Father Christmas (36 page)

Somebody’s Dad

Fund manager Brett Stockton wants love,
commitment, maybe even marriage—but no kids, period. Falling in
love with photographer Sharon Bartell is easy. She’s everything he
could possibly want in a woman…except that she’s the single mother
of a two-year-old son. Can Brett learn to love Max? Or for both Max
and Sharon’s sakes, should he walk away?

Hush, Little Baby

When Levi Holt’s single-mom sister dies and
he learns he’s the guardian of her six-month-old baby, he needs a
crash course in fatherhood. Juggling child care with his demanding
career as an architect, he has trouble conducting business with
Corinne Lanier, who wants him to alter his design for her boss’s
new house. Corinne has no time or patience for a frazzled dad and a
cranky baby—until both Levi and D.J. start working their magic on
her. With love, lullabies and a few desperately needed classes at
the Daddy School, Levi might figure out how to put the fragmented
pieces of his life back together. But will there be room in it for
Corinne? And can he be certain Corinne loves him for himself and
not for his precious little baby?

Almost an Angel

Widower Conor Malone wants Christmas to be
joyous for his daughter. But Amy believes Santa is going to bring
her mother back to her. How can Conor make the holiday bright for
Amy when he can’t give her the one gift she wants? With a little
help from Eliza Powell, the new school psychologist—and the Daddy
School.

Daddy’s Girl

As a court-appointed
guardian for Alix Medina, Hayley Baines has only one job: to
represent the best interests of the little girl at the center of a
difficult custody battle between the child’s widowed father, Kevin
Medina, and Kevin’s in-laws. That Kevin is a working-class guy who
runs a lawn service and the Porters are outrageously wealthy, able
to provide Alix with everything she could ever want, doesn’t
influence Hayley. That Kevin is strong and sexy and irresistibly
attractive
shouldn’t
influence her. But how objective can she be when talking to
him, gazing at him, simply being with him turns her on in a crazy
way?

***

If you enjoyed
Father Christmas
, here’s
a sample of
Father Of Two
, the third
book in the Daddy School series, which tells the story of
high-power attorney Dennis Murphy and Molly’s sister Gail Saunders,
a public defender trying to defeat Murphy in court while he tries
to lure her into his bed. Unfortunately, Murphy’s adorable,
incorrigible seven-year-old twins, Erin and Sean, have plans of
their own which might bring Gail and Murphy together or drive them
apart forever.

Chapter
One

“
THERE’S A PLACE in
France, where the naked ladies dance...
”

“
Oh, gross! I hate that
song!”

“
There’s a hole in the
wall, and the boys can see it all...
”

“
Shut up! That is so
disgusting—”

“
And the cops don’t
shoot, ’cuz they think it’s kind of cute...
”

“
Daddy, make Sean shut up!
That’s such a totally disgusting song! Daddy!”

“
When the dancers
kick, every man will grab his—
”

“
Okay, okay,” Dennis broke
in. He hadn’t been listening too closely to the lyrics Sean had
attached to the classic snake-charmer tune, but he suspected
something bad was about to emerge from his son’s mouth, and if that
happened, something even worse—a blood-curdling scream—would emerge
from his daughter’s. “Nobody wants to know what happens when the
dancers kick,” he told Sean. “What everybody wants to know is,
where the hell are your pj’s?”

The twins shrugged, not bothering to pretend
they cared. The room they were supposed to be settling into was
cluttered with suitcases, tote bags, packed cartons, empty cartons,
and cartons lying on their side, disgorging their contents across
the floor. The room measured fourteen by sixteen feet, yet only
about three square inches of floor showed beneath the massive
detritus of two seven-year-old lives.

Dennis had been combing through the twins’
assorted junk for the better part of an hour, and he still hadn’t
found their pajamas. “I give up,” he said with a sigh. “Your mother
must have packed your pj’s somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I know
where.”

“
I think you shouldn’t
swear so much, Daddy,” Erin scolded, her hazel eyes round and
earnest.

“
I don’t sleep in pj’s,”
Sean added, poking through a pile of assorted clothing. “I sleep in
my swimsuit.”

“
That’s disgusting.” Erin
sent an indignant frown her father’s way. “I really don’t want to
share a room with him, Daddy. He’s so gross. Did you hear the song
he was singing? It has a very bad word in it. Did you hear? He was
going to say—”

“
I heard, I heard. Where
are your pj’s, Erin?”

“
I don’t need pj’s. I need
a room of my own.”

“
Yeah, you and Virginia
Woolf.” Dennis rummaged through a half-filled carton, but found
only an assortment of sweatshirts featuring the logos of every
Super Bowl sponsor since 1975, along with a horrifying number of
unmatched socks.

“
At Mommy’s house I had my
own room,” Erin reminded him. “I don’t see why I have to share a
room with Sean.”

“
Mommy’s house had more
bedrooms,” Dennis explained, ignoring the sting of his conscience
reminding him that Erin could easily have her own bedroom in
Dennis’s apartment if he were willing to vacate his study and
convert it into a room for her.

After all, it wasn’t Erin’s fault that her
mother had decided, after her boyfriend took a job with a high-tech
company out in Seattle, that she wanted to move there with him and
get married. Nor was it Erin’s fault that Dennis had claimed he
would rather accept full custody of the kids than let his ex-wife
move them three thousand miles from Arlington, Connecticut, where
Dennis lived. Nor was it Erin’s fault that Dennis’s ex-wife had
said okay, called her lawyer, and asked him to do the paperwork
that would transfer custody to Dennis.

He’d been elated, even if he suspected that
she’d agreed to give him the kids for selfish reasons. She’d said
something about how she wanted to start fresh, and starting fresh
didn’t mean dragging a pair of seven-year-old kids—who referred to
her new life partner as Mr. Potato-Head, for some reason—across the
country, away from the town where they’d been born and their father
still lived.

Whatever her motives, Dennis had been
delighted to go from a weekend Daddy to the real thing, full-time,
seven days a week. But now, four hours after Dennis had driven with
the twins to the airport to wave their mother off, reality was
kicking in. Reality was that he owned an elegant penthouse co-op
high above downtown Arlington, with spectacular views of the
mountains to the north and west, and with two bedrooms and a study.
Reality was that if he didn’t convert his study into a third
bedroom, Erin and Sean were going to have to share sleeping
quarters.

He really didn’t want to give up his study.
It served as his at-home office. It was his retreat. His personal
think tank. Did not wanting to give up that room mean he didn’t
love his children?

“
I don’t want to sleep
with him because he’s disgusting,” Erin explained with
self-righteous fervor. “Plus, he belches.”

“
So do you,” Sean
retorted. “Only thing is, I can belch louder. You’re just
jealous.”

“
I will
not
share a
room with him, Daddy!”

“
Sorry, sweetie,” Dennis
murmured, abandoning his excavation of sweatshirts and widowed
socks and straightening up. “If I could give you each your own
room—”
if I were willing to sacrifice
my study
“—I would. For now, how
about if I make a dividing line down the middle of the room?” He
shoved one of the cartons to the center of the room, then lined up
another carton next to it, and another. “See? We could divide the
room in half, and each of you can have your own half.” One of the
cartons tilted slightly. Lifting it, he discovered a Hot-Wheels car
underneath. He nudged the car out of the way and set the box back
down. Then he gestured at the two beds, on opposite walls. “This
half is yours, and the other half is Sean’s.”

Erin contemplated the arrangement, not quite
convinced. “He can peek over the top.”

“
Who’d wanna look at you?”
Sean countered, then belched very loudly.

Erin cringed. “Eeeeuw! Daddy—”

“
All right. House rule: no
belching,” Dennis declared.

“
I’m a Budweiser frog,”
Sean boasted, discovering a pair of swimming trunks in a suitcase.
“That wasn’t a belch. That was me croaking.
Bud
.”

Sean croaking
Bud
sounded an
awful lot like a belch to Dennis. “If you’re a frog, I’m going to
make you sleep in the bathroom. Now guys, come on. It’s nine
o’clock, you have school tomorrow, and you should be in
bed.”

“
How is the bus going to
find us?” Erin demanded. “Our old bus stop was near Mommy’s
house.”

“
I’ll drive you to
school,” Dennis promised. His apartment building was located in a
different primary-school district from the one the children used to
live in, but he had decided to keep them at their old school for
continuity’s sake. The least he could do to make the transition
easier for them was to chauffeur them to school in the morning.
He’d already hired a part-time nanny named Betty Grover to pick
them up at school at three in the afternoon, bring them home and
remain with them until he got home from work.

“
I can’t find my night
gown,” Erin announced. “Can I sleep in one of your T-shirts,
Daddy?”

“
My shirts will be too
big,” he warned, knowing he would let her sleep in all his T-shirts
at the same time if it would make it easier for her to share the
bedroom with her brother. “Which one do you want?”

“
The gray one with the
Blood Of Sean on it.”

Dennis stifled a shudder. He’d been wearing
that shirt a few months ago, when Sean had spouted a nosebleed.
Once the nasal Red River had subsided, Dennis had tried to wash the
stains left behind on his shirt, but several runs through the
washing machine had failed to erase them completely. He’d intended
to throw the shirt away, but the kids wouldn’t let him. “It’s
important,” they’d insisted. “It’s got the Blood Of Sean on
it.”

He’d tossed it on the top shelf in his
closet and hoped the kids would forget about the Blood Of Sean.
Obviously, Erin hadn’t forgotten.

Sighing at her elephantine memory, he left
the chaos of their bedroom and trudged down the hall to his own
room. He hadn’t yet closed the drapes, and the wall of windows
framed a lovely view of the night sky above the city’s sparkling
lights. He would have appreciated the scenery, except that the
night sky and the lights reminded him that it was well past nine
o’clock. When the kids used to come to his place on a Saturday
night, it didn’t matter if they stayed up past their bedtimes—which
they usually did. But on a Sunday night, with everyone’s alarm
clock set for seven a.m., this wasn’t good.

He hurried into his walk-in closet, groped
around the shelf until he found the gory gray shirt, and carried it
back to Erin, who slipped it over her head with a laugh that would
have sounded joyful except for the cackling-witch undertone. “Look,
Sean!” she gloated, nearly tripping on the hem of the shirt, which
tickled her bare toes. “I’m wearing the Blood Of Sean.”

Sean didn’t seem envious. In his
electric-blue swim trunks, he looked more ready for a day at the
beach than a night in dream-land.

“
Okay,” Dennis announced.
“Brush your teeth, guys. Do you have your toothbrushes?”

“
No,” they chorused,
barreling past him to get to the bathroom.

He surveyed the turmoil,
the cartons standing like a cardboard Wall of China down the center
of the room, the Barbie with her head twisted
backwards—
Exorcist
Barbie
? he wondered—on the dresser,
the glow-in-the-dark yo-yo on the chair, the Slinky slithering out
from under Sean’s bed and the countless Beanie Babies scrimmaging
on the floor in front of the closet. Dennis appreciated the way the
bean-bag animals blocked the closet door, preventing him from
opening it and going into cardiac arrest when he saw the bedlam
inside. He owed those Beanie Babies his life.

Where the hell had his ex-wife packed the
twins’ toothbrushes?

It didn’t matter; they kept spare
toothbrushes at his place for their weekend visits. But still... He
felt disoriented and dazed—and appallingly disorganized.

He was a thirty-eight-year-old lawyer with a
firm grip on life. He prided himself on being smart, shrewd,
capable, and generally all-around brilliant. Perhaps a tad
arrogant—but his arrogance had a foundation in truth. He was a
Powerhouse, a Master of the Universe, the sort of attorney for whom
clients gladly paid many hundreds of dollars an hour, confident
that they were going to get their money’s worth out of him.