SUSAN MEIER - Merry Christmas, Daddy

The door bumped his back. Gabe stepped out of its way so he could open it completely and slide behind it. Then he waved slightly as he slipped into the hall. For the first time in his life, he was relieved, very relieved, his grandmother was such a prude, because if he had to spend eight or ten hours in the same room with Kassandra, watching her undress, knowing she was wearing very little only a few feet away from him and on the same bed, and remembering what it felt like to kiss her, neither one of them would be safe.

With those thoughts, he headed toward his room and a very cold shower.

They were already late for dinner when Gabe knocked on Kassandra’s door that evening. She let him in while bouncing into her right shoe and trying to fasten an earring simultaneously.

“This isn’t good,” he said, glancing at her bathrobe.

“I’m sorry, but Candy slept until a few minutes ago and any wise mother knows you never dress yourself before you dress your baby.”

From the playpen, Candy gurgled at him. Though he didn’t have a clue about why a wise mother dressed her baby first, Gabe turned to Kassandra and said, “No, I suppose not.”

Awkward, he stood in the middle of the room, not exactly sure what to do. He couldn’t very well wait for Kassandra in the hall while she put on her clothes—that would be a dead giveaway. Yet he didn’t quite feel comfortable waiting in here, either.

Kassandra made his decision for him by stepping into the bathroom to finish dressing. “You know, Gabe,” she called, “I was thinking this afternoon that this charade doesn’t have to be all that complicated. When I was talking with your grandmother I discovered that the truth works for us in a lot of places. The only thing is, we need to make up some stories about us dating, how we decided to get engaged, even about how you got to know Candy.”

“Okay,” Gabe agreed absently, sitting on the bed while he studied the brown-eyed wonder in the playpen. Dressed in a red-and-white striped dress, her dark hair adorned with a red flower which was held in place by a half-inch red elastic ribbon that circled her head, Candy looked cute enough to pose in a magazine.

“I’ve already told your grandmother we live in the same apartment building.”

Gabe smiled. “Did she accuse you of dating me for my money?”

Leaning out of the bathroom, Kassandra peered at him. “Almost. I nipped it in the bud before she could.”

“Good girl,” Gabe said, then Kassandra slid behind the door, going back to doing the things women do in bathrooms. Gabe looked at Candy again. Patting some sort of bright plastic toy, the baby gurgled loudly, reminding him that Kassandra was right. This situation had some anomalies in it that would have to be covered with stories—maybe more lies.

Resting his elbow on his knee and his chin on his closed fist, Gabe shut his eyes. He didn’t like the idea of lying to his parents and grandmother, not one damned bit. But he also didn’t have any choice. Because Emma worried that he’d never get married, Gabe had invented the story that he was engaged to ease his grandmother’s mind. Now, because it was her dying wish to meet the woman who had stolen his heart, Gabe had to introduce Emma to his fiancée. True, this fiancée was fake, but a fake was better than nothing. And in this case, the fake was also a cover for a lie—a bad lie that started with the best of intentions, but a lie nonetheless. Now he was stuck with the consequences—a semitoothless gurgle machine. As he thought the last, Gabe opened his eyes and found Candy studying him. When she realized his eyes were open, she smiled broadly, revealing gums and two, maybe three, teeth.

He decided she looked like an eight-month-old, almost bald flapper from the Roaring Twenties.

Her grin widened.

“I was thinking we could just tell your grandmother Candy’s the result of another relationship, and leave it at that,” Kassandra said from the bathroom, intruding into Gabe’s thoughts.

“My parents might buy that,” Gabe admitted honestly, “but I’m not sure my grandmother will.”

“You’re not suggesting that you’re going to claim her as your own?” Kassandra asked, stretching out of the bathroom to look at him again. The baby gave him a hopeful look and said, “Da-da.”

Feeling strangely hypnotized by the little nymph in the playpen, Gabe rose to pace and broke the spell. “No, I don’t want to make the story go that far. We were only supposed to have been dating for four months or so….”

“So you don’t have anything to worry about, and we can just keep this simple,” Kassandra said, then slid into the bathroom again. “If your grandmother asks about Candy’s father, I’ll just tell her the truth.”

For a good thirty seconds, Gabe stared at the bathroom door, wondering why Kassandra didn’t tell him the truth. He wasn’t really curious in a prying sort of way. Just curious. After all, they had to spend the next three weeks together. It was only fair that he know.

He glanced into the playpen again and Candy grinned at him.

On a whim he reached inside for her. “Come on,” Gabe said, pulling her out of the playpen. “I’ll just hold you here for a few minutes so you get adjusted to me.”

But this baby didn’t have any adjusting to do. She willingly went to him, even patted his fact as if delighted with the texture of his whiskery stubble. With his hands beneath her arms, resting on her rib cage, Gabe held her in a loose standing position. “Anybody ever tell you you’re too friendly?” he asked the happy little girl who gazed up at him dreamily.

“She doesn’t know fear yet,” Kassandra said from the bathroom. “Give her another month or so, though. From what I’ve read, she’s about to tumble into a shyness phase and I won’t be able to leave her with my own parents.”

Still staring at Gabe, Candy stuck her hand in her mouth. Gabe couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her legs, so he just let her dangle in front of him. Candy didn’t seem to mind. The closeness gave her the opportunity to study his face.

“Your parents keep her a lot?” he asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer, and deciding this was as good a way as any to probe discreetly.

“Always,” Kassandra replied from the bathroom. “I couldn’t make it without them.”

“Actually, I’m surprised you got this far,” Gabe said, then realizing she might have taken that the wrong way, Gabe hastened to amend it. “I’m not surprised in a bad way,” Gabe quickly assured her. Candy said something that was a cross between a “boo” and a “goo,” and when she did a little stream of slobber slipped from her mouth to his jacket sleeve. Knowing he would probably be used to this kind of stuff if he really was dating Kassandra, Gabe didn’t react, except to swallow a yelp just dying to leap from his lips.

“I’m surprised in a good way. My God, Kassandra, husband and wife teams sometimes have trouble raising a child. And you’re doing it all alone. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Kassandra said, step ping out of the bathroom. Kassandra’s red jumpsuit matched her daughter’s red-and-white-striped ensemble. Her thick blond hair was down, curving into a loose wave that sat casually on her shoulders. She wore enough makeup to accent her features, but not so much as to look overdone.

Gabe’s immediate thought was to tell her she looked beautiful, but he stopped it. In the first place, she wasn’t the type of woman he dated. He dated uncomplicated women who wouldn’t mind marrying him for his money and then doing exactly what he told them to do for the rest of their lives. And Kassandra was nothing like that. She was a strange combination of sophisticated, smart and conservative. If they dated for real, she’d want to be an equal partner. But they weren’t dating for real. They were the kind of people who antagonized each other from across a hall, and that’s exactly what they would revert to doing the minute they returned to Pennsylvania. There was no need to get too personal. He bit back his compliment and smiled at her.