Page 51 of Single Dad Christmas

Taylor squeezed her eyes shut. “Maybe.” The word was ambivalent, at best. She sighed. “Can we maybe just go to Gramma’s today? I know it’s a day early, but…I kind of just want to be away from all this for a while.”

He heard her plea, her sadness, her desperation. Such echoes of his own emotion. He thought of Louisa, and how desperately he didn’t want to leave her. But he knew he had to choose Taylor. He had to, because she was a child, and he was her father, and that was a sacred, unrelenting duty.

“Okay, we’ll go today,” he said, concealing his own wishes. “I’ve got some things to take care of this morning, but we can leave after lunch.”

She looked up at him, her expression briefly flashing with impatience but then she nodded. “Okay. This afternoon.”

He readthe press release right before he got in the car, and his blood boiled as the words slammed into him.

Louisa Petrakis denies new romance.The piece went on to say that theirs was strictly a working relationship, that she was looking forward to seeing the fruits of her labour in terms of a record-breaking launch of a Fox hotel, and from there, the press release pivoted to the hotel’s virtues. Cleverly done, indeed.

But her denial of their relationship hit him hard in the solar plexus, so he drove with a sense of foreboding, all the way to her place and pulled up just around the corner. He walked quickly with his head bent, just in case there were paparazzi lingering; there weren’t.

He knocked when he got there, and waited, trying to work out what the hell he was going to say.

Louisa wrenched in the door, dressed in a pair of linen pants and a cotton shirt, with an anxious look on her features as she scanned behind him.

“What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk.”

To show her silent agreement, she opened the door and gestured for him to come inside. She closed the door quickly and slid the lock in place.

“About our business relationship?” he asked, then shook his head in frustration, because he had no business going on the defensive.

“It was just easier to diffuse it,” she murmured, moving deeper into her apartment. “Would you like a coffee?”

He shook his head. “I’ve talked to Taylor.”

Louisa nodded.

“She leaked it.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I was pretty sure she had.”

“She’s finally talking to me, explaining how she feels. Why she feels the way she does.”

“I’m glad,” Louisa said, but slowly, carefully.

“She should never have done that. She was worried she was losing me.”

“That makes sense.”

“To a teenager, yes. I suppose it does.” He sighed. “It turns out, she’s known about her mom’s addictions for a while. She’s been dealing with that, on her own. Or worse, using her adolescent friends for guidance, instead of coming to me.”

“She’s a teenage girl,” Louisa said. “Talking to your friends about your problems goes with the territory.”

“Still, I wish?—,”

“You should have spoken to her first,” Louisa said, gently. “But I know you know that.”

He closed his eyes.

“You wanted to protect her, but it was always going to come out.”

He ground his teeth. “Yeah.”

“Is she okay?”

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