Ethan hid a smile.
“Well, here we are,” the older man said, his voice low and gentle as he presented them with the world-renowned little blue box. Placing it ceremoniously on the glass display in front of Daisy, he pulled back the lid to reveal the platinum marquise solitaire Ethan had chosen a couple of days before.
The ring had needed to be sized correctly, which was why he was picking it up today, and now considering it afresh, he was pretty sure he’d made a good choice. It was a classic Tiffany setting: the diamond lifted slightly above the band and held in place by six platinum prongs in order to maximize the stone’s brilliance.
“So what do you think?” he asked Daisy, but it was pretty obvious from the expression on her face that she was captivated by the beautiful ring, although that wasn’t really the question Ethan was asking.
But when she turned to look at him, her delighted expression told him everything he needed to know.
“It’s the perfect choice, Daddy,” Ethan’s eight-year-old daughter assured him, “and Vanessa is going to absolutelyloveit!”
Chapter 2
Thank goodness her reaction had been positive.
All day—no, strike that—allmonth, Ethan had worried about how Daisy would feel about this. Especially when this New York trip held a special significance for both of them.
Earlier that day, over a couple of hot chocolates in a Midtown café, he had watched his daughter pick at an iced lemon cupcake and had known that something was on her mind. Just as her mother had always done, Daisy got that squinty look in her eyes and offset her jaw ever so slightly when deep in thought.
“Did you like Times Square?” he asked, fishing. “With all the lights and everything?”
She nodded. “Everything’s just so beautiful,” she replied and then paused, looking out the window at the bustling street. “Mum said Manhattan was like one big Christmas tree at this time of year. She was right.”
“You really remember how much your mother talked about it, don’t you?” he asked.
She gave a little smile. “I know I was only small, but I loved hearing about it.”
Ethan nodded. “Of course, she was right about it being like a big Christmas tree. Your mum was right about lot of things.”
Suddenly, the significance of sitting here with his daughter in the city that her mother had adored so much washed over Ethan and almost took his breath away. Swallowing hard, he tried to gather his thoughts.
“You know what else she was right about?”
Daisy looked intently at him as she always did whenever he had something about her mother to relate. It wasn’t lost on him that his daughter was seldom more attentive than when he offered some piece of the puzzle whose parts probably seemed quite scattered to her. To him, it was as if she were an archivist of some sort, gathering and assembling the pieces of a great legacy and putting them in order.
Ethan continued with a smile, “She was right that you would grow into a bright and beautiful girl.”
Daisy grinned and turned back to the window to watch the goings-on of a very busy Park Avenue on Christmas Eve.
It had been nine years since his last and only other trip here. Jane, Daisy’s mum, had persuaded him to see the city, and making the trip from their home in London, see it they did.
Jane was a born-and-bred New Yorker and just couldn’t bear to spend another springtime “without a stroll through Central Park as the flowers begin to bloom.” She said dramatic things out of the blue like that now and then, to which Ethan usually responded by asking if it was actually her and not he who was the English language lecturer. “No, Professor,” she would say with a wink. “You’re the brainy, creative one around here, whereas I’m just a born romantic.”
Jane’s parents had retired to Florida in the meantime, so she rarely got to visit the city of her birth as often as she’d like.
Daisy had been conceived in the Big Apple during that visit nine years before. The running joke between them—one that Jane had no problem sharing with their friends and family—was that Daisy existed because they’d taken the expression “the city that never sleeps” quite literally.
As a personal trainer and nutritionist, Jane did her best to keep Ethan in tip-top shape, a fact that was all the more ironic when she’d developed ovarian cancer and discovered she had mere months to live.
Daisy was five at the time, and while Jane and Ethan were head over heels in love but had never gotten around to getting married, he’d wanted to change that, especially once they heard the news.
“Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart. We’ve been happy so far. Why change now?” Jane insisted. “Besides,” she added jokingly, “soon I won’t have enough hair left to hold a veil.”
By then, Ethan would have gone along with anything she wished, and Jane had several last wishes.
One of them was that he take their daughter to visit New York at Christmas when she was old enough to appreciate and enjoy it. She had spent hours weaving for Daisy tales of the magic of Manhattan and her own childhood Christmases there.
When a few months back, Daisy herself started talking about making the trip, Ethan knew it was time.
