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“I’m lucky, too,” Wren piped up, eager to be part of the conversation.
“You certainly are,” Max agreed, and winked at his granddaughter before turning his attention back to the little girl’s father and Hunter’s fiancée. “And if there was any doubt about what was going on between you two, your daughter took care of that when she spilled the beans as soon as she ran into the house.”
Wren’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t spill anything, Gramps,” she said, obviously interpreting his remark literally. “I just said that Daddy’s gonna marry Merry, and I get to be in the wedding and then she’s gonna be my mom.”
Yep, five out of six was impressive.
And now that five of his sons were happily settled, Max would no doubt focus all his attention on the sole remaining holdout.
Oh, hell.
Wilder didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Hunter sternly admonished him with a single word: “Language.”
“Sorry,” he said, his apology automatic and sincere as he looked at each of the couples around the table. “But I just realized that I’m the last Crawford bachelor standing.”
His announcement of this uncomfortable truth was followed by several chuckles and teasing warnings from his siblings and their partners.
“I’m right there with you,” Max pointed out to his youngest son.
“Says the man paying to get us all married off,” Wilder noted dryly.
“Suck it up, kid,” Finn said, with absolutely no sympathy in his tone. Because why should he feel sorry for his little brother? Finn was happily married to Avery and anticipating the birth of his first child with his bride of two months.
Then Finn shifted his attention to Hunter and Merry. “I guess this means that you two will be the next Crawford couple to take on the mysterious diary.”
The book he was referring to had been discovered beneath a loose floorboard shortly after they’d moved into the two-story log home on the Ambling A Ranch. Apparently the “A” was for “Abernathy”—the name of the family who’d originally owned the property. A jewel-encrusted “A” was also on the front cover of the diary, suggesting the book had belonged to a member of the family.
Merry looked at her fiancé. “With everything going on, I almost forgot to tell you what I found out the night of Wren’s play.”
But whatever she’d learned would remain unknown to the rest of them a while longer, as an unexpected knock at the door interrupted her announcement.
Wilder’s gaze moved around the table again, confirming that everyone who was supposed to be there for the family meal was present and accounted for.
So who the heck would be visiting on Christmas Day?
He pushed his chair away from the table to find out. Hunter stood at the same time, and the brothers made their way through the kitchen toward the source of the summons.
As Hunter opened the door, Wilder’s attention was snagged by a blur of color on the driveway. By the time he registered that it was a red car, he was staring at taillights as the vehicle drove off. Fast. He squinted, trying to decipher the license plate, but the car was already too far away. The best he could do was to note that the plate was from Texas.
“I guess whoever knocked must have realized they were at the wrong place,” he decided, despite a niggling feeling that he should have recognized the departing car.
“Or they did what they came here to do,” his brother suggested.
Wilder glanced questioningly at Hunter, then followed the direction he was pointing and discovered an infant car seat on the porch—with a baby inside!
“What the—”
“There’s a note.” Hunter bent down to fish out a piece of paper pinned to the blue blanket wrapped around the sleeping baby.
He unfolded the page to reveal a handwritten message in a distinctly feminine scrawl and began to read aloud:
“‘Wilder—’” he glanced up from the page to give his brother a quizzical look before continuing “‘—this is your baby. I’ve done the best I could for four months and I can’t do it anymore. A boy needs a dad and you’re Cody’s, so it’s your turn now. Please take good care of him.’ It’s signed ‘L.’”
He looked at Wilder again. “Well, little brother, looks like you got a baby for Christmas.”
Wilder snatched the paper out of Hunter’s hand to read it for himself.
His brother said something else, but Wilder didn’t hear him.
He stared at the writing on the page, as if he could will the words to change—or at least make sense of them. But none of this made any sense to him. It simply wasn’t possible that he was the father of this kid.
Was it?
“What’s going on out here?” Max wanted to know, pushing his way between his sons. “Good Lord...it’s a baby.”
“Wilder’s baby,” Hunter said and, miming the act of washing his hands, retreated into the house where the rest of the family was gathered.
His father pinned Wilder with his gaze. “You want to explain this?”
“I wish I could,” he said. “But I’ve never seen the kid before. I’m as shocked by this as you are.”
“But it’s yours,” his father remarked.
It wasn’t a question.
“That’s what the note says,” Wilder acknowledged.
“You don’t believe it?” Max asked him.
“I don’t know what to believe. What to think.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, sincerely baffled by this turn of events. He wanted to believe it was a joke, though he wasn’t the least bit amused. “Who would abandon their kid on somebody’s doorstep in the middle of winter?”
“Not just somebody’s doorstep,” his father argued. “The baby’s father’s doorstep.”
He shook his head. “It’s not possible.”
“You’ve never been intimate with a woman?” Max challenged.
It was, of course, a rhetorical question. Though Wilder didn’t share details of his romantic encounters, he’d been caught—more than once—sneaking into the house the morning after he’d spent the night in a woman’s bed.
“I’m careful,” he assured his father. “Always.”
“Accidents happen,” Max said matter-of-factly.
It was a terrifying thought.
“The note says he’s four months old,” his father continued. “Adding nine months to that is thirteen, which means the baby would have been conceived sometime around November last year.”
“Okay,” Wilder said hesitantly.
“So who were you with last November?” Max pressed.
Last November? Seriously?
He shrugged. “How am I supposed to remember something that happened that far back?”
Which he immediately realized was not the right thing to say to his father under the circumstances.
“You should darn well remember a woman who shared your bed,” Max said, the low tone of his voice doing nothing to disguise the underlying anger and disappointment. “I don’t expect you to be in love with every woman you sleep with, but you should know and respect her enough to remember her name.”
“Give me a break,” Wilder pleaded. “My head’s spinning so fast, it’s a wonder I know my own name right now.”
“Well, there’s no doubt the baby looks like a Crawford.”
“The baby looks like a baby,” Wilder said. Because in his admittedly limited experience with infants, they all looked like bald, chubby-cheeked, squalling little monsters.
As if on cue, the one buckled into the car seat started to squirm and squall.
Wilder stepped back, an instinctive retreat.
“Pick him up and bring him inside,” Max said.
“Me?” Wilder was horrified by the very thought.
With a sigh, his father reached down and grabbed the car seat with one hand and the enormous diaper bag with the other.
“Hunter said there was a baby on the doorstep,” Avery said, entering the kitchen from the dining room at the same time that Wilder and Max came in from the porch.
Then she spotted the carrier in Max’s hand and her expression softened. “Ohmygod—it is a baby.” Her gaze shifted to Wilder. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you’re a daddy?”
“Because I’m not,” Wilder insisted. “There’s no way that kid’s mine.”
“He’s in denial,” Genevieve, his brother Knox’s wife, said. Because apparently Hunter’s announcement had drawn everyone away from the table.
“I think the baby’s hungry,” Lily said worriedly.
“You just want to feed everyone,” her husband Xander teased.
“He is gnawing on his fist,” Hunter noted. “And that’s a telltale sign of hunger.”
As Hunter was the only one of his brothers with significant daddy experience, Wilder was willing to defer to his expertise. But having the problem identified didn’t give him the first clue about how to solve it.
So when his brothers and their partners—and Wren—huddled around the baby, pushing Wilder and Max out of the way, Wilder didn’t object.
“He’s definitely hungry,” Sarah said, as the baby’s unhappy cries turned to sobs.
“Let’s see if there’s a bottle in the bag,” Merry suggested.
There were, in fact, two bottles—one premixed and one empty, plus a can of powdered formula.
Avery unbuckled the harness and lifted the infant out of his seat. His plaintive cries immediately ceased.
Everyone seemed to be talking at once, speculating about the note as they fussed over the little guy. Wilder took advantage of their preoccupation to study the baby—who didn’t seem quite so intimidating now that he was quiet—and realized, a little uneasily, that the baby was staring back at him.
Is it possible? he wondered. Can he be mine?
“Where’d the baby come from?” Wren wanted to know.
“Someone left him on the doorstep,” her dad explained.
“Maybe he’s a gift from Santa,” she suggested.
Hunter chuckled. “Unfortunately for Uncle Wilder, I don’t think the baby came with a gift receipt.”
“He does look a lot like Wilder’s old baby photos,” Logan, the eldest Crawford brother, noted.
“He does not,” Wilder denied, though without much conviction.
But no one was paying any attention to him, anyway.
Except his father, who sidled closer. “The note was signed with the letter ‘L,’” Max noted. “Does that jog your memory at all?”
He automatically started to shake his head, because he didn’t want his memory jogged. And if he was in denial—well, he was quite happy to stay there. Because in denial, his life was easy and carefree and he didn’t have the responsibility of an infant who’d been dumped into his lap—or, to be more precise, on his doorstep.
But somehow, in the midst of all the chaos going on around him, hazy memories slowly came into focus in Wilder’s mind. Memories of an early holiday party at Reunion Tower in Dallas, a few too many cocktails and a pretty—and very adventurous—blonde named Leighton Ames. And no, he wasn’t oblivious to the fact that her name started with the same letter that had been scrawled on the bottom of the note.
They’d had a good time together, not just that night, but for several weeks afterward. And then, just as suddenly as their relationship had started, it ended.
Her decision, Wilder remembered now.
Just after the New Year, she’d abruptly called things off. He’d been a little disappointed at first, but there were plenty of other women in the world. And truthfully, he hadn’t thought of her again—until now.
Was Leighton the baby’s mother?
Was it possible that he was the father of this baby who’d been abandoned on the doorstep?
But if she believed that to be true, why hadn’t she ever told him that she was pregnant?
Well, he could probably guess the answer to that one. Either Leighton wasn’t sure about the baby’s paternity, or she didn’t trust him to step up.
He would have, of course. He would have undoubtedly felt panicked and trapped, but he would have done the right thing. Not that she could have known that, because they hadn’t had the type of relationship where they talked about their future hopes and dreams. Their conversations had been more along the lines of “your place or mine?” And after that question had been answered, there had been even less talking.
But if she hadn’t trusted him to step up, why would she dump the baby on him now?
And how did she even know where to find him?
He’d had no communication with her in almost a year. And the last time they were together, he didn’t know that he’d be moving to Rust Creek Falls, so it was unlikely she could have tracked him down here.
Reassured by his own reasoning that it couldn’t have been Leighton who dropped the baby off—and conveniently ignoring the fact that his name was on the note—Wilder breathed a sigh of relief, confident that he was off the hook. But his father would require additional proof, so as the rest of the family went back into the dining room, he scrolled through the contacts in his phone to see if he still had her number.
