The Best Gift

  “No, I remember, but, enough already! Just open the present and find out what it is!”

  “All right, all right, I’m opening, I’m opening.”

  Uh-huh. Most people would tear into the paper. Not her husband.

  Nope. He takes his time, deliberately–and maddeningly—slipping one fingertip beneath the seam to loosen the tape.

  “Nice wrapping paper.”

  Clara nods and smiles through clenched teeth.

  “Is this one of the rolls you bought from the little girl next door for that school fund-raiser? What’s her name?”

  “Amelia. Amelia Tucker,” she adds, wondering if he’s trying to drive her crazy on purpose.

  Can he possibly know what’s inside and he’s somehow . . . reluctant to open it?

  Nah.

  If he knew, he wouldn’t be reluctant at all.

  Anyway, after almost two years of marriage, she knows that’s just the way he is: always savoring the moment.

  And it’s just the way she isn’t. A native New Yorker, she is, as Drew likes to say, in a perpetual state of hurry, scurry, and flurry.

  It was all she could do not to coach him along as he painstakingly opened all the other presents she gave him, then meticulously folded every shirt, sweater, and tie back into their boxes and stacked them neatly under the tree, along with her big splurge for him: the Filson bag he’s been coveting for years.

  Clara, on the other hand, is surrounded by crumpled paper and a heap of new treasures: a decadent designer purse, the pair of ridiculously expensive shearling slippers she paused to admire every time they passed the window display at Triangle Shoes down the street, a couple of books, emerald earrings Drew sweetly said match her eyes, and a bikini for their annual February trip to the Caribbean.

  “Isn’t it a little . . . skimpy?” she asked in dismay, holding it up.

  “Hell, yeah.” He grinned. “And I can’t wait to see you in it on the beach.”

  Ha.

  Little does he know.

  “Are you going to open that,” she asks now, watching him put aside the wrapping paper and shake the gift again, “or just play with the box?”

  “Play with the box.”

  She sighs inwardly and pretends to take a sip from her mug as he reexamines the package, unaware that the mere smell of coffee makes her sick. So, lately, does the smell of Thai food, her favorite cuisine; it was all she could do not to vomit when Drew brought home a bagful of white cardboard carryout containers to surprise her the other night.

  “I know you always like to save the best gift for last,” he notes, “but that duffel bag was pretty damned good. How can you possibly top it?”

  “You’ll see.” She offers her best mysterious smile.

  “I have one more present for you, too, you know.”

  “You do?” Looking around, she doesn’t see any more unopened gifts. “But you already got me so much, and—”

  “Well, this time, I saved the best gift for last, just like you. I’ll open yours, and then I’ll give you mine.”

  “So it’s not something I have to open?”

  It’s Drew’s turn to offer a mysterious smile.

  “Why do I feel like yours involves the bedroom?”

  He laughs and reaches for her. “I didn’t say that, but if you’re in the mood for—”

  “Drew! Just open the present!”

  At last, he lifts the cover off the box and lifts out . . .

  “A baby rattle?”

  “Uh-huh.” Tears rapidly fill her eyes and the puzzled look on his face disappears into a watery blur.

  By the time she’s blindly set aside her mug and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her bathrobe, his clueless expression has been replaced by one of wonderment—and some tears of his own.

  “Clara . . . ?”

  She nods, her throat too clogged with emotion to say it aloud.

  He grabs her, hugs her fiercely.

  “We’re going to have a baby?”

  Recovering her voice, she sob/sings the word that’s been joyfully pirouetting through her head since she got the news weeks ago: “Yes!”

  Yes, yes, yes!

  After months of trying, she, Clara McCallum Becker, is finally pregnant.

  Dr. Svensen, her oncologist back in New York, had promised her that it would one day be possible. That the breast cancer treatment she’d endured three years ago wouldn’t harm her reproductive organs.

  But she wasn’t so sure it was meant to be. Month after month, they tried. Month after month, she waited, prayed, hoped . . . to no avail.

  And then, in November, in Napa, it happened.

  She took a positive pregnancy test on the first Saturday in December, just before she and Drew went to see The Nutcracker in San Francisco. For her, the ballet is a lifelong holiday tradition—she was named after the little girl whose Christmas gifts come magically to life.

  But this year, for the first time, she was too caught up in her own miraculous drama to focus on Tchaikovsky’s.

  Keeping the pregnancy secret from Drew was one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do.

  But it isn’t the only secret she’s ever kept from him.

  At least this one is more believable, she thinks wryly as he releases her, grinning like the post-reformation Grinch.

  Chances are he wouldn’t be smiling like that if she told him her other secret.

  “Hey, Drew,” she’d say casually, “guess what? A few years ago, when I was filming The Glenhaven Park Dozen, I traveled back in time to December 1941 and fell in love with the real Jed Landry, one of the soldiers the movie was based on. Oh, yeah, and one other thing? The real Jed was killed in Normandy, but he was reincarnated. As you.”

  Uh-huh. Not going to happen.

  In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter how he came to her. All that matters is that he’s here.

  Anyway, Drew would never believe the truth and frankly, if she hadn’t lived through it, she wouldn’t believe it, either.

  As it is, her husband scarcely seems able to grasp the current miracle. He’s patting her stomach like he’s looking for evidence. But of course it’s still flat—not flat like it was back when she lived on celery sticks and diet soda, but flat enough. The doctor said she probably won’t start showing until after the first trimester.

  “I can’t . . . this is just . . .” He shakes his head in wonder. “When are you, I mean, we . . . due?”

  “I’m seven weeks. Early summer.”

  “I’ll be a daddy in early summer!”

  She grins. “Yup. And I’ll be a mommy.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “What?! You’ve known for that long and you didn’t tell me? How did you manage that?”

  “I’m just . . . good with secrets.”

  Maybe too good.

  She wonders, as she has countless times in the past few years, whether she should tell him about the time travel and reincarnation after all.

  But how can she ever say it out loud when hearing it in her own head makes her cringe?

  Time travel.

  Reincarnation.

  You don’t just drop those phrases into a casual conversation, even with your husband. You don’t just shrug off traveling back to 1941 as if it were some everyday occurrence, something that could happen to anyone.

  Why me? Why did it happen to me?

  Clara wondered that very same thing when she found out about the breast cancer.

  In the end, she realized that there was no rhyme or reason to any of it. All she could do was accept it and move on.

  “So nobody else knows, right?”

  Startled, she looks at Drew.

  Oh.

  They’re talking about the baby.

  “No! Of course not. Who would I tell before you?”

  “I don’t know . . . your mother?”

  “You’re joking, right?” The health-obsessed, fatalistic Jeanette Bradshaw
will have a gazillion pregnancy worries to share with her daughter. Clara hasn’t even been tempted to let her know yet about the baby. Thank God she lives on the opposite end of the continent, because she’s the kind of mother who would take one look at Clara, pick up on her perpetual queasiness, and say, “You’re sick. What’s wrong?”

  “When are we going to share the news with everyone?” Drew asks.

  “I don’t know. . . . Maybe we should wait until I’m through the first trimester. Until . . . you know . . . I’m past the miscarriage stage.”

  “Don’t even say that word.” Drew rubs her arm.

  She’s been telling herself not to even think it, either. But you can’t ignore reality. Or statistics.

  “I read that at least one in five pregnant women lost the baby in the first–”

  “Our baby will be fine,” Drew cuts in, as if that settles it, and shakes the plastic red rattle at her for emphasis.

  Then, as if he suddenly remembered something, he goes absolutely still.

  “What is it?”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot about your last present.”

  Relieved, she says, “No big deal.”

  “It might be.” He gets to his feet. “Stay here.”

  “You don’t want me to come with you?”

  He shakes his head. So much for her bedroom suspicion.

  “I’ll go get it. And just so you know, if you don’t want it because of . . . I can always . . . return it.”

  Mystified, she watches him head toward the back of the house. A few minutes ago, he said he’d saved the best gift for last. Why wouldn’t she want it now that he knows she’s pregnant?

  Maybe it’s another bikini. An even skimpier one. Or maybe . . . nonrefundable plane tickets to go on a trip around the baby’s due date?

  She hears the back door open, then close.

  Okay, so he had to go outside to get it, whatever it is. Probably not plane tickets.

  Clara waits.

  Waits.

  Waits for what seems like hours, until at last she hears the back door open again.

  “I’ve got it,” Drew calls. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  She does—then promptly opens them again at the sound of a strange, high-pitched squeal from the kitchen.

  “Drew? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Are they closed?”

  She shuts her eyes again. “Yup.”

  “Okay, here we come.”

  Wait . . . we?

  “Merry Christmas, Clara. You can look now.”

  She opens her eyes to see her husband, wearing a red Santa hat—and clutching a Christmas stocking that contains a squirming black Lab puppy in a matching hat.

  Chapter Two

  For a week—ever since he decided to get Clara the puppy for Christmas—Drew tried to anticipate her reaction. Shocked delight? Shocked dismay? He wasn’t sure which to expect.

  Now that the moment is here, he sees on his wife’s face a mixture of both delight and dismay—and shock. Definitely shock.

  “What . . .” she begins, falters. “Who . . . ? Where . . . ?”

  “He’s all yours. I was worried we might not be able to . . . I mean, you wanted a baby so badly and after everything you’d gone through, I was afraid that . . .” He winces as the puppy puts its paws on his shoulder and licks his face. “Look, I know he’s not a baby, but he’s someone little for you to love and I thought he’d help you to heal if we couldn’t have—”

  Drew ducks as the dog knocks his Santa cap off his head, then jerks its own cap off after it, and squirms his way out of the stocking, which also falls to the floor.

  Laughing, Clara picks it up, along with the hats. “You are adorable.”

  “Me or the dog?”

  “Both of you.” She stands on tiptoes to plop Drew’s cap back onto his head.

  The puppy promptly snags the dangling white pompon and tugs the cap off again.

  “Listen, Clara, if you don’t want him now that we’re going to have a baby after all—”

  “Are you kidding?” She takes the little puppy from him and her face is instantly covered with wet doggie kisses. She hands Drew the stocking. “You should hang this up.”

  “So you want to keep him?”

  “Definitely.”

  Relieved, he exhales for what feels like the first time since the news that he was going to be a dad took his breath away.

  “Where did you get him?” Clara asks as the dog fervently laps her face.

  “At a shelter. He’s a purebred. I picked him up yesterday and he’s been staying next door with the Tuckers.”

  “I thought you barely knew their name!”

  “You’re not the only actor around here.”

  “He’s a purebred? Why would anyone give him up?”

  “As I understand it, he belonged to a family on Nob Hill, and he, uh—apparently, he ate his mistress’s mink coat,” Drew says dryly, rubbing the puppy’s head.

  “He ate a mink coat?”

  “Right. So she got rid of him.”

  Clara nuzzles the puppy’s wet nose. “That’s all right. You don’t belong on Snob Hill. You belong here with us. Even if you do have the worst halitosis ever.”

  As if he understood and is offended, the puppy immediately wrenches himself out of her arms and scampers across the floor.

  “What do you want to name him?” Drew asks, watching the ball of black fur dive into a pile of crumpled wrapping paper.

  “I don’t know . . . something Christmasy.”

  “Sugarplum? Since you’ve got that whole Nutcracker thing going on.”

  Clara grins and tilts her head. “Sugarplum . . . Sugarplum . . . I don’t know. Does he look like a Sugarplum to you?”

  As if on cue, the dog emerges from the wrapping paper with a red bow stuck to his head and skids across the floor.

  “No. He looks like a Scamp or a Rascal to me.”

  As if to prove it, the puppy dives toward another heap of wrapping paper and grabs a piece in his mouth.

  “Scamp and Rascal aren’t Christmasy names, though,” Clara points out.

  “Nope,” Drew agrees, absently watching him devour a chunk of paper, then admiring his wife’s nicely rounded butt as she hurriedly bends over the dog.

  Pondering the changes that will transform her body in the months ahead, Drew finds himself turned on and wonders if they have time for a quick—

  “Drew! Do you see what he’s doing? Hey, dog, cut that out!” Clara tries to retrieve the soggy paper from his mouth. Too late.

  “I can’t believe he just ate paper while we were standing right here,” she says helplessly.

  At least Clara was on the ball enough to catch what the puppy was doing, unlike Drew, who had only one thing on his mind.

  Which makes him wonder what kind of father he’s going to be.

  The kind who fantasizes about seducing his wife while their baby ingests potentially choke-able or poisonous household items?

  Thank God for Clara, who is the vigilant and responsible type.

  “Is it dangerous to eat paper?” he asks her.

  “How the heck would I know? Hopefully, he’ll vomit it back up.”

  Great. Just great.

  He looks down at the dog, who seems perfectly fine. For now, anyway. Drew wonders about the incubation time for wrapping-paper-ink poison.

  “How about Holly?”

  Drew blinks.

  “For a name,” Clara reminds him. “Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”

  No, at the moment, we’re talking about how scary it is to have a puppy’s life in our hands, and how much scarier it’ll be when we have a baby to take care of, too.

  Why did they think any of this was a good idea? Why weren’t they content to leave well enough alone? Especially since well enough was pretty perfect . . .

  “Drew?”

 
“What?”

  “Holly?”

  “Clara, he’s a guy.”

  “Oh. Right. Noel?”

  “That isn’t a guy’s name.”

  “It can be.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “Sure it can. In France, there’s an actor named—”

  “We’re not in France,” he reminds her, “and he’s not an actor, he’s a dog. A guy dog. How about Nick?”

  “Nick?”

  “As in Saint. That’s Christmasy.”

  Clara shakes her head. “Too typical.”

  “Jingle? Snowflake?”

  “Snowflake?” She eyes the wriggling black lab. “He’s no snowflake.”

  “Coal?”

  “How is that Christmasy?”

  “It’s what Santa puts into your stocking if you’re not good.”

  “Don’t tell me that ever happened to you. I’m sure you were always a good little boy.”

  Drew raises an eyebrow. “Who knows? Maybe I have a secret past.”

  Something flickers in Clara’s green eyes.

  “What?” he asks, amused. “Don’t tell me you really think—”

  “Hey, we can always name him after a reindeer!” she cuts in. “How about Vixen?”

  “Sounds like a hooker.”

  “Cupid?”

  “Maybe for a Valentine’s Day puppy . . .”

  She runs through the rest of Santa’s team, and Drew finds a reason to veto each one—then counters with a list of his own, which Clara systematically rules out.

  “If we’re having this much trouble naming a puppy,” she says at last, looking frustrated, “how are we going to name a baby?”

  “We should just pick a letter and stick with it for the dog and the baby, like my mother did.”

  “Your mother doesn’t have a dog.”

  “No, but she named all of us using the same letter to keep things simple.”

  “If you ask me, it’s more complicated. I could never keep your sisters straight when we first met.”

  “Debbie, Danielle, Doreen. Debbie is the one who—”

  “I know them now!” she cuts in, grinning. “So if we did go with one letter to make our lives simpler according to you—”

  “Or more complicated according to you—”

  “Right. Which letter would we choose?”

  “I don’t know, but—” Drew interrupts himself with a curse and bolts toward the dog, who is gnawing the strap of his brand-new Filson bag. “No, puppy! No, no, no!” He examines the strap and curses again.