Merry Christmas, Daddy

Somehow or other, he had to get control of this situation and he had to keep it. And that wasn’t going to be easy. Not only had this woman kept him and his noise in line for almost a year, but she’d arrived twenty minutes late, and Gabe had waited for her. She was smart enough to know her own power, and she also had him in a very precarious position. They both knew it. Because of his lie he was at her mercy. But what Kassandra didn’t seem to understand was that if she didn’t play this part right, there would be no point in taking her to Georgia.

Deciding the best thing to do would be to board the plane and leave her to her own devices with her luggage, so it wasn’t so obvious he was watching for her, Gabe stepped onto the first step of the three-stair entry to the streamlined vehicle. He made one quick backward glance to confirm the woman he saw really was Kassandra, then boarded, settling himself in one of the eight seats in the small but roomy craft. He even opened his briefcase and set papers all over the seat beside him so she wouldn’t realize he’d waited for her.

But twenty minutes later he was still waiting. Furious now, he tossed the paper he was reading to the seat beside him and was just about to go to the cockpit and tell the pilot to leave, when he saw the pilot walking toward him.

“Mr. Cayne, there’s a problem in the terminal that needs your attention.”

Gabe looked up at Art Oxford. “My attention?” he asked, confused.

“There’s a woman claiming you’re waiting for her…”

“Now, you know I’m waiting for a woman, Art!” Gabe said, bounding from his seat and starting out of the plane. “You should have just told them to let her through.”

“But this woman has—” Art began, but Gabe didn’t stay to listen to the end of his sentence. He didn’t have time to wait. In the few minutes it would take for the pilot to call to the terminal to tell security to allow Kassandra through, Gabe could straighten this out himself and probably more satisfactorily.

Storming across the tarmac, Gabe muttered to himself about incompetent people. Everybody had been told to let a five-foot-six blonde through to his plane, yet here he was having to make a personal identification. He bounded through the glass door, strode through the small terminal, burst into the manager’s office and nearly knocked Kassandra on her bottom.

Dressed in a black wool coat and fluffy cashmere hat, she didn’t look anything like the women Gabe normally dated. She wasn’t tall. She wasn’t slender. And she certainly wasn’t sophisticated. Though, she was cute. Cuddly. Sexy in a sweet kind of way. Unfortunately, she was also holding a baby. A little girl dressed in a one-piece pink winter garment with a bunny embroidered on the front. One shock of black hair peeked from beneath the rim of a pink knit cap. She was sucking on a plastic thing that must have been a modern-day version of a pacifier, though Gabe had never seen one that fit flat against a baby’s lips before. The minute Gabe stepped into the room, the kid spit it at him.

It thumped against his chest, then bounced to the floor.

“Hey!” Gabe yelped, jumping away from them. He looked at Kassandra, who appeared sufficiently mortified, but the baby only grinned, held out her arms and said, “Dada.”

Beyond angry, beyond confused, beyond everything, Gabe merely looked at Kassandra.

She cleared her throat, then bent to retrieve the pacifier before she turned to the airport manager. “Mr. Byron, could we have a little privacy, please?”

“Sure,” Charlie Byron said, rising from his seat. “You want me to take Candy with me?”

Kassandra shook her head negatively, then watched as Charlie left the room, closing the door behind him.

“This is the reason I keep nagging you about your noise,” Kassandra said as she shoved the dirty pacifier into an open diaper bag. “I have a daughter.”

She paused, waiting for him to respond, but Gabe was so flabbergasted he didn’t know what to say. Not only did this explain why she always complained, but it made him feel like a heel for disturbing a baby. Worse, it appeared she’d decided to bring her baby to Georgia. Georgia! To meet his mother, his father and his grandmother!

“This is her first Christmas and I don’t want to miss it. Besides, I didn’t want to impose on anybody by asking them to watch her for three weeks.” Kassandra drew a long breath. “So I decided to bring her along,” she added softly, cautiously.

“I see,” Gabe said as he slid onto a chair, then covered his face with both hands. He absolutely, positively did not know what to say…or do. Taking this woman and her baby to Georgia wouldn’t work. His last-minute attempt to save himself from looking like a liar to his family had failed.

“Look,” Kassandra said, obviously becoming annoyed with him. “It isn’t as bad as you think. Candy’s a baby, not a pet rat. I had a choice. Miss out on this opportunity—which I need—or bring Candy along. I didn’t want to lose this chance, so here I am. Now you have a choice. Take us as a team or leave us as a team, but as I recall—” she paused until she caught his gaze “—you didn’t put any stipulations on your offer. You just told me to show up at the airport.”

“You,” he said, then rose so he could pace. “I told you to show up at the airport. Not a package deal. I need one girl, not two. And one of you is a little bit too young for my taste, anyway.”

The baby babbled happily, clapping her chubby little hands and staring at Gabe as if he were the Prince of Wales, but Kassandra looked at him as if he were crazy. “I don’t want to leave her. Three weeks is a long time, and it’s her first Christmas. That’s a special time. I don’t want to miss it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Gabe muttered. Aside from a few company picnics, he hadn’t had much contact with babies before. And this one made him nervous. Oh, she was cute enough, but she also had a very unusual way of looking at him—almost as if she already knew him. He tried to get himself out of Candy’s line of vision. But the baby must have thought they were playing some kind of game, because when Gabe moved out of her way, she peeked around her mother’s shoulder to find him. When she saw him, she grinned, revealing two teeth trying to sprout from her upper gums. “But even so, I can’t take the two of you to meet my family.”

“Fine,” Kassandra said, and she smiled, albeit halfheartedly. “That’s your choice. You can’t say I didn’t give you an option.”

If her voice hadn’t quivered with disappointment, Gabe might have thought this was a bizarre scheme to annoy him since she was so good at that. Because her voice had trembled, Gabe knew all this was real. She really did have a baby, and she really did hold out the hope that Gabe would let her take Candy to Georgia with them. He glared at her. “Some option.”

She shook her head. “That all depends on how you look at it. If you need a fiancée as bad as you say you do, Gabe, then we’re actually better than nothing.”

His eyes narrowed, but he knew she was right. Taking this woman and child home for the holiday would be much better than taking no one. If he took no one, he didn’t have to admit he’d lied. He could always make up the story that he’d broken up with his fiancée. But then his grandmother would be disappointed. And he didn’t want his grandmother to be disappointed—not on her last Christmas. Taking Kassandra would make his grandmother happy.

That’s as far as he would allow himself to think for right now. “Okay. You win. Let’s go.”

Kassandra smiled, and Gabe felt the strangest tightening in his chest. She genuinely was one hell of an attractive woman. Not his type, Gabe reminded himself, but very attractive.

Before he could finish that thought, Kassandra pointed behind Charlie Byron’s desk. “Candy’s car seat, diaper bag, playpen, swing, high chair and overnight bag are all over there,” she said, and watched Gabe’s mouth fall open.

“All that for one kid?”

“We left most of her things at home,” Kassandra announced casually, though she agreed an eight-month-old was not the perfect traveling companion. Still, it wouldn’t do to give Gabe any other way or means to find fault with this situation. Particularly since he hadn’t yet thought of the most obvious complication. “You can get those. I’ll ask Mr. Byron if he can assign someone to help me get my things from Sandy’s car. We should be on our way in ten minutes.”

“It’ll take me ten minutes to haul this stuff through the terminal,” he complained, still staring at the pile of baby paraphernalia stacked in the corner, but Kassandra was already halfway out the door. “Wait a minute,” he called after her. “How am I supposed to explain Candy to my grandmother?”

Chapter Three (#ulink_c7b9ad44-0408-5e70-90da-4404b884ecf9)

Kassandra didn’t give Gabe an answer to his question because she was just about positive he wouldn’t like her answer—at least not until he had a few minutes to adjust to the news she’d already given him. But he didn’t press for an explanation. Because Candy began to cry the very second they stepped into the small plane, Gabe pulled some papers from his briefcase and occupied himself by reading while Kassandra rocked Candy to sleep.

Unfortunately, after Candy fell asleep, Gabe continued to read. He even read through the short limousine ride to his parents’ home. Candy slept. Gabe read. All in all, everything was going smoothly—much better than Kassandra expected—until they turned into the long, circular driveway, and Kassandra got her first jolt of reality.

They were about to meet Gabe’s parents, but he hadn’t instructed her on the things she’d need to know to pretend to be his fiancée.

“I think there’s no time like the present,” Kassandra said, gesturing toward the tastefully luxurious white mansion which was now only about a hundred feet away. “For you to tell me a little bit about yourself and your family. Otherwise, we’ll never pull this thing off.”

Gabe glanced up from his document. He’d apparently come to the airport straight from work because he was wearing one of his tailored suits. His short black hair was combed in the casual way he wore it to the office, not the slick way he combed it for his parties. Dressed as he was, he appeared capable, smart and strong. Powerful. To look at him, no one would ever guess he was the kind to have loud parties, or date women who looked like rejects from rap videos…or do absolutely anything to please his grandmother.

“Won’t talking disturb the baby?”

“Well, yes,” Kassandra reluctantly agreed. “But even if our talking does awaken her, we still need to put a plan together, figure out what I should say when you introduce me….”

Gabe looked down at his papers again. “At this point, I think it’s more important that we don’t wake the baby.”

Feeling summarily dismissed, Kassandra leaned back on her seat. Prickles of fear danced along her spine, but she ignored them. This was his family. If Gabe was comfortable walking into that great big house without a strategy in place, then so be it.

Without as much as a word of comment, Gabe opened the front door of his family home and, carrying Candy, Kassandra stepped through. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust, but once they had, her brow furrowed. Though the huge white mansion had a bright look from the outside, inside it was gloomy and cold. Dark-stained wainscoting covered the lower half of all the walls, even up the stairway. The upper half had been painted an oppressive green. All of the doors were closed to any rooms visible from the hall, making the foyer seem smaller than it really was. A large crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling, but it wasn’t lit. The only light in the foyer came from candle-shaped wall sconces. Still, though it was dark, the foyer dripped with elegance, beauty and money.

“I’m going to show you to a room,” Gabe whispered, directing Kassandra up the long stairway of the front foyer as sleeping Candy nestled into her neck. “So you can put Candy on a bed.”

Since the quiet house appeared to be empty, Kassandra breathed a sigh of relief. Giving Gabe the benefit of the doubt, she decided he must have known they would have plenty of time for discussions once they got Candy to a bed. She nodded her agreement with his instructions, and once they were on the second floor Gabe led her down a long hall and to a huge bedroom. But when they were behind the closed doors of the bedroom and Candy had been settled in the center of the double bed, Gabe still didn’t say anything.

“Your family has a lovely home,” Kassandra said, seeking to start a conversation she hoped would lead him into telling her the things she needed to know.

“Yes. Thank you,” Gabe agreed absently.

He used the same tone he’d used when he said good morning in the hall the day after the first time she called the police on him, and Kassandra only stared at him. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he had every intention of treating her the same way here as he did in Pennsylvania. “Look, Gabe,” she said. “You can’t give me the silent treatment for the next three weeks. You brought me down here to make your family think you’re engaged—happily,” she reminded him. “This charade isn’t going to work if you keep treating me as if I have the plague.”