credit, Aidan Phillips had managed to get his daughter out of the limelight and keep her out of it.
She could feel herself softening toward him the tiniest bit.
“And then you would think you could salvage Christmas with lovely gifts, wouldn’t you?” He sighed with long-suffering.
Again, she felt he was missing the point, but she went along. “Aren’t gifts for little girls easy? Hair ribbons and teddy bears and new pajamas? A jangly bracelet? A miniature oven?”
“Oh, right,” Aidan said, as if Noelle was hopelessly naive.
Of course, his little girl probably got those things as a matter of course, so what did Tess then have to look forward to?
“Doesn’t she tell you what she wants?”
“Yes, a puppy. And a pony. Every other item on her wish list is reserved for Santa. The fat happy Santa at the mall, not the skinny fellow in odd clothes with a real beard in Finland. And it’s a secret. If you tell anyone, then Santa won’t bring it to you, because the hearty laugh and twinkly eyes are just fronts for a mean-spirited old goat that would punish a little girl for telling her dad what she really wants.”
Noelle was struck by an irony here. Aidan Phillips, one of the most wealthy and successful men in Canada, if not the world, was in hopelessly over his head when it came to being a daddy at Christmas.
What had her grandfather just said? That a man who thought money was the only way to be rich was very poor indeed?
Still, it seemed like it should all be fairly easy. Was he the kind of man who could complicate a dot?
“How about that line of dolls that is such a big hit? Millie something?”
“Jilly,” he corrected her. “Jilly Jamjar. And her friends. Corrinne Cookiejar. Pauline Picklejar. They all come with the ‘jar’ they live in.”
“Are you making this up?”
“Really? Do I look like the kind of man who could make up a line of dolls who live in jar houses?”
“No,” she had to admit, “you do not.”
“I wish I was making it up. She already has the first three in the series. But then along came Jerry. Jerry Juicejar.”
It was quite funny listening to this extremely sophisticated man discuss the Jar dolls, fluent in their ridiculous names, but she had the feeling it would be a mistake to laugh.
“The Jarheads—my name for the toy manufacturers, not their own—in all their wisdom, made a limited edition of dear Jerry. There’s a few thousand of him. Period. For millions of children screaming his name in adulation. I swear the Jarheads are in cahoots with the mean-spirited Santa.
“Which brings us to I-Sell. One momentary lapse on my part. Okay, go ahead, see if you can find a Jerry Juicejar on there.”
“You let your five-year-old daughter go on the internet?”
Noelle was treated to a flinty look of pure warning. Do not judge me.
“She’s not five going on six, she’s five going on twenty-one.”
Which Noelle found terribly sad. Really, Tess was little more than a baby, only a year ago being quite capable of throwing a tantrum in the middle of a theme park. Still, she refrained from saying anything. She was beginning to suspect that the do-not-judge-me look she saw in his eyes had something to do with the fact that he had already judged himself with horrendous harshness.
“Plus, she wasn’t by herself. Nana was supervising. I’ve got two acquisitions assistants looking for him full time, and they have not found anyone willing to part with a Jerry. There are some things,” Aidan said with a miffed sigh, “that money can’t buy.”
“There are all kinds of things money can’t buy,” Noelle said firmly.
He looked dubious about that, even after his failed attempts to purchase Christmas happiness for his daughter with lavish holiday plans, research teams and acquisitions assistants.
“Is it possible Tess would like to just stay home for Christmas?” she suggested softly, as gently as she could. “She just wants what any child wants. To be with you. To be with her family.”
“I’m it for family,” he said tightly. “Me and Nana. Another fail in the Christmas department, I’m sure. And we don’t stay home for Christmas.”
A fire, Noelle seemed to remember. In their apartment? Christmas morning? A nation pulled from their Christmas joy to mourn with that very famous family.
“Anyway, she was looking for Jerry Juicejar, and what did she find while her supervisor nodded off on the sofa? An Old-Fashioned Country Christmas.”
“You’re quite lucky that’s all she found,” Noelle said.
Again, she got the flinty look, but underneath it she saw just a flicker of the magnitude of his sense of drowning in the sea of parenting requirements.
“You couldn’t dissuade her?” She deliberately made her tone neutral, vigilantly nonjudgmental.
Not that he seemed to appreciate her effort! He shot her a look. “You’ll soon see how easy it is to dissuade Tess. And I did, very foolishly, promise her she could have anything. A promise is a promise. She’ll be the first to let you know that, too. She has a book by that title that she carries in her hip pocket for reference and reminder purposes. So be very careful what you tell her.”
“I’ve made a note,” she said seriously, and he shot her a suspicious look to see if she was making light of him.
“I had…er…some of my staff make sure your grandfather was legitimate.”
It was faintly insulting, and yet she could hardly blame him.
“And then I spoke to your grandfather on the phone and it all seemed aboveboard. Nice old guy, first Christmas alone. Of course, he neglected to mention Ellie-born-on-Christmas-Day.”
“Maybe your research teams just aren’t that good,” she said drily. “They can’t find out what a little girl wants for Christmas and they totally missed me. I go by Noelle, actually, and being born on Christmas Day was not an indictable offense the last time I checked.”
“Did I say it like it was?”
“You did.”
“It’s just so darn…cute. Most people, of course, would hate having their birthday overshadowed by the ‘big’ day, but I bet you aren’t one of them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What would make you presume anything about me?”
He lifted a broad shoulder. “Presumptions are a part of life. You made some about me—that I was not the type of man who would need to join strangers for Christmas—and I have made some about you.”
“Do tell,” she said, though in truth she was bracing herself. She was not sure she wanted him to tell at all.
“There’s a look about you. A country girl.”
A country girl? She had lived in the city now for nearly five years. She considered herself fairly sophisticated.
Not that you would know it at the moment. She was dressed in a pink parka and her jeans were stuffed into snow boots. On her hurried way out the back door, she had put her grandpa’s toque back on. Her cheeks were probably pink, and no doubt her nose was, too.
“Not a touch of makeup. Wholesome,” he went on, ignoring the fact that she was looking daggers at him. “Giving. Christmas magic and all that. Hopelessly naive. Probably made a bad choice in a man and Grandpa has stepped in to find you a suitable partner. Right at Christmas. Cue the music.”
He began to hum “White Christmas.”
She hoped it wouldn’t