Jingle Bell Baby. Kate Little

      While Daisy sucked away, Jessie guessed that calling the police and reporting she’d found a baby should be the next order of business. But then they would come and take Daisy away—wouldn’t they?

      The bells on the door jingled again and Jessie quickly looked up. Drat, she’d forgotten to lock the door and turn the sign. Well, she’d just have to tell whoever it was that she was closed.

      A man entered. A huge, snow-covered man who stood with his head bowed, cursing softly to himself as he shook the white powder from his thick dark hair and stomped his heavy boots. The gesture and the sheer size of him distracted Jessica from the baby for a moment.

      “Sorry, but we’re closed,” Jessica shouted in his direction. “You can have a cup of coffee to go, but I have to warn you, it’s been sitting there all night and must taste like mud,” she added, looking up at him again.

      He had finally picked up his head and stared at her with brilliant blue eyes, eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky. The expression on his face, however, was anything but cloudless—it could only be described as a dark scowl. His dark brown hair, wet and slicked back from his forehead, accentuated his bold features—a wide brow, high cheekbones and square jaw. He was in need of a shave, she noticed, and looked as if he’d had a hard night that wasn’t going to end anytime soon. But he was definitely one hell of a good-looking man. If you liked them tall, dark and difficult, that was. Which she certainly did not.

      “Luckily I’m not here for the coffee,” he curtly informed her.

      “Well, the rest room is back and to the right,” Jessie said, her attention still fixed on the baby. “Normally, it’s for paying customers only, but I suppose on a night like this it can’t be helped.”

      “And I didn’t stop in to use the damn john,” he said, sounding more than a bit insulted, she thought, at her assumption. “I came in to tell you to close up. There’s a fullblown blizzard out there, lady, or haven’t you noticed?”

      “I guess I didn’t,” Jessie replied truthfully. She glanced out the window. Yes, it was snowing buckets, but as a native New Englander, the sight of a little—well, a respectable amount of—snow didn’t throw her into a panic.

      “Even if you’re not concerned for yourself,” he added in a disapproving tone, “you certainly ought to give a thought to your baby.”

      “Listen, you—whoever you are—” Jessica began, ready to set the stranger straight.

      The baby had sucked the bottle down to the very last drop and now made a loud sucking sound on the nipple. Jessica turned her attention back to Daisy and gently pulled the nipple from her mouth.

      “Now, wasn’t that nice?” Jessie said to Daisy. “You were hungry, weren’t you?”

      Totally satiated, the baby stretched across Jessie’s lap as floppy as a rag doll. Jessie wondered if she should just let her go to sleep. Wasn’t there something else you were supposed to do?

      Jessica rocked Daisy in her arms, trying to remember what it was you were supposed to do after babies ate.

      “Aren’t you going to burp her?” an annoying masculine voice asked. “She’ll just wake up screaming with a gas bubble later.”

      That was it! They needed to be burped. Though grateful for the information, Jessie didn’t thank him.

      “Of course I’m going to burp her,” Jessie said indignantly. She lifted Daisy up to her shoulder and began patting the baby’s back, as she had seen it done.

      Why did people make such a big deal out of taking care of a baby? There didn’t seem to be all that much to it.

      As she gave Daisy’s back gentle pats, she turned back to the object of her ire, who had now come closer and was standing right over her. At close range he was even bigger, more imposing…and even better looking.

      “Who the hell are you, anyway? Barging into my place, sticking your two cents where it definitely doesn’t belong—”

      “This is your place?”

      “That’s right. Jessica Malone, owner, manager, tonight’s star waitress.” She introduced herself, her tone edged with sarcasm.

      He did not look the least bit mollified.

      “Sorry, I’m new in town. I haven’t gotten around to meeting all the local—” She could have sworn he was about to say “characters” but he caught himself just in time. “Business owners.”

      He smiled at her, not exactly a warm smile. Still, it did something wonderful to his face, Jessie couldn’t help but notice, crinkling his eyes most attractively around the corners and causing an astoundingly deep dimple to crease one cheek. She would bet dollars to doughnuts—baked on the premises, of course—that this man didn’t smile often. Not from the heart, anyway.

      “Apology accepted,” she said. “And you are—?”

      “Clint Bradshaw, town’s new sheriff.” He flipped open one side of his jacket to show her his badge, pinned on a black crew-neck sweater that stretched across his muscular chest.

      “Congratulations,” Jessica said dryly. She felt her gaze fix on the man’s rather impressi e physique. He caught her looking and smiled again, just the hint of a grin at the edge of his well-formed lips that said, “Gotcha!”

      She turned away, feeling the color rise hotly in her cheeks.

      It was a classic, nonverbal, male-female exchange, one of the “taking inventory” variety. Not that Jessie had been taking inventory of all that many men lately. But at twenty-nine years old, with one broken engagement under her belt and a few more “definite almosts” on her record, she certainly knew the difference between looking at a man and looking.

      She’d been caught looking, and now, at this very moment, she could feel Sheriff Clinton Bradshaw looking at her. She shifted in her seat, patting Daisy a little faster and feeling suddenly self-conscious.

      All right, she knew she was a sight tonight, her outfit chosen for comfort, not high fashion. The pink waitress uniform was borrowed for the night from one of her employees, Ivy—who was ten years younger, ten pounds thinner and a good three inches shorter. It fit Jessica like a short, tight minidress. Beneath the short-sleeved dress she wore a red, long-sleeved thermal undershirt. But if that wasn’t bad enough, Jessica had chosen to cover the damage with Aunt Claire’s old gray wool vest. The handknitted vest, a most valued piece of her wardrobe, now looked like the ragged coat of an old dog, she knew, but she couldn’t resist wearing it from time to time for purely sentimental reasons. Especially on a night like tonight, when she had felt so alone and down in the dumps.

      Foreseeing the snow, she’d pulled on a pair of black tights and thick socks and her beat-up, clunky hiking boots that gave her legs a real Frankenstein look. Her long reddish gold hair had been swirled into a careless knot and secured with a large clip. The arrangement was now listing to one side of her head, the loose strands hanging in corkscrew curls.

      Jessie unconsciously smoothed a few curls behind her ear as the moment of uncomfortable silence stretched on and she tried to think of something, anything, to say that would send this man on his merry way.

      Daisy saved her, letting loose an amazingly loud burp.

      Both of them stared wide-eyed at the baby for a moment, then Jessica started to laugh. She switched the baby from her shoulder to a sitting position on her lap. Daisy stared up at both of them, smiling and looking quite pleased with herself.

      Clint didn’t join in her laughter, Jessie noticed. But he smiled just enough to cause that devastating dimple to make another brief appearance. Jessie met his gaze for a moment and felt her toes curl inside her hiking boots.

      “Look, the point is,” he said, “I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d close up here and let me give you two a lift home. Your husband must be worried about you driving in this weather with