Merry Christmas, Daddy

But as he kissed Kassandra with purpose and deliberation, he found himself getting lost, forgetting his purpose and losing his deliberation. There was something about the sweet, spicy taste of her mouth that drew him in until he wasn’t thinking anymore, he was only feeling. If his grandmother hadn’t cleared her throat, Gabe didn’t know how far he would have gone, how lost he would have become.

Trying to get himself out of the situation gracefully, he pulled away, but when he did he saw confusion in Kassandra’s eyes that mirrored his own. He also saw a sparkle of desire that he knew mirrored his own, too. Both of which he had to think about.

Clearing his throat, he turned to his grandmother. “So, were you going to make Kassandra dust, too?”

“Well, I figured a chauvinist like you better find a woman who enjoys making a house a home,” Gabe’s grandmother said. She faced Kassandra. “By the way, I’m Emm alee. You can call me Emma if you wish.”

“Thank you,” Kassandra responded politely, but, inside, her heart was beating so fast she wondered why no one noticed. She hadn’t had an overabundance of boyfriends in her life, but she’d had enough to know that kissing Gabriel Cayne wasn’t a normal experience. It was like falling out of an airplane, a rush of excitement followed by several minutes of sheer pleasure. Fortunately, she was wise enough to realize the crash to the ground at the end wasn’t worth it.

Emmalee began walking toward the door. “Oh, and Gabe,” she said as she slowly made her way out of the room. “I hope you’re not planning on sleeping in the same room with the baby,” she said pointedly.

Gabe smiled. “Grandma, we are always very careful of Candy’s feelings, but I’m also very careful of yours. I know your preferences and this is your house. You do not have to worry. Kassandra and I will respect your wishes.”

“Good boy,” she said, then hobbled out of the room.

Gabe immediately closed the door behind her. “Well,” he said, sighing slightly, as if suddenly uncomfortable around Kassandra. “That’s one hurdle out of the way. At least no one will question why we’re not sleeping together.”

Kassandra cleared her throat. “No, they won’t.”

“On the plane,” Gabe said, “I got a little worried that we might have had to—you know—share the same room for appearances’ sake.”

“I don’t think your grandmother would have liked that.”

“I was banking on that, but just in case she might have forced us into the same room as a test of our relationship, I knew we could have worked something out, with me sleeping on the floor or something.”

Kassandra nodded. “That would have worked.”

“Not that we would have to worry about being in the same room. You can trust me,” he hastily assured her, but though Kassandra knew Gabe believed himself to be very dependable, what happened between them when they kissed wasn’t as manageable as the very controlled Gabriel Cayne would like to believe.

Still, because their sleeping in the same room wasn’t an issue, Kassandra smiled. “Yes, I know I can trust you.”

Gabriel smiled, too. He smiled his best, biggest, most wonderful smile as he grabbed the doorknob behind him and began to pull the door open. He was certainly glad he’d convinced her he could be trusted, because that meant he only had to convince himself.

The door bumped his back. Gabe stepped out of its way so he could open it completely and slide behind it. Then he waved slightly as he slipped into the hall. For the first time in his life, he was relieved, very relieved, his grandmother was such a prude, because if he had to spend eight or ten hours in the same room with Kassandra, watching her undress, knowing she was wearing very little only a few feet away from him and on the same bed, and remembering what it felt like to kiss her, neither one of them would be safe.

With those thoughts, he headed toward his room and a very cold shower.

Chapter Four

They were already late for dinner when Gabe knocked on Kassandra’s door that evening. She let him in while bouncing into her right shoe and trying to fasten an earring simultaneously.

“This isn’t good,” he said, glancing at her bathrobe.

“I’m sorry, but Candy slept until a few minutes ago and any wise mother knows you never dress yourself before you dress your baby.”

From the playpen, Candy gurgled at him. Though he didn’t have a clue about why a wise mother dressed her baby first, Gabe turned to Kassandra and said, “No, I suppose not.”

Awkward, he stood in the middle of the room, not exactly sure what to do. He couldn’t very well wait for Kassandra in the hall while she put on her clothes—that would be a dead giveaway. Yet he didn’t quite feel comfortable waiting in here, either.

Kassandra made his decision for him by stepping into the bathroom to finish dressing. “You know, Gabe,” she called, “I was thinking this afternoon that this charade doesn’t have to be all that complicated. When I was talking with your grandmother I discovered that the truth works for us in a lot of places. The only thing is, we need to make up some stories about us dating, how we decided to get engaged, even about how you got to know Candy.”

“Okay,” Gabe agreed absently, sitting on the bed while he studied the brown-eyed wonder in the playpen. Dressed in a red-and-white striped dress, her dark hair adorned with a red flower which was held in place by a half-inch red elastic ribbon that circled her head, Candy looked cute enough to pose in a magazine.

“I’ve already told your grandmother we live in the same apartment building.”

Gabe smiled. “Did she accuse you of dating me for my money?”

Leaning out of the bathroom, Kassandra peered at him. “Almost. I nipped it in the bud before she could.”

“Good girl,” Gabe said, then Kassandra slid behind the door, going back to doing the things women do in bathrooms. Gabe looked at Candy again. Patting some sort of bright plastic toy, the baby gurgled loudly, reminding him that Kassandra was right. This situation had some anomalies in it that would have to be covered with stories—maybe more lies.

Resting his elbow on his knee and his chin on his closed fist, Gabe shut his eyes. He didn’t like the idea of lying to his parents and grandmother, not one damned bit. But he also didn’t have any choice. Because Emma worried that he’d never get married, Gabe had invented the story that he was engaged to ease his grandmother’s mind. Now, because it was her dying wish to meet the woman who had stolen his heart, Gabe had to introduce Emma to his fiancée. True, this fiancée was fake, but a fake was better than nothing. And in this case, the fake was also a cover for a lie—a bad lie that started with the best of intentions, but a lie nonetheless. Now he was stuck with the consequences—a semitoothless gurgle machine. As he thought the last, Gabe opened his eyes and found Candy studying him. When she realized his eyes were open, she smiled broadly, revealing gums and two, maybe three, teeth.

He decided she looked like an eight-month-old, almost bald flapper from the Roaring Twenties.

Her grin widened.

“I was thinking we could just tell your grandmother Candy’s the result of another relationship, and leave it at that,” Kassandra said from the bathroom, intruding into Gabe’s thoughts.

“My parents might buy that,” Gabe admitted honestly, “but I’m not sure my grandmother will.”

“You’re not suggesting that you’re going to claim her as your own?” Kassandra asked, stretching out of the bathroom to look at him again. The baby gave him a hopeful look and said, “Da-da.”

Feeling strangely hypnotized by the little nymph in the playpen, Gabe rose to pace and broke the spell. “No, I don’t want to make the story go that far. We were only supposed to have been dating for four months or so….”

“So you don’t have anything to worry about, and we can just keep this simple,” Kassandra said, then slid into the bathroom again. “If your grandmother asks about Candy’s father, I’ll just tell her the truth.”

For a good thirty seconds, Gabe stared at the bathroom door, wondering why Kassandra didn’t tell him the truth. He wasn’t really curious in a prying sort of way. Just curious. After all, they had to spend the next three weeks together. It was only fair that he know.

He glanced into the playpen again and Candy grinned at him.

On a whim he reached inside for her. “Come on,” Gabe said, pulling her out of the playpen. “I’ll just hold you here for a few minutes so you get adjusted to me.”

But this baby didn’t have any adjusting to do. She willingly went to him, even patted his fact as if delighted with the texture of his whiskery stubble. With his hands beneath her arms, resting on her rib cage, Gabe held her in a loose standing position. “Anybody ever tell you you’re too friendly?” he asked the happy little girl who gazed up at him dreamily.

“She doesn’t know fear yet,” Kassandra said from the bathroom. “Give her another month or so, though. From what I’ve read, she’s about to tumble into a shyness phase and I won’t be able to leave her with my own parents.”

Still staring at Gabe, Candy stuck her hand in her mouth. Gabe couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her legs, so he just let her dangle in front of him. Candy didn’t seem to mind. The closeness gave her the opportunity to study his face.

“Your parents keep her a lot?” he asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer, and deciding this was as good a way as any to probe discreetly.

“Always,” Kassandra replied from the bathroom. “I couldn’t make it without them.”

“Actually, I’m surprised you got this far,” Gabe said, then realizing she might have taken that the wrong way, Gabe hastened to amend it. “I’m not surprised in a bad way,” Gabe quickly assured her. Candy said something that was a cross between a “boo” and a “goo,” and when she did a little stream of slobber slipped from her mouth to his jacket sleeve. Knowing he would probably be used to this kind of stuff if he really was dating Kassandra, Gabe didn’t react, except to swallow a yelp just dying to leap from his lips.

“I’m surprised in a good way. My God, Kassandra, husband and wife teams sometimes have trouble raising a child. And you’re doing it all alone. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Kassandra said, stepping out of the bathroom. Kassandra’s red jumpsuit matched her daughter’s red-and-white-striped ensemble. Her thick blond hair was down, curving into a loose wave that sat casually on her shoulders. She wore enough makeup to accent her features, but not so much as to look overdone.

Gabe’s immediate thought was to tell her she looked beautiful, but he stopped it. In the first place, she wasn’t the type of woman he dated. He dated uncomplicated women who wouldn’t mind marrying him for his money and then doing exactly what he told them to do for the rest of their lives. And Kassandra was nothing like that. She was a strange combination of sophisticated, smart and conservative. If they dated for real, she’d want to be an equal partner. But they weren’t dating for real. They were the kind of people who antagonized each other from across a hall, and that’s exactly what they would revert to doing the minute they returned to Pennsylvania. There was no need to get too personal. He bit back his compliment and smiled at her.

“Want to take her?” he asked meekly, holding Candy in front of him as if he were afraid to break her.

“You’ve got to learn to do this,” Kassandra said, then shifted Candy until Gabe was holding her on his arm. “See? Isn’t that better?”

“Yes,” Gabe agreed. He could smell Kassandra’s perfume, and that scent tripped the memory of kissing her. He’d hoped he’d blotted that out of his mind for good, but one whiff of her perfume brought it back full force. He felt those odd, wild impulses again, the ones he’d forgotten from his youth. He felt stirrings and longings that went much further and much deeper than were proper for a man who’d only really known this woman for a few hours. And, thinking about it, he couldn’t exactly say he knew her because they’d never actually held a real conversation.

“I think you should carry Candy downstairs,” Kassandra said, making her way to the door. “You could hand her to me as we step into the dining room, so no one sees that you’re not completely comfortable with her, but they’ll assume you are because you brought her downstairs.”

“Sounds logical,” Gabe said, but Kassandra was beating a hasty retreat to the door.

God, he looked wonderful tonight, she thought. She wasn’t sure if the proper name for the suit he was wearing was a tuxedo, but she could tell this wasn’t the kind of suit a man wore to the office. It was more dressy, more stylish, and so perfectly tailored, he looked incredibly sexy. Thinking about him tripped off the memory of kissing him, and Kassandra knew she was blushing. Blushing! She, a woman who’d had a baby, shouldn’t blush over a kiss. And not even a kiss, just the memory of a kiss. Good Lord, she was losing her marbles.

To keep her face hidden from Gabe, she led him down the stairway, but he had to direct her to the dining room. Exactly as they’d planned, Gabe handed Candy to Kassandra the minute they stepped into the room, but they hadn’t needed to plan that far ahead. As Kassandra took Candy from Gabe’s arms, both his parents and his grandmother rose and all three offered to take the child—before they were introduced.

Gabe made quick introductions around the table. His parents were Sam and Loretta, two tall, perfectly groomed, very attractive people in their fifties. His grandmother, of course, was Emmalee, a short, dignified woman—when she wasn’t pretending to be the maid.

Once the introductions were completed, it was obvious that Gabe’s family was having so much fun just having Candy around, that none of them was concerned about how or why she came into this world.

“Oh, Emma told us you had a baby,” Gabe’s mother said delightedly. “Isn’t she darling, Sam?”

Candy grinned broadly. Kassandra pressed her lips together to hide her own grin. “You’re going to spoil her,” she said, then laughed lightly.

“Grandparents are for spoiling babies,” Gabe’s dad announced as he beat the women to Candy and slid her from Kassandra’s arms.

“Put her in the high chair, Sam,” Loretta instructed, but Sam only smiled and shook his head.

“Babies don’t eat salad, so I’ll hold her through the first course.”

“All right,” Loretta reluctantly agreed. “But I get to feed her.”

“You feed her the peas and the awful stuff,” Emma said. “Then I’ll feed her the ice cream and she’ll like me best.”

“I’m sure she’ll like you all equally,” Gabe said, pulling out a chair for Kassandra. He took the seat beside her. “God knows, if she can like me, she can like anybody.”

“It is a bit of a shock to see you with a baby, Gabe,” Loretta said honestly. “It’s a pleasant shock, but a shock.”

“Not only that,” Emmalee interrupted, “but Kassandra’s not even Gabe’s type. She’s not bossy, or snotty, or half naked. I think our prayers have been answered, Loretta.”

Loretta took a quick, close look at Kassandra. “Why, Emma, you know, I think you’re right.”

“I’ll thank you both not to talk about me as if I’m not in the room,” Gabe muttered.

“We’ve been doing it since you were Candy’s age, Gabe. I hardly think we’re going to stop now,” Emmalee said. “Pass me a roll.

“Besides, it’s true,” Emma continued as she tore her roll apart and began to liberally apply butter. “This is the woman we’ve always wished to find in your apartment when we made our surprise visits to Pennsylvania. In fact, I’m so pleased, I swear I could cry.”

Right then and there Gabe knew all the torment he’d suffered over the past four days had been worth it. He also knew he’d do anything he had to do over the next three weeks to keep this charade going. Anything. Absolutely anything.

“That’s why I think you should get married while you’re here.”

If Gabe had been drinking something, he would have spit it across the table. Kassandra, however, reacted beautifully.

“We can’t, Emma,” she said sweetly, then patted Gabe’s hand. Grateful, he flipped his palm up, wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed lightly. “I still have eighteen months of school.”

“Eighteen months of school?” Sam asked as he paced behind Emma’s chair, patting Candy’s back as Candy noisily patted his cheeks.

“Yes,” Kassandra answered. “I’m studying to be a teacher.”

“A teacher…?” Gabe said, then realized his mistake. But he was just so surprised. From the way she’d badgered him and thrown ordinance numbers at him, Gabe was sure she was studying to be a lawyer. “Is a very wonderful choice for Kassandra,” Gabe finished, covering his faux pas the best he could. “She’s very good with children.”

“Well, I should say so,” Emma scoffed, rising from her chair. Without asking for permission or giving a word of warning, she pulled Candy from Sam’s arms. “Just look at how happy and pleasant her baby is.” Candy picked that exact moment to lean forward and rub noses with Emma. “And what a darling,” Emma cooed. “She’s so darned sweet she deserves the name Candy.” Abruptly Emma stopped herself. She glanced at Candy, then glanced at Gabe, then back to Candy again.

The room seemed to fall into suspended animation, as Gabe felt the weight of the anticipated question—how to explain Candy to his grandmother. From the look on her face, and the way she kept glancing from Candy to Gabe, Gabe believed she almost expected Candy to be his. Kassandra had given him a logical answer for that. But he wasn’t sure telling his grandmother that Candy was the result of another relationship would be quite enough to satisfy her curiosity, or placate her delicate sensibilities. He held his breath, waiting.

“You know, Gabe,” Emma said, almost giddy. “She looks exactly like you.”

He drew a long breath. “She’s not mine, Grandma. Candy’s the result of a past relationship of Kassandra’s.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Emma blustered. “What I’m saying is, Candy looks so much like you she’ll fit right into your family—once you start one,” she added craftily. “You do plan to adopt her?”

“Yes,” Gabe said, and gave Kassandra a quick look to see how she was reacting. From the expression on her face, Gabe saw Kassandra wasn’t going to contradict him—or rescue him. She was letting him keep the ball. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck.

“Good. A child needs security. Though I’m sure I don’t have to explain that to you,” Emma added, smiling at Kassandra, who, to her credit, nodded, letting his grandmother have her opinions without argument—whether she agreed or not. Which was a hell of a lot more than he could say for his other girlfriends.

“And I also think it’s important that everyone in the family have the same name. So when you adopt her, Gabe, she’ll get your last name.”

Knowing this idea was really passé, and not knowing Kassandra’s feelings on the subject, Gabe held his breath. Still not contradicting, Kassandra only smiled.

“Oh, my goodness,” Emma said, then laughed noisily. “I just thought of something else. Once you change her name, she’ll be Candy Cayne.”

“Isn’t that adorable!” Loretta gasped.

Sam, Gabe and Kassandra all winced.

“Sounds like a stripper,” Sam muttered, shaking his head.

Kassandra said, “All I can picture is Candy getting teased through most of her school years.” She turned and smiled at Gabe. “Maybe we’d better give this another thought.”

“I think I would,” Sam agreed just as the maid arrived with dinner. Emma handed the baby to Loretta, who slid her into her high chair. “I’m more interested in hearing about Kassandra’s schooling. Do you go full-time?”

“Part-time. I can’t afford to go full-time.”

Taking her seat, Emma smiled shrewdly. “All the more reason for you to get married now. Then you’d be able to afford to be full-time because your husband would be responsible for your tuition.”

Unexpectedly, Kassandra laughed. “Don’t you think that’s a little bit inconsistent? I’m getting an education because I want to be my own person. Marrying a man to get my independence is almost paradoxical.”

“I say it’s common sense,” Emma said primly. “In my day…”

Candy let out a yelp, and Loretta, Sam and Emma all jumped to their feet.

“She’s just anxious,” Kassandra told Loretta with a chuckle. “She’s a very healthy eater and a fast eater. She wants you to speed things up.”

“Oh, I’m making you mad,” Loretta cooed to the baby. “Well, we’ll just go faster, then.”

Gabe watched the way his mother fawned over Candy, feeding her, tickling her, teasing her, and realized he’d never seen his mother like this. She was so happy she was buoyant.

“Give her a bite of the peas,” Sam said, and Gabe switched his attention to his father. He’d also never seen his father like this. Hell, he didn’t even know his father liked kids….

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