Merry Christmas Baby Read online

  accessories.

  You really know your wedding stuff.

  Unfortunately, this was true. She’d been a bride once, the most silly, hopeful, eager bride ever. Well, an almost bride. She’d gotten all the way to the church before getting stood up, and since that memory still stung, she shoved it aside. She’d married something else instead—she’d united her strong IT skills with her secret, deeply buried love of all things romantic—and had created TyingTheKnot.com. On a daily basis, she dealt with demanding, temperamental, and in lots of cases, batshit-crazy brides, all looking for their happily-ever-after. She’d made it her job to give them the dream.

  It was exhausting. Standing, Callie stretched and moved to the wall of windows. Her apartment was one of three in a battered old warehouse that had once been a cannery, then a saltwater taffy manufacturer, and then, in the fifties, a carnival boardinghouse. The building wasn’t much to write home about, but the view made the insufficient heat and lack of insulation worth it.

  Mostly.

  Today, the waters of Lucky Harbor were a gorgeous azure blue, dotted with whitecaps thanks to a brutal mid-November wind that was whistling through the tangle of steel rafters, metal joists, and worthless heating ducts above her.

  Callie had grown up in this small, quirky Washington coastal town sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Olympic Mountains, and once upon a time, she hadn’t been able to get out of here fast enough. There’d been more than one reason for that, but she was back now, and not exactly because she wanted to be.

  There was a man in the water swimming parallel to the shore. Passing the pier, he moved toward the north end and the row of warehouses, including the one she stood in.

  Transfixed, she watched the steady strokes and marveled at his speed. He might as well have been a machine given how efficiently and effectively he cut through the water.

  Callie had been in those waters, although only in the summertime. She couldn’t even swim to the end of the pier and back without needing life support.

  But the man kept going.

  And going.

  After a long time, he finally turned and headed in, standing up in the water when he got close enough. After the incredible strength he’d shown swimming in the choppy surf, she was surprised when he limped to the sand. Especially since she couldn’t see anything wrong with him, at least from this distance.

  He was in a full wetsuit, including something covering his head and most of his face. He peeled this off as he dropped to his knees, and she gasped.

  Military-short dark hair and dark eyes. And a hardness to his jaw that said he’d had the dark life to go with.

  He looked just like…oh, God, it was.

  Tanner Riggs.

  While she was standing there staring, her cell phone started ringing with the I Love Lucy theme song, signaling her grandma was calling. Eyes still glued to the beach—and the very hot man now unzipping his wetsuit—she reached for her phone. “Did you know Tanner Riggs was home?” she asked in lieu of a greeting.

  “Well, hello to you too, my favorite nerd-techie granddaughter.”

  “I’m your only granddaughter,” Callie said.

  “Well, you’re still my favorite,” Lucille said. “And yes, of course I know Tanner’s in town. He lives here now. Honey, you’re not reading my Instagram or you’d already know this and much, much more.”

  She didn’t touch that one. The sole reason she was back in Lucky Harbor and not in San Francisco was her grandma.

  Callie’s dad—Lucille’s only son—had been an attorney. Actually, both of her parents had been, and even retired, they still liked things neat and logical.

  Grandma Lucille was neither, and Callie’s parents were pretty sure her grandma was no longer playing with a full set of marbles. Callie had drawn the short stick to come back and find out what needed to be done. She’d been here two weeks, staying in the rental because she needed to be able to work in peace. Her grandma had loaned her the car since she’d been soundly rejected by the DMV for a license renewal. The two of them had daily meals—mostly lunches, as Lucille’s social calendar made the queen of England look like a slacker. But there’d been no sign of crazy yet.

  Not that Callie could give this any thought at the moment, because Tanner shoved the wetsuit down to his hips.

  Holy.

  Sweet.

  Baby.

  Jesus.

  Back in her high school days, a quiet brainiac like Callie had been invisible to him. Which had never gotten in the way of her fantasies, as the teenage Tanner Riggs had been rangy, tough, and as wild as they came.

  He’d filled in and out, going from lanky teen to a man who looked like every inch of him was solid muscle, not a spare ounce of fat in sight.

  Was he still tough and wild and a whole lot of trouble?

  Oblivious to both her musings and the fact she was drooling over him, Tanner moved to the fifty-foot sport boat moored at the dock where he came face-to-face with a teenager who looked just like him down to his dark hair, dark eyes, and that air of wildness. Callie actually blinked in shock. Unless time travel was involved and Tanner had come back as his fifteen-year-old self, she was looking at his son.

  The two males spoke for a moment, the teen’s body language sullen and tense, Tanner’s calm, stoic, and unreadable. Then, still shirtless, his wetsuit low on his hips, Tanner hopped lithely onto the boat and shimmied his way up the mast, moving seemingly effortlessly on the strength of his arms and legs. He had something between his teeth, a rope, she saw, and damn if her heart didn’t sigh just a little bit at watching him climb with heart-stopping, badass grace.

  “He’s certainly romance hero worthy,” her grandma said in her ear, nearly making Callie jump. She’d forgotten she was on the phone.

  “Tall, dark, and a bit attitude ridden on the outside,” her grandma went on, “but on the inside, he’s really just a big softie.”

  Callie couldn’t help it; she laughed. From her view, there was nothing soft about Tanner Riggs.

  Nothing.

  Not his body, not his mind, and certainly not his heart. “I remember him,” she said softly. And what she remembered was getting her teenage heart crushed. “I need to go, Grandma. But I’ll come by for lunch.”

  “Good. I want to introduce you to the guy I think I’m going to take on as my new boyfriend.”

  Callie tore her gaze off Tanner and looked at her phone. “Wait—what? I’ve been here two weeks, and you haven’t mentioned this.”

  “Yes, well, sometimes you can be a little prudish about these things.”

  “I’m not prudish.”

  “And you think I’m losing it,” Lucille said. “That one might be true.”

  “Oh, Grandma.”

  “I mean, just the other night I lost my glasses. And they were right on my head. Someone told me I needed to eat more blueberries to boost my memory. Which reminds me to ask, why couldn’t it be drink vodka, or something good, to regain some memory?”

  Callie rubbed the headache brewing between her eyes. “Back to the taking on a boyfriend thing…”

  “Well, I’ll need your definition of boyfriend first,” her grandma said.

  Callie stared at the phone. “Maybe we should forget the blueberries and have your hormone levels checked.”

  Lucille laughed. “I didn’t tell you about the boyfriend because my sweetie and I like to keep things on the down-low. And plus it was a test. A test to see if you’ve got skills to sniff out the dirt like I do. You failed, by the way.”

  “You mean because I’m not a snoop?” Callie asked, trying not to picture her eighty-plus grandma having a “sweetie.” “And you do realize you have a reputation as the town’s unofficial media relations director, right?”

  “Yep. Although I’m lobbying to make it official—as in a paid position.” She laughed when Callie snorted. “I swear, honey, it’s like you’re not even related to me. And anyway, how is it that you’re the one who taught me how to work a