Six months after his wife leaves him, Bob Jansen finds himself spending the holidays with his parents in the town where he grew up. With him is his seven year old daughter, Jenna, who sometimes seems to be handling her mother's absence better than Bob is himself. But he's worried that, in her letter to Santa, Jenna has asked the jolly old elf for something Bob knows he can't pull off. He's afraid she wants her mother back for the holiday.<br><br>While shopping for his daughter's Christmas presents, Bob runs into Dave Knarr, an old friend. They used to be best buds in high school, before Julia, Bob's soon-to-be ex-wife, came between them. The two men catch up over drinks, and before the evening ends, Dave makes his real feelings for Bob known.<br><br>If Bob is shocked to learn Dave has always been attracted to him, he's more surprised by his own reaction. Even if he's willing to take another shot at romance, what will his daughter think of his old friend?

A Present for Daddy

But we’re adults now—if not in action, then in appearance, at least, and none of the sales associates are older than we are, so they don’t step up and ask us to stop. I don’t even notice what time it is until the music playing over the store’s stereo system turns off and the manager pulls down the front gate a little to entice shoppers to hurry up. I grab the bike and its basket full of toys and wheel it down the aisle. “Damn, we still need to check out.”


“Just when I’m getting good at this, too,” Dave mutters, but the truth is, he sucks as hard at the video game as he did when he was a teen. I always could kick his ass playing Super Mario Brothers, even when he made me play Luigi.


“You coming?” I ask, glancing back at him over my shoulder.


He tosses aside the Wii controller. “All right, already. Hold up.”


Chapter 7