A Charming Christmas Arrangement
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Heatherly Bell
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22
HarlequinChapter One
In a perfect world, it would not be this difficult to find the father of her baby.
Blame it on the fact that Stacy Hartsell barely knew the man. All on her. But she’d checked with his employer, and Adam Cruz no longer worked on a goat farm in Marion. She could count the things she knew about the man on one hand. Things like the fact that he had large, callused, but surprisingly gentle hands. That he’d been kind and loving for one incredible night. And his eyes. They were a deep and dark brown—the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. She’d never forget those eyes.
“I tried.” Stacy rested a hand on her expanding belly.
December had entered Montana like a force of nature, and the wind had turned sharp and bitterly cold overnight. Tomorrow, she’d start the first leg of her drive home to Chicago. Her mother, Regina, a nurse, would help with the baby once “she” was born. Stacy held on to that hope for a girl, even though at her sixteen-week ultrasound recently, the technician claimed it was too soon to tell.
Still, so much had gone wrong in her life for the last few years. She’d made too many mistakes. The very least fate could do was give her a sweet baby girl out of this hot mess.
“We’re in this together, sweetheart, you and me. It’s just us.”
Stacy sealed up another box of books and just as the tape made its loud scrape against the cardboard, she heard a knock on her front door. She wasn’t expecting anyone and had already said goodbye to her only friend in Montana.
Stacy opened the door, and sure enough, there stood Grace, holding two coffees from the shop where they’d originally met.
“Decaf for you.” Grace waltzed in, bringing some of the biting cold with her.
“Thanks.” Stacy accepted the cup. “But I thought we weren’t going to do this.”
“Get all sad and maudlin? We’re not.”
“I write thrillers. I’d rather kill you than cry with you.”
They’d met while writing in the same coffee shop in downtown Marion. It had taken three weeks to figure it out, but when Stacy noticed Grace staring off into space, she’d put it all together. Daydreamer. Fellow writer. After three years alone in Montana, the last six months researching and writing her second book, she’d found her people.
“I bring good tidings to you.”
Grace was that most dangerous of all writers: a romance writer. Full of hope, brimming with romance and a strange real-life belief in happily ever after. God bless her. Stacy would sure miss her.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.” Stacy plopped down on the couch. The cottage had come fully furnished, making it easy enough to leave everything behind. “And I did try to find him. He’s in the wind.”
“That may be true.” Grace joined her on the couch. “But you’ve forgotten one tiny detail about me.”
“What’s that? That you don’t believe in writer’s block?” Stacy snorted.
“Oh, you’re so darned cute. No. You should remember how I love my research.”
“I do remember.” Stacy took a sip of her decaf mocha latte. “Like that time you missed your deadline, too busy falling down the rabbit hole of Scottish castles.”
“But I’ve solved your problem.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse, held it up and waved it like a flag. “Ta-da!”
“What’s that? Today’s word count?”
Grace elbowed Stacy. “You won’t believe this!”
Hope spiked through Stacy. “Oh, gosh, did I win?”
The coffee shop held a drawing only their regulars knew about. A week’s worth of free coffee. It would be just her luck to win now.
“I found Adam.” Grace tucked the slip of paper in Stacy’s hand. “In Texas.”
Until that moment, Stacy thought she was done. She’d tried to find Adam. It wasn’t her fault he’d left town. She unfolded the paper and glanced down at the address of the post office in Charming, Texas. Last she’d heard, that was part of the Gulf Coast. The very bottom of Texas.
“He’s having all his mail forwarded there,” Grace said.
Stacy supposed she could drive to the post office in Charming and ask if they knew where she might find her baby’s daddy. Surely, stranger things had happened. Though she couldn’t think of any at the moment, aside from the plot twists she wrote into her thrillers.
“Stacy? Honey? Say something.”
Adam hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who would welcome news of impending fatherhood. Instead, he’d been...a little damaged. Lost. He’d drawn her in that special night with his hard-muscled, rough cowboy exterior, soothing voice and warm eyes.
The whole crazy night had been her idea.
And then, the next morning, she’d had the equivalent of her teeth knocked in by a roundhouse punch. She was still too embarrassed to mention it to Grace.
“I mean, um...” Stacy began.
“He deserves to know. You said you would tell him.”
“I said I’d try, and I did! Grace, this isn’t going to go the way you hope it will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Do you know how far Texas is out of my way?”
“You really shouldn’t drive, anyway. I’ve been worried about that. Let us go in together and buy you an airplane ticket.”
“And what about my car? I can’t leave it here.” There were twenty-four payments left on the economy sedan.
“Well, Charming is about thirty-one hours from Marion. If you take stops along the way, Texas is just a little farther south than you were intending to drive, anyway.”
“A little?” She snorted. “Do you have any idea how big Texas is?”
“Some idea,” Grace said. “But I hope you’re about to find out.”
Stacy couldn’t blame Grace, who didn’t have all the facts. Her friend didn’t have any idea that she wanted to send Stacy to tell a man, still hung up on another woman, that he’d knocked up his one-night stand. That now he’d be a father.
Yeah.
That should go well.
“Oh, my gosh, I love Christmas!” Ava Long seemed poised to levitate with excitement. “Don’t you?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Adam caught his best friend, Max Del Toro, giving his fiancée the cut-it-out sign. Sure, because Adam was apparently still so “precious” that everyone tiptoed around him. He hated that more than he hated Christmas. And he didn’t hate the holiday as much as he preferred to ignore it.
“I do love Christmas.” Adam slid Ava a smile, and sent Max a glare. “Why not.”
Max gave him a patient look. “Of course, you do.”
Just before opening, Max and Ava were trimming the tree they’d put in a corner of the Salty Dog Bar and Grill. Boxes of ornaments, wreaths and strings of lights were scattered on the floor. By his estimate, and judging by his own height, this tree was a good twelve feet tall.
“Where in Texas did you find this tree?” It was a Douglas fir, reminding Adam a bit of the ones he’d seen in the Montana mountains not long ago.
“Oh, I ordered it a while back.”
“It isn’t real?” He leaned in and, sure enough, no pine smell. Seemed criminal.
“Fresh trees are a fire hazard.” Max finished stringing lights over the top of the tree.
“This is safer.” Ava handed Max another strand. “I was disappointed, too, but Max has a point.”
This was probably better for Adam. At least the smell of pine wouldn’t pull more memories out of him. The therapist he’d seen after Mandy’s sudden death said that flashbacks came from all five senses.
But Adam couldn’t just stand there, so he joined in, helping string the lights around the fake tree. Next came ornaments, some ceramic, some plastic. When he picked up a ceramic one that said, “First Christmas,” a sharp memory hit him of the first and only time he’d put up a tree with his new wife. They’d only had one holiday together.
Still, this would be the third Christmas without Mandy. It irritated him he still kept track this way. One Christmas without Mandy, two Christmases without Mandy, three... It had been almost four years since she’d been gone. He should have moved on, and she would have wanted him to. Yet every time he even glanced at another woman, he felt as if he was cheating.
And he’d already “cheated” on her once, though not technically. The enticing memory, from four months ago, came wrapped in guilt. Still, the memory helped get him through some of his worst days. Try as he might, he’d never regret that one night, despite all the corresponding and inexplicable guilt. Stacy Hartsell had dropped into his life to temporarily remind Adam he was still alive. That he could still feel...something.
But it sure didn’t feel like Christmas this year. The weather didn’t help. In Montana, it would be snowing. He’d been told by the Charming locals that the weather was cooler than normal for this time of year. A mere seventy-four. The sun gleamed on them every day with no intention of dulling. No rain yet, though it kept being promised. But he’d been all over the world with the Navy SEALs, and for him the weather didn’t mean a thing. Only the calendar mattered, ticking away the days.
And the calendar said that Adam was another year older and still hadn’t moved on.
Once it was time to clock in and prep in the kitchen for the day, Adam left Max and Ava to the tree. He had work to do in his kitchen. When his best friends and former SEAL team members had purchased a bar and grill in Charming, Adam’s curiosity had been piqued. Not enough to come up and visit. He’d been fine on the goat farm, after all, keeping to himself. The hard physical work tired him out every day. Left little time to think and dwell.
Then, Max had called, said he’d fired his head cook and was in a jam. Would he help a brother out? That’s how Adam wound up as the head fry cook of a bar and grill in the bucolic town of Charming on the Gulf Coast. As he chopped sweet potatoes and vegetables, and started a soup base, he kept his mind on work. The staff trickled in, and soon talking and laughing rang through the air. Coffee percolated, the rich smell wafting to the kitchen and mixing with the smells of bacon, fried potatoes and eggs.
The mood was light, probably due to Christmas looming. Two of his coworkers, Sam and Brian, arrived, calling out greetings and getting to work immediately. They’d found a solid groove within the first few days. These dudes were hard workers who ran circles around Adam when it came to speed. But he cooked better than any of them. He’d developed a sixth sense when a dish needed a little extra seasoning or a little more butter—just the right amount, no more and no less. Mandy had taught him how to cook and before long he was better than her.
And there went the ache again. A tightness that made him stop flipping a pancake and rub his chest. The therapist said it was more than grief—it was guilt that made it tough for Adam to move on. His nature made him think he could save everyone, fix everything. Not true. He couldn’t save Mandy, though he’d tried.
“Isn’t it time for your break, boss?” Sam asked.
Right again. Sometimes Adam got so caught up he lost track of time. “Yeah. I’ll just make myself a lunch and grab an empty booth.”
“You ought to take a walk down the wharf and get some fresh air.”
Great. Even his young coworkers were worried about him. He was going to have to start making more of an effort at socializing.
“Maybe I will.”
“I’ll take care of your lunch. Go grab a seat. I’ll have Debbie bring it to you.”
Before they kicked him out, Adam pulled off his apron and headed out. The lunch crowd began to arrive. Couples laughing and chatting, some with shopping bags from the stores along the wharf. Max and Ava, done with the tree, now sat at a table making googly eyes at each other. Adam decided then that he’d go ahead and ask out Twyla, since she’d expressed interest in him on day one. His heart wasn’t in it, but something Ava had said one evening stuck with him: fake it ’til you make it. Someday it wouldn’t be this hard.
Before the two lovebirds saw Adam and asked him to sit with them, he scanned the room for a free table...and that’s when he saw her. Sitting alone, watching him, biting her lower lip, eyes wide.
Sweet memory, front and center. Was he seeing things? It sure looked like Stacy. Long, dark hair and blue eyes. A smile that never failed to tug one out of him. The only woman he’d biblically known since Mandy. But that couldn’t be, because she lived in Marion, and...
“Adam.” She waved him over.
Well, this settled it. Stacy was here. Now. He couldn’t deny the excitement that thrummed through him.
He headed to her booth. “Hey. What are you doing here?”
The smile slipped off her face as she stood. “I—I had to see you.”
She looked exactly as he’d remembered her in all his fantasies—still gorgeous, though she’d gained a little weight. Interestingly, though, only in her stomach...
Suddenly every sound in the room stopped and everything faded to black. He could no longer smell French fries and burgers cooking. Every sensory awareness tuned into his vision, which focused on Stacy’s abdomen like a laser beam. This...couldn’t be happening. He swallowed, a sudden thickness in his throat.
Her cheeks flushed pink as he scanned her body and fixated on her swollen belly. When she protectively lowered her hand, every question he’d had was answered. Except for one.
“Is it...mine?” The sound of his own voice was a small croak.
She nodded, biting her lower lip. The knowledge slammed into him.
Merry Christmas!
This was one heck of an early present.
