Teri Wilson - A Daddy By Christmas

But that would have to change now, wouldn’t it?

“Very well. I’ll get you a cup of coffee and then we can go over your schedule,” Mrs. Summers said.

“Thank you.” He held her gaze long enough to impart all the things he couldn’t say—thank you for being there, thank you for not trying to make him talk about his feelings or force him to go home. The list was long.

“Of course.” Her eyes flashed with sympathy, and Anders’s chest wound itself into a hard, suffocating tangle as she bustled past him toward the executive break room.

How long would it be this way?

How long would it be before he could stand in this place where he once felt so capable, so impenetrable, and not feel like his heart had just been put through a paper shredder?

Months. Years, maybe.

Lolly’s sweet, innocent face rose to the forefront of his consciousness, and he knew with excruciating clarity that no amount of time would be sufficient. He’d feel this way for a lifetime. He’d carry the loss to his grave.

But he couldn’t think about that now. Lolly was depending on him. His niece was only five years old, too young to grasp the permanence of what had just happened to her...what had happened to them both. Anders, on the other hand, was all too aware.

He was even more aware of feeling that he wasn’t quite up to the task of raising a child. Anders didn’t know the first thing about being a father. Not that he would ever come close to replacing Grant and Olivia in Lolly’s life. But having lost his own parents at an early age, he knew that children as young as his niece didn’t understand words like guardian and custody . Even if Lolly continued calling him Uncle Anders, he’d become so much more than that. He’d be the one to teach her how to ride a bicycle and help her with her homework. He’d be the one cheering at her high school graduation and pulling his hair out when she learned how to drive. He’d be the one to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.

For all practical purposes, he’d be her father. He’d spend the rest of his life walking in his younger brother’s shoes.

If he was lucky.

“Shall I set up a meeting between you and the estate lawyer?” Mrs. Summers placed a double cappuccino with perfect foam on the desk in front of Anders and took a seat in one of the leather wingback guest chairs facing him. As usual, she held the tablet she used to keep track of his calendar in one hand and a pair of reading glasses in the other.

“Already done. I saw him this morning.” Anders stared into his coffee. It was going to take a lot more than caffeine to get him through the next few weeks.

“Oh.” His secretary blinked. “Everything all right, then?”

Anders took a deep breath and considered how much, exactly, he should share with his secretary. On one hand, she was his employee. On the other, she might be the closest thing he had to a friend now that his brother—who also happened to be his business partner—was gone. Such was the life of a workaholic.

“Not really,” he said quietly.

The phone on Mrs. Summers’s desk began to ring, but when she popped out of her chair to go answer it, Anders motioned for her to stay put.

“Leave it. Just let it roll to voice mail.” He took a sip of his cappuccino. She’d gone easy on the foam this time, and it slid down his throat, hot and bitter. Just like his mood.

Mrs. Summers frowned. “You’re beginning to worry me, Mr. Kent. Is something wrong?”

Nothing that a wife wouldn’t fix.

He closed his eyes and saw the puzzled face of the woman from the animal shelter—her wide brown eyes and lush pink lips, arranged in a perfect O of surprise.

Marry me.

God, he’d actually said that, hadn’t he? The past week had been rough, no doubt about it. It was astounding how much a single phone call could change things, could eviscerate your life so cleanly as if it were a blade of some sort. A knife to the gut.

But until this morning, Anders had been hanging on. He’d had to, for Lolly’s sake and for the sake of the business. Grief was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Not now, not yet. Besides, if he let himself bend beneath the crushing weight of loss, he wouldn’t be able to get back up—not after the things he’d said to Grant the night before the accident.

Anders and his brother rarely argued, and when they did, it was typically about the business. As two of the name partners in one of the most influential investment banking firms on Wall Street, they always had one another’s back, but that didn’t mean blind support. They challenged each other. They made each other better.

Their last argument had been different, though. Anders had gone too far—he’d made it personal. There’d been raised voices and slammed doors, and then nothing but an uncomfortable silence after Grant stormed out of the building. It had been their most heated exchange to date, but that was okay. They were brothers, for crying out loud. Grant would get over it.

But he couldn’t get over it, because now he was gone. And Anders couldn’t even bring himself to set foot in his dead brother’s empty office.

It was easier to stay on this side of that closed door. Safer.

Anders had managed to push their final confrontation into the darkest corner of his consciousness that he could find, and at first, it had been remarkably easy. He’d had a funeral to plan and Grant’s in-laws to deal with and a new, tiny person sleeping in his penthouse.

He was beginning to crack now. That much was obvious. Tiny fissures were forming in the carefully constructed wall he’d managed to build around the memory of his last conversation with Grant. Any minute now, it would all come flooding back. The effort to keep it at bay was crippling, as evidenced by his spontaneous marriage proposal to a woman dressed in a reindeer costume.

“There are some issues with Lolly’s guardianship.” Anders swallowed. The knot that had formed in his throat during the funeral service was still sitting like a stone.

Mrs. Summers shook her head. “I don’t understand. You’re her godfather.”

“Yes, I am.” He’d dutifully attended the church service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and poured water over Lolly’s fragile newborn head. It had been a done deal.

Or so he’d thought.

He took another scalding gulp of his cappuccino. Then he set the china cup back down on the desk with enough force that liquid sloshed over the rim. “As it turns out, the legalities of the matter are a bit more complicated.”

“How so?”

“When Grant and Olivia drafted their wills, they made my guardianship of Lolly conditional. The only way I can be awarded full custody is if I’m married.”

The tablet slid out of Mrs. Summers’s hand and fell to the floor with a clunk. She didn’t bother picking it up. “Married?”

“Married.” He nodded. Maybe if they both kept repeating the word, the reality of his situation would sink in.

“But...” The older woman’s voice drifted off, which was probably for the best. Anders could only imagine the trajectory of her thoughts.

But you haven’t been on more than three dates with the same woman in years.

But you’re a workaholic.

And to quote his brother...

But you’re dead inside.

“Exactly,” Anders said, because it didn’t really matter which objection caused her hesitation. They all fit.

“So that’s it, then? What happens to Lolly?”

“Lolly’s staying put.” They’d take her away over his dead body. He’d made a promise to his brother that rainy day in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and he intended to keep it. He owed Grant that much. It was the least he could do. “I just have to find a wife.”