A Baby In His Stocking (Harlequin Treasury 1990's) Read online

  If Shea could just show Jared just what he’d been missing—

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Hayley Gardner

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  If Shea could just show Jared just what he’d been missing—

  the warmth, spirit and traditions of a Christmas in Quiet Brook, as well as the fun—maybe she could get him to understand where she’d been coming from. He might even feel some of the things she did about close family ties and loving relationships, and then be in a better position to enjoy his child when it came.

  She interlaced her fingers and gazed down at her tummy. With Jared wanting to let her go, it wouldn’t be easy, but somewhere inside her, a tiny bit of hope curled right next to her baby somewhere under her heart....

  Dear Reader,

  Happy Holidays! Our gift to you is all the very best Romance has to offer, starting with A Kiss, a Kid and a Mistletoe Bride by RITA-Award winning author Lindsay Longford. In this VIRGIN BRIDES title, when a single dad returns home at Christmas, he encounters the golden girl he’d fallen for one magical night a lifetime ago. Can his kiss—and his kid—win her heart and make her a mistletoe mom?

  Rising star Susan Meier continues her TEXAS FAMILY TIES miniseries with Guess What? We’re Married! And no one is more shocked than the amnesiac bride in this sexy, surprising story! In The Rich Gal’s Rented Groom, the next sparkling installment of Carolyn Zane’s THE BRUBAKER BRIDES, a ragged ranch hand poses as Patsy Brubaker’s husband at her ten-year high school reunion. But fhis gal voted Most Likely To Succeed won’t rest till she wins her counterfeit hubby’s heart! BUNDLES OF JOY meets BACHELOR GULCH in a fairy-tale romance by beloved author Sandra Steffen. When a shy beauty is about to accept another man’s proposal, her true-blue true love returns to town, bearing Burke’s Christmas Surprise.

  Who wouldn’t want to be Stranded with a Tall, Dark Stranger—especially an embittered ex-cop in need of a good woman’s love? Laura Anthony’s tale of transformation is perfect for the holidays! And speaking of transformations... Hayley Gardner weaves an adorable, uplifting tale of a Grinch-like hero who becomes a Santa Claus daddy when he receives A Baby in His Stocking.

  And in the New Year, look for our fabulous new promohon FAMILY MATTERS and Romance’s first-ever six-book continuity series, LOVING THE BOSS, in which office romance leads six friends down the aisle.

  Happy Holidays!

  Mary-Theresa Hussey

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  A BABY IN HIS STOCKING

  Hayley Gardner

  To people who are there for others, like Jennifer S.,

  and the whole Aut-2B-Home E-mail group.

  I don’t know what I would do without you!

  Thank you.

  Books by Hayley Gardner

  Silhouette Romance

  A Baby in His Socking #1341

  Silhouette Yours Truly

  Holiday Husband

  The One-Week Wife

  The One-Week Baby

  HAYLEY GARDNER

  While the teachers lectured, Hayley used to sit in high school history classes and write romances in her notebook instead of notes. That turned out just fine, because she could always study the textbooks, and the teachers always thought she was their most conscientious student who took down every word they said!

  Now, years later, she is thrilled to be following her dream of full-time writing—when she isn’t homeschooling her son, that is. Any free time Hayley has is spent with her husband or researching methods of teaching children with autism or collecting dolls or knitting or taking long, deep breaths... and hoping her readers enjoy her efforts to make them smile and feel good about love.

  Chapter One

  In her office at the department store owned by her family, Shea Denton Burroughs dropped the telephone receiver into its cradle and leaned back in her executive chair, the breath knocked out of her. To suspect having a baby was one thing—to have it confirmed was another.

  For a few seconds, she let herself be wrapped up in the warmth of the love she was feeling for her baby-to-be. Boy or girl, it would have a life in her small hometown filled with the tranquillity, love and laughter that she’d always wanted for her children—a perfect life, just like her own.

  Perfect in every way except one, she thought, tears misting her eyes. Her baby’s father wouldn’t want it.

  “Don’t be sad,” a child’s voice said brightly from the doorway. “It’s Christmastime!”

  Straightening at the sight of a sandy-haired girl about four years old, Shea hurriedly dabbed at the corners of her eyes. In Denton’s department store, family was tops and kids usually had free rein, so a child loose in the office wing didn’t surprise her at all. In fact, at this point, the diversion was welcome.

  “I’m okay, really,” Shea said, smiling warmly at the child’s concern. “Who might you be?”

  “Santa’s helper,” the girl said.

  “I’m glad to meet you.” Shea was. The girl’s reply and the beaming smile on her heart-shaped face positively charmed Shea. “I could use some help from Santa right about now.”

  “I’ll tell him,” the child promised, nodding solemnly. “But he’ll need to know your name.”

  “It’s Shea Burroughs.” Widening her smile a little, Shea added, “Could you also please let him know I’ve been a very good girl all year?”

  The little sweetheart giggled. Still smiling, Shea bent over to get a candy cane out of her desk drawer. But when she looked up, the treat in hand, the girl was gone. Shea rose and went to check the hallway, but the tyke, one of the very few in the small town of Quiet Brook whom she did not know, was scurrying down the hall toward the escalators.

  Santa’s helper. Smiling at the thought of the day when her own little baby would come up with adorable answers like that one, Shea returned to her desk, sank into her chair and dropped the candy cane back into the drawer.

  Frowning, she began writing a list of what the baby would need, but she wasn’t really seeing the words. She would have to tell Jared about the baby, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. In a little over a week, she’d be getting a divorce from the man who had turned from the husband of her dreams into someone cool and distant she no longer knew—a change that had started when she’d made the mistake of wanting a baby too soon.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t told him before they were married that she wanted children. She had. She’d also told him she dreamed of raising her babies in her own hometown, where they would have traditions and values and a grandpa—her dad—who would love them just as her granddad had loved her. Jared had just nodded and said in a couple of years they might be ready. She’d said she would wait.

  But last December, when her dad admitted to having heart problems, Shea had remembered the way her own granddad had died unexpectedly right in front of her. She’d known then there was no time to waste in starting the perfect life she’d planned. So on Christmas Day she’d asked Jared for a baby.

  He’d said no, he wasn’t re
ady yet, and that had been the beginning of the end. The more she’d tried to persuade him, the more distant he’d become. Finally, he’d admitted he wasn’t the paternal type and doubted that he would ever be. It was in April, when she told him she wanted to get away by herself for a while to think things over, that he’d announced he was letting her go so she could find someone else who could make her happy with the life and children she wanted so badly.

  They’d remained apart until three months ago, when, on their first wedding anniversary in late September, she’d wanted to at least try a reconciliation. Drawn by need, they’d gotten only as far as the bedroom. The morning after, when she tried to talk to him about children, he’d told her nothing had changed. He was still letting her go. She could fall in love with someone else and have the perfect, fairy-tale life she’d always dreamed of. So she’d filed for divorce.

  He might be letting her go, she thought, but he was crazy if he thought she would ever fall in love again. She had picked the perfect man for herself the first time, dang it, and having it end between them had just hurt too much. Especially now. The love she had felt had finally given her the child she always wanted, but not the man. With a sigh, she stared down at her list and continued writing.

  A slight sound at the door made her look up, expecting to see her little Santa’s helper, or her father, or one of the clerks downstairs. The person she didn’t expect to see was Jared.

  Shea stared at him, trying to gather her wits. He lived an hour away in Topeka—so what in the world was he doing here?

  Shea looked shocked, Jared thought as he stared at her wordlessly. He’d been sent up to her office with a message, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find his voice. The second he’d seen her again, his throat had gone dry and tight. He was dying of thirst and she was water, only he couldn’t partake anymore. He’d given up that right to let her find the happiness she yearned for.

  “How have you been, Shea?” he asked. He knew her father had gone into semiretirement and allowed her to take over the management of the store she loved so much after she’d returned to Quiet Brook last April. “Still running the place?”

  “For now.” Shea could see that Jared was watching her every movement, but she had no idea what thoughts lay behind those dark blue eyes. She never had, she realized suddenly. From the second Jared, a former Quiet Brook cop, had stopped a thief from stealing the store’s receipts and hurting her dad, she’d fallen in love with him, but she’d never really known the man.

  She’d been living the fantasy she’d always dreamed of.

  “What can I do for you, Jared?” she asked, wanting him gone so she could have a peaceful Christmas to recover from the hurt of their breakup.

  “Your father asked me to come get you. Said there’s new trouble at the Santa Station. Seems Santa is sneezing and the Grinch has probably struck again. He needs you down there.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Shea hastened toward the doorway, expecting him to move out of her way. Perfectly in tune with her movements, he did, letting her slip through, then falling into step beside her. “You should have told me about Dad first thing,” she scolded, all too aware of the riotous feelings his presence was evoking in her body now that she wasn’t ten feet away from him. But she’d be a fool if she gave in to pure lust again. It wouldn’t melt Jared’s ice-cold heart.

  “I didn’t because you seemed preoccupied,” Jared returned. “Just like you seem right now.”

  With the news of the baby, she thought. She gave him a curious glance. He had a dusky five o’clock shadow she’d never seen him wear before. It lent a sexiness to the chiseled lines of his face, a haunted cast to his eyes.

  As he returned her look, she imagined she saw a flicker of vulnerability in his blue gaze. But then it was gone, and she knew it had just been a romantic notion on her part. Jared Burroughs would let himself be vulnerable at the same moment that the Grinch became Santa Claus. He had always been very much in control of his emotions, even when she had walked out on him. He could be warm, she knew that, but there seemed to be some level of feeling that he just wasn’t able to reach.

  “So what’s all this about a Grinch?” Jared asked. “Wasn’t that some Christmas legend?”

  Stepping onto the escalator, Shea grabbed the black grip for balance. “Some prankster has been trying to drive off our store Santas with practical jokes.”

  “Why is having a Santa so important?”

  Surely that was obvious, she thought. But since he’d asked, she told him. “Mack and I put some of our money into renovations this year, counting on the normally huge Christmas sales to make up the difference. But without Santa, a lot of families are driving the extra half hour to the mall for the sake of the kids and spending their money there.” She stepped off the escalator. “We can’t let Denton’s get into serious financial trouble, Jared.”

  Which was an understatement. They already were. The truth was, Denton’s would go under if it didn’t have a total turnaround in business, and fast And if Denton’s failed, Shea would lose the job that she loved and wanted, needed to keep. She didn’t want her fantasy to fade any more than it already had—for her baby’s sake.

  A nd for her father’s, Mack’s, sake, too. The store had been in the family for three generations, four if you counted her, and she didn’t think her father could handle losing it—and neither could she. She needed the store just the way she needed Quiet Brook, the sleepy little town they lived in, to recover from the heartache of her failed marriage.

  All too fully aware that Jared was trailing her through the maze of counters and aisle dividers filled with Christmas toys, she just barely missed being hit by a shopping cart when she rounded another holiday display. Stopping suddenly, she felt Jared bump into her from behind.

  The physical contact between them left her warm and wishful, two feelings she couldn’t afford to associate with Jared, and she blinked hard as she waited until the customer went by. When she looked up again, Jared was watching her with a frown on his face.

  He was sticking to her like gum to the bottom of a shoe, and she didn’t want him to. “My fault,” she said stiffly, through a throat that had seized up tightly. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t let my presence put you in a tizzy, Shea. I’ll be gone soon enough.”

  “The door is straight down that aisle,” she said, pointing toward it. “I have a Grinch I have to catch.”

  A sneeze that had to have blown down at least one wall assaulted Shea’s eardrums, and hurrying once again, she took a shortcut between the branches of two six-foot Christmas trees bedecked with red ribbons and lots of tinsel. A couple of seconds later, Jared muttered behind her, “Who thought up this danged holiday anyway!”

  She. didn’t want to turn around, but then she heard the smacking sounds of what were probably, judging from the fact that decorated trees were in the aisle, ornaments hitting the floor.

  Let them be the wooden ones, she begged Jared silently, only to hear his lowly uttered, “Damn!”

  That did it. Turning to survey the damage, she frowned at Jared. Broad shouldered as he was, his following her through the closely placed trees had caused several ornaments to fall. He was kneeling, trying to hook a wooden rocking horse back into place, a funny, pathetic look on his face that tugged at her heartstrings.

  As he leaned down, a branch smacked against his cheek. He shoved it out of the way; it hit him again. Feeling sorry for him, she went to his side and helped put the fallen ornaments back on the tree. Clearing the way, she watched as he pushed himself free with a sigh of relief.

  “It’s just not your holiday, is it, Jared?” she quipped, finally letting the tiniest of smiles touch her lips.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m a Fourth-of July type myself. Lots of fireworks.” Reaching up, he trailed his finger along her cheek. “If I remember right, you loved them, too.”

  His words and his touch were filled with double meaning, which only confused her. Drawing back, she looked at
him with troubled eyes. “Fireworks are the last thing I want around here in the middle of my Christmas,” she told him sadly.

  His warm gaze met her eyes.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” she added in a manner she hoped would leave no doubt in his mind exactly where they stood, “I’ve sworn off the Fourth of July. No fireworks—not even a sparkler. Never, ever again.”

  He stared at her for a long minute. “So why am I here, I wonder?”

  She made a gesture of bewilderment. “Dad has some silly last-minute idea of reuniting us?”

  “He’d know better than that, wouldn’t he?”

  “Would he?” she asked.

  The question hung in the air between them until a loud voice boomed from not too far away in the direction she was supposed to be heading.

  “No, Mack, sorry,” the deep voice reverberated. “I’m quitting, and no one can stop me.”

  “Oh, sheesh,” Shea said, turning her head toward the sound. “That’s our Santa. Dad’s waiting for the cavalry and here I am playing around with you!” Throwing up her hands in disgust, she rushed forward down the aisle, throwing a quick smile down at the same little sandy-haired girl she’d seen earlier as she dodged around her.

  “I wouldn’t call what we were doing playing around,” Jared corrected, keeping up. “I remember really playing around with you—and it was a lot more fun than I’ve been having in the past ten minutes.”

  With his talking like that, Shea was totally unable to concentrate on the argument Santa was having with her father.

  “That’s not fair, Jared,” she told him as they passed the gift-wrapping section. “The minute I get ready to divorce you, you suddenly find your sense of humor again.”