Merry Christmas, Daddy

Merry Christmas, Daddy

Susan Meier

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For my dad, John Petrunak

SUSAN MEIER has been an office manager, the division manager for a charitable organization and a columnist for a local newspaper. Presently, she holds a full-time job at a manufacturing company.

Even though her motto, “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” is taped to the wall of her office, Susan firmly believes you have to balance work and play. An avid reader and lousy golfer, she has learned to juggle the demands of her job and family, while still pursuing her writing career and playing golf twice a week.

Dear Reader,

My father always tried to make Christmas magical for us. There were eleven kids in my family, so money was always tight, but somehow, some way, my dad—in cahoots with my mother—always found a way to make every Christmas memorable.

The year that sticks out most in my mind was the year my father worked out of state. He had to be back at work on Christmas, which meant he needed to be on the road right after lunch on Christmas Eve, and wouldn’t be able to spend any of the holiday with us—not even to see us open our presents. We were all upset about that because everyone knew Santa brought the gifts around midnight and my dad would be long gone.

It was a cold year, so we’d blocked off the kitchen from the rest of the house with a blanket and gathered around the table for lunch. After we ate, one of my sisters left the kitchen and immediately ran back yelping for joy that Santa had come while we were eating and all our gifts were under the tree. I was astounded. Getting gifts one day early was about the best thing that could happen to an eight-year-old, but to have it happen the very year my dad couldn’t be home for Christmas made the whole episode seem downright magical.

We talked about that Christmas for years. Still do, in fact. I think my sister Helen helped my parents set the whole thing up. She won’t admit to it though. Neither will my parents. But whatever the explanation, that one Christmas left us with the feeling that Christmas and family are magic. Real or created by someone who loves you, it doesn’t matter. Magic is magic.

Merry Christmas!

Chapter One (#ulink_5e92b1a2-1025-5d73-8d30-41300d9d90c9)

When the elevator doors opened, Gabriel Cayne thought he had walked into an ad for blue jeans. Bent before him, encased in prewashed, natural-fit jeans was the most perfect derriere he’d ever seen. The woman unsuccessfully tried to gather groceries, as they rolled in all directions down the hall, but Gabe didn’t pay too much attention to her dilemma. For this short span of time he had nothing on his mind but enjoying the view. And what a view. The right kind of curves in all the right places.

His vision of perfection lasted three more seconds, then—after snagging a can of green beans—his quarry straightened, and Gabe saw she was his stuffy, conservative neighbor who lived in the apartment across the hall with her two equally stuffy friends. He almost sighed.

He didn’t care to run into her on a normal day, but on this cold, rainy December day, after receiving the news his grandmother was dying, he’d rather take his chances in the rain again than have to make small talk.

“Good evening,” he mumbled, trying to be polite, anyway.

Pushing her blond hair off her face, she glanced at him. Even in the dim hall light, Gabe could see her eyes were green. Despite their many “encounters” over her contention that he played his stereo too loud, his parties lasted too long and his friends made too much noise, he’d never noticed them before.

“Good evening,” she mumbled, then she bent again, grabbed a jar of mayonnaise and set it along the wall by her door since her shopping bag was so wet it had disinte grated.

Looking down the corridor, Gabe saw her groceries had traveled the whole way to 3C. Though his key was two millimeters away from his lock, the gentleman in him couldn’t leave without helping her. He set his briefcase beside his apartment door, placed his wet trench coat on top of it, then strode down the hall as he said, “I’ll get these.”

But Kassandra wished he wouldn’t. Really wished he wouldn’t. Not on the day she’d discovered one of her roommates had eloped. Not on the day the engine in her car had caught fire. And not a week before her second roommate was transferring to Boston. She wasn’t in the mood to have to be friendly to the six-foot-three playboy from across the hall, no matter how good he looked in his striking black suit….

Or maybe because of how good he looked in his striking black suit. The expensive suit—tailored to fit his perfect body—personified everything she disliked about him. He had a flawless life—an easy life. Since he ran his family’s company, he not only didn’t have to worry about money, but he could do anything he wanted, including have parties until all hours any day of the week. Every time he had a party, Kassandra’s baby, Candy, cried all night.

And when Candy didn’t sleep, neither did Kassandra…and then she’d miss school the next day.

It was no wonder she found it so hard to be nice to him.

“Here you go,” he said, striding toward her, holding an odd assortment of canned spaghetti and soups, most of them with cartoon characters on the labels. Her food choices seemed odd to Gabe. Almost odd enough to tease her about. That is, if she had been someone with whom he actually wanted to speak. He made a move to give her the cans, saw her hands were full and looked at her.

Great! Now she was going to have to let him in. They both stifled a sigh.

Kassandra turned and inserted her key into her lock, and the door gave easily. Standing directly behind her, Gabe noticed that her hair looked almost the color of wheat, and was, in fact, quite pretty. Surprisingly pretty. And sweetsmelling, too.

Deciding that train of thought was ludicrous, Gabe moved away from her hair. He bent down to gather a few more items from the floor. Then he followed Kassandra as she led him through her foyer and into her kitchen.

All the apartments in this reasonably new building were neat as a pin, elegant in a functional sort of way. Gabe had decorated his ultramodern—flashy black lacquer trimmed in gold—from the bedroom to the bath to the kitchen. But Kassandra and her two friends had used a softer touch. Though Gabe couldn’t say he would want to live here, he sort of liked her overstuffed floral sofa and chair and the green-and-white leaf pattern incorporated into the all-white kitchen. He knew she couldn’t afford this apartment on her own and neither could either of her friends. He’d expected it to be an inexpensive nightmare, decorated with everybody’s gaudy taste. Instead, he found they must have compromised….

Which amazed him because Kassandra O’Hara had never tried to compromise with him, only demanded that he tone it down. Twice she’d even called the police on him.

That still rankled, particularly since his family owned the company that owned this building. His parents and grandmother continued to get activity reports from the superintendent. Those reports, brief as they were, had to list any visits by the police. And every time the police came to his apartment, his father called for an explanation. Thirty years old, president of a multinational corporation, and he’d had to answer to his dad for making too much noise.

It was no wonder he found it hard to be nice to her.

“I’ll just gather the rest of your groceries,” he said, and bolted toward the door. He wasn’t sorry he’d stopped to help her, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend an extra minute in her company if he could avoid doing so. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could leave.

A few seconds later, he returned with soup, frozen vegetables and a loaf of bread. “Where do you want these?”

She forced a smile. “Oh, just leave them on the table. I’ll put them away.”

“No, no. I don’t mind helping,” he assured her, also forcing a smile.

But to Kassandra it sounded as if he would rather be wrestling an alligator than helping her, and she didn’t want his help, anyway. She was tired. She had some major problems to think about, and worse, Candy would be here any minute. Kassandra had never tried to hide her eight-monthold daughter from Gabe Cayne, but she’d never gone out of her way to introduce them, either. If Gabe had ever given any thought about Candy, he would put two and two together and figure out Candy was the reason Kassandra always complained about his noise. As president of the company that owned this building, Gabe had the power to alter the building’s general lease to exclude children, and that wouldn’t just hurt Kassandra, it would hurt other people, as well. As long as Candy wasn’t too obvious or too visible, Gabe might never make the connection and no one would have to worry.

“I think I can handle things myself from here,” she said, trying hard not to sound like she was kicking him out, though she was. “So, you can leave now.”

“Gladly,” he said, and pivoted away from her. But just as quickly, he turned to face her again. “You know, you’ve done nothing but harass me for the past several months. You call me if my stereo gets too loud and call the police almost every time I have a party. It was actually very nice of me to be so considerate of you tonight. The least you could do is appreciate it.”

“I appreciate it,” Kassandra said, straining for a courteous tone as she stowed her groceries and wished he’d just leave.

“No, you don’t,” Gabe insisted, and Kassandra’s temper began to sizzle. “You don’t appreciate anything. Sometimes I think you’re nothing but a spoiled brat who has to have everything her way….”

Her temper leaped from sizzling to boiling to bubbling over in about three seconds. “Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black,” she yelped, spinning to face him. “You, Mr. Born-With-a-Silver-Spoon-in-His-Mouth, have no right to call me spoiled or a brat.”

“Then how do you justify kicking me out?”

“I’m tired,” she said honestly. “But more than that I have problems. Big problems I need to think about. My roommates are gone…or going. Janie eloped last night. Sandy’s leaving for Boston next week, which means I’m stuck with six months of a lease I can’t afford. Then my car broke down this morning and had to be towed. Unless I find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, I won’t be able to attend this semester of college—can’t afford to,” she said, gathering steam as rehashing her problems fueled her anger. “Which is something you wouldn’t understand because you don’t know the first thing about trouble. You’ve always had everything handed to you!”

“Oh, really, Miss-High-and-Mighty,” he shot back. “Try this on for size. I had to wrangle my family’s company away from an overpossessive board of directors. I still have a few enemies on the staff. And my grandmother is dying. Dying! My favorite person in the world has terminal cancer and she may not live past Christmas.” He didn’t even pause for breath, but kept on speaking as he took slow, measured steps toward her.

“And if all of that isn’t bad enough,” he continued, “I now have to go down to Georgia for Christmas vacation and explain to the woman I love most in the world that I don’t have a fiancée.”

Though his situation was bad—sad—the last of his tirade struck Kassandra as funny, at the very least out of place with everything else he’d said. She didn’t smile, wouldn’t smile over something so tragic, but she couldn’t stop her retort. “What a pity.”

“It is a pity,” Gabe angrily said, pacing away from her. “I’d made up a story that I was engaged to make my grandmother happy for the past few months, but now it’s backfiring. She called me this afternoon and told me that her only wish before she dies is to meet my fiancee.”

If his story hadn’t involved a dying grandmother whom he obviously loved, Kassandra knew she might have gloated over the fact that he’d made his own bed and now he had to lie in it. Instead, Kassandra felt more than a stirring of compassion. She cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry.” She paused. “Really sorry.”

Gabe was really sorry, too. Not merely sorry for antagonizing her, but also sorry that he’d told her so much. No one, but no one, knew about his made-up fiancée except the people he’d made up the fiancée for—his parents and grandmother. Now Kassandra something-or-another, the grouch from across the hall, knew his deepest, darkest secret.