All He Wants For Christmas

by Lizzie Shane

  “I wouldn’t dare,” she whispered against his lips.

  He rolled her beneath him, those insanely blue eyes so close and looking at her like she was everything—and suddenly Andi felt like she was. She forgot about everyone else he’d ever looked at, everyone else he’d ever touched, and sank into the moment with him. He was hers now. Ty Walker, Greek god, doting father, total softie.

  She didn’t know how long they spent kissing before she grew impatient and began tugging at his clothing, making him smile against her lips at her impatience. When they were finally skin to skin, Andi decided sometimes experience was a very good thing. For the next hour the only sounds in the bedroom were muted gasps and panting whispers. The symphony of desire.

  And finally, much later, a breathless, “Merry Christmas, Ty.”

  “Merry Christmas, Andi.”

  * * * * *

  His cell phone rang ungodly early the next morning.

  Ty rolled over and groped blindly on the bedside table to make the damn thing shut up. With a soft sound of protest, Andi snuggled up against his back, looping one arm around his waist. Naked—and extremely distracting. “Who is it?” she mumbled.

  He tilted the screen so he could see the caller ID. “It’s Reg.”

  All the lovely, sleepy relaxation left her body as she went stiff behind him. There was only one thing he could be calling about at the crack of dawn on the day after Christmas. Reg’s PI had been searching for Jade’s aunt. “You should take it,” Andi whispered.

  He was already connecting the call. “Hello?”

  “Ty! I’m glad I caught you. I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ty sat, up dropping his legs over the side of the bed, and Andi’s grip on him fell away. “Bad news first.”

  “Well, the paternity test came back and she’s definitely yours.”

  Ty stood abruptly, feeling like a total ass because the last time he’d talked to Reg that would have been bad news, but now relief sank into his chest and he felt like he could breathe again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Andi sit up and tug the comforter around her like a shield.

  If Reg thought that was bad news… “What’s the good news?”

  “We found the aunt.”

  Five minutes later, Ty disconnected the call and flung his phone across the room. It landed harmlessly on top of Andi’s open suitcase, denying him the satisfaction of electronics shattering.

  “What did he say?” Andi asked.

  He spun to face her, scrubbing a hand over the short bristles on his scalp where his hair had begun to grow out. “Her aunt wants her back,” he snapped—knowing it wasn’t her fault, but too rattled to soften his tone. “She was working a double shift when her husband dumped Jade on my doorstep. He’s claiming she begged him to do it, that she swore she’d take the bus if he didn’t drive her, but he’d probably say anything to cover his ass. As soon as the aunt got off work and learned she was gone, she drove to LA, but we’d already gone to the airport by that point. When she arrived the house was empty so she tried to call my agent, but Barry’s on vacation in Bora Bora and his office gave her the runaround. I hadn’t told anyone there about Jade, so they thought she was a nut.”

  “Is that how Reg found her?”

  “Yeah. She called so much that someone at Barry’s office called Reg to make sure there wasn’t anything to the story. Then Reg called me. The paternity test came back too. Positive.” He scraped back over his buzz cut.

  “So what happens now?” Andi asked softly.

  Ty felt his muscles knotting and forced himself to relax. “She wants Jade back and, legally, she has custody.”

  He’d hoped for this initially, hoped that someone would sweep in and take the complication of a daughter out of his life in a way that left him completely guilt free, but now he felt sick thinking about it.

  “But you’re her father. The test proved it.”

  Ty rubbed a hand over his scalp, hearing Andi’s father’s words echo in his head. Put her first. But how did he do that? What was best for her? “I contributed to her DNA. Does that automatically make me the best person to raise her? What if she’s better off with her aunt?”

  Andi stared at him as if she didn’t recognize him, clutching the bedding like a shield. “You would just give her up?”

  “If it’s the right thing for her, the best thing—” He shrugged, helpless. What the fuck was he supposed to do?

  “What if you’re the best thing?”

  “Am I? Being a dad means putting her first, right? Even when I might selfishly want her to stay with me, I need to think about what’s best for her.”

  “So you’re only thinking of Jade? That’s all this is?”

  Her skepticism stung. “What else would it be?” he challenged. Last night she’d made him feel like the best man in the world, her belief in him buoying him up, and now the look on her face, like he’d disappointed her again, dug into his gut.

  “It would be understandable,” she said softly, from the nest on the bed where he’d left her. “If you wanted your old life back.”

  “You still expect me to bail at the first opportunity, don’t you?” His chest ached and he rubbed at it. He was trying to do the best thing, damn it. Why couldn’t she see that? “The fact is it doesn’t matter what I want. Her aunt has custody.”

  “You could fight it.”

  “And maybe I will, but right now we need to get back to LA.” He grabbed a hooded sweatshirt and jeans and yanked them on over his boxers. “I’ll go get Jade up.”

  He was already halfway out of the room when she said to his back, “I’ll call the charter.”

  * * * * *

  They’d forgotten about the Christmas tree.

  Taking down the ornaments and putting everything back in the boxes to be dropped off at her mother’s house was a subdued affair. Andi and Ty avoided speaking. He’d gone stiff and distant—and yes, maybe she should have given him the benefit of the doubt, but the idea that he could even consider handing over Jade to a woman who had let her be dumped on a random doorstep disturbed her.

  After Jade’s quiet, “Can’t we just stay here?” was met with gentle but firm refusals, she didn’t speak much either as they dismantled the decorations.

  Ty removed the tree from the stand and carried it outside to the woodpile while Andi helped Jade pack her things. She heard the muted thunk of an ax hitting the tree and glanced out the window to see Ty taking out his frustrations on the tree, chopping it into logs for the pile.

  She shouldn’t have reacted the way she did, implying he was taking the easy way out again. She should have given him the benefit of the doubt, but her own fears—that he was looking for a way out with Jade and with her—reared up and spoke for her.

  She shoved a sweater into the roller bag with more force than necessary, making her bracelet jingle, the angel charms tinkling against one another, and Jade’s gaze went, as it always did, to the musical sound.

  “My mom used to have a bracelet like that one,” Jade murmured. “Little angel charms all in a row. She said when it jingled you knew the angels were listening.” Jade looked up at her, pale blue eyes unreadable. “Do you believe in angels, Andi?”

  Andi nodded around the lump in her throat.

  “Me too.” She stared down at the suitcase, unseeing. She was back in her coat, wearing it like a security blanket. “My aunt loves me and my uncle isn’t so bad. He worries about money a lot and they’ve been fighting since I came to live with them. They think I can’t hear them, but the walls are thin. I knew they didn’t want me, not like my mom did. They just sort of got stuck with me and were trying the best they could, but it made me miss my mom more. So I prayed. I prayed to my mom for a family for Christmas. And the next day I saw Ty Walker on television.”

  She reached out, absently stroking the Ravenclaw scarf.

  “I’d overheard
my aunt and uncle fighting about him. I knew he was my dad and there he was saying he wanted a family. I thought my mom was telling me to go. So I asked my uncle to drive me. I left a note for my aunt, telling her that I wanted to meet my father, and that was that.” She looked up, meeting Andi’s gaze—and suddenly Andi could read what was hidden there. Guilt. “I’ve been texting with her every day, telling her I’m okay and I just need a couple more days.”

  “Your phone,” Andi whispered. She couldn’t believe she’d missed it. She’d seen Jade listening to music on it, but cell phones were so ubiquitous it hadn’t even occurred to her that it would be a link back to her aunt. The adult’s name and address on the account would have told them everything they needed.

  Jade grimaced. “We live in Santa Clara and I know the name of my school. I’m sorry I lied. I just wanted to meet my father and I thought if you knew where I came from and that it was a good place, you’d send me back before I got to know him.”

  Andi closed her eyes, letting all of Jade’s revelations sink in. The puzzle pieces fit. A puzzle she might have been able to decipher if she hadn’t been so stupidly caught up in her own drama.

  After that first day, she’d dismissed the aunt almost entirely. Had she been casting the aunt as a villain because it was convenient for her to do so? Creating a situation in her mind in which Jade would have to stay with Ty and he would need her to fill the mom role and they would become one big happy family?

  But that note…

  She opened her eyes. “Who wrote the note?”

  Jade blushed. “I did. It was stuff I’d heard my uncle say when they didn’t think I could hear. How she promised him they’d never have kids and they couldn’t afford me and they shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s mistakes.”

  Andi put her hand over Jade’s squeezing gently. “You aren’t a mistake. Don’t ever think that.”

  Jade turned her head toward the sound of the wood chopping. “Does he think so?”

  “No,” Andi insisted. “He’s mad because he has to take you back.” Because we both fell in love with you when we thought you might be ours. “Do you want to go back to your aunt?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I would, when I came here. I just wanted to see what it would be like, but now I don’t know. I love her, but I love him too. Aunt Izzy has to work a lot, but when she’s home she makes things special, even when she’s tired. Like my mom did.” She looked up then. “Like you.”

  Andi’s throat closed. Like you. Jade’s aunt loved her—just like Andi loved her—and she’d written the woman off in her mind, discarding her as unfit, but how would she have felt if Jade had just vanished one morning, after she’d come to love the girl? It would have ripped out her heart.

  Izzy wouldn’t have to work nights anymore. Ty was a lot of things, but he was also very rich and very generous. Jade would have lots of time with the woman who made things special for her—and who already had custody.

  Maybe that was what was best for her. Did Andi really have a right to judge?

  Ty reentered the cabin, barely breathing hard from all his physical exertion. “You two almost ready?”

  “Just about,” Andi answered. “I’ll get my bag.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The car was silent as they left Clement behind and drove toward Bemidji, each lost in their own thoughts.

  They’d dropped the decorations back at Andi’s parents’ place and said hasty goodbyes, saying only that they needed to get back to LA without offering any other explanation. Jade hadn’t been able to see Kendall before they left, but she sat in the backseat now with her tablet on her lap, sending her friend messages on some app.

  Ty stared out the window at the snowy landscape and asked himself for the thousandth time what he would do when he got back to LA. Should he fight for custody? Maybe some kind of every other weekend deal? He wanted more than that—but what if Jade didn’t want to stay with him? What was best for her?

  Andi had pulled him aside on the way out of the cabin and quietly explained that Jade had been in contact with her aunt the entire time, as well as being the mastermind behind the entire left-on-the-doorstep plan. She’d played them—and he should probably ground her for a month for the deception, but could he ground her if she didn’t stay?

  The country roads were all but abandoned, emphasizing the stark quiet of the winter morning. Most of the drive was straight and flat, but as they came into a hilly area, the road began to weave and wind—every curve revealing another stretch of pristine white as far as the eye could see. They rounded one corner and Ty watched a red sports car coming toward them, his attention caught by the rareness of another car on the road. Then he couldn’t look away as the low-slung car began to skid on the ice.

  “Andi…”

  “I see him.” Her hands tight on the wheel, she slowed down, gently pumping the brakes, but even though the SUV responded immediately, there was nowhere to go with the snow berms piled high on either side of the road, no way for them to dodge the red car bearing down on them.

  “Jade, get down,” Ty snapped, and his daughter looked up in alarm, catching his eye as he turned toward her, her own widening as she dropped her tablet to the seat and bent down with her arms over her head.

  Ty was still turned around when Andi jerked the wheel, her bracelet jingling wildly, and the SUV began to spin. He saw the red car slide past them—somehow Andi had managed to keep them from hitting one another, though the SUV continued to spin, sliding on the ice, until it thudded sideways into a snow berm, throwing Ty against the door.

  His heart thudded in the sudden silence.

  “Is everyone okay?” When no one immediately responded, Ty twisted to check. “Jade?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered, her eyes large and stunned.

  “Andi?”

  “He was going to hit us.” Her hands were still locked on the wheel. “The car shouldn’t have moved like that. If he hit us head-on, we might have been okay, this thing is a tank, but he would have—”

  Ty pried her hands off the wheel, one by one. “It’s okay. You did the right thing. We’re okay. We’re all fine. Jade?”

  “I’m fine,” she confirmed again.

  “See?” He rubbed her hands between his. “Everyone’s okay.”

  On the inside, the SUV didn’t even look like it had taken a dent—they hadn’t even hit hard enough to deploy the airbags—but there was snow pressing against Ty’s window and as he looked out the front windshield he realized they were facing one hundred and eighty degrees the wrong direction, wedged in the berm on the wrong side of the road. Ahead of them, they could see the red car that had slid past, its nose buried in another snowbank.

  “I’m gonna go check to see how the other driver is doing.”

  With no exit on his side thanks to the berm, he unbuckled his seat belt and didn’t even bother trying the door, instead hooking his hands on the lip of the sunroof and pulling himself up and over the middle console into the backseat.

  Jade hadn’t moved, her eyes still huge, and Ty unbuckled her belt and pulled her close for a hug. He knew he should check on the other driver, make sure he wasn’t injured, but he took a moment to breathe in the scent of her. It hadn’t been a bad accident. It could have been so much worse—he thought it might be worse when he’d first seen that red car sliding toward them. Now all he could think was that there was something he didn’t want his daughter to go another second without knowing.

  “I love you, kiddo. You know that, right?” he whispered against her hair. He rested his forehead against hers. “No matter what. I’m always going to want you with me. You never need to doubt that.”

  She nodded, a tiny, jerky nod, and hugged him back. As soon as her hold loosened, he reached over to open the door and climbed out of the SUV, checking down the road for any more careening vehicles, but the road was as abandoned as it had been most of the morning.

  He walked over to
the other car, slipping a few times and almost falling on the slick ice, but managing to keep his feet. On closer inspection he saw that the slinky little car was a honey of a Ferrari that didn’t belong anywhere near winter roads. Ty knocked on the window and the driver emerged, shaken, but unharmed, babbling about how his wife had gotten him the car for Christmas and he’d just wanted to take it for a spin.

  Ty eyed the damage that the snow bank had done to the front end and clapped the other man on the shoulder sympathetically before pulling out his cell phone. The SUV was wedged deeply into its own bank, but in a Christmas miracle, they weren’t in a dead zone and he was able to call the rental company for a tow, using the GPS in his phone to give their location.

  The other driver retreated back inside his wrecked car to wait for his own tow truck in the relative warmth while Ty looked up the number for the local air field and called the charter service to let them know the Walker party would be late.

  That done, he headed back to the SUV, only to find Jade climbing out of the back to meet him.

  “Is everything okay?” He guided her around the front of the SUV so they would be shielded in case another car came along and got caught in a skid.

  “Can I really stay with you?”

  He caught her and tugged her into another hug, needing the reassurance of holding her. “Your aunt has custody right now, but we’re always going to be in each other’s lives, okay? We’ll work something out. We’re a team now, remember? You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  She hugged him tighter, nodding against his sternum.

  “Good.”

  He looked up, meeting Andi’s eyes through the windshield. He would do what was best for Jade, but he wasn’t giving either of them up.

  * * * * *

  Andi watched Ty and Jade through the windshield and tried in vain to slow her thundering heart. She knew she should get out of the car, assess the damage, call in the accident, arrange a car to get them to Bemidji—take care of all the details that usually calmed her down and gave her focus, but she couldn’t seem to stop remembering the crash.