if they had, Anders would have had to speculate in front of a judge and jury why his own brother would place such a condition on his role in Lolly’s life in the event she became orphaned. He would be forced to admit that the provision in the will had taken him by surprise, but he knew precisely why it was there.
If Grant and Olivia couldn’t be there for Lolly, they wanted her to grow up in a nuclear family—a home with a mom and dad. But that wasn’t the only reason. They knew that Anders loved their daughter, but they also knew he couldn’t be trusted to get up and walk away from Wall Street at a reasonable hour every day. Work was his first love, his only love. And that wasn’t good enough for Lolly.
Hell, even Anders knew it wasn’t.
He would change. Had they really thought he wouldn’t? He’d turn his life inside out and upside down for that little girl.
Yet here you sit.
The paneled walls of his office felt as if they were closing in around him. Anders fixated on the smooth surface of his desk and breathing in and out until the feeling passed.
When at last he looked up, the tablet was back in Mrs. Summers’s hands again and her glasses were perched on the end of her nose.
“Tell me how I can help,” she said.
A fleeting sense of relief passed through him. Help was precisely what he needed, and Mrs. Summers was efficient beyond measure. He could do this. He had to. “Get me the names and contact information for every woman I’ve dated in the past twelve months.”
“Yes, sir.” She jotted something down with her stylus.
“Better make that the past eighteen months, just to be safe.” He took a deep inhalation. It felt good to have a plan, even if said plan was a long shot. Reaching out to old girlfriends made more sense than proposing to strangers.
“If I might make a suggestion, sir. Perhaps you should consider...” Mrs. Summers tipped her head in the direction of the office across the hall from Anders’s, which belonged to another partner in the firm—Penelope Reed.
Anders grew still. He hadn’t realized anyone in the office knew about the arrangement he had with Penelope. So much for subtlety.
“No.” He shook his head.
It wasn’t completely out of the question, but Penelope was his last resort. True, they occasionally shared a bed. And true, their relationship was strings-free, as businesslike as a coupling could possibly be.
But marrying someone within the firm was a terrible idea. They could hide the occasional one-night stand, but a marriage was another matter entirely.
“Very well.” Mrs. Summers nodded. “It was just an idea.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and wondered what it meant that he’d felt more comfortable proposing to a stranger than to a woman he bedded from time to time. Nothing good, that was for sure. “In the meantime, I also need to find another puppy.”
Mrs. Summers peered at him over the top of her glasses. “Did you miss your appointment at the animal shelter this afternoon? I thought I’d programmed it into your BlackBerry.”
“No, I was there. But the shelter made some kind of mistake. They promised the dog to someone else.” For a brief, blissful moment, Anders’s attention strayed from his messy life, and he thought about the graceful woman in the reindeer costume—her soulful eyes, holly berry lips and perfect, impertinent mouth. Somewhere in the back of his head, he could have sworn he heard jingle bells.
“What a shame. Lolly would have loved that little dog.” His assistant pressed a hand to her heart.
Anders had screwed up a lot of things lately. His list of mistakes was longer than the line to take pictures with Santa at Macy’s, but he had a feeling he’d done the right thing when he’d walked away from the animal shelter empty-handed. Maybe he wasn’t as big of a Scrooge as everyone thought he was.
Dead inside.
A headache bloomed at the back of Anders’s skull. “There are other puppies. I suspect it worked out for the best.”
Mrs. Summers narrowed her gaze, studied him for a beat and then nodded. “Things usually do.”
Did they?
God, he hoped so.
“I think I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off, after all.” He stood, buttoned his suit jacket and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
This office was his sanctuary. He’d always felt more at home at his desk, glued to the market’s highs and lows, than he did at his luxury penthouse with its sweeping views of Central Park and the Natural History Museum. But today it felt different, strange... He wondered if it would ever feel like home again, and if it didn’t, where he was supposed to find peace.
“Call the nanny and tell her I’m on the way to fetch Lolly.” Maybe he’d take her to see the tree at Rockefeller Center or for a carriage ride through the park. Something Christmassy.
Like the Rockettes show at Radio City Music Hall?
His jaw clenched tight.
“Yes, Mr. Kent. And I’ll look into the puppy situation and send you a list of available dogs that might be a good fit.” Mrs. Summers looked up from her tablet. “Would you like me to try and find another Yorkie mix?”
He heard the woman’s voice again—so confident, so cynical in her assessment of his character.
You really don’t seem like the Yorkie type.
What did that even mean?
Did she picture him with something less fluffy and adorable, like a bulldog? Or a snake? More to the point, why had that assumption stuck with him and rubbed him so entirely the wrong way?
“Anything. I’m open to suggestions,” he muttered. Then on second thought, he said, “Scratch that. I want a lapdog—something cute and affectionate, on the smaller side. A real cupcake of a dog.”
Mrs. Summers stifled a smile. “Of course, sir.”
“The sweeter, the better.”
The afternoon following Chloe’s odd encounter at the animal shelter, she tucked her new puppy into a playpen containing the candy cane–striped dog bed and a dozen or so new toys and then trudged her way through the snow-covered West Village to the Wilde School of Dance.
It was time to face the music.
She couldn’t keep lying to her family about her job. Just this morning, she’d thought she spotted her cousin Ryan walking through Times Square while she’d been on flyer duty. She’d ducked behind one of the area’s ubiquitous costumed characters—a minion in a Santa hat—but there was no hiding her blinking antlers.
Luckily,
