A Daddy by Christmas

by Teri Wilson

  Marry me.

  What had he been thinking? He’d just proposed to a complete and total stranger in a sterile room that smelled like soap and puppy chow. A stranger who was dressed as a reindeer. And now she was looking at him as if he was the crazy one.

  Oh, the irony.

  He wasn’t crazy. Nor was he impulsive, all evidence to the contrary. He was simply desperate. Which was also ironic, considering Anders’s name popped up in the tabloids from time to time as one of New York’s most sought-after bachelors. Anders Kent had an office with a corner window in Wall Street’s premier investment banking firm and a penthouse overlooking Central Park West. If he wanted something, he generally found a way to get it. Romantic entanglements included.

  But his current predicament didn’t have anything to do with romance. Far from it. There wasn’t anything remotely romantic about sitting across a desk from your attorney and being told you had thirty days to find a wife.

  Anders had been given just such an ultimatum at nine o’clock this morning, and his head had been spinning ever since.

  Marriage?

  No.

  Hell no.

  Anders didn’t want to get married—to anyone, least of all the hostile woman beside him who looked as if she was on the verge of prying Lolly’s puppy right out of his arms.

  “What did you just say?” She swallowed, and the jingle bells at her throat did a little dance.

  “Nothing.” Anders shook his head. He sure as hell wasn’t going to repeat himself. He shouldn’t have opened his mouth to begin with.

  You don’t even know this woman’s name.

  His gut churned. In the brief span of time since he’d left his lawyer’s office, something strange had happened to Anders. He’d begun to weigh every woman he came across as a potential wife...as if he truly had any intention to go through with the insane requirement.

  He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d fight it. He’d throw every dollar he had at fighting it until he won.

  But legal battles took time. More often than not, they took years. And Anders didn’t have years. He had a month.

  “It didn’t sound like nothing. It definitely sounded like a big fat something.” The woman’s eyes grew wide, panicked.

  She’d gotten his message, loud and clear.

  He should have phrased it differently, though. He was proposing a business arrangement, not an actual marriage.

  Yes, he needed a wife. But not a real one, just a stand-in. A temporary wife. After Lolly’s guardianship was properly settled, everything could go back to normal.

  His chest tightened. Normal was a pipe dream. It didn’t exist anymore. His life wouldn’t be normal ever again.

  He took a tense inhalation and looked away from the dancing reindeer. “Never mind.”

  “Never mind?” She threw her arms in the air. Jingle, jingle, jingle. “You can’t just ask someone to marry you and then take it back. This isn’t the season finale of The Bachelor.”

  “I’ve never seen that show,” he said woodenly.

  He couldn’t marry this woman. She watched garbage television. She was bubbly, brash and far too emotional. She was a bleeding heart who spent her free time visiting shelter dogs. Plus, she obviously despised him.

  It would never work.

  Unless...

  He frowned.

  Unless the fact that they were so clearly ill-suited for one another would be an advantage. He couldn’t marry anyone he actually found attractive. That would be a recipe for disaster. And he definitely wasn’t attracted to the reindeer.

  He shouldn’t be attracted to her, anyway.

  A surge of something that felt far too much like desire flowed through his veins. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “I’m not going to marry you for a puppy,” she said hotly. She looked him up and down. “No matter how...nice...the two of you look together.”

  She swallowed and averted her gaze, giving Anders an unobstructed view of the graceful curve of her neck.

  Definitely a dancer, he thought. Her posture, coupled with the way she moved, was undeniably balletic. Beautiful, even in that silly costume.

  “I thought you said I didn’t look like the Yorkie type,” he said.

  Her cheeks went pink, but before she could respond the door swung open and a no-nonsense-looking woman wearing a T-shirt with Adopt, Don’t Shop printed across the front of it extended her hand.

  “Hello, Miss Wilde. Mr. Kent. I’m the shelter manager.” She looked back and forth between them. “I understand there’s been a mistake.”

  Anders nodded and glanced at Rudolph—whose actual name was Miss Wilde, apparently—and braced himself for the tirade that was sure to come. She hadn’t let the adoption counselor get a word in edgewise. Why would she hold her tongue now?

  But she didn’t say a thing. Instead, she crossed her arms and stared daggers at him while the shelter manager reviewed their respective paperwork.

  He’d dodged a bullet. There were countless single women in New York. He didn’t know what had possessed him to propose to this one.

  Still, there was a sadness in her eyes that made him feel like his heart was being squeezed in a vise. Anders had seen enough sadness in recent days that it made him want to do something to take away that melancholy look in her eyes—something that was sure to make her smile.

  “Here,” he said, holding the little dog toward her.

  He had more than enough to worry about without adding alleged puppy thievery to the list. He’d simply have to find another dog for Lolly. It was sure to be easier than finding a wife.

  “She’s yours.”

  Chapter Two

  The tiny dog squirmed in Chloe’s arms as she watched the brooding man—her erstwhile fiancé—cross the length of the lobby and walk out the door in just three bold strides.

  What just happened?

  Wordlessly, she stared after him until the shelter manager cleared her throat.

  “Well,” she said. “I guess that settles that. The dog is yours if you still want her.”

  Chloe snapped back to the matter at hand. “I do. Definitely.”

  Of course she still wanted the puppy. She was just having a hard time switching gears from being proposed to by a total stranger to once again thinking about the logistics of puppy ownership.

  “That was weird, though, wasn’t it?” Chloe held the dog closer to her chest. The tiny animal smelled like shampoo and puppy breath, which was a comforting and welcome switch from the gritty aroma of Times Square. “Don’t you think so?”

  “Um.” The shelter manager’s smile faded. “I really couldn’t say.”

  “That’s right. You missed the crazy part.” The puppy started gnawing on Chloe’s thumb. Somewhere in her purse, she had a chew toy she’d purchased for a moment like this one, but she was too rattled to look for it. “He asked me to marry him.”

  The shelter manager gave a little start. “Oh, I didn’t realize you and Mr. Kent knew each other.”

  Kent.

  So that was his name. It swirled through her thoughts like a snowflake until she found herself combining it with hers.

  Chloe Kent.

  Mrs. Chloe Kent.

  Her face went hot. “We don’t. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  “Oh.”

  Chloe sneaked a glance at his paperwork, still sitting on the counter where he’d left it. “Anders Kent” was printed neatly in the name box.

  “He just upped and asked me to marry him, and then he took it back.” Chloe huffed out a sigh.

  Of course this would happen to her. The hits just kept on coming. Instead of getting a normal proposal from a normal man—her ex, Steven, for instance—she got one from a total crackpot who promptly changed his mind.

  Except he hadn’t seemed like a c
rackpot. He actually seemed sort of charming, especially when he was holding the puppy. But come on, what handsome man didn’t seem charming with a cute dog in his arms?

  “Not that I considered it for even a second. It seems exceedingly rude to withdraw a proposal, though. I’m just saying.” The puppy started to whine in her arms, so she bounced up and down a bit. Jingle, jingle, jingle. “Surely you agree.”

  The shelter manager sighed. “Honestly, as long as the puppy goes to a good home, I don’t really care.”

  “Right. Of course.” Why was she telling this woman about her almost-engagement to a perfect stranger?

  More specifically, why couldn’t she let the stunning incident go? She shouldn’t be dwelling on it. It was a non-incident, as evidenced by the mysterious Anders Kent’s speedy retraction, followed by his hasty exit.

  “Do you want the dog or not?” The exasperated woman slid a paper across the counter toward Chloe.

  “Absolutely.” She scrawled her name on the designated line.

  After all, she was here to adopt a puppy, not to get engaged.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  * * *

  “Mr. Kent.” Edith Summers, Anders’s personal assistant, stood as he strode into the paneled entryway to his office. “We weren’t expecting you to come in today.”

  Anders paused and nodded graciously at the older woman. He wasn’t typically one for small talk in the workplace, but he hadn’t seen Mrs. Summers since the funeral and her presence at that ghastly affair had been more comforting than he’d expected. Burying his brother and sister-in-law was by no means easy, but seeing his assistant sitting in the second pew, wearing her customary pearls and stoic, maternal expression, had made him feel a little less alone. A little less untethered.

  “I changed my mind.” Anders smiled stiffly.

  He should say something. He should thank her, or at the very minimum, acknowledge her presence on that darkest of days. But just over Mrs. Summers’s shoulder, Anders spotted his brother’s name on the smooth oak door to the office next to his own, and the words died on his tongue.

  Mrs. Summers followed his gaze, then squared her shoulders and cleared her throat. She’d been Anders’s assistant long enough to know that what he needed now was normalcy. And normalcy meant work. It meant numbers and spreadsheets and meetings with investors. It meant being at his desk from sunup to sundown...

  But that would have to change now, wouldn’t it?

  “Very well. I’ll get you a cup of coffee and then we can go over your schedule,” Mrs. Summers said.

  “Thank you.” He held her gaze long enough to impart all the things he couldn’t say—thank you for being there, thank you for not trying to make him talk about his feelings or force him to go home. The list was long.

  “Of course.” Her eyes flashed with sympathy, and Anders’s chest wound itself into a hard, suffocating tangle as she bustled past him toward the executive break room.

  How long would it be this way?

  How long would it be before he could stand in this place where he once felt so capable, so impenetrable, and not feel like his heart had just been put through a paper shredder?

  Months. Years, maybe.

  Lolly’s sweet, innocent face rose to the forefront of his consciousness, and he knew with excruciating clarity that no amount of time would be sufficient. He’d feel this way for a lifetime. He’d carry the loss to his grave.

  But he couldn’t think about that now. Lolly was depending on him. His niece was only five years old, too young to grasp the permanence of what had just happened to her...what had happened to them both. Anders, on the other hand, was all too aware.

  He was even more aware of feeling that he wasn’t quite up to the task of raising a child. Anders didn’t know the first thing about being a father. Not that he would ever come close to replacing Grant and Olivia in Lolly’s life. But having lost his own parents at an early age, he knew that children as young as his niece didn’t understand words like guardian and custody. Even if Lolly continued calling him Uncle Anders, he’d become so much more than that. He’d be the one to teach her how to ride a bicycle and help her with her homework. He’d be the one cheering at her high school graduation and pulling his hair out when she learned how to drive. He’d be the one to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.

  For all practical purposes, he’d be her father. He’d spend the rest of his life walking in his younger brother’s shoes.

  If he was lucky.

  “Shall I set up a meeting between you and the estate lawyer?” Mrs. Summers placed a double cappuccino with perfect foam on the desk in front of Anders and took a seat in one of the leather wingback guest chairs facing him. As usual, she held the tablet she used to keep track of his calendar in one hand and a pair of reading glasses in the other.

  “Already done. I saw him this morning.” Anders stared into his coffee. It was going to take a lot more than caffeine to get him through the next few weeks.

  “Oh.” His secretary blinked. “Everything all right, then?”

  Anders took a deep breath and considered how much, exactly, he should share with his secretary. On one hand, she was his employee. On the other, she might be the closest thing he had to a friend now that his brother—who also happened to be his business partner—was gone. Such was the life of a workaholic.

  “Not really,” he said quietly.

  The phone on Mrs. Summers’s desk began to ring, but when she popped out of her chair to go answer it, Anders motioned for her to stay put.

  “Leave it. Just let it roll to voice mail.” He took a sip of his cappuccino. She’d gone easy on the foam this time, and it slid down his throat, hot and bitter. Just like his mood.

  Mrs. Summers frowned. “You’re beginning to worry me, Mr. Kent. Is something wrong?”

  Nothing that a wife wouldn’t fix.

  He closed his eyes and saw the puzzled face of the woman from the animal shelter—her wide brown eyes and lush pink lips, arranged in a perfect O of surprise.

  Marry me.

  God, he’d actually said that, hadn’t he? The past week had been rough, no doubt about it. It was astounding how much a single phone call could change things, could eviscerate your life so cleanly as if it were a blade of some sort. A knife to the gut.

  But until this morning, Anders had been hanging on. He’d had to, for Lolly’s sake and for the sake of the business. Grief was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Not now, not yet. Besides, if he let himself bend beneath the crushing weight of loss, he wouldn’t be able to get back up—not after the things he’d said to Grant the night before the accident.

  Anders and his brother rarely argued, and when they did, it was typically about the business. As two of the name partners in one of the most influential investment banking firms on Wall Street, they always had one another’s back, but that didn’t mean blind support. They challenged each other. They made each other better.

  Their last argument had been different, though. Anders had gone too far—he’d made it personal. There’d been raised voices and slammed doors, and then nothing but an uncomfortable silence after Grant stormed out of the building. It had been their most heated exchange to date, but that was okay. They were brothers, for crying out loud. Grant would get over it.

  But he couldn’t get over it, because now he was gone. And Anders couldn’t even bring himself to set foot in his dead brother’s empty office.

  It was easier to stay on this side of that closed door. Safer.

  Anders had managed to push their final confrontation into the darkest corner of his consciousness that he could find, and at first, it had been remarkably easy. He’d had a funeral to plan and Grant’s in-laws to deal with and a new, tiny person sleeping in his penthouse.

  He was beginning to crack now. That much was obvious. Tiny fissures were forming in the carefull
y constructed wall he’d managed to build around the memory of his last conversation with Grant. Any minute now, it would all come flooding back. The effort to keep it at bay was crippling, as evidenced by his spontaneous marriage proposal to a woman dressed in a reindeer costume.

  “There are some issues with Lolly’s guardianship.” Anders swallowed. The knot that had formed in his throat during the funeral service was still sitting like a stone.

  Mrs. Summers shook her head. “I don’t understand. You’re her godfather.”

  “Yes, I am.” He’d dutifully attended the church service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and poured water over Lolly’s fragile newborn head. It had been a done deal.

  Or so he’d thought.

  He took another scalding gulp of his cappuccino. Then he set the china cup back down on the desk with enough force that liquid sloshed over the rim. “As it turns out, the legalities of the matter are a bit more complicated.”

  “How so?”

  “When Grant and Olivia drafted their wills, they made my guardianship of Lolly conditional. The only way I can be awarded full custody is if I’m married.”

  The tablet slid out of Mrs. Summers’s hand and fell to the floor with a clunk. She didn’t bother picking it up. “Married?”

  “Married.” He nodded. Maybe if they both kept repeating the word, the reality of his situation would sink in.

  “But...” The older woman’s voice drifted off, which was probably for the best. Anders could only imagine the trajectory of her thoughts.

  But you haven’t been on more than three dates with the same woman in years.

  But you’re a workaholic.

  And to quote his brother...

  But you’re dead inside.

  “Exactly,” Anders said, because it didn’t really matter which objection caused her hesitation. They all fit.

  “So that’s it, then? What happens to Lolly?”

  “Lolly’s staying put.” They’d take her away over his dead body. He’d made a promise to his brother that rainy day in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and he intended to keep it. He owed Grant that much. It was the least he could do. “I just have to find a wife.”