Dear Santa

“Every damn day since her birth,” Grant said through gritted teeth, as if willing the raw fear—that he was going to fail his own child—to stay locked up where it couldn’t do him, or Haley, any harm. “And it kills me, that there’s a little girl upstairs who didn’t ask for her mother to die and leave her with me as her father! That I’m the one who’s supposed to get her through this, only I have no earthly idea how to do that!”

“Who the hell does, Grant?” Mia said. “Who knows how to handle stuff like this until they have to?”

“But at least Haley likes you.”

Mia eyed him for a long moment, then sighed out a swear word, followed by, “I can’t stay, Grant.”

“Just for a few days. To help Haley through the transition.”

“I can’t,” she repeated. “I have a life. And a business to run.”

“I thought you said you loved her?”

Her eyes darkened. “Oh, you will not pull that emotional blackmail crap on me. Of course I love Haley. But she’s not my daughter, she’s yours. And whatever is or isn’t going on between you is not my problem to solve—”

“I’m not asking you to solve anything, damn it! I’m only asking you to help me solve it! And I would think, given Haley’s obvious affection for you, that you’d put her needs before whatever animosity you feel for me!”

Silence jangled between them for several seconds before she finally said, “I can’t get out of this party tomorrow night, it’s too big for my assistant to handle on her own. At least not on such short notice. But…” Long, blunt-nailed fingers dragged across her jaw for a moment before she crammed both hands into her jeans’ pockets. “But I’m free for a few days after that. I suppose I could come back up the day after tomorrow for a day or two.”

“Until after the funeral?” At her frown, Grant said, “Since Justine has no one else…”

“Right. Okay. Until after the funeral, then. But just so we’re clear? I’m only doing this for Haley. Not for you.”

“Fair enough.”

He followed her when she walked out of his office, watching silently as she gathered her things off the table in the foyer and shrugged into a boxy tweed jacket at complete odds with the sweatshirt. And he couldn’t resist wandering into the living room after she’d left to stand in front of one of the bay windows, listening to her peel rubber as she sped off, spitting gravel in her wake.

“Not exactly a prissy little thing, is she?” Etta said behind him.

He almost smiled. “No.” Then he added, “She’s coming back.”

“So I heard. But she’s right, you know. It’s not up to her to fix whatever’s wrong between you and Haley.”

The smile stretched slightly. “You’re not even the least bit repentant about eavesdropping, are you?”

“Hell, no,” she said, and tromped off, and Grant eventually went upstairs to check on his daughter. The light from the hallway spilled across her bed, illuminating the tiny child sleeping fitfully in it.

Grant slipped noiselessly into the room to stand over the bed, releasing a long, soundless breath. He couldn’t exactly grieve for Justine, but her death—the shock of it, the pointlessness—had still shaken him. More, in fact, than he’d at first realized. For what had happened—to her and between them—regret and genuine sorrow clawed at him, snarling and snapping. Once the truth sank in, Haley would miss her mother terribly.

As would Mia. Undeserved and misplaced though her loyalty to Justine may have been.

She doesn’t know.

Again, the words pelted him, leaving the sting of guilt in their wake. But it wasn’t his place to tell her. Relationship Neanderthal though he might be, even he couldn’t bring himself to disabuse Mia of her faith in Justine’s friendship. What would be the point? The woman was dead, her indiscretions—and betrayal—soon to be buried with her, God willing. Still, whatever his personal feelings about Mia, it had been no easy feat to tamp down the flash of anger on her behalf, that the woman she credited with getting her through the worst period of her life had actually been the very cause of her misery.

Oh, his ex-wife’s talents had been quite extraordinary, he thought bitterly as Haley thrashed in her sleep, sending the poor stuffed lion sailing overboard. Grant bent over to retrieve the toy, carefully setting it where she could reach it. Instantly, a little arm shot out, groping for her new friend; Grant edged the lion closer, smiling slightly when Haley pulled the floppy thing back into the safety of her arms, her thumb popping into her mouth as she relaxed.

Then his forehead knotted as his thoughts strayed back to his ex. As much as Justine’s infidelity had gouged his ego, at least it was understandable, given her obvious craving for more attention than Grant could give her. But to screw around with her best friend’s fiancé…?

And then to have the gall to console Mia in the aftermath?

Un-freaking-believable.

Almost as unbelievable as Mia’s naiveté. Weren’t women supposed to have some sort of radar about these things? Especially by their thirties? But then, how had the two women become such close friends to begin with? Considering how orderly and driven Justine had been, Mia—who’d given up a prime slot in one of Manhattan’s most prestigious law firms to become a party planner, for God’s sake—came across as downright flighty in comparison.

Then he thought of her when they’d been in here together, as unkempt as Justine had been fastidious, her dark brows drawn underneath a curtain of wind-blown, dark brown waves. And he had to admit, her obvious affection for his daughter, the concern trembling at the edges of her wide, bare mouth when she smiled, had suckered him into feeling a twinge of sympathy for her cluelessness.

He also had to admit, as personality traits went, cluelessness was far preferable to calculated treachery.

Feeling more weary than he ever had in his life, Grant gently tugged Haley’s tangled covers from around her legs, smoothing them over her frail-looking shoulders. She stirred, her eyes never opening, trusting at least in sleep, even if not when awake.

Helplessness and hope collided inside his chest, nearly taking his breath.

Mia waited until she was back in her apartment, a cozy one-bedroom in the West Twenties, before digging out her cell phone to check her messages. At the sight of her parents’ number, she groaned, executing a much-practiced spin-and-flop maneuver onto her sofa as her father’s flat, blue-collar Massachusetts accent burrowed into her ear.

“Just wondering if you’d heard from your brother, or maybe you got a number for him or somethin’, some way for us to reach him? Give us a call sometime.”

No need to ask which brother they meant, since her four older brothers—and their families—all lived within ten blocks of the red-bricked, white-shuttered Springfield colonial they’d all grown up in. One black sheep out of six, you’d expect. Three, however—twelve years ago, her next oldest brother, Rudy, had knocked up his eighteen-year-old girlfriend, and then there was Mia walking away from a six-figure salary to start her own business—was just wrong. Still, at least Mia still touched base with her family from time to time. And Rudy lived with their parents, so their mother could watch his daughter, Stacey, while he was at work. Kevin, however…

She let out a sigh, punching the phone to retrieve her next message, thinking the kid would send them all to early graves. Except at twenty-six, he was hardly a kid anymore, was he…?

The second message was from Venus, her assistant, aka the Butt Saver.

“Girl, where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to callyou all freaking day, which is scaring the crap out of me because I know you don’t go to the bathroom without taking your phone with you. If I don’t hear from you by midnight, I’m calling the police. And no, I’m not kidding.”

In her early fifties and the most organized human being Mia had ever known, Venus had been Mia’s secretary at Hinkley-Cohen. And as eager to ditch the nine-to-five—or, in Mia’s case, eight-to-whenever—grind as Mia had been. She immediately hit the callback button, spewing, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” in the wake of Venus’s “This had damn sight better be good!” Only as soon as she told Venus why she’d been incommunicado, she was all, “You’re not serious? Oh, hell…I’m so sorry, baby! You must be a wreck, I know the two of you were pretty tight.”

Yeah, that’s what she had thought, too.

But now past the initial shock, Mia had to finally acknowledge the tiny flicker of doubt that had grown increasingly brighter since Justine’s divorce, that Justine and she had been drifting apart. Not blatantly, and not all the time—the shopping trip again came to mind—but there’d definitely been the odd moment when Mia would catch Justine looking at her with something approaching regret in her eyes. As though she’d made a pact she now wished she could break. Sometimes Mia would even wonder if her babysitting availability had been the only reason Justine bothered to keep their relationship going.

“Yeah, we were,” she now said to Venus, tears stinging her eyes. “Even if you didn’t understand why.”

“Oh, I suppose I did, if I thought hard enough about it. The two of you being new at the same time, and Justine being all flashy and glittery and worldly and whatnot, and you this subdued little thing when you first got there. What were you, twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two. And I was never subdued! And I haven’t been little since kindergarten!”

“Okay, unpolished, then. Those sorry, clunky shoes you used to wear—”

“Hey. I paid big bucks for those shoes.”

“Then more fool you. And that pitiful thing you called a suit… Honey, I had ancestors from the plantation days who were better dressed. So it was no wonder you gravitated toward her. But you know something? I never did think the friendship was real balanced. That one of you was getting more out of it than the other.”

Mia frowned. “Meaning me, I presume?”

“Hell, no. Miss Justine definitely got the better end of that deal. Flash and glitter might be real pretty to look at, but you were the one with the substance. The solid one. Even if you were younger. She needed you a lot more than you ever needed her.” She paused. “She needed somebody to worship her, to make her less like the little butt-wipe associate she was.”

If Mia hadn’t been lying down already, her knees would have given out from under her. “First off, we were both butt-wipe associates. Secondly, why didn’t you ever say anything before?”