Merry Christmas, Daddy

Which seemed impossible. Short of throwing in a block of Cayne Enterprises stock, Gabe didn’t know how he could have made her a better offer. Yet, obviously, his very lucrative, very generous proposition wasn’t good enough.

On the verge of giving up, Gabe saw Kassandra jump out of a late-model car someone else was driving. Though Gabe felt a burst of relief, followed by a stirring of guilt since he never thought to offer her a ride to the airport, he didn’t want to weaken. Couldn’t weaken. This trip had to be on his terms, because this was his family. He couldn’t have Kassandra calling the shots, or running the show, or even being smart with him.

Not in front of his family.

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

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.”

“I am not treating you as if you have the plague.”

“All right, just a bad case of the flu, then,” she said, attempting to lighten the mood enough that he’d relax with her.

“Very funny,” he said, though he certainly wasn’t laughing. “To you this is just a big joke, and in this case I’m left holding the bag. We’re going to fail because I don’t know a damned thing about kids and I’m supposed to have been dating you long enough that I would be accustomed to your daughter by now,” he said, revealing to Kassandra that he might not have been reading through the ninety-minute plane ride to Georgia, but rather thinking about their predicament and not liking the conclusions he had drawn. He combed his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “Hell, I don’t know why I bothered bringing you. Once I saw the baby, I should have realized this wouldn’t work.”

With that, he turned and stormed to the door. “I’m going to get Candy’s things,” he said, bounding from the room.

Kassandra dropped to the bed, dispirited. She’d never thought of that. A man engaged to marry a woman would have been dating her long enough to know her child. And Gabe didn’t know her child.

He was right. They were destined to fail. And it was her fault. If she couldn’t come alone, be what he wanted, then she never should have come. He had every right in the world to be angry with her.

“What the hell is wrong with Mr. Cayne?”

Kassandra glanced up and saw a short, white-haired woman standing in the open doorway. She wore a simple gray dress and sensible shoes. She clutched a thick black cane in one hand, but her other hand and arm were weighted down with clean linens. “I said, what the hell is wrong with Mr. Cayne?”

For a full ten seconds, Kassandra sat openmouthed, staring at the woman, not quite sure how to respond. Kassandra might not be a member of the ruling class, but she knew one didn’t talk about the family’s troubles with the maid.

“Uh, thank you for the linens,” Kassandra said, hoping she’d changed the subject.

The woman hobbled to the bed and laid the linens on one corner. As she did, sleeping Candy rolled onto her belly and rubbed her face into the comforter. “Well, what have we here?”

“That’s my daughter, Candy,” Kassandra said.

“Oh, let me guess,” the old woman said. “I’ll bet this is why Gabriel Cayne went storming out of here a few minutes ago.” Leaning over to get a better look at Candy, she added, “He doesn’t like complications in his life. Wants everything to be perfect. I wouldn’t worry about what he thinks, though. He can be a real uppity pain in the butt sometimes.” She pointed at the towels. “Here, honey, put these towels in the bathroom for me, would you?”

“Sure,” Kassandra answered, taking the stack from the bed where the maid had set them. Walking to the bathroom, she realized that though she, herself, wasn’t actually saying anything, the maid could be drawing all kinds of conclusions from this conversation, and Kassandra knew she had to nip them in the bud. “Mr. Cayne just wasn’t expecting me to bring Candy along,” Kassandra explained. “At the last minute, I decided I didn’t want to miss Candy’s first Christmas. He wasn’t angry. We were both simply stressed out from the trip. Not only does Candy have more luggage than six adults, but she cried for most of the plane ride. Candy’s not the most wonderful traveling companion,” Kassandra added as she walked out of the bathroom.

“Nonsense,” the old woman said. “I think she’s perfect. Why, look at her,” she said, smoothing her gnarled fingers along Candy’s feathery hair. “She’s adorable.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Kassandra agreed, gazing at Candy’s rosy cheeks and velvety skin. Her hair had been matted into little tufts, and the spot right beside her ear held the imprint of Kassandra’s coat button, but in spite of that Candy managed to look beautiful. “It is hard to believe Mr. Cayne doesn’t find her as adorable as we do.”

The maid looked at Kassandra quizzically. “Do you always call him Mr. Cayne?”

“Not really,” Kassandra answered, unwittingly thinking of the hundreds of things she’d called him in the past year, particularly the things she’d called him when he woke Candy with one of his parties. “I’m only trying to be respectful.”

“Well, the hell with that,” the maid said with a cackle. “You can be honest with me.”

Not thinking that a very wise idea, Kassandra glanced at the linens. “Were you going to change the bed?”

“Yeah, but you beat me up here,” the maid said, still gazing at Candy who was sleeping soundly. “And now one of us is going to have to hold the little one while the other one works.”

“Fair enough,” Kassandra agreed, glad to be off the subject of Gabe Cayne. “You hold Candy,” she said, motioning the old woman to the rocker by the bay window. “And I’ll change the bed.”

“I like the way you think,” the old woman said, her eyes shining. “I could use a few minutes off my feet.”

Kassandra was half tempted to ask the poor thing how long she’d been working for the Caynes and how much longer she’d have to work before she could retire, but she thought the better of that one, too.

“Why don’t you tell me where you’re from while Gabe’s out getting your bags?”

Bags wasn’t the half of it. There was an odd assortment of baby things too numerous to mention. She didn’t want to think about that any more than she wanted to carry on a personal conversation with a member of the staff, but at this moment the conversation was the lesser of two evils. Besides, the question itself was harmless.

“Pennsylvania.”

“You work with Gabe?”

“Not really. Actually, I live in his apartment building.”

“I see,” the maid said quietly.

Kassandra shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do. I didn’t start dating him because his company owns the building I live in. I started seeing him because he wanted to see me,” she said, realizing how easily a story could be created by using the actual facts. “Things just sort of fell into place after that,” she added, deciding that this really was simple. Easy enough that they could pull this off—even with Candy—if Gabe would just loosen up enough to give her a few minutes to prime him for his part.

“No kidding,” the maid said, genuinely impressed, then she cackled. “To tell you the truth, I’m surprised the old scrooge brought you with him. He never brings his girlfriends down here. From what I hear, he’s ashamed of them. In fact, I’m real surprised he’s dating a woman who not only has a brain in her head, she also has enough class to give an old woman a break by making her own bed.”

Wide eyed, Kassandra gaped at her. “You shouldn’t be talking about him like that.”

The maid batted her hands again. “Oh, hell, when something’s true I think everybody’s got a right to say it. Gabe’s a chauvinist,” the old woman added candidly. “After seeing one or two of his girlfriends, even you would have to admit he’s a chauvinist.”

Not wanting to touch this conversation with a ten-foot pole, Kassandra frowned.

The maid gave her a crafty look. “You’ve seen some of the women he’s dated, haven’t you?”

Kassandra couldn’t help it, she winced.

“Awful, weren’t they?”

“No, not awful,” Kassandra began, scrambling to think of something positive to say about Gabe to counteract her wince, but she stopped herself. The woman just admitted Gabe never brought a girlfriend to Georgia before. Kassandra was the first. So, the maid couldn’t know about Gabe’s girlfriends.

Just as quickly as Kassandra reasoned that out, she also realized Gabe’s grandmother would know about his girlfriends, if only because of visits to Pennsylvania. She slumped on the bed. “Oh, God.”

As she said the last, the bedroom door swung open. “Judas H. Priest,” Gabe said, puffing as he dragged the playpen and swing into the room. “I’m surprised you didn’t roll up her bedroom carpeting and bring it along.”

He looked at Kassandra and then looked past her and saw his grandmother sitting on the rocker by the window, holding sleeping Candy. “Grandma!”

“Don’t you grandma me,” The woman said as she motioned for Kassandra to take the baby. “You have about four hours of explaining to do, young man,” she added, hoisting herself out of her chair. “What kind of man gets angry with his girlfriend because she doesn’t want to miss her baby’s first Christmas?”

Taken aback, Gabe glanced at Kassandra. Her eyes had widened, and her face had frozen into a look that said quite clearly she’d fallen for one of his grandmother’s traps. Seeing this, Gabe smiled. Two could play this game.

“I wasn’t angry that she wanted to spend Candy’s first Christmas with her,” Gabe explained. “I just didn’t want to spoil your holiday by having a baby around when we’re not used to children.”

Before Gabe realized what she was about to do, his grandmother swatted him across the back of his knees with her cane. “Poppycock. Don’t try to fool the master. I see what’s going on here.. If I hadn’t already realized you gave poor Kassandra a hard time about bringing Candy, I would have known it when I saw you bring Candy’s gear in.”

She drew a long, life-sustaining breath, and in that second Gave remembered that this woman who talked a good game was in the final minutes of her final quarter. The whole purpose of this visit was to spend some time with his grandmother before she died. And happy time. The purpose was not to argue or antagonize her. Or beat her at her own game.

“Apologize,” she said simply.

Without hesitation or qualm, Gabe turned to Kassandra. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely, and suddenly realized he meant it. Not only had his silent treatment been unfair, but the child sleeping in Kassandra’s arms wasn’t all that bad. A little noisy, maybe, he thought, remembering the plane ride down, but not bad. “I yelled before I thought,” he added, leaning toward her. He brushed his lips across Kassandra’s for his grandmother’s sake, and though the move had been so unexpected Kassandra hadn’t responded at all, Gabe got a surprising little jolt.

Telling himself he was testing this only for his grandmother’s sake, he took Candy from Kassandra’s arms and laid her on the bed. Then he hooked his hands under Kassandra’s elbows and forced her to stand before he went back for another taste of her mouth. Not quick, or without thought, this kiss was long and lingering…and purposeful. The way Gabe had life figured, there was a reason behind everything, and once he uncovered the reason, then the problem had no power over him.