Harlequin Special Edition December 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise\The Maverick's Christmas Baby\An Early Christmas Gift by RaeAnne Thayne

Author:RaeAnne Thayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

With only three days until Christmas, and Sunday the last weekend day before the holiday, Nina knew the store would be swamped. She and all of her staff and extra holiday personnel were scheduled, and she’d also asked her parents to come in.

Todd and Laura Crawford were semiretired, handling primarily behind-the-scenes business for the store now—ordering merchandise and doing the bookkeeping. But for Nina and the holiday they’d agreed to work the floor.

Nina expected them to arrive just before the store opened. She didn’t expect them to arrive just as she was sitting down to breakfast.

“Have you eaten? I can scramble a few more eggs and make extra toast,” she offered as they took off their coats.

“We ate,” her mother answered, but both of her parents accepted glasses of orange juice as they sat at her small kitchen table and encouraged her to eat while her food was hot.

“We came early because we wanted to talk to you,” her mother added as Nina put butter and jelly on her toast. “We’ve been hearing a lot about you and Dallas Traub.”

“What’s going on with that?” her father demanded.

“I’ve seen him a few times since the blizzard. He’s helped out with the Santa’s Workshop things—”

“From what we’re hearing it sounds more like you’re dating him,” her mother accused, clearly not happy with the idea.

“I wouldn’t say we were dating.” Nina balked at that term herself, despite the fact that the evening at the snow castle and the plan for the Candlelight Walk couldn’t really be called anything else. “But we are—” she wasn’t sure how to describe what they were and settled on “—friends, I guess.”

“You’re friends with a Traub?” her mother said as if even that was repugnant.

“I don’t know why that’s so awful to you,” Nina responded, thinking that maybe she could reason with them. “After everything that Dallas did for me during the blizzard—”

“He ran you off the road.” Her father again.

“I ran myself off the road. And him, too. And since then he’s not only wanted to know how I’m doing, he’s volunteered—”

“To get next to you,” her mother insisted. “The Traubs are probably angling for something—”

“What could they possibly be angling for?”

“That’s the problem,” her father picked up where her mother had left off. “You don’t know what they’re angling for until they stab you in the back.”

“Dallas is not positioning himself to stab me in the back,” Nina asserted, unable to even imagine that.

“Maybe you don’t know the Traubs like we do,” her father suggested.

“Maybe you don’t know them the way you think you do. I haven’t heard anything that makes them sound any different than we are,” Nina informed her parents firmly.

“No different than we are?” Her mother nearly shrieked as if that was inconceivable. “Have you forgotten the election?”

“I haven’t forgotten that, like all politics, there was mudslinging from both sides,” Nina reminded them pointedly.

“She’s siding with the enemy,” her father said to her mother.

Nina closed her eyes in frustration and shook her head.

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