Baby Under the Christmas Tree by Teresa Carpenter

Author:Teresa Carpenter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

HER PARENTS WERE HAPPY to give Elle a ride to her office to pick up her car.

“It was nice of you to bring Max to the party.” Her mom glanced back at Elle from the front seat. “Walter was thrilled.”

“I thought it was against team policy for you to date the players,” her dad grumbled.

“We’re not dating— Mom.” Elle pleaded for intervention. The men in her life would wrap her in cotton candy and set her on a shelf if she let them.

“Leave her alone, Jim. Elle is entitled to her privacy. If she wants to break the rules with a hunky hockey player, that’s her business.”

“Mom!”

“Becca, don’t encourage her.” Dad growled his displeasure.

“Hush,” Mom scolded him. “I will encourage her. She works too hard and deserves to find someone special.”

Go Mom.

“Thanks, Mom.” Elle flipped through her emails on her phone. Maybe she’d get a chance to answer a few before the game.

But she spoke too soon.

Because Mom turned her eagle eye on Elle.

“You can protest all you like, Elle, but it was obvious to everyone at the party that there’s strong chemistry between you two.”

“You’re wrong.” Elle did protest because it was her only defense against an unwanted truth. “That was just residual falloff from Adam and Stephanie.”

“It wasn’t Adam defending you.” Becca flipped down the mirror to check her makeup and fluff up her hair. Pride for her beautiful mother burned in Elle. She admired and respected her so much.

Both redheads, with the same slim, athletic build, they’d been mistaken for sisters more than a few times. But Becca’s blue eyes and softer features gave her a beauty Elle—with the brown eyes and defined cheekbones inherited from her father, who had a touch of Native American in him—lacked.

Becca met Elle’s gaze in the mirror. “It’s the way he was looking at you that had your brothers’ and father’s hackles bristling.”

“Okay. There may have been a moment of awareness,” she confessed, never able to keep things from her mother for long. “But it doesn’t matter, so don’t get your hopes up. Dad is right, the team has rules.” And so did she. “Max is off-limits. Besides, the truth is I’m a glorified babysitter.”

“Is there a problem with his son?” A total mom, Becca immediately latched on to any baby concerns. “Troy seemed like such a sweet boy.”

“He is, except for the screaming jags.” Elle recounted her experiences with the toddler. “It’s a bad habit that’s worked for him.”

“How did you get him to stop?” Becca wanted to know.

“I held him wrapped up in my arms, told him I wanted him to take deep breaths, and we breathed together. After a couple of minutes, I hummed to him until he settled down. Then I told him I would not put up with screaming.”

“And that worked?”

“He hasn’t screamed with me again. I don’t know about Max.”

“He needs a nanny,” her dad threw in.

“He hired a nice woman,” Elle confided. “She used to be a foster mother of his,

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