Some kind of wonderful (3 page)

Laughter bubbled from the back seat and the sound of

it was ... good. He didn't want to think about why—so he added it to the already long list of things he wasn't going to think about.

"Quinn, stop scaring the sheriff." "Who said anything about being scared?" "I'm sure you are, but it's not manly to admit it." "Even mountain men walked a wide path around a bear," he said tightly and ordered himself to ignore the dog still staring at him.

Scowling, he flicked her a glance, while listening to the dog, whose grumbling sounded sort of like thunder from a cloud hovering three feet over your head. In the yellow glow of the fog lamps lining the street, the blond streaks in Carol's hair shone with a golden light.

She was tall and he knew she couldn't have been too comfortable in the back seat of a Mustang. But she didn't seem to mind while sitting beside the baby. Jack could understand that. Babies tended to bring out the deepest emotions in people—good or, as he'd seen too often on the force, bad. She kept glancing at the baby, as if half-expecting it to disappear from the car seat. The whole time they'd wandered the aisles in the twenty-four-hour grocery store, she'd carried the little thing carefully—like you would a ticking time bomb. He couldn't decide if she was inexperienced with kids, worried about becoming too attached, or expecting the missing mother to come tearing into the store to reclaim her child.

That last one probably wasn't an issue. In his experience, women who abandoned their babies didn't have a change of heart and instantly become Mother Teresa. They went on about their lives, trusting that strangers would give their child what they couldn't—or wouldn't. Jack couldn't quite figure Carol Baker out. Not many people would have reacted so emotionally to the situation.

Most would have taken the baby to the hospital, or called the cops and then walked away—gone back to their own lives. But Carol had not only stayed with the child, but when push came to shove, she'd agreed to take the baby in.

Why?

Even as that one single word whispered through his mind, he told himself to back off. To put aside the old instinct to pry into motivations. He wasn't a cop any-more. He'd left that world behind—along with his old life. Now was what mattered. And now he had a temporary job in the town where he'd grown up, his old room at his mother's house, a woman with Santa on her shirt in his back seat, and an abandoned baby to investigate. Not to mention the bear.

"So where do you live?" He practically growled the question and even he winced at his tone. She didn't seem to notice.

"Off North Pole, left on Jingle Bell Way."

Jack sighed.

"I heard that," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Just this town," he admitted as the light turned green and he stepped on the gas. "Christmas—everywhere you look Christmas in spring, summer, and fall." He shook his head and steered the car into a left-turn bay. "In LA, I'd always hear people complaining about how retailers started hawking Christmas earlier and earlier every year." He glanced at the blinking, electric Frosty the Snowman out in front of Elves' Hardware and choked out a laugh. "But here in la-la land, we get it day in and day out."

"I like Christmas," she said.

"Christmas is hard enough once a year. All year is a little much for anybody." Especially these days, he

thought, and then instantly turned his mind away from memories he'd spent the last two years burying.

He turned left on Jingle Bell Way. "Where's your place?"

"The Victorian here on the corner."

"Naturally." He pulled up out front and parked the car at the curb. Studying her house, Jack felt another sigh building, but he squashed it. What would be the point?

The name of her shop, Christmas Carol's, was just as cutesy as any other business in town. In the dark, it was hard to tell what color the place was, but there were neatly planted gardens lining the sidewalk leading to the front steps and baskets filled with flowers hung from the eaves and dotted the length of the wraparound porch. Strings of multicolored lights outlined the edge of the roof and then twined around the porch columns. A wide, and he assumed, artificial, evergreen wreath studded with bows and ornaments decorated the front door, and electric candles had been left burning in the windows.

Jesus. She was every bit as bad as every other nut in town.

"Christmas Carol's" she prompted from the back seat. "Get it?"

"Yeah," he said, turning off the engine and unbuckling his seatbelt. "I picked right up on that subtlety."

"Are you always this crabby? Or am I just special?"

He turned around to look at her and managed to avoid bumping into the dog's nose as he did. "It's the middle of the night. I've been grocery-shopping. I'm driving around with a trained bear sitting in my front seat—"

"And I appreciate it."

He kept going. "I spent an hour traipsing around a

Nativity scene looking for clues to the missing mother of an abandoned baby—"

Carol frowned at him, and quickly leaned over to cover the baby's ears with her hands. "Don't say that in front of her."

"What?"

"A-B-A-N-D-O—"

"For God's sake, it can't understand what we're saying."

Carol straightened up and glared at him. Her dog must have picked up on her sudden twist of anger because the damn thing growled again and damned if it didn't sound like another crash of rolling thunder. Jack inched backward. No point in taking chances.

"She's not an it. And you have no idea what she can and can't understand. People—even babies—know when they're being talked about. They know when they're loved. They know when they've been ... A-B-A-N—oh, forget it." Quickly, carefully, she undid the straps holding the newborn into the car seat, then scooped it up into her arms, tucking the blanket around it. "Doctors tell pregnant women to talk to their bellies, right?"

A flash of memory zipped through Jack's brain and was gone again in the next heartbeat. He didn't even pause to be grateful. "Yeah. That's for the tone of voice to be heard."

"Then why not just hum? Why talk to them? Babies have ears. They can hear."

"Sure, but it's like me trying to understand Italian. It's just noise."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Neither do you." Jesus, had he just said that? Was he starting to sound like a third-grader? Were they about to get into a rousing chorus of "yes sir, no sir"? Or, "shut

up, no you shut up"? Good God, what coming back to Christmas had brought him to. 'Tine. Talk to it. Sing to it. Whatever."

Quinn whined, growled, and took a step forward. Unfortunately, that put one big paw directly on Jack's nuts. Pain exploded through his body and splintered into a fireworks show in his brain. He was pretty sure his eyes were wheeling behind closed lids. "Jesus, get off me." Groaning, he shoved at the damn dog and didn't budge it an inch. Instead, the damn thing stepped down even harder, pushing its face into Jack's and blowing hot dog breath all over him.

"Quinn, sit down."

"Not now" Jack managed to choke out through clenched teeth. Breath wheezed in and out of him as he tried to scoot out from under the dog. Christ, if the dog sat on him, he was a dead man.

"Sorry! Quinn, no"

Now the dog was getting agitated and that's all he'd need, Jack thought. The dog gets riled and he'd have two of its paws on his nuts and then he'd be looking for a job with the Vienna Boys' Choir. With his left hand, he reached to one side, sprung the door latch, and somehow found a way to roll out from under the dog and onto the street.

Of course, he landed on a rock that jammed his right knee. So he'd have a limp. At least his nuts would recover. And at the moment, that's all he was concerned with. Kneeling on all fours on the damp street, he took several deep breaths before trusting himself to move. When he did, he swiveled his head and came eyeball to eyeball with the beast.

"You lousy, no-good son of a—"

"Not in front of the baby," Carol warned from the

back seat. "And besides, it wasn't Quinn's fault. You upset me and that upset him."

The dog was upset?

"Right." Jack choked out another groan and shook his head as his breathing evened out and the pain subsided into a dull throb he'd probably carry for the rest of his life. "You two were upset. I need a hospital, but that's not important."

"For heaven's sake, you're not bleeding "

He glanced up and caught her eye through the side window. "There are some things more important to a man than a slashed artery."

"Pizza and beer?"

"That, too."

She smiled. "Are you okay?"

"I'm a soprano, but I'll live."

"Not that you're exaggerating or anything."

That smile of hers was damn near lethal. He watched her face in the glow of the streetlights and almost wished he was a different man. But if he was a different man, he wouldn't be back in Christmas and he never would have met her, so no sense in that.

Climbing to his feet, he glared at the big dog as it jumped out with a lunge of movement and stood beside him. The damn thing nearly hit Jack's hip. He'd never seen a dog so big. Well, except for a Great Dane ... but somehow, this dog even looked bigger than a Dane. Maybe it was the coarse, wiry gray hair that stood up on end all over his body. Like a punk rocker dog. Or maybe it was the deep rumblings of sound that kept roaring out around them. And maybe, he thought, pulling his foot out from under one huge paw, maybe it was just its weight.

Soon, he promised himself silently, Sheriff Thompson

would be back at the helm of Christmas where he belonged, Jack took a breath and got a grip. Hell, he'd grown up in Christmas. He could handle the place for a few more weeks. Then he'd be gone again, and from now on, he'd limit himself to weekend visits with his family. Preferably somewhere far, far away from Christmas.

He opened the back door for Carol, and she held the baby out for him to take her. He took one step forward, the dog growled, low and throaty and with a definite threat, and he stepped back, hands in the air. Glancing at the dog first, he then looked at Carol and said, "I don't think so. Your personal guardian doesn't approve."

"But—"

"You take her," he said. "I'll get the stuff from the trunk."

Carol just stared at him. She didn't think it was just because of Quinn that he'd backed off from handling the baby. For one brief second, she'd thought she saw a sheen of panic in his eyes. But that was ridiculous. He was the oldest in a family of five kids, and two of his sisters had children, so he'd had to have been around babies more than she had.

But, now that she thought about it, she realized, he'd kept his distance from the infant from the moment he'd stepped into Phoebe's office.

Interesting.

But not fascinating, so she scooted inelegantly out of the car, holding the baby carefully, terrified of dropping her, and then walked around the back end of the black Mustang and headed for the house. Quinn padded right behind her, his nails clicking in a comfortable pattern against the asphalt.

It was her habit to let her gaze sweep across the home she'd made in the last two years, and as always, the sight

of the old Victorian filled her with a sense of... belonging. She'd carved out a space of her own in this little town. She'd planted her petunias and stock and columbine. She decorated her porch, stocked her store, and kept her Christmas lights blazing all year round.

Comfort and coziness surrounded her every time she approached the house, and tonight, those feelings were even more profound. She held a baby, close in her arms. The slight weight and subtle warmth of its body snuggled close to her felt way too good. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to volunteer to be the emergency foster parent.

But could she really have done anything differently? Could she, in a pitiful attempt to protect her own heart, have allowed this tiny girl to go into an anonymous nursery filled with more needy children? No. Just as she couldn't live with the fact that if she had turned her back, it would have been like the baby being abandoned twice in one night.

A fine birthday gift.

No, she'd had no choice, really. None at all. Oh, she wasn't an idiot. She knew this wouldn't last. She was a temporary mom. She, better than anyone, knew how the foster system worked. So she'd do her best not to get too attached to the baby she held so close to her heart. She'd try not to give in to the urge to resurrect long-dead fantasies she'd had about a family of her own.

She took the steps quickly but Quinn still beat her to the door. He sat down and waited while she fumbled for her key, then once the door was open, he slipped first into the house as if to assure himself that all was safe.

"We're home, little girl," she whispered and hit the light switch by the door as she stepped into the foyer. The polished wood floor gleamed. The glass covering theiramed

Currier & Ives prints winked with reflected light and the pale, rose-colored walls looked soft and homey. The staircase on the right led to the upstairs apartments and the door on the left opened into her shop.

She ignored the store and started up the stairs as she heard Jack coming up the walk. "It's upstairs," she said and thought she heard him mutter, "Naturally."

Another hallway greeted her at the head of the stairs and she waited there for him. A long carpet runner decorated with fat, faded, yellow roses lined the narrow hall dividing the upstairs into two one-bedroom apartments. An iron wall sconce in the shape of a Christmas tree threw indistinct, watery light into the shadows.

Carol stared down at the baby in her arms and her breath caught as the infant opened her eyes and looked back at her. "Hello," Carol crooned softly. "My name's Carol and I'm going to take care of you for a while if that's okay with you."

"She's not in a position to argue, if that's what you mean," Jack said and his voice came from so close by that Carol jumped.

She shifted her gaze from the baby to the very male man standing now at the head of the stairs. Somehow, in her hallway, in the shadows, he looked even taller and ... crabbier than he had at the clinic.