Baby It's Christmas: A Secret Baby Holiday Romance Read online

  Baby, It’s Christmas

  Chloe Fischer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The Mafia Series

  The Hard Series

  Hard Instincts

  Hard Time

  Hard Wired

  Hard Limit

  Also by Chloe Fischer

  Join Me

  JACEY WARD

  Chapter 1

  “Ivy, sweetheart, I’ve told you so many times!” Neve James said, exasperated. “Please don’t play in the front yard without telling me!”

  As Neve stood on the front porch, watching her daughter, Ivy, jumping around in the snow in their front yard, she began to feel the memory of Ivy’s father creep across her shoulders and settle in her mind.

  “Mommy! Come build a snowman with me!” Ivy called out, breaking into Neve’s thoughts.

  She jolted a bit at her daughter’s voice. It wasn’t surprising, after all these years, that Neve would still become overwhelmed by emotions while standing in this spot. After all, it was in this very front yard that Neve had fallen in love with Ivy’s father.

  He had been a good-looking, darkly charming teenager when they were together for that short time in high school. Now, he seemed to be more of an apparition that had come and gone in her life – except for when she accidentally stumbled across his face on T.V.

  That was always painful. How could it not be?

  In love, engaged…and then alone, and pregnant. That first year had been agony, the stares from the other townspeople, the judgement in their eyes, having to tell her parents. God, that had been a terrible moment.

  But at least there was a silver lining to the suffering – Ivy was the spitting image of her father.

  His name was Connor Bush, and he had been an angst-filled teen, fiery and hard towards the world, but always soft and kind when with Neve. His sweet and tender love for her had been part of the reason she had never come to terms with his leaving. How could he have seemed to love her so much, yet leave so abruptly without a word? As the memory of Connor began to creep towards the painful realization that he had chosen to walk out of her life, Neve reached out her gloved hand to tuck away a wisp of hair that had escaped from Ivy’s ponytail.

  “Ivy, you’re so beautiful,” Neve mused, her thoughts drifting softly.

  “Beautiful like Daddy?” Ivy asked innocently.

  A stab of pain pierced her heart, but she was careful to shield the look from her daughter. Neve had never hidden the identity of Connor from Ivy. She told Ivy weekly how she looked just like her father.

  She had explained to her that he had left to bring color to the world and help people see their dreams come to life. The idea was grand to a child, and placated Ivy’s imagination. In reality, Connor had become a successful tattoo artist, famous and distant. It was ironic to Neve that the man that had left her empty and alone was famous for his ability to deliver permanency.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Neve finally responded to her daughter. “Just like your daddy.”

  Ivy had Connor’s shiny dark hair, thick and straight, and long, much like her father used to wear it back in high school. Her eyes were large like Neve’s, but gray like Connor’s, and her skin was olive toned like Connor’s as well. Ivy was still so young, but already appeared to have her mother’s tall and graceful frame.

  Our daughter really is a perfect mixture of us both, Con, she smiled bitterly to herself. Although he’d never know that.

  Neve observed Ivy as she carefully rolled a snowball, to create the base for their snowman. As Neve watched, she inhaled a deep breath of the cool winter air. She and Ivy were living in the same home that Neve had grown up in, given to her by her parents when they decided to retire as snowbirds to Arizona. Mannington, Illinois was all Neve had ever known, and in a way, she held onto it, hoping, but never letting herself admit it, that one day Connor would return to her.

  She had kept her life nearly the same since he had suddenly left without a word to her over seven years ago.

  Watching her belly swell with Ivy just as Connor’s memory faded, even as a young girl, she had known she was going to be confined to this small town by the growing responsibility for a child.

  Pursuing Connor was impossible—at the time she’d had no idea where he had gone or why, and as time passed without any word from him, his absence became normal.

  Before she even realized it, life without him and not knowing where he had gone was just a reality of her situation to be accepted and hopefully forgotten.

  But Neve was never able to completely forget, and when he did finally reappear, it was four years later, and it was to her TV screen. He was the host and producer of a famous flash tattoo show called “Ink in a Blink”. Knowing where he was though, didn’t really help. He obviously had the ability to contact her – but he hadn’t. The pain of being forgotten so easily still burned in her chest at times.

  When they had been teenagers in love, Connor and Neve had carved their names into a tree in her front yard. Without even looking, she could feel the imprint of the carving searing into her heart, despite the fact that it was currently covered in snow.

  Closing her eyes, Neve could see the blue skies that she and Connor had hid from under the thick branches of the oak tree. She could feel his strong hands running over her arms and cradling her face. She could feel the freedom and see the love in his dark gray eyes as they looked into her own emerald green orbs. She could feel her body, relaxed and content as she sat in his lap when they lounged on lazy afternoons.

  Her breath began to increase as she conjured his memory. She felt his strong lips press down onto her waiting mouth, a kiss that she was sure had enough feeling to sizzle across her nerve endings. The memory of lazy days began to fade into a memory of the last night Neve had spent with Connor. The night she had given him her whole self, the night she had surrendered to his love, the night she had thought would be the first night in a lifetime’s worth of firsts.

  Connor had proposed to her on that night. Her parents had gone out of town for a weekend in Dearborn with her ailing grandmother, and her and Connor had been left alone with each other. It was a frosty evening in winter, with snow packing them into the warm house – the weather similar to how it was in this present day. He had pulled her heart-shaped face close to his, his hands firm against her cheeks and his breath warming her lips as he spoke his proposal.

  “Neve.”

  Neve’s eyes shot open.

  She fell back to reality with a thud, disoriented from how deep in the memory she had been. It had been so real, like Connor had just spoken her name. She shook her head and bent down to help Ivy roll the snowball for their snowman base. But when she looked at Ivy, the little girl’s eyes were turned towards the street, wide in wonder. Neve turned to see what Ivy was watching so intensely, and when she saw what it was, she froze in shock.

  Staring back at her were dark gray eyes.

  “Neve…” Connor said again.

  Chapter 2

  Connor hadn’t been home in years. Over seven, if he was forced to count. He hadn’t returned for a variety of reasons, but the main one was now standing in front of him with eyes so wide he could get lost in their emerald pools. She was beautiful, just as beautiful as the day he had first asked her to tutor him in high school English. He hadn
’t known what to expect when he’d decided to show up on the sidewalk in front of her parents’ old house – but the last thing he had expected was for her to be standing there.

  He was forced to return to Mannington when his father called about his younger brother causing problems at school. His younger brother, Cyrus, was facing expulsion due to fighting, and Connor’s father had thought Connor coming to speak with him would help him get back in line. But as Connor found himself traveling down these familiar asphalt streets, he kept getting flashes of Neve in her cheerleading uniform, running towards him after school all those years ago.

  He had fallen so in love with her so fast. He had been worse than Cyrus with the fighting and the trouble making. His family was poor and lived on the east side of town in a trailer park. He had seen Neve in his English class, her auburn hair falling down her back and her green eyes shining bright. In his teen years, her tall athletic frame was almost too much for him to handle. He called upon this memory regularly when thinking of her.

  She was so intelligent and sweet, and her soft features and the gentle nature which she had carried herself with all drew him to her. She had offered such a steep contrast to the difficult upbringing he had endured. In his reckless confidence, he’d asked her to tutor him after class in English, never really believing she’d accept.

  She shouldn’t have accepted, not really. He was the bad boy, from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’. No one would have been surprised if she had turned and run from him.

  It was the light that shone in her eyes when he asked her to tutor him that had told him this would be the love of his life. The attraction between them was instant and hot, and sure, it was sexual, but it was really everything about her that drew him.

  Her intelligence, her wit, her surprisingly sharp sense of humor. She was one of the only people in his life that had the nerve to knock him down – verbally, at least. They had loved each other deeply and intensely, and on their last night together he had asked her to marry him. Her answer was given when they made love for the first time together.

  But it was a short-lived euphoria.

  When he returned home that night, it was to the realization that his whole life would never be the same. His circumstances and the neighborhood he grew up in dimmed the bright future he dreamed of. Something had happened that night, something he didn’t like to acknowledge or muse on too often. Something that he’d never told Neve was responsible for his abrupt leaving. Something he felt a sharp pain in his chest just thinking about.

  He wouldn’t think about it right now either. Not now, with Neve standing in front of him, the only woman he had ever loved…he couldn’t believe that he had ever been able to disappear from her life.

  “Neve, I didn’t think you would be here—,“ he started, returning his thoughts back to the moment. The reality of her actually standing in front of him all these years later made his heart ache with loss.

  “Then why are you here?” she shot back, deadpan. She looked like she was in shock, pale, but stony featured.

  Connor could only imagine what it was like for her to see him now. And looking at the little girl staring up at him with wide eyes, he felt guilty that he had come and interrupted the life she had managed to make without him. It was a picturesque moment, mother and child, playing in the snow. Suddenly, he hoped that the husband wouldn’t join this postcard moment.

  He looked down at the beautiful child that Neve had created with another man. But for some reason, when his gaze landed upon the child, Neve tensed, reaching her hand out to grasp the child’s shoulder. It was this movement that caused him to take a closer look at the young girl.

  She had her mother’s heart-shaped face and elegant frame, but the child’s hair and eyes reminded him sharply of looking into a mirror. In an instant, the reality of who this child was hit him like a freight train. All of the pieces fell together in his mind.

  As he stood with his eyes locked upon those of the child, so strikingly familiar to him, it was now her expression that seemed overwhelmed. He began to see her young eyes light with hope as she rushed towards him.

  “Are you my daddy?” the child asked, bounding to stand in front of him.

  Connor was stunned. A myriad of emotions wracked his mind. Standing on the sidewalk, he couldn’t believe how an impulse decision was going to alter his life forever. The impulse had been to see the tree, and the house where he and Neve had fallen in love. This was why he had shown up to Neve’s parents’ house in the first place. A sadistic part of himself seemed to want to reminisce over the love he had lost.

  He had assumed that Neve had moved on with her life, used her intelligent mind to leave this small Illinois town and find a worthy husband.

  In fact, that’s why he had left her alone all these years. He wanted her to do better than end up with a man like himself, and he never returned for fear of preventing her from moving on with her life. She didn’t need a man with secrets. Not the kind he carried around.

  His desire to see the tree and the house, and conjure her memory was a far more sentimental act than he usually would participate in, but when he found himself driving past the old gas station where they had kissed for the first time, or the high school where he had first seen her, the impulse had taken control and before he knew it, he was headed down her old, familiar street before he realized how crazy he was being.

  Now, he knew why he had been drawn to this place. The beautiful little girl standing in front of him couldn’t possibly be anyone other than his daughter. Even her bold nature reminded him of himself. Many times he had gotten into trouble because he said what he thought and fuck the consequences.

  “Mommy lets me see you on TV sometimes! She says you put color in the world and make dreams real! I think so too, I love your pictures. I’ve waited my whole life to tell you that.”

  Connor was stunned. He had so many thoughts in his head. She knew? Even the child knew who he was? And no one had ever tried to contact him? Had Neve meet someone new who had been raising his child the past seven years? Why hadn’t Neve tried harder to contact him about this? And she let his child know about him?? And watch him on TV?

  The pain of never being told was suddenly tempered by the strength it must have taken to speak well of him to their daughter, after he had abandoned her. God, he couldn’t come to terms with that – it was bad enough when he thought he had simply broken her heart, but that she would recover and meet someone new to fall in love with.

  But now, knowing that he had left her pregnant. Alone. The pain was almost enough to fell him.

  And she had taught their daughter about him – without bitterness, it seemed.

  Without pause, he reached out for the little girl, scooping her into his long, tattooed arms. It was an embrace that he hadn’t realized he’d needed for the past seven years.

  Chapter 3

  Neve stood breathless. A moment that she never imagined in her wildest dreams was happening before her very eyes. Her daughter was being held in her father’s arms. Neve had tears streaming from her eyes, and in the pit of her stomach was a knot that she desperately wished she could bury under the snow on the ground. She was too scared of what this meant to be happy or even a tiny little bit hopeful. The possibilities steamrolled through her mind quickly, each one causing more fear to tighten the muscles in her stomach.

  When she first turned in the direction of her daughter’s haunting gaze, she hardly recognized the man standing in front of her. When she had known Connor, he was a lean teenager. Taller than most men at around 6’3”, he had strong arms and a waist that narrowed into firm and masculine hips. His legs were long, with strong thighs that were well-proportioned and toned. Now, he seemed larger than life. His shoulders and arms were packed with muscles, obvious even through his winter coat. His legs were still long, and the intoxicating memory of her body pressed between them nearly pushed her beyond the frail calmness she was trying desperately to project.

  His large gray eyes were
still dark and hid a layer of sadness Neve knew many couldn’t detect beneath his dominant exterior. He had the same beautiful mouth with full lips, and darkly lashed eyes. His high cheekbones set off his strong jawline, which was clenched with the effort she imagined it was taking him not to freak out in front of Ivy.

  “Mommy! Can Daddy stay for dinner?” Once again, Ivy’s words pulled her from the trance she had fallen under while admiring Connor’s beautiful features.

  Jesus, girl, get it together! He may be Ivy’s father, but he’s nothing to me anymore. Especially not his amazing body. She mentally rolled her eyes at her pleasure-deprived mind.

  “I’m sure he has better things to do…” Neve began, unsure of what she even wanted to say. She was not sure of anything at that moment. She felt anger, fear, and something else that she wasn’t quite ready to put a name on just yet.

  “Actually, I don’t have any plans,“ Connor responded, cutting Neve off and now looking at her with a firm, unreadable expression.

  “Well, I’ll think about it,” Neve stalled “Ivy, don’t you have something you want to give your dad?” The change in topic was designed to distract both of them and she hoped that Ivy would leave for a moment to give them some time alone.

  “Yes!” Ivy squealed, turning to run into the house.

  “Sweetheart, don’t forget to put your boots by the heat register to dry!” Neve called out after her daughter’s retreating figure, thus leaving her and Connor standing in the yard, staring at each other.

  Neve could hardly trust her legs to hold her up, and she could feel her chest heaving as the energy from his body so near to hers warmed her skin, despite the chilly temperature outside. She could hardly believe the way his nearness still affected her after so much time had passed.