A Baby In His Stocking (Harlequin Treasury 1990's) Page 3

  “If you really think he can get rid of this Grinch, who am I to ruin Christmas for everyone?” She shrugged her shoulders and then gave Mack a soft smile. Since she was manager, all she really would have to do to avoid Jared was to delegate. Issue him his orders at the beginning of the day, then follow up later. With any luck, she shouldn’t have to be around him more than once or twice a day until he found the Grinch.

  She just hoped that was as easily done as thought. As she unwrapped the candy cane, she gave a sideways glance out the window—still no Jared—and then glanced at her father.

  “You’re awfully quiet suddenly,” she said.

  “I was just thinking,” Mack started slowly. “Maybe you could use some of that Christmas spirit of yours to convince Jared to play Santa. It would give the two of you something to do while you watch for the Grinch to reappear. Who knows, it might even be good for him.”

  Jared playing Santa all day, seeing and relearning the joy and wonder of the holiday through the eyes of children? The idea brought a twinge of hope to Shea’s heart, and she put the candy cane down beside her as she considered it.

  If she could 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.

  Oh, she knew better than to expect he would change and want everything she did, and without that happening, she didn’t think they could rekindle the love they’d once shared. But his having a merry Christmas in Quiet Brook could really only help him—and her baby—couldn’t it?

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

  Once Mack’s receptionist told Jared that his fatherin-law was waiting for him at his home, Jared headed back down the escalator, scowling at the thought of what his friend might really be up to by dragging him around Shea. He nodded grimly at any number of people who wished him a merry Christmas until finally he didn’t bother looking at anyone anymore. Christmas had ceased being important to him long ago—and right now, he had other things on his mind. Like Shea. Like letting her go for her own good.

  Dodging three youngsters running amuck through the aisles, he bumped into a cardboard display of Santa. Both the decorations and the kids were grim reminders of how different he and Shea actually were, and he quickened his steps, needing to get out of the store and out of Quiet Brook. When he caught up with Mack, he wasn’t standing for any more delays. Friend or no friend, he was putting his foot down.

  Someone tugged on the back of his jacket. Turning, he had to drop his gaze way down to look into the blue eyes of a little girl, maybe five years old, one of the kids whom he’d seen in Denton’s earlier that day. Her denim jacket looked a size too small and was much too thin for the weather outside. Her look of poverty reminded him of his past and made him even more eager to escape the store, which seemed to be bringing back too many memories for comfort ever since he’d set foot inside it.

  “Yeah?” he asked, glancing around at the almost empty aisles. Didn’t the kid have a mother?

  “I know where Santa is.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Jared knew that story. “The North Pole.”

  “Honest. I know where the real Santa is.”

  “Whatever you say.” He began to sweat. Even with his time on the force, he’d never quite gotten used to dealing with children. But before he could walk away, she latched onto his jacket with a grip that surprised him.

  “You want me to take you to Santa? Then you can tell Mrs. Burroughs where he is, and she can ask him to sit at the Santa Station, and then she’ll be happy. I saw her almost cry before.”

  Oh, that was just what he didn’t need to hear. He’d counted on Shea’s return to Quiet Brook making her happy—something she hadn’t been toward the end with him. The fact that she still wasn’t content was unsettling as hell because he still cared. He still cared a whole lot, and he knew the mental picture of her crying would come back to haunt him in the lonely hours of the night—it already had once or twice.

  “Can you come see Santa with me?” The little sandy-haired girl smiled up at him with cajoling eyes.

  The cold insides of Jared’s heart started melting. “No,” he said, careful to keep his tone soft as he gently disengaged her fingers from his jacket. “I can’t come with you anywhere. That wouldn’t be a good idea. You should go and find your mom and not talk to strangers.”

  “But it’s okay to talk to you,” she said earnestly, dropping her hand to her side. “Santa said you were once a nice boy—you just grew up wrong.”

  Raking his fingers through his thick brown hair as he stood there, Jared tried to figure out what exactly was going on. A stranger dressed up like Santa Claus talking to a little girl about him—and getting the information right? He decided he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to get that involved with the child, the Santa Claus, or with Shea for that matter. What he wanted was to get out of her store where he could practically smell the ginger of her perfume every time he walked down an aisle.

  “I don’t want to see Santa,” he told the child firmly. “Run along and find your mother, okay?”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.” With a wave, he turned and started walking away.

  The girl was probably just lonely, he supposed. Her friends must have run off and she had no one to play with. But still, it wasn’t good that she was inviting complete strangers to take her someplace...not even in a small town that was quiet and peaceful most of the time.

  Sighing, knowing he wouldn’t rest that evening unless he was sure she had someone to watch over her, Jared began to scan the aisles, looking for the little girl in the thin denim jacket. But she seemed to have disappeared.

  At the service desk, he told the clerk about the child. She claimed not to have noticed any young girls by themselves. Everyone else he asked in the front and rear of the store said practically the same thing. Finally, he came to the conclusion the girl must have gone home, even though by the strange looks he’d been getting as he asked after her, he was starting to believe she didn’t exist. That she was a little fairy of some sort, in a fairy-tale town.

  But he didn’t believe in fairy tales. Swearing under his breath, Jared headed toward the front again, passing the deserted Santa Station on his way out. Seeing it reminded him of Shea and her efforts to keep the Santa there. Apparently, she had lost. That didn’t bode well. She lived for Christmas, and with the store in trouble, this wasn’t looking to be a good one. He was used to that, but he knew it was going to be a disaster for Shea. He didn’t want that for her. Not along with their divorce in just over a week. But he couldn’t do a thing to help her. Not one damned thing.

  Five minutes later, he was in his truck, driving toward Mack’s, his face tight with tension. Their marriage probably could have been salvaged if he’d given in about having a baby, but he couldn’t do that to a kid. He’d been an only child and his father had been a bitter, remote man. All Jared knew about fatherhood was what he’d learned from his own, and that wouldn’t be nearly enough. It hadn’t been for him.

  From his mother’s death at childbirth, Jared had been brought up on the family farm. The only love he’d ever known was from his Aunt Ruthie, who came most days to cook and clean. But when he was nine, she’d died of some illness—he couldn’t remember what.

  What he did recall, vividly, was clinging to her in the hospital, begging her not to leave him, that he didn’t want to be left alone with his father, with no one to love him. Seconds later, his father had pulled him away with a look of fear and sadness on his face that Jared had never forgotten because he had put it there by his words. And his father had said something that he
still remembered.

  “I’m sorry, boy. I did the best I knew how for you.”

  After that, Jared had never mentioned anything about not wanting to be with his father again, and in return, his father had continued to practically ignore him. After a while, he guessed he had just stopped caring whether he had love in his life. Maybe he thought his father’s remoteness was love. It was all he knew.

  And all he could give a child.

  He’d done all right alone, and would again. He’d put himself through college with scholarships, and by the time he was twenty had his degree and a job on the Quiet Brook police force. He’d kept mainly to himself for years, dating occasionally, but mostly living without love and emotion, until that fateful day when he’d gone into Denton’s, saved Mack’s payroll and his life—and met Shea.

  When he married her, he’d known that she was too much the sweet princess in a fairy tale and he’d been too much an emotional pauper for them to ever make it together. But he’d wanted, for once, to feel like the prince, so he’d ignored all his inner warnings that their relationship would never last, that he couldn’t give her what she needed most. He shouldn’t have. He’d only hurt her. For himself, he didn’t care, but the last thing he wanted to do was hurt the one woman who had loved him for a while with all her heart.

  After parking his truck, he got out and walked up the steps to Mack’s door, where he paused to steel himself against seeing Shea again. He was doing the right thing by letting her go, he reminded himself. Without him, she could find someone who would make her happy and give her the family and the small-town life she craved. He just had to remind himself not to feel anything when he was around her, to revert back to the loner he’d always been.

  Ready, he rapped on the front door. Mack answered it and led him into the study. Shea was sitting in the window seat, framed by Christmas decorations of holly and ivy. The house smelled of cinnamon and sugar and...Shea.

  He found himself staring at her again, even though he knew better. Tendrils of her long black hair waved softly around her face, framing it as her eyes met his with an evergreen warmth that always filled his body with the familiar heat of longing. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that would ever change. He wanted her. He always would.

  Her lips parted as she began to speak, but Mack beat her to it, his tone jovial. “Jared, thank you for coming.”

  “You said it was urgent,” Jared reminded him, finally tearing his gaze away from Shea. “So what can I do for you, Mack?”

  Seeing Jared standing there, rigid as a wooden soldier, Shea knew she had to carry through with the semblance of a plan she’d made while she waited for him to arrive. Every line of his face spelled loneliness. Jared needed to be given a chance to know the joys and pleasures of the season, to share in the Christmas spirit with others, and she was the only one who really still cared about him enough to persevere through the attempt. Since she already knew her marriage was over, she had nothing to lose by doing this, and her baby—and Jared—would have everything to gain.

  “I assume Shea filled you in on what’s been happening at the store?” her father said to Jared.

  “With the practical jokes?” He nodded. Waiting.

  “I’d like you to find out who the Grinch is,” Mack explained. “We’ll pay you, of course.”

  “You got me down here just to find a guy playing practical jokes?” Jared asked, sounding like he didn’t believe it—or considered it a waste of time. Shea winced.

  Mack nodded affirmatively, and Shea added, “Please?”

  Jared turned to her. “How would you two suggest someone go about finding this ‘Grinch’ of yours?”

  “We figure the troublemaker is more than likely someone in the neighborhood.” She toyed with the drapes as if she hadn’t a care in the world and as if she didn’t really notice how steadily he’d been watching her. “Maybe even someone who doesn’t like small towns and who doesn’t have any Christmas spirit.”

  That someone, Jared thought uncomfortably, sounded an awful lot like him.

  “To get this guy,” Mack said, taking over, “you could keep an eye out for someone lurking around the Santa Station and try catching him in the act. You could also ask around and try to find out if anyone is upset with my store.”

  “I’m not sure I understand why this is such a big problem,” Jared said, all too aware that this remark wasn’t going to set well with his friend. But he didn’t want to stay. “Couldn’t you just give out free candy or something to the kids at the Santa Station? You don’t really need anyone to play Santa Claus, do you?”

  Shea tried to think of an explanation she hadn’t already given him, but her father sat down on the chair by his desk with an audible whoosh coming out of his mouth.

  “Don’t need a Santa?” he asked incredulously. “Heck, Jared, of course Denton’s needs a Santa. Christmas in Quiet Brook wouldn’t be the same...” Mack frowned at Jared. “Didn’t Shea ever tell you about our gift-giving program? It’s been a family tradition for years.”

  Jared aimed a long, unfathomable look in Shea’s direction that had her tingling all over and forgetting, for the moment, about their present troubles and the fact that the two of them were currently as incompatible as dry Christmas trees and Roman candles.

  “I’m sure she might have tried,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ve never paid much attention to anything about Christmas.”

  That cool tone in his voice was all too familiar. She’d heard it a lot right before she’d left him, Shea remembered. It made her sad and afraid at the same time. Afraid especially because she knew she couldn’t help getting herself involved in trying to change him, and she was already feeling tender and wounded.

  But she had to try, for Jared’s own sake. “During World War II,” she said, “my grandfather started a program. As each child visited Santa at the Station, the helper there recorded the child’s name and wish on a list. Then Denton’s would move heaven and earth, either through soliciting donations or giving the present themselves, to make sure the needy kids in town received at least one gift they craved.”

  “The churches in town could do that now, couldn’t they?” Jared asked.

  “They could,” Shea admitted. “Or the children could just mail their lists to Santa in the box in front of our store. But, Jared, the way Denton’s department store plays Santa to kids is one of the things that helps make Christmas in Quiet Brook the magical holiday it is.”

  And, she added silently, they had to get things back to normal at the store by capturing the Grinch and hiring a Santa. She didn’t want to lose her job, the store, or anything else in her life.

  She’d already lost Jared.

  “So couldn’t you consider helping us—for the kids’ sakes?” her father asked.

  From the way Jared was looking at her again, with an unreadable something in his dark blue eyes that Shea couldn’t figure out—but it wasn’t emotion—she knew he wasn’t going to stay and help by finding the Grinch, never mind by playing Santa. He wasn’t, she knew, because she was there.

  Just as she predicted, Jared shook his head. “If that’s all you needed, Mack, old buddy, then I’ve got to be getting back to Topeka. There’s work there calling my name.”

  The scene seemed eerily familiar to Shea. She had lived through it more than a few times since last December when she’d brought up the topic of having a baby and started pressing him to agree. Jared tended, to say the least, to avoid confrontation. If she didn’t miss her guess, in about four seconds...

  She was right. With a wave, he turned and walked out of the room. Knowing the importance, Shea rose and hurried after him, flicking on the front porch light on her way out.

  “Jared, wait!”

  He cleared the porch steps and kept walking.

  “Please?” The frosty air swirled around her, but if she went inside long enough to get her coat, he would leave and she would miss her chance. “Please? We have to talk.”

  He stopped, his
shoulders tensing, and she held her breath. To save Christmas for the store and the kids—and to help him and their baby, she had to find a way to persuade him to remain in town, even if every time she saw him brought back the painful memories of what could have been so perfect. He had to stay, only she didn’t know if she could be near him without falling to pieces.

  Very slowly, he reversed direction. The shuttered look on his face was one she knew well, and it occuned to her that he had completely lost whatever sense of humor he seemed to have had at the store—or he’d just been faking it all along.

  Either way, she was going to have to help him find it—and fast.

  Chapter Three

  Walking up to join Shea on the porch, Jared watched her with shaded eyes.

  “I wish you wouldn’t go,” she said softly, her green eyes tearing him apart. “Mack needs you here.”

  “I have to go.” He did, because he was not going to spend the upcoming days until the divorce torturing himself by being in the same town as Shea. Instead, he would be back in Topeka, working his tail off until he keeled over. If he timed it right, that event would take place at midnight of the morning of the divorce, and then he would sleep through until Thursday morning. After that...well, after that he would try to get through his life by pretending that Shea had never existed. Reaching out, he brushed a wisp of her hair behind her ear. “Why didn’t you tell your father there’s no hope for us?”

  “I did, Jared,” she swore. “I even repeated it today. He just doesn’t want to believe.”

  “Then I guess the question is, why are you out here trying to convince me to stay here and go through with his plan?”

  “I have a couple of very good reasons,” she told him. “One of them is that Dad doesn’t need the strain of losing the store. The other...” Her voice dropped off. “It doesn’t matter. What does is that your helping us is so important for the sake of the store, the kids, the town—everything. You have no idea.” The cold was getting to her, and she couldn’t hold back a small shiver.