A Daddy by Christmas

by Teri Wilson

  “I’m not asking you to stay for me or for the school. Stay for Anders and Lolly. They need you, but more than that, you need them.”

  Truer words had never been spoken.

  She closed her eyes, and the judge’s words came back to her.

  Merry Christmas, Mr. and Mrs. Anders. You’re a family now.

  But they weren’t. And she couldn’t need Lolly and Anders. She had no right.

  “There’s something else.” She pushed her coffee cup away. The gingerbread scent was making her sick. It reminded her too much of reading Christmas stories to Lolly, decorating the tree in Anders’s penthouse and the way she’d looked out his bedroom window and watched the skaters spinning round and round on the frozen pond below while he’d wrapped his arms around from behind and pressed tender kisses to her shoulder.

  “I suspected as much,” Emily said calmly. Too calmly, as if she knew exactly what Chloe was about to say.

  Was her mother some kind of mind reader? Or was Chloe just that transparent?

  The latter, probably. She felt as delicate as tissue paper right now. “The only reason Anders and I got married was so he could be appointed as Lolly’s guardian. The hearing was earlier today.”

  There. She’d said it. She’d confessed all.

  She’d been holding so much inside that she should have felt unburdened, but she didn’t. It still felt as if there was a ten-pound weight attached to her heart.

  “And?” Emily prompted.

  Chloe swallowed. “He won. It’s over.”

  “Are you sure those two things go hand in hand?” her mother asked quietly.

  “Yes.” She was tired of fooling herself. She couldn’t do it anymore. Since the night Anders had helped her paint the studio, she’d let herself pretend their marriage bargain was in the past. Technically, there’d never been a formal contract. Maybe on some level, Anders hadn’t wanted one. Maybe she’d been different. Special.

  Now she knew the truth. She wasn’t. She could have been anyone.

  “I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t have doubts about you and Anders. It all came about very suddenly, but I supported you—as did the rest of your family—because you assured us it was what you wanted. Biting my tongue was hard, but not for long.” Emily reached forward and cupped Chloe’s cheek, forcing her to meet her gaze. “Look at me, sweetheart. Listen to what I’m saying. That man loves you. Maybe he can’t articulate it, or maybe he hasn’t realized it yet, but he does. It’s been written all over his face since the morning after your wedding. He’s been through a lot. He lost his brother, and from what you’ve said, he nearly lost Lolly. If you love him, too, you owe it to him to give him more time.”

  “He could have asked me to stay, but he didn’t.” Chloe choked on a sob. “It’s too late.”

  “Oh honey, it’s never too late. Not while you’re still wearing his ring.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chloe toyed with the diamond on her finger as the elevator carried her to the top floor of Anders’s office building.

  How could she have forgotten to return the ring?

  She hadn’t even realized she’d still been wearing it until her mother pointed it out. It had become part of her in the same way that a dancer’s choreography became rote after enough repetition. Muscle memory, they called it. A body remembered what it was supposed to do—feet moved in time to music without the dancer having to give it conscious thought. Most people thought that memories lived only in the mind, but they were wrong.

  And now the ring felt as if it belonged on her finger. The day Anders had given it to her, it felt so foreign, so strange. She couldn’t stop looking at it, even though she knew it didn’t mean anything. It was just a symbol, part of the charade.

  Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten that significant fact. It had become more than a ring. More than a diamond. It was a sparkling part of her heart, a memory belonging to the body’s hardest-working muscle of all.

  She slipped it off and tucked it into her coat pocket as the elevator slowed to a stop. Keeping it was out of the question. It had to be worth a fortune. But she definitely didn’t want to return it to him at the recital later. She was planning on staying as far away from him as she possibly could. It was her only hope of getting through the night and doing her job without breaking down.

  Nor did she want to go to the penthouse. If a clean break was what he wanted, she’d give him one. He was supposed to be out of the office all day, so she’d simply put it in an envelope and leave it in his desk drawer. She’d send him a text, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise. It was the polite thing to do.

  She shook her head. Good grief, their parting was all so civilized and businesslike, the complete opposite of a normal breakup. It was ending in the same way it had begun. Maybe that was fitting.

  Or maybe you’re still fooling yourself.

  The elevator doors slid open, and there was nothing businesslike about the way her heart pounded when she pushed through the paneled entry of Anders’s investment banking firm, or the way the diamond felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket—all light and heat, out of sight but not out of mind.

  “Mrs. Kent.” Anders’s assistant, Mrs. Summers, knitted her brow as Chloe approached. “I’m afraid Mr. Kent isn’t in right now. He took the afternoon off.”

  “Yes, I know.” Her gaze darted toward the closed door to Anders’s office. “I just need to drop something off. Is it okay if I go inside?”

  “Of course. We’re closing in just a few minutes, though, so everyone can run last-minute Christmas errands.”

  “It won’t take long. Thanks so much.” She wished Mrs. Summers a merry Christmas and then stepped inside the office, clicking the door shut behind her.

  Chloe flipped the lights on and then paused, feeling like an intruder. The space was so quintessentially Anders, with the same sleek, classic decor as the penthouse. It even smelled like him, warm and woodsy.

  She hadn’t set foot in this building since the day she’d turned up in her reindeer costume to insist that Lolly keep the puppy, and instead had ended up engaged to be married. Something about the space seemed different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  It didn’t matter, though, did it? She just needed to leave the ring somewhere safe and get to the Wilde School of Dance so she could prepare for the recital. She had plenty to keep her busy until the touring company left town. If she just kept moving, maybe she’d get through the next twenty hours in one piece.

  It wasn’t until she crossed the room that she realized what was different about the office. A collection of shiny new picture frames decorated the bookshelves to the right of the desk. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw that each and every one of the photographs were of either her or Lolly. But then she turned her back on the frames and reminded herself that they were only props, just like her. All for show.

  She moved behind Anders’s desk, searching for an envelope. There weren’t any—not anywhere on the desk and not in any of the neatly organized trays on the credenza. She should probably ask Mrs. Summers for one, but that might lead to questions that Chloe was in no way prepared to answer.

  She was going to have to open one of the drawers and pray that no one walked through the door and thought she was snooping.

  Just do it and get it over with.

  Chloe slid open Anders’s top center drawer as quickly as possible, but as soon as she saw what was inside, she froze.

  It was a file folder labeled Premarital Agreement, and the sight of it caught her so completely off guard that she couldn’t seem to move. Or breathe. Or even blink.

  Was this the contract that Anders kept talking about in the beginning, but that never seemed to materialize? It had to be, right?

  There was only one way to find out. And even though looking at it would be painful, maybe she needed t
o see it. Maybe it would remind her what she’d signed up for in the first place. Not a real relationship, and definitely not love.

  Love.

  Was she in love with Anders? She couldn’t be, could she? People didn’t fall in love in a matter of weeks. She was just suffering from an intense case of Christmas infatuation.

  She flipped open the file folder, fully prepared for the words on the contract to reinforce her theory. If there was one way to convince herself she wasn’t in love, seeing the details of their marriage spelled out in black and white would surely do the trick.

  But the name at the top of the contract wasn’t hers; it was Penelope’s. The only contract in the folder was the very same one she’d spotted on Anders’s desk weeks ago. She flipped through the entire stack of papers just to be sure, but her name wasn’t on any of them. Only Penelope Reed’s.

  Chloe’s name wasn’t the only notable omission, either. None of the numbered pages included a single mention of an engagement ring.

  But that didn’t make sense. She’d specifically asked Anders if the sparkling diamond was part of the contract and he’d said yes. It was all part of the package—the package he’d first offered to Penelope.

  Unless it wasn’t.

  For the first time since their tense exchange in the courthouse hallway, Chloe’s heart felt as if it were expanding instead of shrinking into nothingness. Could it be true? Could the ring have been meant for her all along?

  If so, maybe she’d never been just an interchangeable, convenient bride. Maybe what she and Anders had really meant something. Maybe it had all along.

  Maybe it really was love.

  She pressed a hand to her breastbone to try to calm the frantic beating of her heart. She wanted to believe Anders loved her. She wanted to believe she’d been different from the very beginning. She hadn’t realized how very much she wanted to believe until right that second.

  She squeezed her eyes closed tight and let herself imagine, just for a moment, that everything had been real. And a feeling so pure, so sweet wrapped itself around her heart that it was like Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future all rolled into one. Timeless.

  When her eyes fluttered open, the first thing her gaze landed on was a picture frame at the head of Anders’s desk. Inside was a photograph of Chloe on their wedding day, and it wasn’t facing outward like all the other newly framed pictures in the office. The photo faced Anders’s chair, where only he could see it.

  Her eyes swam with tears.

  What had she done?

  Her mother was right. She’d been so ready to believe Anders didn’t love her that she’d acted as if she really wanted to go on tour, when all the while he’d been sitting at this desk every day looking at her picture. And now it was too late—too late to tell him she wanted more, too late to stay.

  Or was it? Emily’s words from earlier echoed in her consciousness, as sharp and clear as if her mother was whispering them in her ear. Oh honey, it’s never too late. Not while you’re still wearing his ring.

  Chloe picked up the diamond, and with tears streaming down her face, she gingerly slid it onto her finger.

  Back where it belonged.

  * * *

  Anders moved in a daze after he left city hall.

  He remembered holding Lolly’s tiny hand in his, but he couldn’t quite recall walking down the building’s wide marble steps or sliding into the town car that waited for them at the curb. It was as if one minute he’d been standing in that awful, institutional hallway watching Chloe walk away, and the next, he was sitting inside the car, staring blankly at his driver’s face in the rearview mirror, unable to answer the question that had been posed to him.

  “Sir,” the driver repeated, more slowly this time. “Shall we wait for Mrs. Kent?”

  Anders blinked. Hard. “Ah, no. She won’t be joining us.”

  The driver’s gaze flitted briefly to the columned building, and his brow furrowed. Mercifully, he didn’t press for an explanation. “Yes, sir.”

  Then the car was winding its way through the holiday traffic, and once again Anders felt as if he were in a dream—a garish nightmare in which everything around him was too loud and too bright. The tree in Rockefeller Center loomed over the block, dark and terrible, and the animated store windows on Fifth Avenue seemed to be moving in double time. Snow flurries whirled dizzily past the car window, making him sick to his stomach, so he closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest.

  Anders loved Manhattan. He loved that he could walk down the street and hear multiple languages spoken all at the same time. He loved the way the subway was like a spool of Christmas ribbon, tying all the different parts of the city together, making it feel like he could be anywhere in a matter of minutes. He loved the way the lights of the surrounding skyscrapers made the East River shimmer at nighttime, like liquid gold.

  Most of all, though, he loved the way the sidewalks and the streets pulsed with life at all hours of the day and night. All the hustle and bustle, all the noise—they made it easier to forget that sometimes his chest felt hollow and empty. Even the loneliest person in the world could feel a little less isolated in Manhattan.

  But now the city he loved so much was betraying him. His life had come to a screeching halt, and everywhere he looked, people kept moving. Throngs of last-minute shoppers filled the streets, and the decorations that transformed the gray, urban grit into an enchanted wonderland—the giant stack of oversize red ornaments on Sixth Avenue and the neat rows of trumpeting angels that towered over Rockefeller Center—seemed more surreal than beautiful.

  What the hell had just happened?

  Lolly was safe. She was his. The judge had called the three of them a family, and immediately afterward, he’d somehow let Chloe walk away.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. He’d pushed her away.

  A clean break is probably best.

  He’d actually said those words, as if a clean break from Chloe was what he wanted, when it wasn’t at all. He didn’t want any kind of a break.

  He tried to take a deep breath, but his throat closed up.

  You did the right thing.

  He’d done it for her. Chloe deserved better than what he’d offered her, better than a fake marriage to a man who’d made a mess of every personal relationship he’d ever had. She deserved the world.

  He knew she wanted to dance again. She’d told him so herself at Soho House. If performing again hadn’t meant so much to her, she wouldn’t have kept turning up in Times Square in that crazy, blinking reindeer suit.

  A smile came to his lips at the memory of the day they’d first met, at the animal shelter. He would never look at a reindeer the same way again. Or Christmas, for that matter.

  Lolly tugged at the sleeve of his coat and he turned to face her. He needed to keep it together. But, damn it, how was he going to explain Chloe’s sudden absence from the penthouse? On Christmas, no less. “Hey, sweetie.”

  “Your phone is ringing,” Lolly said. “Don’t you hear it?”

  He hadn’t heard it, probably because it was just part of the sensory overload that was bombarding him at the moment. So much noise, so many feelings...all pressing in around him.

  “Thanks. I’ll get it.” He ruffled her hair and managed a smile. She grinned back up at him and then went back to sucking on her candy cane and looking out the window at the snowfall.

  Anders pulled his ringing cell phone from his pocket, and for a brief moment of pure optimism, he thought perhaps it was Chloe. But it was the office, of course—at two in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

  Mrs. Summers’s familiar contact information flashed on the display, and as if by rote, his thumb hovered over the accept-call button, but he stopped just shy of pressing it.

  The old Anders would have answered the call in a heartbeat, but he didn’t want to be that person any
more. He was Lolly’s father figure now, the only family she had. He wanted to be better. He needed to be better. Whatever was happening at the firm could wait.

  So he did something he’d never done before in his entire professional career. He let a call from his assistant roll to voice mail. And he had no qualms about it, until the phone started ringing again almost immediately afterward. Mrs. Summers never bombarded him with repeat calls. Then again, he usually picked up the first time.

  Something was wrong. He could feel it. He wasn’t sure what it could possibly be on Christmas Eve, but it had to be important.

  He glanced at Lolly again, but her gaze was still glued on the scene out the window, so he finally took the call. “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Kent. I know it’s Christmas Eve, and the office is about to close.” Mrs. Summers’s voice lowered to a murmur. “But Mrs. Kent is here, and she seems rather...sad...so I thought I should call.”

  Anders’s heart hammered hard in his chest. “Chloe is there?”

  “Yes. She’s in your office. I hope it’s okay that I let her go inside.”

  “It’s fine.” Chloe didn’t want to see him. That much was obvious, since she knew he wouldn’t be at the office. “I’m glad you called.”

  It’s clearly over. Let it go.

  “I was just on my way out, but I can stay if you like.” She cleared her throat. “You know, in case you’d like me to keep her company and give you time to get here.”

  Subtlety had never been his assistant’s strong suit. She’d obviously picked up on the fact that there was trouble in paradise.

  Mrs. Summers knew the marriage was only temporary. So did Penelope. Why was he the only one who seemed to remember that significant detail?

  Chloe remembers.

  He ground his teeth. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. You have a merry Christmas.”

  As soon as he ended the call, the driver met his gaze in the rearview mirror. “Mr. Kent, has there been a change in plans or are we still headed to the penthouse?”