Jingle-Bell Baby. Linda Goodnight

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      “She’s a darling. So pretty with all that fine golden hair and her little turned-up nose.”

      Jenna thought her daughter looked like an alien. A withered old lady alien. “Will her head always be pointed like this?”

      With a shake of dangly white earrings, the nurse laughed. She reached over, flipped the soft pink blanket back and gently massaged the baby’s head with a cupped hand. “You do that every day and before you know it, the cone head will be gone.”

      “Thank goodness.” Jenna gave a shaky laugh.

      She’d read books and searched the Internet on the topic of parenting and felt competent to be a mother, but now that the moment was upon her, the idea of caring for another human being frightened her. She had no home, no job, and no one to help. For a person who’d never been allowed to do anything for herself, she had a great deal to learn—fast.

      “Do you have a name for this little princess?”

      A gentle smile lifted Jenna’s mouth. “Sophie. Sophie Joy because she is the greatest joy I’ve ever known.”

      “Oh, hon, that’s beautiful.”

      Sophie stretched, her tiny face screwing up in an adorable expression. Jenna’s whole body seized up with an overwhelming love, a love so powerful tears filled her eyes. This was why she’d run away. This precious bit of humanity deserved to love and be loved for the right reasons. She deserved to grow up free from fear and the hovering, controlling influences that had stymied Jenna’s life since birth.

      Her family, particularly Elaine Von Gustin Carrington, would not control this baby’s life the way they’d controlled hers.

      People who envied her opulent lifestyle had no idea what it was like to live in an ivory tower surrounded by hired bodyguards and nannies and private tutors. They had no idea the sadness of a child never allowed to play outside or with other children who were “not like us.” They’d never sat with their faces pressed against the window watching others play in the snow while wondering what it would be like to build a snowman with someone other than a hired nanny and a burly bodyguard.

      The world considered her a spoiled rich princess, but they were wrong. Elaine Carrington’s elitism and her kidnapping paranoia had made her only daughter a lonely child, a prisoner of her family’s enormous wealth.

      Which was exactly the reason Jenna wanted Sophie Joy to grow up in a normal home, in a normal town, doing normal things. She’d play with other children and go to a real school and maybe even join a soccer team if she wanted to. When she was a teenager, she’d hang out at the mall and have sleepovers and attend school dances with friends of her own choosing.

      Sophie would have a childhood her mother had only dreamed of, a wish that sounded foolish to most people—even her late husband, though he’d pretended something far different in the beginning. Early in their secret relationship, Derek had nurtured Jenna’s longing to be a regular wife living in the suburbs. But the Carrington money had followed her in marriage, corrupting the boy who’d claimed to love her, and the few weeks of normalcy had disappeared as quickly as his love.

      In the end, her mother had been right about her fortune-hunting husband, and Jenna had gone home to the estate, broken. From Derek, she had learned a cruel fact of life—never trust a man, no matter how pretty his promises. Men were only interested in someone like Jenna for one thing. As Mother had so succinctly put it, “A trust fund makes any woman attractive.”

      She swallowed back the festering hurt. She might not be beautiful, but she refused to care anymore. All that mattered now was assuring Sophie the happy, uncomplicated life and freedom she had never known.

      To do that, she could never go back to the Carrington Estate or even to Pennsylvania.

      As she marveled at her baby’s velvet skin, at eyelashes so pale and perfect, the pink rosebud mouth, Jenna made a silent promise. No matter what she had to do from here, her daughter would lead a normal life.

      The nurse, whom she’d almost forgotten, patted her arm. In a pleasant drawl she said, “I’ll be back in a few, Jenna. We’ll get your vitals again and then you’ll be good to go.”

      Jenna’s head snapped up. “Go?”

      Go where? She’d hoped to stay in the hospital a few days, to get her thoughts together and form a plan. To read the newspaper and make sure the world hadn’t been alerted to her disappearance. To figure out where to go and what to do with a newborn.

      “Sure thing. Unless there are problems, an OB stays twenty-four hours or less these days. Would you like for me to phone your family?” The young woman reached for the chart at the end of the bed, flipped open a few pages. A frown appeared between her black eyebrows. “Seems we didn’t get that information when you arrived yesterday evening. Well, it was a hectic time. No problem. Someone from the business office will be in. They always extract their pound of flesh.”

      Jenna managed a weak smile at the woman’s joke. She hadn’t thought about the hospital bill or even about the records a hospital would keep on her and Sophie.

      She’d given them her name yesterday and no one had reacted. But she wasn’t surprised no one recognized her face. Due to her family’s paranoia, their only child had been publicly photographed very little. Jenna found a certain irony in that. The fear that had made her life a prison might be the very thing that assured her freedom. Unless her parents had released her disappearance to the press, there was a chance no one here in this small Texas town would ever guess that she was one of the Carringtons, reluctant heiress to a staggering financial empire.

      “Would you like for me to call Dax?”

      Jenna blinked. “Who?”

      “The rancher who brought you in. Dax Coleman. I thought you knew him.”

      A warm blush crept up the back of Jenna’s neck. She hadn’t remembered her rescuer’s name. “No.”

      “Oh, well, I just assumed…” The nurse flapped a hand. “Never mind. My mouth is running away, though it’s too bad about Dax. He seemed real concerned, and for a reclusive guy like that, well, we just figured the two of you knew each other.”

      Was the nurse asking if she and Dax knew each other in the Biblical sense? Did she think Dax Coleman was Sophie’s father?

      Her flush of embarrassment deepened.

      “Mr. Coleman,” she said in her most dignified voice, “was kind enough to render aid to a damsel in distress. But no, I had never before made his acquaintance.”

      The nurse, who was darkly pretty and not much older than herself, looked disappointed. “Well, then, that’s really too bad. Dax could use a spark in his life after what happened.”

      Jenna refused to ask the obvious question. “You know him?”

      “Sure. In a region this sparsely populated everyone knows everyone else. Dax is an old friend of mine. Or used to be.” The nurse fanned her face with her fingertips. “He’s still pretty deliciouslooking, too, if you know what I mean. Don’t tell my husband I said that.” She laughed.

      Delicious-looking? Jenna remembered a gravelly, rough voice and strong, calloused hands, though he’d been as gentle as could be with СКАЧАТЬ