A Baby For Christmas. Marie Ferrarella

the thinking of a desperate man, the twenty-eight-year-old rancher told himself. He shouldn’t be desperate. After all, he had earned all this peace and quiet. Lord knew he’d worked hard enough for it over the years.

      The only trouble with peace and quiet was that it was, well, too quiet. And peaceful could also be another word for boring.

      For the last twenty-eight years, the ranch house he was sitting in had seen more than its share of bustling activity—as well as its share of sorrow. His mother had died here giving birth to Cassidy twenty-three years ago and this was where his father had passed away, as well. The latter had happened a week before he was about to go off to college. The first one in his family to actually go to college.

      That dream wound up being temporarily shelved, or so he told himself, because if he had gone off to college, Cody, Cole and Cassidy would have been farmed out to foster homes, most likely separate ones.

      So he’d stayed on and the four of them had worked as hard as they could to eke out a living and keep the ranch, his father’s legacy, going.

      It definitely hadn’t been easy.

      At times it was damn near impossible, but somehow, they’d always wound up managing, thanks to hard work and the kindness of their fellow neighbors in Forever—especially Miss Joan, the redheaded, wisecracking, dour-faced guardian angel who ran the diner that had been, and still was, the small town’s only restaurant.

      Looking back, he kind of missed those years. Missed working so hard that he fell into bed, bone tired and asleep before his head had a chance to hit his pillow.

      Missed hearing his siblings arguing about whose turn it was to do what chore.

      At times, he recalled, it had gotten so noisy, he couldn’t hear himself think.

      Well, he certainly could hear himself think now. But all he could really think of was that he missed the arguing. Missed all the sounds of a family living together.

      One by one, Cody, then Cassidy and finally Cole had found the one they were supposed to be with and they had all gotten married in what seemed to him to be, now that he looked back, an amazingly short amount of time. All three were now married with kids. And, of course, they were all here every Sunday. Sunday dinners were pure bedlam and he loved it. But in contrast it made the rest of the week feel almost as quiet as a tomb.

      At least, that was the way the evenings felt.

      Most of the time Rita, his housekeeper, was around. The woman wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, but she did talk on occasion and the sound of her voice took away the oppressive feeling of loneliness.

      But Rita had gone to visit her sister in Austin for a few days. He didn’t miss her cooking—although the woman did have a spectacular knack for making everything she put her hand to taste good. What he missed, now that the others were gone, was her company.

      Granted that Cole was here during the week, helping him around the ranch, but when six o’clock came, Cole was gone.

      Which was as it should be. He wanted his siblings to have families of their own. Wanted them to be happy.

      For the last few days, with Rita gone, if he wanted company when the sun went down, he turned on the television set. But somehow, that felt way too artificial to him.

      He needed to communicate with something living and breathing. Which was why he’d started entertaining the idea of getting a dog.

      Finishing up dinner—Rita had prepared several casseroles for him before she’d left—he began forming a plan. He’d go into town tomorrow and get a cup of coffee—maybe even lunch—at Miss Joan’s and ask her if anyone’s dog had had pups recently. If anyone would know, it would be Miss Joan. The woman was the unofficial source of information for the whole town. He could swear that she had a way of knowing about things before they even happened.

      He liked that idea, Connor thought as he took his lone plate from the kitchen table to the sink.

      Turning on the hot water and dabbing some liquid hand soap onto the dish, he smiled to himself.

      A dog.

      Okay, so most of the time he had more than enough to do around the ranch, even with Cole’s added help. But once the sun went down, he could stand to have a pair of soulful brown eyes looking up at him for—

      Connor turned off the running water and listened, his dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes. He pushed it back.

      Was that knocking he heard?

      He gave it to the count of five.

      Nothing.

      Shrugging, he went back to rinsing off the solitary dish, as well as the knife and fork he’d used. It was the middle of the week, no reason to believe that—

      He stopped and turned off the water again, cocking his head toward the front door, the direction of what he perceived was the source of the sound.

      This time, rather than just standing and listening to see if he could hear it again, he wiped his hands on the back of his jeans and went to the living room.

      No point in wondering whether or not there was anyone knocking on his door when he could just as easily open it and check if there was anyone there.

      “You’re a little more than one year away from turning thirty. That’s too young to be hearing things and imagining people on your doorstep,” Connor upbraided himself.

      He was definitely going to talk to Miss Joan about getting a dog.

      Although he didn’t hear any further knocking, Connor still twisted the doorknob and pulled open the door just to make sure there was no one there so he could put his mind at rest.

      He wound up doing the exact opposite.

       Chapter Two

      There weren’t very many things that could catch Connor McCullough off his guard these days. One of the reasons for that was a great deal had happened in the last year and a half.

      Cody had shown up with a newborn whom he’d helped a stranded mother-to-be give birth to in her dilapidated, stalled secondhand car. Not all that long after that, Cassidy had turned up, dripping wet and clutching a baby she’d helped rescue from the river during an unexpected flash flood.

      And then Cole had topped both of them when he’d brought home twins who had been left in a basket on the doorstep. He had almost tripped over them when he’d walked out of the bunkhouse one morning.

      All in all, Connor would have been the first to say that he didn’t think there was anything that would surprise him anymore.

      With that in his mind, he was in no way prepared for what he saw when he swung open his front door to look outside.

      A wan, breathless Amy Donavan was standing on his doorstep, holding what looked to be a six-month-old baby in her arms.

      For a moment, he thought that he’d somehow managed to fall asleep in the kitchen and was dreaming this, or hallucinating it, or whatever it was called when a man’s mind conjured up an image of the only woman he had ever loved standing on his doorstep, looking utterly helpless and needy.

      “Amy?” he asked uncertainly, half expecting the sound of his own voice to wake him up.

      Except that it didn’t.

      And then his hallucination spoke.

      “I’m sorry, Connor. I just didn’t know where else to turn.” Her eyes, those beautiful, mesmerizing blue orbs that he always used to get lost in, were now the eyes of a woman who looked as if she was on a first-name basis with fear. “I’d understand if you don’t want to let me in,” the petite strawberry blonde added hesitantly, already taking a step back from the doorway.

      “Maybe you might, but I wouldn’t.” Connor took hold of her elbow and drew