Karen Templeton - Dear Santa

“You’re here, you’re here!” the little girl cried, wrapping herself around Mia’s thighs, as Grant looked on.

“Aren’t you forgetting somebody?” Mia whispered to Haley. “Maybe your daddy would like a welcome back hug, too.”

“But I just saw him this morning!” Haley said. “And ’sides, he doesn’t know how to hug.”

“Then maybe,” Mia said softly, “you could show him how.”

Haley glanced over at Grant and then looked back at Mia. “He’s the daddy. He has to hug first.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake . She hauled Haley up, dangling her in front of her father. “Hug, already.”

As she’d hoped, Grant grabbed for his daughter, and Haley – bless her – threw her arms around her father’s neck, and ta-da!

“Now, was that so hard?” Mia asked.

But when she next looked up, Grant’s gaze briefly touched hers, swarming with a world of unspoken emotions, setting off a volley of a whole bunch of the suckers inside her head, as well.

KAREN TEMPLETON,

a bestselling author and RITA®Award nominee, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty nappies are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasising about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

Dear Reader,

Like every other five-year-old, at some point I asked my mother if Santa was real. Since the gifts were all piled in a corner of my parents’ bedroom, the whole Ho-Ho-Ho Delivery Service thing was kind of shot, anyway. So Mama told me Santa Claus was a spirit (cagey woman, my mother), and off I went, satisfied. Not until much later, however, did I really appreciate the wisdom behind her response.

Because even the most secular version of Santa is still about the message, not only behind the trappings of the season, but also beyond a particular religious belief. Santa Claus symbolises love and generosity and joy…and, perhaps most of all, hope. So little Haley’s plea to the jolly old elf isn’t about asking for stuff , it’s an unselfish faith in something beyond her small self to bring healing and happiness to the people she loves.

Leave it to a small child to really get the true meaning of Christmas…just like that long-ago kindergartener who intuitively understood her mother’s off-the-cuff explanation about something far more substantial than mere myth.

Karen Templeton

KAREN TEMPLETON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Tristan, my first grandbaby

Trust me – Santa will have nothing

on your grandparents!

Merry First Christmas, little one.

Chapter One

“Mr. Braeburn? Are you still there?”

“Yes, yes…” Grant released a long, strained breath, pressing his fingers into his eyelids. “I’m here.” He blinked at the rain-drenched vista on the other side of his home office window, watching distractedly as sixty-foot pines cowered and shuddered under the leaden sky’s relentless onslaught. “How—” He carefully cleared his throat. “How did you know to call me?”

“Mrs. Braeburn had emergency contact information in her purse. And the glove compartment.” The doctor—middle-aged, still not comfortable with making these sorts of calls, Grant guessed—paused. “And her briefcase.”

A humorless chuckle released the vise constricting Grant’s lungs. Catching himself, he sank into a leather club chair facing the window. “I’m sorry—”

“Shock often produces seemingly inappropriate emotions,” the doctor said kindly. “It’s a coping mechanism. So the pain doesn’t overwhelm us.”

“It’s not…” Outside, rivers slammed against the paned windows. Grant shook his head to clear it. “Justine and I were divorced more than a year ago.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course.” A pause. “I understand you have a daughter?”

Grant shut his eyes, willing his brain to assimilate… anything. “Yes. She’s here. It’s my weekend.”

“Then…you’ll tell her?”

“Of course,” Grant said, even as he thought, How the hell do you tell a three - year-old her mother’s dead? He sucked in an acid-tinged breath, then asked, “Justine…she was alone? In the car?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

Another pause, then a measured, “She apparently took a curve too quickly, hit a patch of wet leaves and lost control. She may have been on her cell phone.”

Typical, he thought bitterly. Justine would practically have a panic attack if she lost contact with the outside world for more than five minutes. With each breath, Grant’s lungs eased. Slightly. “I suppose I’ll need to make arrangements?”

“There’s no other family, then?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Mr. Braeburn, I could…give you some names if you, or the little girl, would like to talk to someone?”

“Thank you. But I have my own contacts. Should the need arise.”

“Of course. If there’s nothing else…?”

“No. No, wait…”

“Yes?”

A second’s wrestling preceded, “Her face?”

The doctor hesitated, then said, “She’d been a beautiful woman, I take it?”

For some time after the call, Grant stood staring into the late day dreariness outside, the phone still clamped in his chilled hand. An odd, tight smile pulled at his mouth. He could just imagine Justine’s soul—if she had one—floating over her lifeless body, wailing over losing her looks. Especially considering the megabucks she’d invested in them—

“Mr. B.? Everything all right?”

Grant turned; his housekeeper’s puglike face was more deeply creased than usual, worry peering out from light brown eyes framed in drooping crow’s feet. Etta Bruschetti didn’t exactly fit the mold of who one generally found keeping lives and houses intact in this part of the world. But the smart-mouthed brunette kept him honest, on his toes and from believing his own press. It also didn’t hurt that she cooked as though she’d been personally instructed by God.

He returned his gaze outside and said quietly, “Haley’s mother was killed in a car crash a few hours ago.”

“What? Ohmigod, you’re not serious!” Etta pressed a broad hand to her generous chest. “God, that’s awful. That poor woman!”

One side of Grant’s mouth twitched. “Oh, come on, Etta…I know how you felt about Justine.”

“Okay, so maybe I wasn’t exactly all broken up when the two of you split. But I wouldn’t wish somethin’ like that on anybody, you know what I mean?”

Even though the question was rhetorical, Grant nodded anyway. Etta stuffed her hands in the pockets of the white utilitarian apron she wore over her sweatshirt and jeans, the closest she came to a uniform unless Grant entertained. Which he hadn’t since the divorce. “Guess that means the baby’s gonna be living here full-time now, huh?”

His thought processes hadn’t gotten that far. But of course, he realized with a slug to his midsection—Justine’s death made him a single father.