Mistletoe Mommy

Chapter Four

Brenna almost groaned at the naked joy in her stepbrother’s expression. No, she wanted to tell him. Josh had made no secret of the fact that he wanted Brenna to date more, but Adam Varner was not an option. This was a critical time for her small company, her first potential “growth spurt,” a chance to turn a profit, instead of living bill to bill each month. Brenna needed to work hard this summer, not get distracted by a man-no matter how good looking he was, or how endearing his efforts with his kids. Besides, Adam had his own summer plans and would be gone in a few weeks.

“Dr. Varner here is just passing through Mistletoe,” she said quickly. “He gave me a lift when my car died. Would you and Natalie mind taking me home?”

“Of course not,” Josh said absently. His bright smile had dimmed to a frown. At first Brenna thought he was upset about the car situation-he and Fred had both nagged her to let Fred cosign on a car loan. It’s no more than he would do for me, Josh had said.

Brenna had barely stopped herself from insisting that the situation was different. Instead, she’d simply told him, “I want to be self-sufficient. Need to be.” When you grew up subject to the whims of an unstable parent, you found that as an adult, you liked to be in control. Reliant on no one.

“So, Dr. Varner, you’re an out-of-towner?” Josh asked. His tone had subtly shifted from Welcome to the family to You’d better not have any outstanding warrants for your arrest. “How convenient that you just happened to be driving by in time to pick up a lone woman in distress.”

Adam looked unsure how to answer. “We were glad to be able to help.”

“We?” Josh echoed, his gaze darting to Brenna. “Just how many strangers were in the car?”

She sighed. “Four, three of them not even old enough to drive. Stop looking at Dr. Varner as if he’s suspect. And stop being so overprotective! I’m the older sibling, remember?”

“As bossy as you are,” he said lightly, “how could I forget?”

Natalie politely smothered her laugh.

Adam scooted over on the bench. “Would you two like to sit down? We probably won’t see my kids again until they run out of quarters.”

“Thank you.” Natalie sat next to him, and Josh took a seat on Brenna’s side.

The waitress reappeared, clearing plates and promising a box for Morgan’s cheeseburger. When she asked if Josh and Natalie needed time to decide on their orders, Josh laughed. He had the menu memorized and had probably known what he wanted even before he parked his truck out front. He asked for the barbecue plate, and after a moment’s consideration, Natalie ordered a half-size fried-chicken salad.

“So, Dr. Varner…” Natalie began.

“Please, call me Adam. ‘Doctor’ seems too formal for vacation. And I desperately need a vacation,” he added with a rueful grin.

Considering his traveling companions, Brenna doubted he’d get any real rest or relaxation.

The blonde returned his smile, her interrogation techniques a lot more amiable than Josh’s. “What brings you to Mistletoe?”

“Three weeks of bonding with my kids. I have two girls and a teenage son. We’re looking forward to hiking, exploring the town. We’ll be staying at the Chattavista.”

“What a coincidence!” Natalie said. “Josh works for the lodge.”

It wasn’t that big a coincidence-there were only two real places for tourists to stay around here. The Mistletoe Inn located downtown, as it were, and the more rustic Chattavista Lodge outside the town proper. Nestled among hills dotted with Georgia wildflowers, the lodge was in perfect proximity to a river that offered fishing, tubing and rafting. People made the most of outdoor sports in the spring, summer and brilliantly colored fall. During the colder months of the year, when holiday visitors were more likely to stay at the inn, the lodge offered discount space for corporate retreats, attracting businesspeople from Atlanta and surrounding states.

“I take groups out on the river,” Josh said. “Well, and answer the phone and other stuff. But white-water rafting is a much more exciting job description.”

Brenna smiled in his direction, feeling a big-sister rush of pride. And also feeling suddenly, inexplicably old. The quiet, shaggy-haired boy who’d seemed unsure how to react when his father married Brenna’s mother was now a broad-shouldered, confident man. Despite his joking about “playing outdoors” for a living, she knew how committed he was to doing a good job. “Josh is a trained guide, a CPR instructor and a certified Wilderness First Responder.”

Josh flashed a grin across the table at Natalie. “Brenna’s just trying to make me sound good for you. Is it working?”

His girlfriend chuckled, but before she could reply, the waitress returned with their food.

Josh offered his heartfelt thanks, then stole a glance at Brenna. There was a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Now, if I wanted to repay the favor and make Brenna sound good for anyone’s benefit, I might mention how she kept making the dean’s list and got her MBA.”

Apparently he’d weighed the potential risks of Adam’s being a total stranger against the likelihood of Brenna finding another boyfriend soon and had come down in favor of the good doctor.

Well, can’t fault his taste, anyway.

“You have an MBA?” Adam asked, looking at Brenna in surprise.

Some people found it perplexing that she’d busted her butt for six years in higher education and now walked dogs. “I interned at a corporation after I got my bachelor’s, then tried jobs at two other places once I completed my MBA. After three false starts, I realized that cubicles and Monday-morning meetings just aren’t for me. I lack the corporate group-think mentality.” More alarmingly, she’d felt restless, edgy. For the first time in her life, she’d worried about turning into her mother, so she’d abruptly quit and come “home” to Mistletoe, wanting to feel grounded.

And it had worked. Creating her own business from the ground up was challenging but immensely satisfying; she was carving out her own unique place among family and friends. “My MBA isn’t being wasted, though. I am my own marketing staff, HR and accounting department.”

“Lot of responsibility,” Adam said.

“It’s not exactly on a par with heart surgery,” she said with a wry smile, “but I am very aware that people are trusting me with keys to their homes and members of their family.” Furry, four-legged members, but still.

“Dad!” Geoff yelled from the middle of the dining room. Adam whipped his head around as if anticipating an emergency, but Geoff’s chief concern as he ambled toward them seemed to be, “Any food left?”

Adam stopped his son as he reached for the white square box on the table. “That is your sister’s. And I know your mother raised you with better manners. You don’t shout across a restaurant unless it’s urgent.”

Looking genuinely bemused, Geoff asked, “Was I shouting? Sorry.”

“Now say hello to Brenna’s brother, Josh, and his friend Natalie.”

“Hey.” Geoff nodded politely to Josh, then turned to Natalie. Whereupon he reddened and looked away.

Brenna managed not to smile. When Natalie had been in high school, she’d been one of the head cheerleaders, admired by many tongue-tied teenage boys; a decade later, she was still a head-turner. “We were just telling your father that Josh is a river guide. You have any interest in white-water rafting?”

“That would be awe some!” Geoff sat next to Josh, temporarily forgetting Natalie’s good looks and even food. “Dad, can we try that while we’re here? I know you said we’ll go fishing and tubing, but can we try rafting, too?”

Dumb, Bren. Seeing Geoff’s animated expression, she realized that she shouldn’t have said something before finding out if it was okay with Adam. It was akin to asking someone else’s dog, “Wanna go for a walk?” and getting it all excited without knowing whether the owner had time for that.

“I don’t know.” Adam sounded dubious but refrained from shooting her any accusatory glances. “How old do you have to be to do that, Josh?”

“For rafting, the minimum age is seven. It goes up from there, depending on the intensity of the trip you sign up for.”

Adam nodded. “Morgan’s way too young.”

Speaking of which. Brenna noticed the girls threading their way through the dining room.

“I was still playing,” Morgan announced forlornly, “but Eliza said I couldn’t stay back there by myself.”

“She’s absolutely right,” Adam said.

“She said she wanted to come find out who the he-”

“So is there still room at the table for us?” Eliza asked, blushing furiously.

Adam gave her a hard look, then sighed. “Grab a couple of chairs from that empty table over there. You can sit on the end, and Morgan can squeeze in here with me.”

It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion since Morgan took up no room, and Eliza, having already eaten, didn’t need much space. But she looked so ticked off that Adam might as well have asked her to sleep on the floor so someone else could have her bed. From what Brenna had seen so far, it would be easy to believe Eliza was just ticked off at the world in general. But Brenna thought there was more to it than that.

Although the girl acted as if she loathed her father, was she jealous of his attention elsewhere? Eliza already had to share him with two siblings, and now, on the very first day of their vacation, three new people were added to the mix.

Brenna thought of the string of boyfriends with whom she’d had to compete for her mother’s scattered attention-until the woman had left her outright. “Josh, I don’t suppose you’re ready to leave?”

As she finished the question, he gaped at her. He wasn’t even halfway finished with his meal. “You in a hurry?”

“I…” Between her attraction to Adam and her discomfort at being the outsider witnessing another family’s drama, she couldn’t be more eager to go. But since she couldn’t say any of that, she concluded, “I still have one stop tonight in my neighborhood, and I should try and go by the Dillingers’ if I can get a ride over there. Plus, I have a lot of clerical stuff to catch up on tonight. I’ve been so busy with the actual pet visits for the last few days that I’m behind on updating my calendar, printing invoices and logging checks to deposit.” Which was crucial since it looked as though she’d have to rent a car while hers was being fixed. Lord alone knew how much that was going to set her back.

“We can take the rest of our dinner to go,” Natalie offered.

“No, that’s all right.” Brenna backpedaled, feeling silly and ungrateful. “You guys are doing me the favor. The least I can do is let you finish your meal.”

“Nobody rush on our account,” Adam said. “The kids and I should actually head out to the lodge. If I wait until it gets dark, I may end up lost. Natalie, Josh, it was nice meeting both of you.”

“I’ll definitely see you around,” Josh said. “If you want, I can recommend activities for your whole family.”

“Thanks.” Adam’s gaze fell on Brenna. “And maybe I’ll see you around this summer, too?”

“Don’t count on it,” Josh said, shooting her a teasing smile. “Her workdays sometimes start as early as five and can go past ten o’clock. She has no life.”

Brenna sucked in a breath, a bit embarrassed that Adam had heard her described that way. She briefly considered smacking her stepbrother upside the head, but violence was a bad example for the children.

Besides, it probably wasn’t fair to get mad at someone just for speaking the truth.

“QUINN, DO YOU THINK I have no life?”

The brunette driving the car stifled a yawn. “It’s not even seven in the morning and my coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m not thinking anything.”

Brenna stared at the day’s schedule and said nothing. As it was, she couldn’t believe she was letting Josh’s comment from the night before bother her. She’d known going into the summer that she would have next to no free time, and it hadn’t disturbed her then. So why was it eating at her now?

Because you felt pathetic in front of Adam Varner?

That was a ludicrous reaction. After all, aside from their paths potentially crossing at the Diner or Mistletoe’s only sizable grocery store, she wasn’t planning to see him again. How he viewed her lifestyle was immaterial.

“Brenna? Everything okay?” Quinn asked, sounding more alert.

“Yeah, just ignore me. Everything’s fine-except my car.” The local automobile dealership also rented vehicles, but when she’d called yesterday evening, they’d said she would have to wait until noon to pick one up. That would be useful for her afternoon visits, not so much for the various dogs who’d been home alone since last night and really needed to be let out this morning. “I appreciate your helping me out today.”

“No problem,” Quinn said. “Honestly, it’s good for me. With school out for the summer, I’ve turned into a bum and sleep in way too late most days. Besides…”

“Yes?” Brenna prompted.

Quinn laughed. “I feel like an idiot saying this out loud, but I’m happy for the excuse not to be at home this morning. I hired Gabriel Sloan to do some roof repair for me. I’m lucky that last set of storms didn’t leave me with a living room full of water. Dylan’s pretty handy and does as much work around my half of the duplex as his own, but he and Chloe are away at Hilton Head.” Dylan Echols was coach of the Mistletoe High baseball team; until tryouts in late July, he, like Quinn, had the summer free.

“Gabe Sloan, huh?” Since the man didn’t own a pet, Brenna didn’t know him very well. But most everyone in Mistletoe knew of him.

“Yeah. He does great work and you can’t find a fairer price, but I get a little unnerved around him. Not because of the scandal-that’s ancient history and probably got exaggerated in gossip, anyway. It’s just that he’s so intense. Lilah says she’s never noticed.” Lilah Waide was Quinn’s best friend.

Brenna laughed. “That’s because Lilah’s too wrapped up in that hunky husband of hers to notice anything about other men.”

“Arianne said that, too. Except she didn’t refer to her brother as ‘hunky.’ But she does think Gabriel is sexy.”

“Really?”

Arianne, Lilah’s sister-in-law, had grown up with two older brothers; she was chatty, opinionated and socially fearless. The idea of Ari having a conversation with the brooding loner Gabe Sloan was both vastly entertaining and completely unimaginable.

“Oh!” Brenna snapped her fingers. “I forgot to ask. How are Rachel and the baby doing?”

Quinn smiled. “Wonderfully. Arianne called me from the hospital last night to say that Bailey Kathryn Waide is beautiful and that the entire family is already wrapped around her teeny tiny finger. David should be taking home both his ladies this afternoon.”

“You should have seen him yesterday when he stopped to see if I needed a ride.” Brenna smiled at the memory. She’d gone to school with the eldest Waide sibling; he’d been the valedictorian of her graduating class. “I always thought he was unflappable, but he looked terrified.”

Quinn rolled to a stop at a red light. “I want to hear more about the guy who did give you a ride. Single dad, huh? Was he good-looking?”

Oh, yeah. “I suppose. He’s only in town for a few weeks, though.”

“A lot could happen in that time,” Quinn said playfully. “I don’t want to sound desperate, but I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ve already met most of the local prospects. You ever worry about that?”

“Umm…” Brenna spent more time worrying about whether she’d met most of the pet-owners in Mistletoe.

“There are a lot of great guys here in Mistletoe,” Quinn continued. “Even a few that are still single. But if I were going to click with someone, feel that spark, shouldn’t it have happened by now?”

Brenna tried to think back to her last real relationship, her only serious one since returning to Mistletoe. But it had never gotten as serious as Kevin would have liked. Had there been a definitive spark between her and Kevin Higgs?

The vet was handsome, definitely, and had been a considerate lover. They’d had common interests and enjoyed each other’s company, but in retrospect, she wasn’t sure her feelings for him had been strong enough to generate real chemistry.

“The thing about sparks, Quinn, is that they can lead to fire.”

“Exactly! Igniting passion, that all-consuming heat when you’re around just the right guy.”

Maybe Quinn would be comfortable with that kind of volatility, but Brenna would be frantically looking around for an extinguisher. “Well, good luck with the chemistry thing. For me, right now all I want is to grow my business and expand my client base.” She’d hoped to start building a nest egg, eventually hire part-time help, but her transportation needs were an even more pressing priority.

“Hmm.” Quinn shot her a sidelong glance. “So…if you’re all satisfied and fulfilled with just your work, why the question about whether or not you have a life?”

“This is why I like dogs and cats,” Brenna grumbled. “They don’t point out any conversational inconsistencies!”

Quinn laughed. “In other words, I should shut up and drive?”

“Please.”

“DA-AD!” GEOFF’S VOICE echoed through the two-bedroom suite, an indignant demand for justice.

Adam rubbed the space between his eyes. “What seems to be the problem, Geoff?” The current problem.

It was now eight-thirty. At two o’clock this morning, the problem had been that Morgan missed her mom and was scared in the unfamiliar bedroom the girls shared, even though Adam had left a closet light on for her. She’d crawled into Eliza’s bed, which led to Eliza complaining at three-fifteen that Morgan kicked in her sleep. So he’d given up his own bed for his disgruntled daughter and stretched out on the small sofa in the common room. At seven, he’d awoken to a stiff neck and a bright-eyed Morgan wanting to know why she couldn’t find her regular cartoons. The small television in the common room had basic cable but not the array of personalized channels Morgan was used to at home.

“It’ll be all right,” he’d assured her. “We won’t spend that much time in the suite, anyway.”

He’d promised them a hearty breakfast in the lodge’s main dining hall if everyone could manage to get ready.

Geoff flung out his arm, pointing at the bathroom door. “The problem is we’ve got only one bathroom, and Eliza seems to think it’s her sole dominion.”

“What’s do-min-on?” Morgan asked. She’d insisted on picking out her own clothes, pairing a red shirt covered in pink animal shapes with neon-striped leggings. The overall effect, best described as colorful, was not helping Adam’s headache. “Is it like a dalmatian?”

“No, pumpkin.” Adam knocked on the bathroom door. “Eliza?”

The door swung open. “Jeez, I’m finished,” she said from around her father, glaring at Geoff. “Happy now?”

Mumbling a response, Geoff dashed into the now vacant room. He shut the door with just enough force to up Adam’s need for aspirin without technically slamming it.

Ten minutes later, all three children were ready to go, even if one of them looked like the inside of a kaleidoscope and another was wearing too much eye makeup. Sara had discussed the cosmetics issue with him just before Eliza’s twelfth birthday and he’d deferred to Sara’s judgment, saying that if she was okay with it, so was he. But he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Eliza didn’t leave the house with red lipstick and raccoon eyes on her mother’s watch. She was baiting him, but he refused to kick off their morning with a fight.

He held the door open while the kids filed past, dropping a gentle hand on Eliza’s shoulder.

“What?” Her voice, probably meant to be challenging, came out nervous and guilty.

“I love you, kiddo.”

She blinked, the little girl he remembered peering out from inside a ring of uneven eyeliner. Then she was gone. “Y-yeah, I know. We better go. If Geoff doesn’t get fed soon, he’ll probably start eating the furniture or something.”

With that, she darted into the hall. Adam sighed. The Medical College Admission Test was easier than this.

The good news? It was bound to get better.