Page 48 of Must Love Mistletoe

“Let’s do it.”

Shock left her speechless.

Her father sat back in his wingback leather power chair, every inch the successful stock-market tycoon that he was. “Did you not just invite me to spend Christmas with you at the ranch?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Probably not the time to remind him that he hadn’t spent Christmas with her in years. With her father unavailable, and a family unit that consisted of just the two of them, she’d taken to riding out the delights of the season first at boarding school and then at the midtown loft her father had gifted her on her twenty-first birthday. But she’d always wanted to spend it with him. She hadn’t given up hope. “It’ll be so much fun.”

“I’d like to bring some guests.”

“Okay.” She nodded, widened her eyes, and figured why not? Christmas was a time of giving. She didn’t need all her father’s attention. Just some of it. “Sounds good. Business associates?”

“My son.”

Madeline blinked.

“He’s seven. You’ll need to get a tree in with all the trimmings.”

“Your…son.” Across all her expensive therapy and brutal self-examination when it came to why her father had all but abandoned her after her mother’s death, him having another family to be with had never once crossed her mind. In the end, she’d been encouraged to think that far from him being neglectful, she was simply asking too much of a very busy man. “You have a son?”

“Yes.”

“Who is seven.” Saying it aloud did not increase her understanding. “Who you’ve never mentioned?”

“And my fiancée will be joining us as well.”

“You have a fiancée?” Her fingers clenched over the back of a nearby chair. “Do you mind if I sit?”

“I have another meeting in five minutes.”

She sat anyway, clasped her hands on top of the folder he’d just given her and squared her shoulders, legs crossed below the knee and knees together just so. This was what expensive finishing schools in Switzerland were good for, she realized suddenly. These moments when everything she thought she knew about her world had just been proven false… and there she sat, demurely attentive. Not one single scrap of her inner turmoil evident.

Or maybe she was dreaming, and her father could see full well that she was weeping existential angst all over the Aubusson.

“Your fiancée… is the… your son’s mother?” Maybe her father had been with this woman briefly eight or so years ago and then something had happened to part them, and… “And you’ve probably only just found out you have a son and…”

“No.”

“Oh.” She had no other words to put toward this situation.

“I was there at Cade’s birth.”

“Oh.” Her half-brother had a name.

“I usually spend Christmas with Cade and his mother.”

A mother who apparently did not have a name.

“Irene married a financier earlier this year and is choosing to holiday with her new husband this festive season so it’s my turn to have Cade for Christmas.”

Irene. Cade. Irene had a husband now. He probably had a name too.

Her father’s lips twisted in a bitter little grimace and Madeline stared, fascinated. Who was this man in her father’s office, wearing his face and using his voice to say all these words she didn’t understand? “Rebecca, my fiancée, has expressed interest in meeting my children and I’ve been telling her about passing the ranch over to you. She’s never been to Montana and said she’d like to go there one day if she can clear her patient schedule. Many birds, one stone.”

No kidding. “Patient schedule, you said. So, she’s a…?”

“Cardiac surgeon.”

Of course she was. Her father would never be satisfied with someone mediocre.

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