Prologue

      Houston, Texas, December 23

      “Come on, Dad, you’re single, rich, a great catch. You need to find someone and—”

      “Okay, Mike, that’s enough.” In the back of the limousine, Quint Gallagher cut off his son’s words coming over the cell phone. “I’m here to work tonight. It’s a reception, a business function, not a singles’ party. Everyone, including me, will have an agenda with them and they’re all business.”

      “Bummer,” Mike murmured.

      Quint could almost see his twenty-two-year-old son sitting in his apartment in Los Angeles, probably with clutter all around from his move last month. “Yeah, bummer,” he echoed. “But it’s part of the package with LynTech and something you’ll learn at your job.”

      “I’m never going to be like that,” Mike said. “My work isn’t my life. It’s so I can live life.”

      “So you’ve told me many times,” Quint said as he stretched his legs out and slipped lower on the leather seat, enjoying the roominess of the limousine as he tried to ease muscles still tight from the long flight in from New York.

      “I mean it. You did your thing the way you wanted to, but I’m not doing it that way. I wish you weren’t anymore. You’ve got all the money you’ll ever need, and you could just cut loose and have some fun. Why don’t you start by ditching the reception and going somewhere else?”

      “That’s not going to happen.”

      “Dad, I hate to say this, but you need to get a love life, to—”

      Quint cut that off right away. “What did you call for, besides checking on my love life?”

      “So, you do have a love life, huh?” Mike murmured.

      “That’s none of your business.” He and Mike had always talked about anything, but right now, Quint was setting the limits. He wasn’t about to go into this with his son. There had been women over the years; they’d come and gone, but he’d kept them separate from his real life as a single father to his only child Mike, and from his work. He’d never introduced those women to Mike, because he hadn’t wanted to have another woman do what Mike’s mother had done—walk out. It had been a conscious decision on his part to stay free of that possibility ever becoming reality again, and now it was a habit that fit him well, just not to get involved. “Now, are you going to tell me why you called?”

      “Okay, okay. Since you aren’t going to come out here for Christmas and Grandma and Granddad are going to Florida for the holidays, I was going to head up to Tahoe for some skiing. I just wondered if you had Joe Kline’s number so I could see if we could use his condo? I can’t find it anywhere.”

      Quint passed the cell phone to his other ear and looked past his reflection in the tinted window to the night streets of Houston glittering with Christmas decorations. “I don’t have it with me, but you can get it from his son, Dane. He’s listed.”

      “Great, thanks.”

      “Who’s the ‘we’ in ‘we could use his condo?”’

      “A friend.”

      “Okay, fair enough,” he murmured. “Just be careful, have fun and leave—”

      “—it the way we found it,” Mike said, completing the sentence for him.

      “You read my mind.”

      “Now, that’s an easy job. Just think work and responsibility.” Before Quint could counter that, Mike asked, “So, are you going to be out at the ranch or what?”

      “I’m staying at the Towers Hotel in the city. It’s just easier than being all the way out at the ranch.”

      “How’d you convince Grandma that you weren’t staying with them now that you’re back in Houston?”

      “Unlike you, your grandmother understands what work is and how important it is to be close to that work.”

      “Obviously you haven’t talked to her since you landed.”

      “I called and left a message. What’s going on?”

      “I talked to Grandma yesterday and she’s worried about you. She thinks you should take advantage of being on your own again, that you should find some nice girl and settle down.”

      Quint narrowed his hazel eyes at his own reflection in the tinted windows, a man with gray-streaked dark hair brushed back from a face that was all planes and angles, dominated by a full mustache. Hardly a “kid” a mother had to worry about. “She’s wasting her time on that line of thought.” He’d settled down once and lived to regret it. He’d never regret having Mike, and if he’d been able to have the same child without ever having had Gwen in their lives, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a minute. But it didn’t work that way. “I’m too old to buy into that scenario anymore.”

      “Why don’t you rewrite the scenario and forget the ‘settling down’ part? Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.”

      “God, you sound like some hedonistic hippy,” he said. “And any lady my age isn’t into the party scene. She’s sitting at home with her grandchildren.”

      Mike laughed at that. “Dad, you’re not old. You’re only 49. Besides, who says you need someone your age? You know what they say—if you’re in this world at the same time, age doesn’t matter. So go with that.”

      “If you say, ‘let it all hang out’ I’m hanging up on you,” Quint said.

      Mike laughed again. “Okay, okay, I won’t, but can’t you ditch that reception and go party?”

      “You go to Tahoe and have a great time, and I’m going to work at a job that’s going to be a killer.”

      “I’ll bet you’re even thinking of working on Christmas.”

      Without Mike around and with his parents away, Quint would be alone. “It’s just another day.”

      “What about on your birthday?”

      Quint seldom thought about birthdays, and this one was no exception. “It’s just another day,” he repeated.

      “It’s New Year’s and it’s your birthday.”

      “Why waste a perfectly good day?”

      “I don’t think you remember how to have fun,” Mike said, then chuckled ruefully. “I guess, with it being Christmas and all, I was hoping for a miracle.”

      “I don’t need a miracle. I’m fine.”

      “I hope so,” Mike murmured, then said, “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

      “Merry Christmas, son,” Quint said, then turned off the phone and slipped it into one of the inside pockets of his tuxedo.

      Mike would learn soon enough that there were no miracles in this life. Quint had learned that the hard way.