality at this point. The sooner we get these things settled, the faster we can move on.”

      “What if I don’t want to move on?”

      The pain in his voice hurt her. She had no doubt he still cared, but she knew how this would end. She’d read this same story a hundred times over the course of their marriage. “Cole, we’ve tried this. The big fight, the talk of ending it. You come back, try for a few days, then before you know it, you’re back at work and I’m in a marriage of one person. Let’s just make it official, okay? Instead of pretending that we’re ever going to be a family.”

      She gathered her things and got to her feet. She started to pass by him, when Cole reached out. “Emily.”

      His voice was harsh, jagged, filled with need and regret. Feelings she knew well because she’d felt them herself. She hesitated, standing on the dock under the bright November sun while the water lapped gently at the pilings, and looked down at the man she had pledged to love forever.

      “I’m sorry, Cole. I really am,” she said softly, then placed a kiss on his cheek.

      At the last second, Cole turned, and his mouth met hers. Heat exploded in that kiss, and Cole jerked to his feet, hauled her to his chest and tangled his hands in her hair. Her mind went blank, and her body turned on, and everything inside her melted. All the perfect little arguments she had against being with Cole disappeared and for a moment, Emily Watson was swept back into the very fairy tale she had thought stopped existing.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      FOR ONE LONG sweet moment, Cole’s life was perfect. Then Emily broke away from him, and stumbled back a step. “We...we can’t do that. We’re getting divorced, Cole.”

      He scowled. “I know what’s going on between us.”

      “Then let’s stop getting wrapped up in something that’s never going to work. We made that mistake a few months ago, and—”

      “And what?”

      She shook her head and backed up another step. “And it was a mistake.”

      “So you’re giving up, just like that?”

      Her gaze softened, and though Cole wished he read love in that look, what he really saw was sympathy. “No, Cole, I never gave up. You did that for both of us a long time ago. And now you’re doing what you always do. Fighting to win, because Cole Watson never loses at anything. Too bad you never realized that you lost me a long, long time ago.”

      He stood on the dock for a long time, listening to the soft patter of her feet as she headed up the dock and toward the inn. The water winked back in the sunlight, bright and cheery. For the hundredth time, Cole wondered what the hell he was doing here and why he was trying so hard to save his marriage when his wife didn’t want him to.

      The lake blurred in front of him, and his mind drifted back over a decade into the past. To a beach in Florida, a run-down motel and the happiest five days of his life. Things had been simpler then, he realized, before the company and the money and the big house, and all the things he thought would improve their life. Instead, it had cost him all he held dear.

      Somehow, he needed to get back to that simple life, to the world that had once seemed to consist of just him and Emily. Then his phone started buzzing against his hip, and he knew doing that was going to be harder than he’d thought.

      * * *

      Emily buried herself in words for two hours that afternoon. She cracked the window, letting some of the crisp, fresh air filter past the lacy curtains and into the room. The sounds of chirping birds and the occasional whine of the table saw broke the quiet of the day. The pages flew by, as she took her characters and had them battle past the challenges in their lives, striving for success, even against impossible odds. The book was going very, very well and each new chapter she started gave Emily a little burst of energy and satisfaction. She was doing it. Finally.

      She sat back in the chair and stretched. If only solving her own life problems was as easy as solving those of her fictional characters.

      It didn’t help that she had complicated things herself by kissing Cole. It was as if there were two parts to her heart—the part that remembered the distance, the fights, the cold war of the past few years, and the part that remembered only the heady beginning of their relationship. The laughter, the happiness and the sex.

      Okay, yes, being touched by Cole was the one part of their marriage that had never suffered. Their sex life, when they’d had one, had been phenomenal. He knew her body, knew it well, and had been a wonderful lover.

      When he had been there to love her at all.

      That was the real problem in their marriage. Cole’s absences, fueled by his dogged dedication to the business, meant he was never home. In the early years, she’d supported him, encouraged him to work as much as he needed, but as success began to mount and Emily thought he would finally cut back on his hours, Cole instead worked more, dedicating weekends and vacations to this new project or that customer problem. He’d poured his heart and soul into the company, leaving almost nothing of either one for their marriage.

      She got to her feet, gathering her dishes from her afternoon snack and headed down to the kitchen. Carol was peeling potatoes at the table, and had a basket of fresh green beans waiting to be cleaned beside her. Emily put her dishes in the sink, then sat in the opposite chair and started twisting off the stringy ends and breaking the green beans in half, then adding them to a waiting colander. “I remember doing this when I was a little girl,” Emily said.

      Carol smiled. “You always did like helping me in the kitchen. Half the time I’d have to kick you out and remind you that you were on vacation, not part of the KP crew.”

      Emily shrugged. “I liked being here.”

      “Instead of with your own family.”

      “We weren’t much of a family to begin with,” Emily said. “My mother was always off doing her thing, my father was always working. And when they were together, they fought like cats and dogs.”

      An understatement. Emily’s parents’ marriage had been mostly a marriage of convenience, two high school friends who’d married at the end of senior year, then had a child in quick succession, before realizing they were better friends than lovers. They had lived separate lives and only came together for birthdays and major holidays. The annual “family” summer vacation to the Gingerbread Inn was more of an opportunity to spend time with their friends and play shuffleboard than to bond as a family. The only time all three of them were together was Friday nights, when they all went into town for dinner at their favorite diner.

      Carol picked