Page 2 of Almost Christmas in Paradise

I hold her against me while our special guest belts our song, We Belong Together.

The door of my office opens, and she sticks her head inside. I don’t look away from my screen. She walks to me, and I pull her onto my lap. She’s in one of my tees, and I stroke her smooth thigh with my fingertips.

“I woke up, and the bed was cold and empty,” she says. I don’t respond. Sometimes, we don’t need to speak. She always knows how I’m feeling. “What is it?” she whispers. “You haven’t been sleeping like usual and were distracted at dinner. I know it’s not work, so what is it?”

I promised her that I would not let my work consume me, and I’ve kept my word. I leave the office at a reasonable time, and for the most part, I leave the job there and focus on my family when I’m home. There is nothing at work that would keep me up.

“I think it’s time,” is all I say. She freezes for a moment, and then she turns and straddles me. Shecups my face. “I don’t want to drag this baggage into another year. I want to deal with it now and leave it behind.”

She lets go of my face and hugs me. I wrap my arms around her and feel her against my body.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“I am. It’s time, baby girl,” I say back to her.

She doesn’t say anymore. She knows my mind is made up and that I would not mention this unless I’m determined to see it through.

This has been weighing on me for over two years. Since the day she told me and showed me proof that my father was the one behind our separation, I’ve wanted answers. But my father is dead, so confronting him hasn't been an option.

The man who raised me with nothing but compassion and love turned out to be a fraud. I’ve been grappling with it since then. That’s part of the reason why I blackmailed Nia into marriage. That and the fact that she was dating, so I had to make her mine. I made it almost impossible for her to walk away from me, and I had to do it before I could confirm the truth.

Well, it was confirmed. It only took one conversation with my father’s former attorney for him to divulge the entire truth. The only surprise was that my father left me a letter and a video explaining his actions, and I’ve put off looking at them for too long. It’s time I slay that dragon and put it to rest.

Chapter 2

Nia

“Dada, dada, dada,” my one year old, Priya, says over and over again. She kicks her legs as I tape her fresh diaper together. Once she sits up, she smiles at me, showing off her four teeth—two on top and two on the bottom.

Unlike my five-year-old son, this one looks just like me, but with her daddy’s nose. She coos, grabs a chunk of my hair, and pulls.

“Ouch,” I say, and she laughs. Once I put the yellow footie onesie on, I put her in the crib, run to the adjoining bathroom, and wash my hands.

She’s standing in the crib and holding the rails when I return. “Dada, dada, dada,” she says again.

“Sure. I do all the work, and you ask for him.”

She laughs as if she understands me and raises both hands for me to lift her out of the crib.

This is not your typical nursery. Our daughter’s room was designed by an exclusive interior designer, per her daddy’s request. We went all out, and I let him have his way. Whatever he wanted in this nursery, no matter how ostentatious, I let him have his way.

I know he was making up for missing out on the first three years of Carter’s life. I don’t know if it was fate, but he learned that he had a son in the most random way. It was entirely accidental, but I was eventually convinced we were meant to be back in each other’s orbit.

All that time apart, I thought he knew and chose not to be a part of our lives, but that could not have been further from the truth. We were both manipulated and lied to which led to nothing but anger and bitter arguments when he confronted me and accused me of keeping his son from him.

Our road back to each other was fraught with accusations, finger-pointing, anger, and words so sharp, they drew blood. Yet, in all of the ugliness, I could never forget the beautiful year we spent together before we were torn apart. The man who adored me, put me on a pedestal, and did everything in his power to make me happy couldn’t have been just a mirage.

I spent years trying to forget him. There were chunks of time when I was successful. As a single mother, I had to focus on my son. I spent countless nights thinking of the future when Carter would be old enough to ask about his father. I lost sleep as I thought of ways to explain who his father was and the reasons he was not in his life. I imagined a world where my son would find his father only to be rejected to his face. I created all sorts of scenarios, but nothing I had imagined had come close to the truth.

Compared to how easy our relationship was the first time, it was the opposite when he barged back into my life. We did notmake things easy on each other. He resented me for the time he missed, and I resented him for the same reason. Except I didn’t keep him from his son, and there’s no way he would have missed a single moment of my pregnancy or Carter’s life.

After all the uncertainty, the angry words, and the fighting, he was still the same man I fell in love with. Unfortunately for us both, we never told each other how we felt. I was intimidated by his wealth and scared he didn’t feel the same way. He was waiting for the perfect time to say it, but it never happened.

“Come on, Princess P,” I say, using the nickname my parents gave my daughter. “Let’s go downstairs and wait for your daddy and big brother.” As the first granddaughter, she certainly is the princess in our family. As my husband’s first daughter, she will forever be his baby doll. “They should be back soon.”

I leave the nursery, which is bigger than my first apartment, and go down the hall. The house is so large it took me a few days to learn the layout. Like everything my husband does, it’s over the top, but I won’t ask him to be anyone other than who he is.

As a girl with solid middle-class parents—a detective father, and a mother who works for the public library—I never dreamed of a life with unlimited money and luxury like the one I live now. I never wanted it because I had everything I needed growing up. I had a happy home and the love of my immediate and extended family. I might not have been rich, but I had it all.

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