LITMIR.BIZ

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sweater that was long enough and just loose enough to accommodate her not-too-large belly. And while she was shoeless, her socks were red-and-green argyle for the holiday so she stayed in her stocking feet to open the door.

      Dallas was there when she did, his fisted hand ready to knock.

      “Whoa,” he said, stopping short so she didn’t get the knock in the face.

      Nina couldn’t help grinning at that first glimpse of him. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing boots, jeans and that same suede coat over a plaid flannel shirt with the collar button open to expose a white T-shirt underneath it.

      Rugged, masculine, rock-solid and drop-dead gorgeous—so her mind hadn’t built him up to be more than he actually was, she thought. She’d been wondering if that might be the case.

      “Come in! Take off your coats,” she invited, stepping aside.

      Dallas crossed the threshold, trailed by three boys of varying heights, all of them younger versions of him, with the same blue eyes hazed with gray, the same heads of thick brown hair, the same bone structure.

      “This is Ryder.” He began the introductions with a hand on the head of the tallest as they all removed their coats. “And Jake.” Clearly the middle child. “And Robbie—”

      “I just got to be six and I go to kinnergarten,” Robbie announced.

      “Then I’ll bet your teacher is Willa Christensen,” Nina said.

      “No. It’s my aunt Willa but in school I need to call her Mrs. Traub. Like me, Robbie Traub. But she’s not my mom, she’s my aunt since she married my Uncle Collin.”

      “Ah, that’s right. I guess I sort of forgot that Willa married your brother,” Nina said to Dallas.

      “Lookit all this Christmas stuff! Lookit that tree!” Robbie said then, wasting no time moving into Nina’s apartment to survey her many Christmas decorations.

      “It is pretty festive in here,” Dallas agreed.

      “I love Christmas,” Nina said before focusing on the other two boys, who were staying near to their father. “So Robbie is six. You’re eight, Jake? And Ryder, you’re ten, right?”

      “Yeah,” Jake confirmed while Ryder said nothing at all.

      “Well, come on in. You can have a look around, too, if you want. There’s a dish of candy canes and taffy—if it’s all right with your dad you can help yourselves. And how would you all like some hot chocolate and Christmas cookies?”

      “I would!” Robbie answered first.

      “Me, too,” Jake seconded.

      Ryder merely shrugged his concession just before Dallas said, “What do you say?”

      “I would, please,” Robbie amended.

      “Me, too, please.” Jake added some attitude while a simple “Please” was muttered by Ryder as the older boys joined the younger in looking around and ultimately being drawn to the train that circled the tree skirt.

      “Does this work?” Jake asked.

      “It does. The switch is on the side of the station house,” Nina answered, closing the door behind them all.

      “Watch what you’re doing,” Dallas warned his sons.

      “It’s okay,” Nina told him. “They can’t hurt anything. Like I said, kid-friendly.”

      She led the way into the kitchen portion of the big open room that included a fair-sized kitchen and dining area separated from the large living room by an island counter.

      “This is a nice place. I didn’t even know it was up here,” Dallas said as Nina set about heating milk and adding cocoa and broken chocolate bars.

      “It’s where the first Crawfords in Rust Creek Falls lived when they started the store. A lot of us have taken advantage of it over the years. You can’t beat the commute to work,” she joked.

      “You’ll bring your baby home here?”

      “I will. There are two bedrooms—the nursery is almost ready, I just have a few finishing touches to put on it. And living up here after the baby is born—even before I’ve actually gone back to work—will let me still oversee some things. Then when I can get back to business as usual, I’ll have a nanny or a sitter here with the baby, but I’ll be able to carry a baby monitor with me to listen in and I’ll also be able to come up as many times a day as I want or need to.”

      “Handy,” he agreed.

      “I think it will be.”

      “And is this still going to be a house of sugar when you have your own kid?” he asked as she set iced cookies out on a plate and then brought the pan of hot chocolate from the stove.

      He was teasing her again and it struck her that there was already some familiarity in it. Familiarity she liked...

      “It’s Christmas,” she defended. “And the middle of the afternoon—I’m sure they had lunch and dinner is far enough away that this won’t spoil their appetites.”

      “And they’ll be so wired they won’t have to ride home in the truck, they’ll be able to run behind it,” he joked before advising, “Give them all half cups of hot chocolate.”

      “Killjoy,” Nina accused playfully. And slightly flirtatiously, though she didn’t know where that had come from....

      “Oh, so you’ve heard about how glum I’ve been the past year,” he joked back, smiling that crooked smile that lifted one side of his agile-looking mouth higher than the other.

      His eyes were intent on her, and the humor allowed them to share a moment that told Nina she wasn’t alone in whatever it was she’d been feeling about him as her rescuer. That, regardless of the old feud between their families, things between the two of them were different now even if they were no longer in dire straits.

      It pleased her. A lot.

      Dallas took two mugs of hot chocolate in each of his big, capable hands, leaving Nina to carry the fifth and the plate of cookies into the living room. They set everything on her oval oak coffee table and the boys gathered around it, sitting on the floor while Nina and Dallas sat on her overstuffed black-and-gray buffalo-checked sofa.

      After the boys tasted their hot chocolate and each took a cookie, Robbie looked to his father and said, “When are we gonna put up our tree?”

      “You don’t have a tree yet?” Nina asked, surprised.

      “Dad’s been too busy,” Jake answered, disappointment and complaint ringing in his tone as the three boys carried their cookies and hot chocolate with them and went back to playing with the train.

      “Busy and not much in the mood,” Dallas confessed, quietly enough for the boys not to be able to hear.

      “Scrooge,” she teased him the same way.

      “I’m not usually,” he admitted, his voice still low and echoing with sorrow. “But this year...I don’t know. It’s felt all year like this family has been left sort of in shreds and I’m not quite sure how to sew it back together again. Or if I’m even up to it.”

      “Kids need their holidays kept, no matter what,” Nina insisted.

      But she couldn’t be too hard on him, considering that this was the anniversary of the end of his marriage and it couldn’t be an easy time for him.

      So rather than criticizing any more, she decided to fall back on the reason she’d contacted him in the first place.

      “I called because I wanted to thank you again for helping me on Wednesday,” she said, setting her own cup of hot chocolate on the coffee table and breaking off a section of a bell-shaped cookie. “I also wanted to apologize for the way my family treated you at the hospital.”

      “I’m

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