Snowbound With The Single Dad

“All part of an old-fashioned Christmas,” she said, deadpan. Of course, she had not planned a single thing for an old-fashioned Christmas. Was it wrong to take such delight in his discomfort? “I think it’s a requirement, as well as snow. You can see we have plenty of that.”

“The Christmas before Disneyland we had snow,” he confessed. “My team found a place in the Finnish Lapland. We stayed in a glass igloo and witnessed the Northern Lights. We rode in a cart pulled by reindeer. We visited Santa’s house.”

“That sounds absolutely magical.” Noelle actually was not sure anything her grandfather could offer would compete with such a Christmas.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, dear, I can tell by your tone—”

He nodded. “Another Christmas fail. She was three at the time. Santa was not as depicted in her favorite storybook. I think creepy is the word she used in reference to him. Cweepy. Rhotacism is perfectly normal until age eight.”

“Rhotacism?” Noelle asked weakly.

“Trading out the R sound for W.”

Which meant he had checked. Or his research staff had. It was all a bit sad, and somehow made him more dangerous than his wisps of dark hair falling gently back into place after he had raked his hand through them.

Before she could reconjure the red dress, he continued. “And the reindeer were a major letdown. Non-fliers. None with a red nose.”

“I guess some elements of Christmas might be best left to the imagination,” Noelle said. It seemed to her that Aidan, in his feverish efforts to manufacture the Christmas experience, might have missed the meaning of that first Christmas entirely.

She saw, again, just a hint of vulnerability in him—the single dad trying desperately to make his daughter happy. Especially at Christmas. Desperate enough to join strangers…

Noelle searched her memory. His wife had been a very famous and extraordinarily beautiful actress. Hadn’t she died around Christmas? Three years ago? The papers had not been able to get enough of that sad little toddler’s face. And then, to his credit, Aidan Phillips had managed to get his daughter out of the limelight and keep her out of it.

She could feel herself softening toward him the tiniest bit.

“And then you would think you could salvage Christmas with lovely gifts, wouldn’t you?” He sighed with long-suffering.

Again, she felt he was missing the point, but she went along. “Aren’t gifts for little girls easy? Hair ribbons and teddy bears and new pajamas? A jangly bracelet? A miniature oven?”

“Oh, right,” Aidan said, as if Noelle was hopelessly naive.

Of course, his little girl probably got those things as a matter of course, so what did Tess then have to look forward to?

“Doesn’t she tell you what she wants?”

“Yes, a puppy. And a pony. Every other item on her wish list is reserved for Santa. The fat happy Santa at the mall, not the skinny fellow in odd clothes with a real beard in Finland. And it’s a secret. If you tell anyone, then Santa won’t bring it to you, because the hearty laugh and twinkly eyes are just fronts for a mean-spirited old goat that would punish a little girl for telling her dad what she really wants.”

Noelle was struck by an irony here. Aidan Phillips, one of the most wealthy and successful men in Canada, if not the world, was in hopelessly over his head when it came to being a daddy at Christmas.

What had her grandfather just said? That a man who thought money was the only way to be rich was very poor indeed?

Still, it seemed like it should all be fairly easy. Was he the kind of man who could complicate a dot?

“How about that line of dolls that is such a big hit? Millie something?”

“Jilly,” he corrected her. “Jilly Jamjar. And her friends. Corrinne Cookiejar. Pauline Picklejar. They all come with the ‘jar’ they live in.”

“Are you making this up?”

“Really? Do I look like the kind of man who could make up a line of dolls who live in jar houses?”

“No,” she had to admit, “you do not.”

“I wish I was making it up. She already has the first three in the series. But then along came Jerry. Jerry Juicejar.”

It was quite funny listening to this extremely sophisticated man discuss the Jar dolls, fluent in their ridiculous names, but she had the feeling it would be a mistake to laugh.

“The Jarheads—my name for the toy manufacturers, not their own—in all their wisdom, made a limited edition of dear Jerry. There’s a few thousand of him. Period. For millions of children screaming his name in adulation. I swear the Jarheads are in cahoots with the mean-spirited Santa.

“Which brings us to I-Sell. One momentary lapse on my part. Okay, go ahead, see if you can find a Jerry Juicejar on there.”

“You let your five-year-old daughter go on the internet?”

Noelle was treated to a flinty look of pure warning. Do not judge me.

“She’s not five going on six, she’s five going on twenty-one.”

Which Noelle found terribly sad. Really, Tess was little more than a baby, only a year ago being quite capable of throwing a tantrum in the middle of a theme park. Still, she refrained from saying anything. She was beginning to suspect that the do-not-judge-melook she saw in his eyes had something to do with the fact that he had already judged himself with horrendous harshness.

“Plus, she wasn’t by herself. Nana was supervising. I’ve got two acquisitions assistants looking for him full time, and they have not found anyone willing to part with a Jerry. There are some things,” Aidan said with a miffed sigh, “that money can’t buy.”

“There are all kinds of things money can’t buy,” Noelle said firmly.

He looked dubious about that, even after his failed attempts to purchase Christmas happiness for his daughter with lavish holiday plans, research teams and acquisitions assistants.

“Is it possible Tess would like to just stay home for Christmas?” she suggested softly, as gently as she could. “She just wants what any child wants. To be with you. To be with her family.”

“I’m it for family,” he said tightly. “Me and Nana. Another fail in the Christmas department, I’m sure. And we don’t stay home for Christmas.”

A fire,Noelle seemed to remember. In their apartment? Christmas morning? A nation pulled from their Christmas joy to mourn with that very famous family.

“Anyway, she was looking for Jerry Juicejar, and what did she find while her supervisor nodded off on the sofa? An Old-Fashioned Country Christmas.”

“You’re quite lucky that’s all she found,” Noelle said.

Again, she got the flinty look, but underneath it she saw just a flicker of the magnitude of his sense of drowning in the sea of parenting requirements.

“You couldn’t dissuade her?” She deliberately made her tone neutral, vigilantly nonjudgmental.

Not that he seemed to appreciate her effort! He shot her a look. “You’ll soon see how easy it is to dissuade Tess. And I did, very foolishly, promise her she could have anything. A promise is a promise. She’ll be the first to let you know that, too. She has a book by that title that she carries in her hip pocket for reference and reminder purposes. So be very careful what you tell her.”

“I’ve made a note,” she said seriously, and he shot her a suspicious look to see if she was making light of him.

“I had…er…some of my staff make sure your grandfather was legitimate.”

It was faintly insulting, and yet she could hardly blame him.