Dear Santa. Karen Templeton

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СКАЧАТЬ reached for her, but she lurched backward, stumbling over a stuffed beagle lying sideways on the lacquered, honey-blond floor to land on her bottom.

      “No!” she bellowed, frantically scrambling away, crab-style, to plaster herself against the wall underneath one window, between a pair of white bookcases crammed with books and games and puzzles. “I don’t want you! I want Mommy!”

      Despite the wet-clay feeling of helplessness swamping him, Grant crouched in front of his daughter, who shoved the heels of her sneakers into the floor, pressing further into the wall. “It’s okay,” he said as she started to whimper, “I’m going to take care of you now—”

      “No!” she shrieked, launching the stuffed lion at his chest. “I wanna go home! I want to talk to Mommy now!”

      Grant sprang to his feet and crossed to the other side of the room, ramming his hand through his hair and trying to catch his breath. Rain still slashed at the windows, pummeled the roof, the normally comforting sounds of a rainy fall Saturday barely audible over Haley’s hysterics. Juggling millions of dollars of other people’s money, taking risks that most human beings wouldn’t dare…no sweat. How to comfort his daughter—how to even get over the first hurdle, of getting her to understand what was going on? Not a clue.

      He glanced over at his little girl, huddled in her niche. She’d grabbed the lion again, clutching it to her and rocking, her face smashed into the thing’s mane. After a moment, Grant lowered himself onto the edge of Haley’s bed, a white four-poster smothered in yellow and white gingham ruffles. From ten feet and a world away, she glanced over, then scootched sideways to give him her back, clumsily scrubbing the back of her hand across her dripping nose.

      “Go ’way.”

      “I can’t.”

      “Why?”

      “Because Mommy wouldn’t want me to leave you alone.”

      Haley tossed a withering look over her shoulder, then pulled her knees closer to her chest, a tiny, stricken figure in her little corduroy skirt and sweater. And Grant, who was not by any means a religious man, found himself praying—pleading—to be shown what to do.

      Etta appeared at the doorway, phone in hand, frown in place. She motioned Grant over, then whispered, “It’s that friend of Justine’s. Mia Vaccaro? She said she and Justine were supposed to get together this afternoon, but she won’t answer her cell. Wants to know if you know anything.”

      With a last glance at his daughter’s fragile-looking back, Grant took the phone, thinking this was why he’d never been a big fan of that whole prayer business to begin with.

      Because all too often, the answer is exactly what you don’t want.

      “Where is she?” Mia tossed the question in Grant’s housekeeper’s direction as she catapulted herself through the mansion’s open door, simultaneously unwinding her scarf and shrugging out of her tweed jacket.

      “Upstairs, in her room,” the older woman said, relieving her of the garments. “But—”

      “Thanks.”

      Mia strode across the black-and-white tiled floor in the mini-rotunda that served as a vestibule, deaf to the screams of Money, money, money! reverberating from the high-ceilinged space. That she’d made it up here in one piece was a miracle in itself, considering all she really wanted to do was curl up in a corner somewhere until the world made sense again—

      “Mia. Wait.”

      The deep voice hit its mark like a sharpshooter’s bullet. Already at the foot of the curved staircase, Mia spun around, her gaze colliding with a pair of steely lasers, nailing her to the spot. Not until then did she realize she was panting, as though she’d run all the way from Manhattan instead of driven. Vaguely, it dawned on her that she hadn’t even changed clothes after she’d talked to Grant, that she was still in the same rumpled jeans and who-gives-a-damn hoodie she’d been wearing to schlep fake fall foliage to the pier for the Chins’ anniversary party the next night, that her tortoiseshell clip was hanging by maybe two teeth to her long, thick hair.

      That she looked every bit the scatterbrain he undoubtedly thought she was.

      “Grant! I’m sorry, traffic was a bear on the Henry Hudson, I got here as soon as I could!”

      One side of his mouth ticked. Grant Braeburn’s version of a smile. “Clearly. Thank you. Before you go up…?” He gestured toward a room off the entryway. His office, if she remembered correctly. She’d been in the house before, of course—for the wedding, once after that for dinner with Christopher, a night branded in her memory as somewhere between miserable and excruciating. But she wasn’t here to see Justine’s ex, she was here for the little girl who’d wrapped herself around Mia’s heart from the first time she’d laid eyes on the baby when she was less than a day old.

      “Mia!” came the imperious tone when she started upstairs. “We need to talk!”

      “Later!”

      She’d already reached the landing when his fingers wrapped around her arm. A lesser woman might have been intimidated—or, in other circumstances, turned on—by the man’s grip. Or, at the very least, let out a soft, feminine squeal of surprise. Instead, Mia went for the severely pissed-off look. One that nicely complemented Grant’s own.

      “Damn it, Mia—I don’t want you breaking down in front of Haley.”

      “Not a problem,” she said, yanking out of his grasp and striding across a billion bucks’ worth of oriental runner toward Haley’s room. Whatever issues Grant had with her—or she, him—would have to wait. Preferably until they were both dead and buried—

      The thought literally made her stumble, although she righted herself before Grant could notice. She hoped. But despite the heartburn from hell dissolving her digestive system, she wasn’t about to crumple.

      Not yet, anyway.

      Grant loomed behind her, much too close, as, through Haley’s open door, Mia could see the child sitting quietly in the middle of her bed in her teddy-bear-flecked pajamas, sucking her thumb—a habit given up months ago. And clutched to her small, far-too-fragile-looking chest, Mia realized with another fiery blast to her midsection, was the stuffed lion Justine had only just given her.

      “Hey, little bit,” she said softly, and the child’s head shot up. A second later she’d streaked across the room to wrap her arms around Mia’s thighs.

      Then she tilted her head back, hope and worry and confusion tangled in her eyes. “Did Mommy come with you?”

      Crap. Mia glanced over at Grant, whose glower had rearranged itself into something much more worrisome, then lowered herself to one knee, lumpy throats and heartburn from hell be damned.

      “No, baby,” she said softly, brushing Haley’s curls off her cheek, praying she was striking the right balance between reassuring and serious. “Mommy’s not here.”

      Haley disengaged herself to swing back and forth, clutching the toy. “Then are you going to take me back to the city?”

      Slowly, Mia shook her head. “No, sweetie pie. You’re going to stay with your daddy СКАЧАТЬ