The Daddy Wish. Brenda Harlen

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      His answering smile didn’t seem forced. It was effortless and easy and so potent; she was grateful that she was sitting down because it practically melted her bones. “Good morning, Allison.”

      She forced herself to glance away, down at the calendar on her desk. “Your uncle is free, if you want to go in.”

      “I will,” he said, but eased a hip onto the edge of her desk. “But first I wanted to apologize for not calling you when I got back from my ski trip.”

      “Oh, well.” She kept her gaze focused on the papers on her desk, because his proximity was wreaking enough havoc on her hormones without looking at him and remembering how his mouth—somehow both soft and strong, and utterly delicious—had mastered hers, or how those wickedly talented hands had moved so smoothly and confidently over her body. “I know the holidays are a busy time for everyone.”

      “And then Uncle John had his heart attack the day after Christmas.” She glanced up and could tell, by the seriousness of his tone and the bleakness in his eyes, that he was still worried about his uncle.

      “So it was more than a minor blip,” she remarked.

      “Is that what he told you?”

      She nodded.

      “The doctors did say it was minor, but it was definitely a heart attack.”

      “That must have come as a shock to all of you,” she said.

      He nodded. “Aside from smoking the occasional cigar, he didn’t have any of the usual risk factors, but the doctors strongly urged him to make some lifestyle changes.”

      “He’s already asked me to look into that cruise he’s been promising your aunt for the past few years.”

      “Retirement is going to be a big adjustment for him, so it will be good for him to have something to look forward to.”

      “It’s going to be a big adjustment for the whole office,” Allison agreed.

      “And not exactly the adjustment I was hoping to make in our relationship,” Nate said.

      Our relationship.

      She wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but her heart gave a funny little jump anyway—before she ruthlessly strapped it down. “Mr. Garrett—”

      “Really?” His brows rose and his lips curved in a slow, sexy smile that made her want to melt into a puddle at his feet. “Are you really going to ‘Mr. Garrett’ me after the—”

      “There you are, Nate.”

      She exhaled gratefully when John poked his head out of his office and interrupted his nephew. Because whatever he’d been about to say, she didn’t want to hear it.

      Nathan held her gaze for another moment before he turned his attention to his uncle. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

      “Normally I wouldn’t mind,” John told him. “But we’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the next twenty-five days.”

      Nate nodded. “I’ll look forward to catching up with you later,” he said to Allison, already moving toward the CFO’s office.

      She didn’t bother to respond, because as far as she was concerned, there wasn’t anything to catch up on.

      Whatever might have started between her and her soon-to-be boss under the mistletoe was over when he flew off to Vail with Melanie Hedley the next day. And that was for the best. Not only because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself—again—where Nathan Garrett was concerned, but because any fantasy she might have had about getting naked with the VP of Finance was inappropriate enough, but the same fantasy with the company CFO could be fatal to her employment.

      And that was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

      * * *

      “How was your first day back?” Allison asked when she picked her son up from his after-school program.

      Dylan made a face as he buckled up in the backseat.

      “Do you have any homework?”

      “Yeah. I’ve gotta write a stupid journal entry about my holiday.”

      “Why do you think it’s stupid?”

      “Because it’s the same thing Miss Cabrera made us do last year. And because I didn’t do anything really exciting. Not like Marcus, who went to Disney World. Or Cassie, who got a puppy.”

      His tone was matter-of-fact, but she was as disappointed for him as he obviously was. Unfortunately, peak-season trips weren’t anywhere in her budget, and pets—especially dogs—weren’t allowed by the condominium corporation. “But we had a nice holiday, anyway, didn’t we?” she prompted.

      “I guess.”

      “What was your favorite part?” she asked, hoping to help him focus on the highlights.

      “Not being at school.”

      She held back a sigh. Her son’s extreme shyness made it difficult for him to make friends, but she didn’t understand how he could prefer to be alone playing video games rather than interacting with other kids his own age. At the first parent-teacher meeting of the year, Miss Aberdeen had suggested that he was bored because the work was too easy for him, but when she offered to give him more advanced assignments, Dylan had been appalled by the prospect of being singled out. So he continued to do the same work as his classmates and continued to be bored at school. “What was your favorite part aside from not being at school?” she prompted.

      “I had fun at the cartooning class at the art gallery,” he finally said.

      “So why don’t you draw a comic strip about your holiday?”

      His brow furrowed as he considered this suggestion. “Do you think that would be okay?”

      “I think Miss Aberdeen would love it.”

      So once they got home, Dylan sat at the table, carefully drawing the boxes for his comic strip while she made spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner. As she stirred the sauce, she kept an eye on her son, pleased by the intense concentration on his face as he worked.

      If she’d told him he had to write a paragraph, he would have scribbled the first thing that came to mind and been done with it. But he was obviously having fun with the cartooning, and she was pleased that he didn’t just want to draw a comic strip but wanted to draw a good one.

      When the outlining was done, he opened his package of colored pencils, and she felt a wave of nostalgia as she remembered when he used to sit at that same table with a box of fat crayons and scribble all over the pictures in a book. He’d been a fan of single-color pictures and would cover the page with blue or green or red or brown, but rarely would he use a variety of colors.

      She’d always loved him with her whole heart, but she couldn’t deny that there were times when she missed her little boy. The one who would crawl into her lap for СКАЧАТЬ