The Baby Gift

For three days he’d lived in a nightmare of bad airline connections and endless delays. He’d spent too many hours crouched in cramped plane cabins, missed too much sleep, been able to stomach too little food.

Truth be told, he’d also nursed too many Scotches and vodkas to dull the pain. The pain came not from his physical discomfort, but out of fear for his daughter.

Along his jerking, twisted journey, he’d kept in touch with Briana as best he could. He told her he’d rent a car in St. Louis and drive to Illyria, for her not to drag Nealie out into the cold.

But when he got to the gate, his heavy camera bags slung over his shoulder, he saw them both, his ex-wife and his child. It was as if the rest of the sea of waiting people parted and vanished.

They stood at the edge of the walkway. Briana looked beautiful but pale and tense. Nealie, his little, bespectacled elfin Nealie, looked radiant.

His daughter grinned at him. She had lost a tooth. For some reason, this nearly undid him. He ran toward her, and she ran to him, her arms out wide.

Then he had her in his embrace, and she seemed to be both clinging to him and climbing him like a little monkey. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” she cried, her arms tightening around his neck.

He kissed her all over her face, knocking her glasses askew. She laughed and kissed him back.

“Daddy,” she said again with such deep contentment that the words tore his heart.

She tried to wrap her skinny legs around his waist, but she was too small, and his parka made him too big. He let his camera bags fall to the floor and held her as tightly as he could. She buried her face in the harsh fur of his new parka, giggling.

He stared over the top of her head into Briana’s dark eyes. She was holding back tears, he could tell.

For a few seconds, everything that had ever gone wrong between them disappeared. For those few beats of his jittery pulse, once again he loved her, and she loved him.

But he knew it was an illusion and he knew that it couldn’t and wouldn’t last. There were some things in life so broken they could never be fixed. His marriage was one of them.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR A MOMENT Briana’s gaze locked with Josh’s. There was a wildness in his hazel eyes, a desperation she’d never before seen. In that look she read the depths of his love and fear for Nealie.

She understood his feelings, shared them. She had an impulse to join him and Nealie in their crazy embrace. But she did not. Instead she turned away and let them have their moment.

She bit her lower lip and wished her heart wouldn’t beat so hard that its every stroke felt like a stab wound. The airport looked blurry through her unshed tears, and she gave all her will to blinking them back.

But then she felt Josh’s touch and, helpless, she turned to him. Nealie clung to his neck, and he carried her in his left arm. His right hand gripped Briana’s shoulder.

He said nothing, only stared. His looks had always been a paradox to her, his face both boyish and rough-hewn. The jaw was pugnacious. The nose had a thin scar across the bridge from having been cut in a street fight when he was twelve.

But the eyes under the dark brows were alert and sensitive, and she had never seen such vulnerability in them. Still, his mouth had a crooked, slapdash grin that she knew he put there for Nealie’s sake.

His brown hair was long and not quite even. He had a close-trimmed beard, and the harsh winter had burnished his cheekbones and etched fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

He put his free arm around her. “Briana,” he said. He bent and kissed her on the mouth. His beard tickled and scratched. He smelled of Scotch and airline peanuts. His lips were chapped.

None of it mattered. Something turned cartwheels inside her, and to steady herself, she put her hand on the thick gray fur of his parka.

He drew back too soon, or maybe not soon enough.

He shook his head in mock disapproval. “You weren’t supposed to come for me.”

“She insisted,” Briana said, giving Nealie a shaky smile. “You think I could keep her away?”

Nealie’s arms tightened around his neck. “You came all the way from Russia. We just came from Illyria.”

He shifted her to hold her closer. “It doesn’t matter where we started out, does it, shrimp? We ended up together.”

She smiled and buried her face in his shoulder. He hugged the child and pressed his cheek against her hair. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve missed you. Every day, every night, I’ve missed you.”

NEALIE CHATTERED on the way home, bombarding Josh with volleys of questions. “The people really have reindeer that pull their sleds?”

“Indeed they do.”

“Just like Santa Claus?”

“Pretty much. Except Santa lives in one place. And these people move around.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re nomads.”

“What are nomads?”

“People who move around,” Josh said. “They have to hunt. They have to have fresh grazing for the reindeer. They change places when the seasons change.”

“Why do the seasons change?”

“Because the earth goes round the sun.”

“Why?”

“Because of gravity.”

“What’s gravity?”

“It keeps things fastened down.”

“Why doesn’t it keep the nomads fastened down?” Josh darted a helpless glance at Briana’s profile. She had a strange, sad little smile, but she kept her eyes on the road.

“That’s a good question,” Josh hedged. “I’ll have to think about that one. Ask me again tomorrow.”

Nealie settled more comfortably into her booster seat. She was growing tired, he could tell. He held her hand, and her head lolled against his shoulder.

“Daddy?”

“What, Panda Girl?”

“Why do you always call me Panda Girl?’

She knew the answer to that. It was a game they played. “Because when you were born, you had an extra thumb on one hand. Pandas have extra thumbs.”