Page 75 of The Christmas Arrangement

“You were at Christmas karaoke. You sat in the back and had a cowboy hat pulled down over your eyes.”

“Yup.”

He’s the man who left in a hurry when Dash sang the Daniel Lovelace song.

“How long have you known you’re his father?” I ask.

“Since I broke my leg on tour two ago. Or at least, I suspected then. I was laid up in Albuquerque and an episode of the vampire football series came on. I’d never seen it, and I didn’t have anything better to do. Ended up binge watching all seven seasons.”He chuckles.

“It sucks you in,” I agree, smiling a little at my unintentional pun.

He nods and goes on. “The kid who played Vlad sure reminded me of myself. I started to wonder. Pine’s not the most common surname, and I’d had a romance with a girl with that last name.”

Daniel stands and moves to the window, staring out at the parking lot.

“Once I was up and around again, I dismissed it. Then I saw his new movie, the one about the rancher. I spent the whole film trying to remember to breathe. It was like watching myself at twenty-five. The same face. The same mannerisms. And now that he’s grown, the same voice.”

His voice is raw, anguished. So I wait a beat, giving him time.

“But you didn’t reach out to him?”

“What was I supposed to say? Hi, I’m the father who never knew you existed. The one who chased record deals and played dive bars while your mother raised you all alone.”

He has a point. “But why not contact his mother?”

“Rachel and I were together in the late nineties. I was nobody, playing opener slots for fifty bucks a night. She was trying to make it as an actor, auditioning for commercials, sit-coms, anything. We were young, broke, and stupid. And completely in love.” He pauses. “At least I was. Then one day she was gone with no explanation. She just vanished.”

“And you let her?”

He spreads his palms wide. “What could I do? She wouldn’t return my calls, my letters came back undelivered. I went to her apartment, but she’d moved out. I thought”—he stops and then restarts—“I thought she decided I wasn’t ever going to make it and she was tired of waiting. At some point you have to stop the chase.”

“But twenty-some years later, you couldn’t call her and ask her if Dash was your son?”

Daniel closes his eyes. “She obviously didn’t want me in his life. And … I still love her. I’ve never stopped. Crazy as that sounds. I couldn’t risk contacting her and hearing she’d moved on. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.”

My chest tightens. There’s more to this story, I’m sure of it. But that’s not why I’m here.

“The plan,” I say. “The whole scheme with Lia Campbell, revealing their fake relationship in Mistletoe Mountain—you were behind that, weren’t you?”

He opens his eyes, startled. Then he laughs dryly. “After Dash had that meltdown on the morning show I had to do something. I’ve been there, spiraling in the spotlight. So I reached out to an old friend.”

“Griselda?”

He nods. “She was a dancer on one of my first stadium tours. We’ve stayed in touch, and I know she’s savvy. She knows a lot about reputation management. She put me in touch with Lia Campbell’s team. I put a bug in their ear, and they went for it. I also suggested the town where Griselda lived as the perfect place to go public. Figured I’d come up and watch him right his ship.”

“Fathering from a distance.”

“Better than nothing.”

“Is it, though?” The words come out sharper than I intended. “Because right now, Dash is at a children’s hospital playing Vlad the vampire for sick kids, trying to be everything to everyone, and he doesn’t know the one thing that might actually help him understand himself.”

“What’s that?”

“That he comes from someone who understands longing. Who turned loss into art. Who knows what it’s like to live in the public eye.”

Daniel’s jaw works. “You think telling him will help?”

“I think he deserves to know his father didn’t abandon him.”