Page 54 of Christmas with the Baby Daddy

He hadn’t gone far, though. After I stepped out of my room, I heard a woman talking from the dining room.

“Then,” the small, distant voice said in a lecturing yet peppy tone, “you simply pull the bottom left corner up and secure it.”

“Simply?” Zach scoffed. “There’s no simple way to make paper elastic…”

I smiled, coming up behind the tall, rugged soldier as he stood at the dining room table where he’d fulfilled at least two of my fantasies. He hadn’t left. He just got up before me to watch YouTube tutorials on how to wrap strange-shaped packages. A short pile of gifts was stacked on one chair. Another taller pile waited on a different chair, more items to be wrapped.

“I see you chose the easier ones,” I teased as I came close.

He didn’t flinch or react with shock. With his senses and training to always be on alert, he likely heard me exit the bedroom. “None of them are easy.”

I walked closer, still smiling. “You didn’t have to do this.”

He turned to kiss me quickly, then resumed furrowing his brow as he focused on covering up the package of a small desk-top easel. “I sort of did. You said you didn’t have a lot of free time and wanted to scratch wrapping presents off your list. Then I convinced you to be derailed with some dirty but fucking perfect kind of fun.”

Is that all it is, though? Just a fun pastime to you?I shoved aside those thoughts. I had no right to yearn for more from him. I sniffed, smelling the coffee and deigning not to remark on what he said. “You made coffee?”

“Can’t function without it. Hand me that tape, please.”

I did, then got a mug of coffee to join him.

“You’re terrible at this,” I teased a little while later.

“Only as terrible at this as you are,” he replied in kind. He stood and arched his back, then rubbed his shoulder.

“Is it bothering you?”

“What?” His deep blue eyes pierced me.

“Your shoulder?”

“Nah.” He got back to the wrapping effort. “Sometimes, but I’m learning how to adjust.”

“You’re learning how to adjust to your shoulder’s strength? Nothing else?”

“No. It’s all a work in progress. I don’t think I’ve been adjusting well.”

“Why should you? You’ve been in the military for so long. It’s what you know.”

He nodded. “But it’s no longer an option. I need to learn something else now.” Going a little further in depth, he explained that it was harder because this was what his dad had wanted. For Zach to be a military man like him. He wouldn’t admit that it felt like he was letting him down, if he were still alive, but like he’d failed to finish the mission.

“Where will you go after the holidays?” I asked, daring to pose such a direct question. His answer would help me know how to tell him he had a son. Whether he’d stay far from or close to Vernford.

“I have no clue. None.”

Then why go?

“George said he’d like to go to the North Pole,” he said, smiling. “We got to talking about where in the world Santa went, and he said he wanted to see Santa’s home.”

I couldn’t hide a smile as I finished my last gift and set it in the big black bag to hide back in the basement. “He’s so imaginative.”

“He is.” Zach wrapped the last thing from his pile and set it in another bag. As we carried them downstairs together, he kept talking. “It’s a strength, not a weakness. I was never the most creative or artistic kid, but I know its worth.”

“I agree. I let him choose his interests, and I’m happy that he’s always gravitated toward artsy things.”

“Unlike Brent,” he said with a wry smirk.

“That boy…” I growled as we walked back up after putting the bags back into the crawl space. “He’s been a bully from the moment he met George. I can’t wait for George to move up a grade or test out and be in a higher, elevated class.”

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