Christmas, Actually. Anna J. Stewart

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СКАЧАТЬ opened it immediately. Her smile reminded him of the old days—days and nights they’d shared just a few months ago—when her smile had been for him, and he’d never imagined being without her.

      “I thought for a minute you didn’t even recognize me,” she said.

      He moved toward her, and she had to step back. “Why are you here?” he asked. “I made myself clear.”

      “When you packed up everything you owned, quit your job and moved home because I was pregnant?”

      Her tone, as sharp as a scalpel, sliced into him, but he and Sophie and her child would all fare better if he withstood the wounds. He set the tray on a table between two armchairs in front of the fireplace.

      This might go more easily if she’d only shown up to extract a pound of flesh.

      “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “What did you expect?”

      She shut her eyes, and her face seemed to smooth as she breathed her stress away. He hardened his heart. He could not be around a child. Would not.

      She opened blue eyes, more beautiful than he remembered. Two months, and seeing her made him as eager as a starving man contemplating a table groaning with abundance.

      “I hoped to find the man I loved for nearly two years.” Her voice dragged his gaze from her eyes to her mouth. “The doctor who gives his all to save lives, the friend who never, ever walks away.”

      “I walked.” He turned toward the door. “If that’s all...”

      She followed, grabbing his arm. He would not shake her off. He wouldn’t risk hurting her.

      “Sit down,” she said, her confusion a painful stumbling block. He was determined to stick to his decision, but he didn’t want to hurt her more than he had to. “For a few minutes, listen to me.”

      Whatever she said wouldn’t change anything, but maybe, after he said no again, she’d go away.

      Cold sweat raced down his spine.

CHAPTER THREE

      SOPHIE POURED CIDER into both cups and took one, mostly to keep her hands occupied. “Let’s get this over with. I’m not even sure there’s a point in talking.”

      Except she’d been nobody’s daughter all her life. Not even a name to peg her hopes or her resentment on.

      “You’re finally hearing me,” Jack said.

      She put one hand to her mouth, resting her index finger along her upper lip as her stomach heaved. She had yet to conquer morning sickness. Some women had it from conception to delivery. Hers seemed to be connected to stress. “You know that my mother kept my father’s name off my birth certificate?”

      “I don’t want my name on the baby’s papers.”

      Was he trying to make her despise him? It might work, if a small voice in her head would stop insisting he must have lost his mind. He had to have a reason.

      “I came to tell you I won’t do that. It’s not best for my baby. I know nothing about my father or whatever family he might have had, except that clearly he was either ashamed or married or a coldhearted—”

      “Those are the stories you’ve told yourself,” Jack said. “You can’t prove any of it.”

      “Exactly. But when you’re the one who’s been rejected, it’s harder to pretend it doesn’t matter. If something happens to her later in life, if she needs medical records or—I don’t even know what—I’d like for her to have a name. I don’t know the man you’ve become, but I’m putting your name on the birth certificate.”

      “You could have asked me that on the phone.”

      She sipped the cider. It still burned her lips. “I said ‘tell you.’ I’m doing this, and you can live with it.”

      “Don’t encourage her to dream up comforting stories about me,” Jack said, standing. “You’ll only make sure she’ll be hurt.”

      Sophie tried to equate this guy with the loving, witty man she used to know.

      Bringing her a pot of purple violets on a Tuesday evening just because he thought the color would look nice with her eyes. That pot still held pride of place on her nightstand.

      “I don’t know how you can leave your own baby.” She went to the door and opened it for him.

      “I’ve already spoken to an attorney about child support. I’ll be setting up the payroll deduction as soon as you deliver.”

      “What a good idea. Once it’s set up, you won’t have to think about your daughter ever again.”

      Despite her anger, she only wanted to know one thing. Why?

      The question echoed inside her head. She heard it, but she must be holding it back. He didn’t even blink. He just walked away. Again.

      She slammed the door so hard the whole house must have shivered. Nice pregnant women didn’t run at implacable men and pound their fists on feelingless backs. Nor did they break Esther Underbrook’s house.

      Sophie bit her fist to keep from crying. As soon as her car was repaired, she’d get out of Christmas Town.

      * * *

      “ESTHER, I NEED to buy a new coat.” The next morning, Sophie had gone downstairs to breakfast, nibbled on a slice of toast and decided she’d walk off her frustration. No need to lurk around the B and B, whiling away the hours before her car was repaired. “Mine didn’t survive the accident.”

      Esther refilled Sophie’s herbal tea. “There’s Dockery’s. Go around the courthouse and follow the green, where they’re starting to put up the decorations. You won’t be able to miss it. Dockery’s doesn’t put up their Santa until after Thanksgiving, but he’s been waving from the top of their pediment for a week now.”

      Sophie’s hard heart softened. Maybe she could use a little Santa after last night’s dose of rejection. “Is the distance walkable?”

      Esther looked over Sophie’s thick sweater and purple knitted cloche, mittens and scarf. “Maybe on the way back. I’m going to call you a cab for the drive over. ” She motioned for Sophie to follow her to the reception desk, where she shuffled among the pages for a map of downtown, and then drew in directions for walking back from Dockery’s. “Now you be careful. The sidewalks might be icy.”

      The cab arrived in no time, and Sophie rode in the backseat, staring out the windows at the lighted snowflakes blinking on street lamps and the people attaching holly to a white picket fence around the long town green.

      At Dockery’s, a tall Victorian brick department store that oozed decorum, Sophie hopped out. She was drawn to the Norman Rockwell–type window displays. The first showed a family around a tree decorated in rich reds and greens and the other, a family around the fireplace, popping corn to string on their still bare tree.

      Sophie СКАЧАТЬ