A Merry Penthouse Christmas (Single Dads All the Way #5)

Prologue

BEAU

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly

Fa la la la la, la la la—”

Urg.

It's been three days since Halloween, but what else did I expect?

A typical day for me is usually fairly routine.

Was fairly routine. I suppose most of it still is.

Except for one thing.

“Next stop: Hudson Square,” the announcer’s voice blares over the subway speakers, temporarily overtaking the—in my opinion—far too early Christmas carol. “Next stop: Hudson Square.”

Two more stops to home. Well, two more stops to the apartment I can barely afford but have to rent by the month, because I don’t know where my next paycheck might be coming from. It’s been this way for a while. There is supposed to be a teacher shortage, yet I can’t seem to find a job in my field.

I’ve been subbing, and temping at call centers to make ends meet, which I hate, but I had to go and make my focus middle childhood education and history, and there are zero 6th grade history teacher positions in this city.

Even only months from completing my masters, I can’t get a bite, not for a steady job anyway.

Another interview ending with, “We’ll let you know if anything opens up,” and I am going to become one of those screaming lunatics on the subway who everyone avoids.

Or one of the sobbing ones.

Maybe if I had a tie that wasn’t over ten years old from my first college interviews—and crap, is that a hole in my slacks?—I might make better impressions. Or I’m just unlucky. It certainly feels like the universe is out to get me lately.

I tug my equally threadbare jacket more tightly around me.

I can’t zip it because the teeth snag and I can never get it undone again afterward.

The weather lately is threatening to not even hit low fifties.

Despite being only just past Halloween, Christmas decorations are already everywhere, and if the subway is playing “Deck the Halls,” you can bet that poking my head into one shop or another will mean my first forced listening of “All I Want for Christmas” long before Thanksgiving.

I usually love this time of year. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years—these are the good holidays, the exciting ones filled with food, fun, and family.

Or at least they used to be.

My phone buzzes, and I worry it’s another late fee notification for one of my many overdue bills, but it’s my brother calling. At least my original family is still there for me.

“Hey, Bell,” I answer.

“Hey! Have you, um… heard the news?” Bellamy asks.

My blood runs colder than the chill outside. With that tone and given what month it is, I know what he must mean. “She had the baby?”

“Today. It’s a girl.”

“Oh.” It’s not as if I care what gender the baby turned out to be, but to hear it feels so final.

“If you need to talk or just scream at someone—”

“I’m on the subway, Bell, and I hate being one of those people on their phones the whole trip. Can I, uh… call you back?”

“Job interview today?”

“Done and dud. Same old story.” I speak through the urge to grind my teeth. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Okay, Beau. I love you.”

“Love you too, Bell.”

I actually could use a scream, but not here. I probably won’t give in when I call Bellamy later either. I might be out of screams.

Not tears though. Crap. I wipe my eyes before it gets too obvious that I am close to crying. I still catch a suspicious glance from the teenager otherwise glued to her phone across from me. With my phone still in hand, I scroll back through my texts to the last ones from… her.

The most recent were about me moving out. Whether I’d found an apartment. If I’d be okay. If I was sure. I eventually get to the text that started this months ago.

Emily: I need to tell you something.

The “we need to talk” of it all had caused me to call her immediately.

Imagine my shock and devastation when she admitted I was not the father of our baby, after four months of being excited together.

At least the real father isn’t anyone I know but a coworker of hers.

I’ve been carrying our divorce papers around for a week.

My brother has been trying to get me back out there, but how do I return to dating after marrying my college sweetheart? How do people even ask women out these days?

“You could try dudes again,” Bellamy suggested.

Right. Not that I didn’t enjoy my few college boyfriends, but I haven’t been with a guy since then, before senior year when Emily and I got together. That’s five—no, six years ago now. If I don’t know how to ask out a woman anymore, I definitely don’t know how to ask out a guy.

How could I even consider hooking up with anyone when the birth of my not-child was looming? Now it’s here. She’s here.

And I’m still not the father.

I must be a glutton for punishment because instead of getting off the subway at my stop, I get off at the one nearest to First Methodist Hospital.

Because the one thing that’s different about my routine these days is how, until recently, I would have been going home to a doting and faithful wife. And now, I’m alone.

ARIK

A typical day for me is usually fairly routine.

Was fairly routine. I suppose most of it still is.

Except for one thing.

“Thank you, everyone. That’s all for today,” I dismiss the board meeting, and my peers and I in our equally expensive and expertly tailored suits and pencil skirts disperse. I am in a suit, but a pencil skirt wouldn’t be unheard of from me. I have the legs for it.

My company’s high-rise offices have already been decked out in tinsel for the coming season. I would complain but a little early glitz and glamour helps morale. Or so I’m told. Being the boss, I work even when I’m spiraling.

Without having to summon my assistant, he meets me at the elevator, tablet in hand and ready to recite the next items on my schedule with barely a nod in greeting. I love that about Skylar. He is efficient, blunt, and appropriately vicious, just as a good assistant should be.

He would wear a pencil skirt to work if he found one adequate to his tastes, but today he is in a deep burgundy suit and pink floral button-down.

Although he looks like a pale, blond twink—and he is—he could break a floundering intern in two with his words alone whether in person or over inter-office email.

“Your driver is waiting downstairs. You have a ten-thirty meeting across town regarding the Johnson merger. That tie is hideous. And you have four missed calls. Two aren’t worth your time. One can wait until after the Johnson meeting. Fourth was Clara.”

That catches my attention as Skylar hands me my phone. I don’t keep it on me during important meetings. I prefer to be present and focused. Skylar only takes my calls for me if it is business related, and Clara isn’t business.

I check my texts first, scrolling down to her name to see that she also messaged me.

Clara: Hey Daddy. Guess what? It’s a boy.

A boy. It’s a boy. I would have been happy with anything, but to see it in writing feels so real. I knew it would happen any day now. I’d wanted to be there when the baby was born, but that damn meeting went longer than expected.

“Move my ten-thirty to this afternoon,” I inform Skylar.

“But Arik—”

“Code pastel,” I cut him off, and he immediately straightens. He nods, following as I exit the elevator and make my way even more swiftly than before to my waiting car.

I falter a little along the way, however, since the lobby is playing… urg.

"Dashing through the snow

In a one-horse open sleigh,

O'er the hills we go..."

I guess I should be glad I made it through the weekend.

I begin loosening my tie as we exit the building, and by the time I’m inside the vehicle, it is undone for me to hand it out the window to Skylar. “I expect everything to be ready when I get home. The tie was a gift.”

“Do you need—”

“No. This I have to do on my own.”

Skylar stays behind as we drive off, and I direct the driver to First Methodist Hospital.

It is a tense ride, at least for me, and I try to distract myself by catching up on my other missed messages.

My texts are mostly business-related but a few are for pleasure.

I can get practically anything and everything I want by way of the contacts on my phone, sex included.

Such as the reminder from a certain dancer named Rowan that we had plans for tonight. They are a particularly exquisite dalliance I indulge in from time to time, but I send them my apologies and the promise of a raincheck. I also have texts from dalliances Sandra and Kevin, but they can wait.

I scroll back up to Clara’s message and text her that I am on my way.

We already agreed I am getting full custody.

There is hardly any paperwork left. She isn’t fit to raise a child, and we both know it.

Maybe I won’t be much better, but as soon as she told me she was pregnant and willing to have the child, whether to give it up for adoption or to turn it over to me, I’d felt a rare possessiveness and hadn’t hesitated to say I would raise the child myself.

I must have been out of my mind because “baby proofed” is the last thing my life is, let alone my penthouse.

Doesn’t matter now though. Because the one thing that is different about my routine these days is how, until recently, I would have been going home to a blessedly empty apartment. And now, I’m about to have company for the next eighteen years.