Once Upon a Christmas (52 page)

“Larry, come
on
!” Grunting with effort, she
managed to drag her dog away from the love-in. She reeled in the leash and
locked it in place. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I think I know.” Nick lifted his mail—and
Shemp—from his head. “They probably smell the ingredients I’ve been using
for my latest invention.”

“Eau de pet chow?”

“Something like that. It’s a sports drink. Beef- and
tuna-flavored—”

“Pet Gatorade!” Chloe interrupted. “You
really made it!” She couldn’t believe he’d remembered. And taken time away
from his growth accelerator work to do it. “Can I put some in Red’s shop?
It’ll be a mega-seller. You’ll see.”

“Before you come up with a multilevel marketing scheme,
maybe you’d better come check it out for yourself.” He grinned and aimed
her bird toward her, letting Shemp click-click his way across a sweepstakes
envelope and onto her shoulder again. “You want to?”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm?”

“Hmmm, I hope you weren’t planning to enter that.”
Chloe leaned forward to examine the Shemp surprise on the envelope.

Nick leaned forward, too. “But I’m already a winner!”

She grinned and batted her eyelashes at him. “You were
always a winner with us, Nick.”

“Cute. Anyway, come on inside. I’ll show you what’s got
your menagerie all riled up.”

“I’d better take these guys home first.” Chloe
lifted Moe from his new perch around Nick’s shoulders. “Next thing you
know, Shemp will decide you’re his new lovebird companion and things will get
really interesting.”

Nick shuddered. “I don’t even want to know what you
mean by that.”

“Nope, you probably don’t. See you in a few minutes!”

Chloe’s “few minutes” stretched into a half hour
before Nick heard her coming up his front walk.
Female standard time
, he
mused as he opened his front door and watched her approach.
It was a whole
other dimension
.

She waved, hurrying with surprising pregnant-bellied grace
between the white oleander bushes bordering his walk and front porch. Her
sneakered feet clomped quickly over the porch floorboards.

“Look!” She waved a huge, ripped-open express mail
package. “This was waiting on my doorstep when I got home.”

She bounded inside, powered by excitement and something else
Nick couldn’t define. He shut the door and turned to find her jiving across his
living room, hugging the package to her chest. This time, that “glow”
of hers was no joke, and this time it didn’t come from a workout or her
pregnancy. It came from whatever was in that package.

Hell.

It could only be one thing, Nick figured. Even though he’d
known it would come someday, the reality still felt like a sucker punch to the
gut.

“So, when’s Bruno coming back?”

Chloe’s head came up. Her fingers froze on the package.
Somehow, he’d liked it better when she’d been hugging the damned thing. At
least then she’d looked happy.

Well, he’d be damned if he’d make her miserable now. Wasn’t
this what they’d both worked toward for so many weeks? Bruno was coming back.
Nick would be able to concentrate full-time on work again for a change. They
should both be ecstatic, dammit!

Or at least one of them could be.

“I mean,” he went on, forcing the words past his
suddenly aching throat, “you must be wanting to go get things ready for
him. You know, to meet him at the airport.” Why wasn’t she moving? “Or
the harbor, I guess. What’s the preferred Marine mode of travel anyway?”

His voice cracked on the joke. Swearing under his breath,
Nick stared at the test tubes he’d arrayed in their holders on the coffee
table, all set up to show Chloe the different varieties of pet sports drinks he’d
come up with. For some reason, the samples looked smaller than he’d remembered.

“Oh, you mean this!” She waved the package. “Nick,
it’s the—”

“Yeah. Good news, huh?”

She beamed. Hell. Next she’d probably want to read him the
damned thing.

“Let me put these back in my office and we’ll—”

“Nick, wait.” Her voice came hesitantly from
across the room. “I’m sorry. Your invention… Awww, Nick. I’m sorry. I
was too excited to think straight. I should have—”

“No apologies necessary.” Striding toward the
table, he swept the tubes in his arms. They clinked against each other,
sounding as hollow as his heart felt. “I can show you these another time.”

“No, wait! It’s just been so long since I’ve heard from
my dad that I couldn’t wait to—”

She kept on talking, but Nick’s brain stuttered on the word “dad,”
and refused to catch up. The package wasn’t from Bruno?

She touched his shoulder. “Why don’t you show me what’s
got Larry and Moe all crazy over you today? Then we’ll do this.” She
nodded at the envelope and shook it in her excitement. “Okay?”

Only one thought zinged through his head, replaying itself
like an ancient vinyl LP stuck on one really well-played groove:
The Package
Wasn’t From Bruno
song.

“Okay?” she prompted.

Nick shook his head to clear it. He focused on Chloe. It
wasn’t an easy task, considering the way she was bouncing in place.

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “I’ll show you
this later. It’s not every day you get a supersize express mail from your
father.”

“It’s never, actually,” she admitted, raising the
package. She flipped it over to read the addresses on the front. “He’s
very busy.” She frowned briefly, then her gaze zipped to Nick. “Are
you sure?”

Nodding, he arranged the test tubes on the coffee table. As
long as it wasn’t a letter from Bruno in that package, he’d listen to just
about anything.

“Okay!” She jigged toward him, all excitement
restored. Her smile brightened as she put her hand in the envelope. The
flexible waterproof packaging bulged as she rummaged inside, talking non-stop. “He
must have gotten my letter about the baby,” she said breathlessly. “I
wasn’t sure whether I should send it to his vacation house in Florida or his
new apartment in Manhattan. You know, he’s always, ummm, on the move.”

She withdrew a small bubble-wrapped bundle and an embossed
ivory card. For an instant, she hugged the items to her chest. She all but
threw them toward him in her excitement. “Look!”

“Okay!” he squealed, mimicking her high-octane
delivery. He grinned despite himself as he caught everything. Her enthusiasm
was impossible to resist.

The bubble wrap crinkled as Nick juggled everything to get
the card on top. He rubbed his thumb over the monogrammed initials on the front
of the card. Ritzy. But then, if he remembered correctly, Chloe’s father was a
corporate executive for an international consulting firm. He could undoubtedly
afford something nicer than a drugstore note card, especially for his own
daughter.

Beside him, Chloe hugged his arm excitedly. She gave his
biceps a vise-grip squeeze. “Go ahead. Read what it says!”

Resisting the urge to flex, Nick flipped open the folded
note card. A business card fluttered out. He caught it with his thumb just
before it slipped to the floor, and read the words beside the tasteful logo.
Sloan,
Hinkle, Hinkle-Sloan, and Carmichal: Consultants
.

“Whoa. Consultants too exclusive to reveal what they’re
supposed to be consulted about. Swanky.”

“I guess so.” She shrugged as she read over his
shoulder. “I’ve never visited his company, but it keeps him pretty busy.”

Not too busy to advertise for more business from his own
daughter, Nick noticed. What kind of guy slipped a business card in his family
mail?

Chloe tapped it. “Hinkle-Sloan is my father’s second
wife,” she explained. “Remember? The one I told you about?”

“The wedding where you wore your Brownie uniform instead
of the flower girl dress they gave you and staged a sit-down strike in the
middle of the church aisle?”

She gave him a mischievous grin. “I was seven years
old.” She made a show of examining her manicure with inch-thick innocence.
“What did I know about weddings?”

“Enough to know you didn’t want your dad to remarry, I
guess.”

“Hmmph. They managed to squeeze past me and do it
anyway.” Chloe rested her hand on her middle and stroked gently. “Anyway,
it wasn’t just me. The ring bearer helped, too.”

“See? Even then you could wrap a guy around your little
finger.”

“Fun-ny.”

“He wasn’t wearing a Brownie uniform, I take it.”

“No. He thought his knees looked too knobby in the
little skirt.”

Nick laughed as she snuggled nearer. Her belly nestled
companionably against his hip, familiarly warm and round beneath her
sweatshirt. Chloe hadn’t been this close to him since their patio-table
encounter, Nick realized. Over the intervening weeks, she’d kept her distance
from him. Now, if he hadn’t had his hands full already, he’d have pulled her
even closer.

“Since the wedding, it’s really been
Hinkle-Sloan-Carmichal,” she went on, wrinkling her nose, “but
Tabitha doesn’t think that looks nice on a business card.”

“Aww. Poor Tabitha.” He grinned. “I hate it
when multi-marriages wreck my business cards. Sooo inconvenient.”

“Be nice,” she ordered. And pinched him.

“Youch!” he yelped, rubbing his elbow against his
side. “Be nice yourself, you big bully.”

“Sorry.” She jabbed him in the ribs. “Hurry
up and look at everything!”

Nick gave her a sideways glance and realized she was
probably oblivious to all the Three Stooges poking and jabbing she was doing.
In fact, she wasn’t even looking at him anymore. Instead, she squished up
closer to him and stared at the things in his hands, twirling her hair against
her cheek.

Insecurity clue number one. Messing up that immaculate
hairstyle of hers. He wondered what was bugging her. Maybe she’d thought the
package was from Bruno, too, and was disappointed it wasn’t.

Grrr. He resisted the urge to rip open the bubble wrap, and
scanned the message on the card instead.
Congratulations, Chloe
, it read
in neat laser-printed type.
Tabitha and I
—

He quit reading and looked up. “Chloe, this message is
printed. As in computer-generated and printed.”

Her forehead wrinkled as she glanced at the card.
Yup, it’s
still the same one
, her expression said. “Of course it is. Catch up,
Nick! This is the twenty-first century. Secretaries don’t handwrite things
these days.”

“Secretaries?”

Another shrug. “My dad suggested I route my
correspondence through one of his secretaries. It’s more expedient.”

His jaw dropped.

Then snapped shut when Chloe laughed.

“I know, I know.” She gave him an
ignore-those-pesky-concerns kind of wave. “You’re thinking my dad must be
some big old stuffy corporate muckety-muck, having secretaries at his beck and
call like he does, right? But—”

“No, that wasn’t precisely what I was thinking, but—”

“—but not even four secretaries would have that effect
on him. He’s a regular guy, really.”

“Four. Four secretaries?” And the guy still couldn’t
find the time to handwrite a note to his only daughter, a month before his
first grandchild was due?

“No, he only has three secretaries. Sheesh, Nick, you’re
not listening. All I’m saying is, my dad’s just an ordinary Joe who happens to
be in big business.” She stared expectantly at him for a minute, then
prodded his shin with her sneakered foot. “Keep reading!”

Nick looked at the note card and seriously considered
shredding the thing. That was about the nicest treatment it deserved. But Chloe
seemed thrilled to have it, so he only raised it higher and went on reading.

Tabitha and I,
it said,
are delighted with your
news. We’ll be thinking of you during our annual Christmas cruise next month!
Give the newest Carmichal a kiss for grandpa, and call me if you need anything.
Love, your father, Newton Carmichal.

At least the signature was handwritten.

Beside him, Chloe sighed. “Isn’t that sweet? Did you
see how he put ‘grandpa’ in there? How he said to call him if I needed
anything?” She hugged herself and beamed up at him. “Thank God for
Lucinda.”

“Lucinda?”

“Secretary number two.”

“Of course.”

“If not for her, my letter might never have reached
him.”

“Right.”

How had Nick never noticed how outrageously…absent her father
was? How thoughtless?

“You know, this really gives me hope, Nick. I think
this might be a new beginning for us.”

“You and Lucinda?”

“Me and my dad, silly.” Chloe poked him again and
gazed fondly at the card. “Sweet, huh?”

Nick gazed down at her smiling, sunlit expression, and
realized there was nothing else to do. He didn’t have the heart to tell Chloe a
truth she so obviously didn’t want to hear. So he smiled right back and lifted
the bubble-wrapped package still waiting to be opened.

“It’s really nice, Chloe.”
You’re really a
liar, Steadman
. He rattled the package in his hand, then winked. “What’s
this, do you think? Gold-plated mutual funds? Baby bootie bonds?”

“He’s not a stockbroker.” She took away the note
card and hugged it close while Nick unwrapped the bubble wrap. “Just look,
will you? I can’t wait for you to see!”

The last of the clear cushioned coating came away. Nick
looked inside. Nestled inside the wrap, nestled inside a fancy white box,
nestled inside a pillow of tissue paper, was a shiny silver thing wrapped with
a white ribbon. Monogrammed with a set of three script letters too fancy to
make out on the curved surface and polished to a high-gloss, it looked sort of
like a miniature silver dumbbell.

For a newborn baby? The fitness craze was getting way out of
hand.

Never mind,
Nick commanded himself.
Say something
nice.