Shirley Jump – Their Unexpected Christmas Gift (страница 1)
She’d given up on Christmas miracles, until one landed on his doorstep
Vivian Winthrop is a brilliant lawyer, but family has never been on her to-do list. Until her baby niece is left at the Stone Gap Inn on Christmas Eve. Vivian is thrust into the role of mommy, a challenge she’s completely unprepared for! Luckily, chef Nick Jackson is a natural with little Ellie. And if being near him stirs up delicious—and unexpected—feelings? Maybe a little Christmas magic could turn their holiday fling into something a little more permanent…
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Their Unexpected Christmas Gift
Shirley Jump
ISBN: 978-1-474-09180-0
THEIR UNEXPECTED CHRISTMAS GIFT
© 2019 Shirley Kawa-Jump, LLC
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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To a Christmas I will never forget, with the man
who makes every day better than the one before.
Here’s to many, many more!
Contents
Note to Readers
H
Nick Jackson stood under the banner draped across the center of Main Street in Stone Gap, and debated sign sabotage. The entire town was in the process of getting decked out for Christmas. Elves—or rather, Department of Public Works employees in silly costumes festooned with bells—were on stepladders, draping garland over the street lamps. Shopkeepers were pasting images of fat Santas and fake snowflakes in their windows. Others were piping holiday tunes from their sound systems a full three days before the first day of December.
When Nick was young, he’d loved Christmas as much as any other kid, even though his parents hadn’t been the traditional kind who woke up at dawn and had a pajamas-on-the-couch Christmas morning. They’d believed in dignified holidays, with practical gifts like suits and calculators. But for a kid of three, or five, or seven, the world still held magic and promise, and anything could happen. By the time he hit middle school, Nick had given up on miracles.
Until then, Nick had woken up at the crack of dawn every Christmas morning, then dragged his brothers Carson and Grady out of bed. He’d sat on the stool at the kitchen bar, fidgety and anxious and dreaming of finding something cool under the elegant, professionally decorated Christmas tree, like a race car or a skateboard. The three boys would wait through an interminable breakfast served by the cook, who shuffled around the kitchen and grumbled under her breath about being underpaid to make pancakes on a holiday morning.
Then their parents would wake, and there’d be a quiet, five-minute exchange of whatever sensible present had been chosen for the boys. Books, savings bonds, dress shoes. No Legos. No remote control cars. As holiday after holiday passed, and Nick began to realize there would never be one of those cozy family-by-the-fireplace scenes in the Jackson household, he’d told himself that when he was grown and out of his parents’ house, his life would be different. He’d have the white picket fence, the Labrador and he’d flip pancakes for his kids himself every Sunday morning. He’d dreamed of that first Christmas, with all its perfection of a lazy morning by the tree. He’d even started filling in the image with his girlfriend, Ariel, and had been on the verge of proposing—up until she’d dumped him for his best friend.
The next day, Nick had hopped a plane to Stone Gap, North Carolina, to bury his grandmother and figure out what the hell to do next. After the funeral, he’d found out that Grandma Ida Mae had left Grady the house, and Nick and Carson each a nice sum of money. So he quit his job and stayed in Stone Gap, without a mustard seed of an idea of what he was going to do next. He had an inheritance to rely on once he decided, but that came with a few strings that Nick hadn’t wanted to tackle yet.
After a month of scotch and self-pity. Della Barlow, owner and main chef at the Stone Gap Inn, got sick and left the kitchen understaffed. Nick had ended up taking her place temporarily, pinch hitting for Della and winning over the guests with his béchamel lasagna and lighter-than-air pancakes. By the end of that week, Nick had finally figured out what he wanted to do with his life at thirty.
He could have gone for another job in IT—he was certainly qualified for it, after several years working with his brother Carson at Tech Analysts. Somehow he’d slipped into a life of building computer security systems and analyzing hacker threats. Actually, it wasn’t a somehow—Nick remembered the exact day he’d hung up his apron and toque and called Carson. The fight with his father, the confrontation when Richard Jackson found out his son had been lying about law school for over a semester.
The job with Carson was always supposed to be a temporary measure, a stopgap, until Nick could save enough to go out on his own as a chef. One year had turned into two, had turned into four, and then he’d met Ariel, and leaving seemed like a bad idea. His cooking skills had gotten rusty, and he’d started to think he was too old to start over with a pipe dream. Until he’d found himself in the kitchen of the Stone Gap Inn. As the whisk turned wine and flour into a velvety sauce, his love of food returned. After she returned from being out sick, Della had offered him a job and Nick Jackson had had a purpose again, at least until he was done avoiding his life.