The Maverick's Christmas Baby. Victoria Pade

      But the more weight his ex-wife had gained, the more unhappy she’d become. Even more unhappy than she’d been during the rest of the marriage she’d never really been happy in....

      Laurel was the last thing he wanted to think about, though, so he sealed off the memory and focused on Nina, who honestly did make true the adage about pregnant women glowing.

      Or maybe that was just the way she looked all the time....

      Since he’d never noticed her before, he couldn’t actually be the judge.

      Although sitting there now, studying her, he wondered why he’d never noticed her before. How could anyone who looked the way she did have gone unnoticed?

      She was only twenty-five—that was probably a factor because she was too young for him to have paid attention to. Plus he’d been so involved with his marriage—first in the early throes of love, and then trying to save it—that he hadn’t really paid attention to any other females. And even as an adult, Nina’s being a Crawford just automatically clumped her together with the rest of her family, who had all been cast under the shadow of contempt. Put it all together and he supposed that he’d just been blind to her.

      But he wasn’t blind to her anymore.

      At that moment he was sorry he wasn’t sitting as close to her as he’d been in the backseat of his truck. With the blanket over the two of them. With his arm around her—the way it had been when he’d put it there without even thinking about it.

      The same way he’d kissed her without even thinking about it....

      A Crawford. He’d kissed a Crawford.

      A pregnant Crawford.

      This had been a very strange day....

      But still, thinking about it, here he was wishing he was back there. Stuck in a blizzard. At risk of having to deliver that baby.

      Because it had somehow been nice there like that. With her.

      It had been the best time he’d had in a very, very long while....

      Okay, maybe he’d lost it. The best time he’d had in a long time, and it had been in that situation, with a Crawford?

      That was crazy.

      And yet, true...

      Because she was something, this Nina Crawford.

      Even under the worst circumstances, out there stuck in the snow, there had still been something positive and affirming about her. Strong. He’d known she was worried and scared, and even in the face of that she hadn’t bemoaned anything, she’d held her head high about making the choice she’d made to have that baby on her own, and she was just...

      Something.

      Something a whole lot better than he’d been for the past year since his divorce.

      Something a whole lot better than the cranky naysayer he sometimes felt as though he’d turned into.

      She was a positive force. He was a negative one.

      Figured. The Crawfords and the Traubs—oil and water. That was how they’d always been. How they always would be. Except that he and Nina hadn’t been oil and water today.

      Not that that meant anything. Or mattered.

      Even if she wasn’t a Crawford, he thought, she was still only twenty-five and pregnant, while he was thirty-four and had three kids. Nothing about any of that put them on the same page. And people who weren’t on the same page couldn’t—or at least shouldn’t—come together. He’d learned that the hard way with Laurel.

      Not that what had gone on today was anything like he and Nina Crawford coming together, he told himself when his own thoughts alarmed him a little.

      He just felt responsible for her for the moment. Because he was the other party involved in the near-collision that had put her in the hospital.

      There wasn’t any more to it than that.

      If he could just stop recalling every minute of being alone with her in his backseat.

      “Dallas Traub? What are you doing here?”

      Now that was a Crawford that Dallas recognized.

      “Nate,” Dallas answered in a whisper, glancing up to find Nina’s brother Nathan Crawford in the doorway with their parents—Todd and Laura, who had also been front and center through the recent mayoral election in support of their son—who had lost the race to Dallas’s brother, Collin.

      Dallas stood instantly to face them. “Didn’t Gage tell you what happened?” he whispered, both in response and as a signal to keep voices low.

      “He said Nina went off the road and had to be brought here. He didn’t say anything about you,” the matriarch of the Crawford family whispered back harshly, obviously having taken the cue.

      But the attempt to keep things quiet was already too late because from the bed Nina said, “Stop. Dallas isn’t to blame. It was all my fault. I couldn’t see him coming until it was too late and I’d pulled out in front of him. We both swerved to keep from crashing.”

      “Still bad enough. What are you doing here now?” Todd Crawford demanded.

      “Daddy, Dallas has been great!” Nina informed her father. “He took care of me until the sheriff got there and even then he didn’t let Gage move me, and he had Gage follow us to make sure we got here all right. And here he is, even now!”

      Dr. Axel joined the group then and Nina seemed to seize the sudden presence of the obstetrician as help in mediating, because she said, “Hi, Dr. Axel. Could you maybe take my family out in the hallway and let them know what’s going on with the baby?”

      The doctor did as requested, herding the other Crawfords from the room.

      “Thought I needed to be rescued, did you?” Dallas said with a laugh, moving to stand directly at the foot of the bed.

      “Three against one—bad odds,” she answered, sounding groggy and worn-out.

      “I didn’t want to leave you by yourself,” Dallas explained his continuing presence.

      “That was thoughtful.” She gestured in the direction her family had gone. “I’m sorry that was your reward for being so nice.”

      “No big deal,” he assured her, finding that what was feeling like a big deal to him was the idea that he was going to have to leave her now....

      “Everything with you and the baby is fine, you know that, right?” he said then.

      “I do. I’m giving you credit for that.”

      “Nah. I didn’t do anything.”

      “You did—”

      “I’m just glad you and the baby are okay.”

      “And that you didn’t have to deliver it,” Nina said with a smile that let him know she was teasing him.

      “That, too,” he agreed, laughing in return and basking in the warmth of that smile that he liked more than seemed possible.

      “Is it still snowing?” she asked then.

      “It is, but the wind stopped so it isn’t as bad out there.”

      “You should get home, then. To your boys.”

      Dallas nodded. He did need to get home. He just couldn’t figure out why he was so reluctant to leave Nina. Nina Crawford, he reminded himself, as if that would help. “I suppose your family can take over from here.”

      “They will. And everything is okay anyway, so there isn’t really anything to take over. I’ll lie in this bed and get waited on tonight, then go home tomorrow.”

      Again Dallas nodded, lingering. “I’m sorry for all of this. That it happened,”