A Baby for Christmas Read online

  Amy looked down at her plate and saw that she’d finished the pie without even realizing it.

  It had gone down far too easily, she mused. “Why don’t we do that shopping you wanted to do and then we’ll see?” she suggested.

  “Sounds good,” Connor answered. Looking around the diner for Miss Joan, he raised his hand to get her attention.

  “Something else?” the woman asked as she walked over to them.

  “Just the check for now,” Connor told her.

  Taking out the pad she always kept in the pocket of her uniform, Miss Joan quickly wrote down a total, tore off the page and pressed it into his hand.

  Glancing at it, he thought that it seemed to be lower than he’d expected.

  “You sure about this?” he asked her.

  “Don’t ever question me in my own place, boy,” Miss Joan warned him. “Of course I’m sure. Now take that over to Nina and be on your way,” she instructed, nodding at the cashier.

  He wasn’t about to argue with her. But Connor shook his head as he crossed to the cashier.

  “Don’t know how that woman makes any money,” he said to Amy.

  “I don’t think she’s in it for the money,” Amy said.

  He gave the cashier more than what was on the receipt. When she began to give him change, he shook his head.

  “Keep it,” he told the girl. Turning to Amy, he replied to her observation. “You’re probably right. The diner is a way of life for her.”

  “That really was very good,” Amy said, commenting on the pie as they walked out of the diner.

  “Yeah, it was.” The wind had picked up, almost swirling around them. It felt colder than it had when they’d walked over from the law office. “Why don’t you go back inside and wait for me while I go get the truck?” he suggested.

  But Amy shook her head, turning down his offer. “I’m not that frail, Connor,” she assured him. “And I’m not about to turn into an icicle if I walk to the general store with you.”

  Connor turned up his collar. “Just remember I offered,” he told her as he held out his elbow to her again.

  Smiling warmly, Amy slipped her arm through it. “Don’t worry—I’m not going to sue you if I get pneumonia.” And then she laughed when she saw the concerned look come over his face. “I’m just kidding, Connor. Really. I’m not cold.”

  He still had his doubts about the wisdom of this. He didn’t think she was dressed warm enough for this kind of weather. He’d been so glad to get her out of the house, he hadn’t really paid attention to what she’d put on.

  “It is cold,” he pointed out.

  Amy shrugged in response. “Is it? I don’t feel a thing.” She wrapped her other arm around the one she’d already linked with, hugging him. “As a matter of fact, I feel all warm and toasty inside,” she said, looking up at him as they walked in approximately the direction of the general store.

  “Well now, isn’t that just too sweet for words?”

  Amy froze.

  She would have recognized that sarcastic, belittling voice anywhere. The next moment, as she turned around to face the man who’d made her life so miserable, she felt Connor’s arm slip protectively around her shoulders.

  Clay Patton’s dark eyes were regarding her with contempt. She met his stare head-on, no longer afraid, no longer ready to turn and run. He was still as tall and darkly handsome with thick, almost black hair as he had been when she’d first fallen in love with him, but she now saw Clay as a little, little man. She wondered how she could have been so blind and foolish to not see him for what he really was.

  “Didn’t take you long to find yourself a sucker, did it, Amy?” Clay asked, sneering. “What did you do, play the pathetic, wounded little sparrow so that he’d feel sorry for you?”

  For the first time, Amy saw anger crease Connor’s face.

  “The only thing you need to do,” Connor informed the man before him, “is take yourself over to Cash Taylor’s law office and give him those divorce papers you were sent—signed.”

  “Oh no,” Clay said nastily, “I’m not making it that easy for you, McCullough. You want my wife, you’re going to have to pay for her. Dearly,” he underscored. “You understand my meaning?”

  “You always were a piece of worthless filth, Patton,” Connor told him. “You don’t deserve someone like Amy. You never did. And she’s not your property. She never was. Nobody’s going to be paying you for anything.”

  All the anger he’d felt toward the man when he’d pieced together things that Amy had suffered at Clay’s hands was now bubbling up to the surface, threatening to spill over. He struggled to hold himself in check.

  The sneer on Clay’s lips deepened, transforming his sculpted features into a mask of ugliness. “You don’t and you’ll be sorry,” Clay threatened.

  “No,” Connor said, sounding far more calm than he actually felt. “You even try anything and you’ll be the one who’s sorry. Lift one finger against Amy and I’ll get your hide thrown into jail so fast, it’ll make your head spin so hard, you’ll be throwing up.

  “Now I know you’re not exactly the brightest penny in the drawer, but get this through your thick skull. Nobody’s on your side, Clay. Everyone’s on Amy’s. So for once in your life, do the decent thing. Sign those papers and then go back down the hole you slithered out of and get out of her life.”

  Fury blazed in Clay’s eyes as he glared at Amy. “Is that what you want?” Clay demanded, almost shrieking. “You’re picking Dudley Do-Right over here over me?”

  She saw that Connor was about to place himself between Clay and her again, but she put her hand on his arm, silently stopping him. She needed to handle this herself if she was ever going to hold her head up high.

  “Well?” Clay demanded, apparently taking the fact that she had stopped Connor from doing anything to mean that he had won.

  “You’re damn straight I am,” she said fiercely. “I’d pick Connor seven ways from Sunday over you because he’s ten times the man you ever were. He doesn’t have to pump up his ego by finding ways to belittle me.”

  Enraged, Clay made a grab for her. Reacting quickly, Connor punched him, sending him reeling backward and falling to the ground. Clay scrambled to his feet, cursing at both Connor and Amy. Snarling, he was about to tackle Connor when they heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

  “Hold it right there and take a step back, Patton, if you know what’s good for you,” Sheriff Rick Santiago ordered the man in a voice that was deceptively calm.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You saw it, Sheriff,” Clay shouted, so livid that his face was turning red. “You saw what McCullough did! He attacked me! That maniac hit me first!”

  Beside himself with fury, Patton appeared to be all but foaming at the mouth. It was at that moment that it seemed to dawn on him there was a crowd gathering around him and McCullough—and he hated looking like a fool.

  Drawn by the sound of the angry, raised voices, a dozen customers and employees had filed out of the general store while at least a dozen more had glimpsed the goings-on through the diner windows and had come out to see what was happening.

  “We all saw it, Patton,” Rick answered, nodding at the people around them. “And the way I saw it, Connor was just trying to protect Amy.”

  “Protect Amy?” Patton jeered. “She’s my wife. I’ve got rights, damn it!” he shouted, the veins popping out along his neck. “I’ve got a right to take back what’s mine. Amy’s my wife and I’ve got a right to—”

  “No, she was your wife,” Connor emphasized, unable to just stand by and listen to the man’s rantings a second longer.

  Anyone looking at Connor’s face could see that the rancher was doing a very slow, very steady burn and it was just a matter of time before he would lose h
is cool and erupt.

  “You were officially notified, Clay,” Amy said, stepping in to face up to her former husband. There was disdain in her eyes as she told the man, “I’m divorcing you.”

  “No, you’re not!” Clay bellowed. “I’m not signing the papers!”

  “For your information, you don’t have to,” Amy countered, her voice as tranquil and quiet as his was irate and loud. “I’ve got more than enough grounds and I will get that divorce whether you sign those papers or not.”

  “I don’t know what kind of a game you and your boyfriend here are playing, but if this is a shakedown, you’re not getting a penny out of me!” Clay’s voice had risen so high, he was all but screeching.

  Her eyes were an icy blue as she looked at the man who had made her life so miserable over the last five years. “I don’t want anything from you except to never have to lay eyes on you again.”

  Rick glanced briefly in Connor’s direction before he turned his attention to Patton. It was obvious that he didn’t take kindly to anyone disrupting the peace in his town. Rick rested his hand on the hilt of the weapon he had just holstered, his meaning quite clear.

  “I’d listen to Ms. Donavan,” Rick said, deliberately using Amy’s maiden name, “if I were you. In my opinion, I’d say that you were getting off pretty easy.”

  Patton glared at Amy. “You’re going to be sorry, you bitch,” he warned her. Connor took a step forward, ready to pummel Patton for insulting her, but Amy had her hand on his shoulder, stopping him. Patton shrank back a little, but he couldn’t resist one last threat. “And when you are, don’t come crawling back to me.”

  “Do me a favor, Clay,” Amy said, raising her voice so he could hear her over the growing din as Patton opened the door on the driver’s side of his blazing red sports car.

  “What?” he spit.

  “Hold your breath,” Amy answered sweetly.

  Shouting several more curses at her from the safety of his car, Patton slammed the door and locked it before Connor could reach him to make him eat his words.

  She could tell that Connor looked ready to yank her former husband out of the car, undoubtedly to make him apologize.

  Hand on the car’s door, Connor appeared ready to rip it off its hinges. Behind the door’s rolled-up window, Clay seemed properly terrified.

  “Don’t,” Amy pleaded, holding on to Connor’s arm even though she knew there was no way she could stop him if he did decide to pull Clay out of the car. “He’s not worth it and you don’t want to give him the satisfaction of stooping to his level.”

  And then, both because she wanted to and because she knew that Clay was still watching, Amy threw her arms around Connor’s neck, raised herself up on her toes and kissed him. Kissed him as if he was a soldier coming home from the war and she hadn’t seen him in over five long years.

  It took very little for Amy to get lost in that kiss. And even less to forget that Patton was watching them—and fuming.

  She was vaguely aware that the crowd that had gathered to see what all the commotion was about was now actively cheering them on. She also heard the very distinct sound of Clay’s sports car, revving up and then peeling out of Forever.

  Drawing back, Connor kept his hands wrapped around her waist. “Was that to show up Patton?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered honestly, smiling up at the man she credited for having saved her, emotionally and literally. “That was for me. And to say thank you.”

  “Okay, everybody,” Rick announced, turning toward the crowd and addressing them. “Show’s over. Go back to whatever you were all doing.”

  “Not much of anything, Sheriff,” Harlan, one of Miss Joan’s steadiest customers, said, referring to what had occupied at least the people in the diner. “And this—” he indicated Amy and Connor with his gnarled finger “—was a whole lot more interesting than sittin’ on a stool, having lunch.”

  Another one of Miss Joan’s patrons, Ben Crawford, gave Amy a fatherly pat on the shoulder.

  “Don’t you worry. That no-account’s probably gone for good. He’s too much of a coward not to be. No offense,” he said as an aside to Amy.

  “None taken,” she assured the man.

  “But just in case,” Ben went on, looking over his shoulder at his friends, “we’ll all keep a lookout for him, won’t we, boys?” A chorus of murmurs agreed. Dutifully, Ben looked over toward Rick. “And not to worry, Sheriff. We’ll come straight to you if we see him.”

  “You’d better,” Rick told the man, his gaze sweeping over all the people who were in the crowd. “All of you,” he added for good measure. “Now move along. No sense in blocking the street—unless it’s to look up at that big Christmas tree.”

  The crowd obediently broke up. Taking Amy’s hand, Connor led her away from the point of confrontation, as well.

  “Not exactly the way I intended today to go,” Connor said, frowning. “Are you all right, Amy?”

  Walking beside Connor, she didn’t hesitate with her answer. “I got to finally tell that walking narcissist what I thought of him and then I got to kiss my guy.” Her eyes were shining. “I’m terrific.”

  “Yes,” he agreed warmly with a grin, “you are.”

  And then Amy replayed the words she’d used in her head, afraid that maybe she had scared him off by assuming too much and telling him so.

  “Um, Connor, when I called you ‘my guy,’ I didn’t mean...”

  “What, that you thought of me as your guy?” he asked. “Am I being demoted? Because if I am, that kind of puts a kink in my plans.”

  “Demoted?” she repeated. Stunned, she looked at him. “You mean that you want to be my guy?”

  She knew the term sounded a little juvenile, but right now, she felt as if she was eighteen all over again. Eighteen and this time finally headed in the right direction.

  “Wait,” she cried as the rest of what he’d just said replayed itself in her head. “What kink?” she asked. “What plans?”

  “Oh, so now you’re interested?” Connor asked, feigning surprise.

  She stopped walking. She didn’t want to play it safe anymore, didn’t want to keep herself and her feelings under wraps anymore. No risk, no gain, she told herself, and she really, really wanted to be able to gain the happiness that was shimmering right before her eyes. What she and Connor had had these last few days was something she had aspired to all her life, and now that she’d had a taste of it, she knew she would never want to go back to the way her life had been.

  “I have always been interested,” she admitted seriously. “I was just too dumb to realize it.”

  “Hey, don’t run yourself down,” he said. “If I hadn’t kept coming up with excuses why I couldn’t step up and tell you how I felt about you, things might have gone a whole different way right from the start. But I didn’t and that’s on me.

  “We can’t change any of the past, Amy. We can only learn from our mistakes and move on. And what I want to do,” he told her, his voice growing lower, “is move on with you.”

  “With me, not from me, right?” she asked, wanting to be absolutely sure.

  “With you,” he repeated with feeling. “Come back to the truck with me.”

  She thought he was saying that so he could shelter her from the wind that was still picking up. “I said I wasn’t cold.”

  “This has nothing to do with the weather or you being cold,” Connor said. “Just come back to the truck.”

  He sounded so serious, she wasn’t about to argue with him. “Okay.”

  Amy assumed the scene with Clay had put a damper on the rest of the day for him and Connor just wanted to go back to the ranch. She certainly couldn’t blame him, so she didn’t try to talk him out of it, or mention the fact that he hadn’t done the shopping he’d said he wanted to do.
r />   Reaching the truck they’d left parked near the law firm, she got in, put her seat belt on and waited for Connor to start the engine.

  But he didn’t. And he didn’t put his seat belt on. He just sat there, being very quiet.

  Too quiet, Amy thought.

  “Um, Connor, the truck won’t go on its own. You have to put the key in,” she prodded, hoping a little humor would make him come around. She couldn’t help wondering what was going on in his mind.

  Had that scene with Clay ruined more than just their outing? Was the confrontation and what was said making Connor rethink everything? Especially their budding relationship?

  When he still didn’t say anything, Amy grew nervous. She didn’t want to lose him.

  “Connor? Talk to me.”

  With a slight nod, Connor began talking very quietly. “I was going to wait until all the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed.”

  He might be talking, but she was not understanding what he was talking about.

  “Wait for what?” she asked, growing steadily more nervous. “What i’s, what t’s?”

  Connor realized that he was getting ahead of himself—and losing her in the process. He tried again. “Your divorce. I was going to wait until that was resolved and you had it behind you.”

  It still wasn’t making any sense to her. “You still haven’t told me. Wait for what?”

  Connor felt as if he was tripping over his own tongue, but in his defense, he’d never done this before. “I was going to wait until all this was cleared up and you didn’t feel like it was hanging over your head.”

  He still wasn’t answering her question.

  “Wait for what? Why were you waiting?” she cried, enunciating every word. “And why are you telling me this in your truck? Why aren’t we going to the general store to go Christmas shopping the way you said you wanted to?”

  She would have felt safer if they were outside. Connor wouldn’t risk making her cry if there were people around, she thought. He was too much of a gentleman for that.