started as easily as this? His daughter threatened to leave him and he started drinking in the office alone? Not socially with clients or to celebrate a deal, but to obliterate the hollowness, the loneliness?
He was turning into Mort. His wife had left him for another man and now his daughter wanted to leave him, too. It hadn’t been so bad when Marsha had left. After all, how much had they loved each other, really? Not enough to sustain a lifelong commitment.
But Emily? He loved her to distraction. Mort had said she’d complained that Nick didn’t spend enough time with her; therefore, the solution was simple. He would spend more time with her.
She wasn’t happy.
She deserved to be happy.
Starting tonight, she would be. He dropped the bottle of Laphroaig into the trash then called Emily to tell her he loved her and planned to spend more time with her, starting tonight, leaving a message on the machine for when she got home from school. He would let her go to France to visit, but to live? No.
He’d leave the office as soon as he finished with the clients in the waiting room.
He straightened his tie, made sure his hair was in place and asked Rachel to send them in.
* * *
HE COULDN’T GET away until after six and didn’t reach home until six-thirty.
TGIF.
He rubbed the back of his neck, took his overcoat and briefcase from the backseat, closed the door and locked the car. He turned to walk up his driveway...
...and got a snowball full in his face.
“What the—?”
He swiped his hand across his eyes to clear them of wet snow. Emily stood in front of the house with a dare in her eye, and what might be construed as hope.
She’s not happy with you.
So. She’d received his phone message and wondered how sincere he was.
Did he intend to follow through on his promise to spend time with her? You bet!
He tossed his briefcase and coat onto the hood of the car and grinned.
When had he last had a snowball fight? He caught a glimpse of a memory. Ah, yes. Snowball fights with his two older brothers. He’d forgotten about that—a rare good memory.
His cell phone rang, its blare a harsh discord in this quiet neighborhood covered with softly falling wet snow.
“Dad, don’t answer it,” Emily shouted, still with that dare in her eye. She stood ten feet away from him with another snowball in her hand.
Dad? When had his daughter stopped calling him Daddy?
She’d turned twelve this week. He’d missed so much. Where had the years gone? Into building a business. Into making more money than he could ever need.
The phone rang again and it took all of his self-control to stay focused on Emily and ignore it.
If he answered it now, he’d lose her. He sensed it as surely as the snow soaking his shoes. He needed to change. That change started now. This minute.
The wrinkle of his vibrating cell phone required superhuman control on his part to ignore.
She lobbed the second snowball at his head. Bull’s-eye.
“You want a fight, kid?” He laughed and picked up a handful of the wet snow left by a rare late-April snowfall and formed it into a ball with his bare hands, the bite of cold bracing on his palms. “You got it.”
He threw it at her, making sure he didn’t hit her above the shoulders. She hid behind the only tree on the front lawn. A moment later, a snowball hit his chest. He ducked behind the car and lobbed one over the hood. It landed beside the tree.
He watched a pair of hands in fuzzy red mittens build a small stockpile of snowballs beside the tree.
Nick sneaked around the back of the car and made a run for it, swooping around the tree to catch her by surprise from behind.
He lunged at her, picked her up and tossed her into a pile of snow left by the man who had cleared his driveway. She squealed. Emily was getting heavy, too big for this, but fool that he’d been, he’d missed innocent, spontaneous play in her childhood.
He breathed a sigh, feeling young rather than the thirty-two-going-on-fifty that he felt in his office.
Emily giggled and picked up a handful of snow and threw it at him, but he dodged.
“Look what you did to my shoes,” he said, his words harsh, but his tone not. “You could have ruined my suit.” He dumped handfuls of snow onto her, scraping it from the two