Dear Santa

With a last glance at his daughter’s fragile-looking back, Grant took the phone, thinking this was why he’d never been a big fan of that whole prayer business to begin with.

Because all too often, the answer is exactly what you don’t want.

“Where is she?” Mia tossed the question in Grant’s housekeeper’s direction as she catapulted herself through the mansion’s open door, simultaneously unwinding her scarf and shrugging out of her tweed jacket.

“Upstairs, in her room,” the older woman said, relieving her of the garments. “But—”

“Thanks.”

Mia strode across the black-and-white tiled floor in the mini-rotunda that served as a vestibule, deaf to the screams of Money, money, money! reverberating from the high-ceilinged space. That she’d made it up here in one piece was a miracle in itself, considering all she really wanted to do was curl up in a corner somewhere until the world made sense again—

“Mia. Wait.”

The deep voice hit its mark like a sharpshooter’s bullet. Already at the foot of the curved staircase, Mia spun around, her gaze colliding with a pair of steely lasers, nailing her to the spot. Not until then did she realize she was panting, as though she’d run all the way from Manhattan instead of driven. Vaguely, it dawned on her that she hadn’t even changed clothes after she’d talked to Grant, that she was still in the same rumpled jeans and who-gives-a-damn hoodie she’d been wearing to schlep fake fall foliage to the pier for the Chins’ anniversary party the next night, that her tortoiseshell clip was hanging by maybe two teeth to her long, thick hair.

That she looked every bit the scatterbrain he undoubtedly thought she was.

“Grant! I’m sorry, traffic was a bear on the Henry Hudson, I got here as soon as I could!”

One side of his mouth ticked. Grant Braeburn’s version of a smile. “Clearly. Thank you. Before you go up…?” He gestured toward a room off the entryway. His office, if she remembered correctly. She’d been in the house before, of course—for the wedding, once after that for dinner with Christopher, a night branded in her memory as somewhere between miserable and excruciating. But she wasn’t here to see Justine’s ex, she was here for the little girl who’d wrapped herself around Mia’s heart from the first time she’d laid eyes on the baby when she was less than a day old.

“Mia!” came the imperious tone when she started upstairs. “We need to talk!”

“Later!”

She’d already reached the landing when his fingers wrapped around her arm. A lesser woman might have been intimidated—or, in other circumstances, turned on—by the man’s grip. Or, at the very least, let out a soft, feminine squeal of surprise. Instead, Mia went for the severely pissed-off look. One that nicely complemented Grant’s own.

“Damn it, Mia—I don’t want you breaking down in front of Haley.”

“Not a problem,” she said, yanking out of his grasp and striding across a billion bucks’ worth of oriental runner toward Haley’s room. Whatever issues Grant had with her—or she, him—would have to wait. Preferably until they were both dead and buried—

The thought literally made her stumble, although she righted herself before Grant could notice. She hoped. But despite the heartburn from hell dissolving her digestive system, she wasn’t about to crumple.

Not yet, anyway.

Grant loomed behind her, much too close, as, through Haley’s open door, Mia could see the child sitting quietly in the middle of her bed in her teddy-bear-flecked pajamas, sucking her thumb—a habit given up months ago. And clutched to her small, far-too-fragile-looking chest, Mia realized with another fiery blast to her midsection, was the stuffed lion Justine had only just given her.

“Hey, little bit,” she said softly, and the child’s head shot up. A second later she’d streaked across the room to wrap her arms around Mia’s thighs.

Then she tilted her head back, hope and worry and confusion tangled in her eyes. “Did Mommy come with you?”

Crap. Mia glanced over at Grant, whose glower had rearranged itself into something much more worrisome, then lowered herself to one knee, lumpy throats and heartburn from hell be damned.

“No, baby,” she said softly, brushing Haley’s curls off her cheek, praying she was striking the right balance between reassuring and serious. “Mommy’s not here.”

Haley disengaged herself to swing back and forth, clutching the toy. “Then are you going to take me back to the city?”

Slowly, Mia shook her head. “No, sweetie pie. You’re going to stay with your daddy now.”

The little girl frowned. “Daddy said Mommy got broken an’ the doctors couldn’t fix her.”

“That’s right,” Mia said, swallowing back tears.

Soft brown eyes shifted from Mia to Grant and back again. “Like Hump-y Dump-y?”

“Yeah, baby. Like Humpty Dumpty.”

“But Hump-y Dump-y’s not real. Mommy said.”

Bugger. “Well, that’s true, but—”

“So where is she?”

Oh, brother. Mia glanced up at Grant, desperately hoping for a bone, here. Justine hadn’t been particularly religious that Mia knew of, and Grant’s spiritual bent was anybody’s guess. However, since no bone seemed to be forthcoming, Mia decided to go with thirty years of Catholic indoctrination and let the chips fall where they may. “She’s in heaven, sweetie. With the angels.”

“What’s heaven?”

Ah. Clearly she was introducing new material. “Someplace really, really nice where people go after they die.”

“It’s far away?”

“Yes. Very far.”

Her brow puckered, Haley fingered Mia’s loose hair. “C’n you get there in a taxi?”

“No.”

“How ’bout an airplane?”

“Nope.”

Almost expressionless, Haley looked at her for a long moment, then down at the lion. A second later, she held the lion out to Mia, who wagged one of the lion’s floppy paws and said softly, “Who’s this neat guy?”

“That’s Henry. Mommy gave him to me.”

“I know. I was with her when she bought him for you.”

“You were?”

“Uh-huh.”

After another moment’s thoughtful consideration, Haley leaned over and whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and Mia whispered back, “Okay,” and the little girl bounced off, Henry safely tucked under one arm. Mia struggled to her feet; her hands stuffed in the front pocket of her hoodie, she frowned toward the bathroom door.

“You’ve already gotten ten times further than I could,” Grant said behind her, the words brittle as dry sticks. Mia turned her frown on him, thinking, And whose fault is that? From what Justine had said, the man hadn’t even tried to fight for joint custody. Not that Jus would have given it to him, but still.

But this was hardly the time to call him on any of it. She walked to the other side of the room, idly poking through the little girl’s collection of Dr. Seuss. “Weird, isn’t it?” Mia said, sliding Horton Hears a Who back into the bookcase. “To think there’s a time when we have no concept of what death means.”

“Do we ever?” he said softly.