Expecting a Christmas Miracle

This book is dedicated to my editor, Meg Lewis.

Thanks for everything.

I always enjoy working with you.

“S
LOW
down, Ben,” Alyssa Knight called, tightening the red wool scarf around her neck and pulling her black jacket over her pregnant belly in an effort to block the chilly wind as she followed her charge down the path toward the Lake Michigan shoreline. “I can’t move that fast.”

“But I want to see if the water is frozen,” Ben protested, with six-year-old logic.

“The lake is too large to freeze. Ben, I mean it. Stop right there and wait for me,” Alyssa said in a firm, you’d-better-listen tone.

Ben let out a heavy sigh and stopped in the middle of the path. She smiled and shook her head. Ben was Kylie Germaine’s active son, and she’d agreed to watch him for a few hours. Kylie was spending this Saturday afternoon doing some last-minute Christmas shopping, along with a final fitting for her wedding dress, in preparation for her New Year’s Eve wedding to Seth Taylor, one of Cedar Bluff’s Emergency Department physicians.

Kylie would make a beautiful bride, she thought with a pang of envy. The couple radiated happiness. When
Alyssa had been young, she’d always wished for a big family. Kylie and Seth were planning to have more kids, and Seth already treated Ben like his own son.

She was glad to help out, even for a couple of hours.

There was an inch of snow covering the ground and she was looking forward to a white Christmas. In spite of the chill in the cold December air, she’d thought a trip to Cedar Bluff Park would be a good way to keep Ben occupied. Much better than sitting around in her small apartment.

An apartment too small for her expanding family.

The dark, heavy clouds overhead indicated more snow might be on the way. She picked up her pace, more so to keep warm than to catch up with Ben.

“When are your babies going to be born?” Ben asked as she met up with him on the path. There was an upper path leading to the top of the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, but they’d taken the lower path leading directly to the lakeshore. Climbing the upper path in her current condition had been too daunting.

“Not for another eight weeks,” she told him, smoothing her hand down over her stomach. At least she hoped she wouldn’t have them too early. With twins, nothing was certain. Not only was she facing the fact she was pregnant with twins, but that she’d need to raise them alone, since their father, an emergency department physician named Jadon Reichert, had vanished in a disappearing act over four months ago.

She’d tried to call him, to let him know she was pregnant, but after the first couple of messages his cell phone had announced the number was out of service. According to Seth, Jadon was on an extended personal
leave of absence from Cedar Bluff Hospital. In her opinion, a personal leave of absence was nothing more than a euphemism for gone and never coming back.

Which meant she was on her own. Exactly how she would manage to raise two kids alone was something she hadn’t quite figured out yet. But, no matter what, she was determined to succeed in providing her babies with a secure, loving home.

“Mom says you’re gonna need our help when the babies are born,” Ben said, skipping up the path. He picked up a large stick and poked it into the snow.

She was going to need help all right. And lots of it. Luckily the close-knit, family-like atmosphere of Cedar Bluff, the town and the hospital where she worked as an ED/trauma nurse, meant she was surrounded by friends. People like Kylie and Seth had already offered their support.

Alyssa knew she wasn’t alone. Not really. But having friends who were willing to chip in and help wasn’t exactly the same as having a full-time father for her babies.

Wishing for the impossible was a waste of time, so she quickly pushed thoughts of Jadon aside. She’d gone into the affair knowing it wasn’t going to last, so it was her own fault if her heart had gotten bruised when he’d left. If he didn’t want to be a part of her life, fine. Her focus needed to be on taking care of herself and the babies.

Besides, her favorite holiday of all, Christmas, was only a few weeks away.

The path opened into a small clearing near the lakefront. Ben dashed forward, heading straight for the rocky shore.

“Don’t go near the water,” she warned.

“I won’t,” he hollered over his shoulder.

She told herself not to worry so much. Kylie brought Ben down to the lakefront all the time; surely he would abide by his mother’s limitations. The wind kicked up, blasting frigid air into her face, whipping her long dark hair over her eyes and stealing her breath.

Jiminy Cricket, it was cold.

She turned to face the wind, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She pulled the scarf around her neck a little tighter and looked for Ben. Where had he gone? Impatiently she scanned the area, finding him standing precariously on the rocks above the water.

What part of
Don’t go near the water
hadn’t he understood?

“Ben? What are you doing?” she called in exasperation. “Get down and come back here.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, poking intently at something between the rocks. She had no idea what he’d found—surely all the marine wildlife was in hibernation by early December. She quickened her step, intent on dragging him back to safety, when suddenly there was a loud crack and a shrill cry. His walking stick had snapped in two, throwing him off balance. His small arms made windmill motions as he hung for mind-numbing seconds poised above the water.

“Ben!” Alyssa broke into a run just as his body toppled into the icy lake with a horrifying splash.

She scrambled up and over the rocks, helplessly scanning the water for his body. Could he swim? Had he hit a rock? Could he survive in the dangerously cold water?

There, his tiny head bobbed in the water, his arms flailing as he tried to stay afloat, his heavy winter coat dragging him down. Quickly, she shrugged out of her coat and pulled off her scarf. Remembering some of her old lifeguard skills, she wound one end of the scarf around her left hand and leaned out as far as she dared before tossing the other end into the water toward Ben.

“Grab the scarf!” she shouted. “I’ll pull you in.”

Ben reached for the end of the scarf, but missed. Her heart lodged in her throat when his head disappeared beneath the water for a couple of long seconds. Thankfully, the tide pushed him a little closer as his head cleared the surface again.

“Ben!” She reeled in the scarf and this time took careful aim before throwing it again, hitting him in the chest. “Grab the scarf!”

In slow motion, his numb fingers grasped the end and she nearly wept with relief as she towed him the short distance to shore. “I’ve got you. It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

When he was close enough to the edge, she reached down to pull him up.

Her center of gravity shifted. She’d forgotten all about her pregnant belly and her miscalculation made her lose her balance. She plopped with a thud into the water next to Ben.

Her babies!

Shockingly cold water surrounded her, sucking her down into the murky depths. For precious seconds she couldn’t move, stunned by the cold water, and she idly wondered if she and Ben were both going to drown. The thought spurred her into action. Frantically she strove toward the surface, her fingertips brushing against
something soft. Ben. Her head cleared the surface and she coughed, grabbing hold of the boy and holding him upright in the water.

“I’ve got you,” she repeated, gasping and clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Poor Ben had already been in the frigid water too long for a child his size. She tried not to think about the potential harm to her unborn children as she shucked off Ben’s water-soaked coat so he’d weigh less and then used every ounce of her strength to lever him upright, literally pushing him up and out of the lake, onto the rocks. “See my coat up there? Use it to get warm.”

Ben crawled over the rocks, falling facedown onto her coat. He may have been out of the water, but he still wasn’t safe. Hypothermia was deadly. He needed to get warm, and soon.

Alyssa struggled to follow him out and over the rocks, but her fingers slipped and she fell back into the water, her strength seeping away. Desperately, she lunged upward, clutching a boulder while also trying to find a toehold so she could climb out. The task seemed impossible. She didn’t have the upper-arm strength to pull herself out of the water.

Her legs were numb. She focused on Ben’s too-still body lying on her coat and on the survival of her babies to give her the energy and willpower she needed to pull herself out of the icy water. She had to do this. She had to! She found a toehold and inched her way up, willing the quivering muscles in her arms to support her.

Finally she broke free of the icy prison, dragging herself up, over the rocks to safety.

“Ben.” She collapsed next to him, beyond shivering
as the cold wind hit her wet body. She recognized the numbing fatigue for the danger it presented. They needed help. Fast.

Her fingers didn’t move very well, but she managed to pry her cell phone out of her coat pocket and fumbled to flip it open. Pushing the buttons for 911 wasn’t easy, but she had to try. She couldn’t rest, not until she’d told someone where they were.

Dimly she realized the connection had been made. The dispatcher wanted to know the nature of her emergency. “We’re on the rocks by the lakeshore in Cedar Bluff Park. We fell in the water. Hypothermia. Hurry…”

The woman dispatcher on the other end of the line continued talking, but Alyssa couldn’t hang on to the phone, uncaring when it clattered against the rocks, disappearing from view. Help was on the way, all they had to do was wait. She pulled Ben against her rounded stomach, sharing what little warmth they possessed between them and doing her best to use her coat to shelter his body from the dangerously cold wind.

“Don’t worry, they’re coming to get us,” she whispered, closing her eyes, the need to sleep nearly overwhelming. “They’re coming…”

Bright lights. Blurred faces. Unintelligible voices.

Warmth. Lifesaving warmth.

Exhaustion. Her arms and legs felt like dead weights. Even her head was too heavy. Tired. She was so very, very tired.

Time had no meaning. She vaguely realized she was probably at the hospital. Maybe still in the emergency department. The people around her were a blur. She
needed to know if Ben was all right, but couldn’t find the strength to ask.

“Alyssa? Can you hear me?”

She frowned, blinking against the light, recognizing a familiar face hovering above her.

Jadon?

No, it must be her mind playing tricks on her. Jadon was gone. He’d left.

He was on a personal leave of absence. Gone for months. And never coming back. He didn’t know she was pregnant. He didn’t know he was soon to be the father of twins.

“Alyssa? Look at me. Can you hear me?”

No, she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to keep having dreams about Jadon. They were too painful. She closed her eyes and turned away, seeking peace.

Allowing the precious warmth to draw her down into blessed oblivion.

Jadon Reichert clutched Alyssa’s limp hand in his and willed her to open her eyes, to talk to him.

“We need to get her moved up to the OB unit,” Kim Rayborn was saying. She was the OB doctor on call, responding to emergencies as needed, but had informed him that she was also Alyssa’s regular OB doctor.

Pregnant.

Alyssa was pregnant.

With twins. His twins.

The irony of the situation didn’t escape him. He was certain, without talking to Alyssa, that the babies were his. The timing was right, for one thing. He’d thought
they’d been careful, but obviously not careful enough. How could this have happened? With everything else in his life falling apart, he hadn’t even considered the possibility he’d left her pregnant.

Even now, when faced with the reality of Alyssa’s round belly, his mind couldn’t seem to grasp the news. He’d told Alyssa from the start he wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, and she’d agreed that she wasn’t either. But things had quickly gotten intense between them. When he’d received the emergency call from his mother, he’d left Cedar Bluff, figuring the timing was for the best, since he’d been starting to care about Alyssa a little too much.

Now he was back. And Alyssa was pregnant. She and Ben had been rushed into the ED by the paramedics, both requiring immediate treatment for hypothermia on the same day he was being reoriented to the ED by Simon Carter, one of the other ED physicians.

He’d soon learned that Ben was Kylie and Seth’s son. Kylie was relatively new to Cedar Bluff so he’d never met her, but he’d worked with Seth Taylor. The boy had been dangerously chilled after his dunking in the icy lake water, but he’d be all right. Seth had been home sleeping after his night shift, but he’d rushed in to be there for Ben, with Kylie showing up a little while later.

The boy would be fine. And so would Alyssa.

Kim Rayborn hadn’t made a similar commitment regarding the survival of Alyssa’s twins yet.

As much as he’d never considered being a father, he was oddly protective of his unborn babies now.

“We need to move her upstairs to the OB unit,” Kim repeated, as if he were a dimwitted child.

“I know,” he said, in a hoarse voice. “But I’d like to stay with her.”

Kim’s expression held uncertainty. “Jadon, Alyssa has been through a terrible shock. Maybe it’s best for now to give her some time, some space. Why don’t you let her get through this immediate crisis first?” Before disrupting her life, was her unspoken implication.

She was right. Logically, he knew Kim was right. Yet he didn’t want to let go of Alyssa’s hand, to let her be taken upstairs without him. The OB specialist had already confirmed his fear regarding the possibility of premature labor. Alyssa had nearly lost her life. Right now, she needed to conserve her strength.

Clearly, she wasn’t ready to talk to him.

Alyssa had looked directly into his eyes when he’d called her name. The way she’d turned from him, deliberately closing her eyes to shut him out, had stabbed deep. But at the same time he understood she had every right to be angry.