Mistletoe Mommy

Chapter Five

“And I assume you want to pay extra for the unlimited miles?” Lloyd asked from behind the counter.

Honestly, Brenna thought, no one ever wants to pay extra for anything. But she did accumulate an amazingly high mileage for a woman who spent most of her time driving around a small town, and tomorrow was Saturday. Weekends were often her busiest time. “Same deal as last time, please. Extra mileage, extra insurance.”

Lloyd grinned at her. “You’re one of our favorite customers. Which is really saying something considering you’ve never purchased a car from us. I’ll be right back with the finalized paperwork and your receipt.”

“Thanks.”

Brenna had bought Quinn an early lunch to thank her for her assistance that morning, and Quinn had dropped her off at the auto dealership.

“Sure you don’t want me to keep chauffeuring you?” her friend had asked.

“Thanks, but my schedule’s a bit erratic for the next forty-eight hours.” The Hildebrand family was paying her an exorbitant fee to “tuck in” their chocolate Lab for the night; she’d check on him one last time at about ten-thirty. “I can’t just keep you at my beck and call.”

“All right, guess I’ll head home. But don’t tell Ari we parted ways this early. She was angling shamelessly for an invitation to come hang out at my place and catch glimpses of Gabe in his work jeans.” Quinn had waved goodbye with a reminder to “call if you need me.”

“Brenna!”

At the sound of her stepfather’s voice, she spun around. The sight of his rugged face filled her with affection and exasperation. Josh, you twerp. She’d bet the cost of her latest phone-book ad that Josh had told his parents about her unreliable car.

“Hey.” She hugged Fred. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” Although she should have.

He patted her on the back. “I don’t suppose you’d believe I just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

She sighed. “Well, it is Mistletoe. I guess the neighborhood’s not that big.”

“I’ve offered to go car shopping with you a couple of times, honey, and you’re always too busy. So what better time than now? You’re here, I’m here. An entire lot of economy cars await.”

“You know I appreciate the thought.” Mostly. “But I need to get over to the Heritage Pond subdivision. I’ve got a new-client orientation at twelve-thirty.”

“Got time in your full schedule for Sunday dinner? Josh and Natalie are coming. Maggie’s hoping you can join us, too.”

She ground her back teeth. On the one hand, she loved the Pierces and enjoyed spending time with them, but Fred and Maggie had already been trying to help her find “a nice man” even before Josh started dating Natalie. Now all four of them ganged up on her. And she was the fifth wheel, the odd one out even among people who adored her.

She was damn lucky for the Pierce family and never wanted to seem ungrateful. “You tell Maggie I’ll be there. Can I bring anything?”

“Just your company and your lovely smile,” Fred said warmly. “Unless…there’s anyone you wanted to bring? Any guest of yours is always welcome at our table.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake! Josh couldn’t just leave it at tattling about the car? He told you about the doctor, too!”

“Doctor?” Fred frowned. “What doctor?”

Whoops. She’d read too much into Fred and Maggie’s habitual wishful thinking, immediately making the mental leap to handsome Adam Varner.

“Never mind,” Brenna chirped brightly. “Not important.”

“But-”

“Okay, you’re all set,” Lloyd said from behind them.

“Wonderful! Thanks!” Beaming at him, she accepted the keys to the getaway car.

Since she’d already cited a customer appointment, her stepfather had no choice but to let her go. Unexpectedly her thoughts of Adam were harder to shake. She’d been moved yesterday by his desire to bond with his kids-undoubtedly he’d been an imperfect father, but the fact that he was trying so hard counted for a lot with her. Wonder if he’s having any luck yet.

ADAM LEANED on the railing of the lodge’s massive wraparound wooden porch, listening to intermittent birdsong and the burbling rush of the river. Behind him, Geoff and Eliza were trying to teach Morgan how to play checkers. In a minute he’d join them, but he hated to push his luck. The day so far had exceeded his most optimistic expectations.

A few months ago, he’d kept the kids for an afternoon while Sara and Dan were busy with wedding plans. When Sara had come to pick up the children, she’d caught Adam in a moment of extreme frustration with Eliza; he’d confessed to his ex-wife that he’d never felt so clueless in his life. She’d told him, with a mix of compassion and censure, that half of parenting was just showing up. Today had certainly borne that out. Thank God.

When he’d proposed coming to Mistletoe, even Sara had been surprised by his choice of location. There were plenty of great places in Tennessee-Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge or Chattanooga were far more obvious tourist destinations-but he hadn’t wanted to take the kids anywhere they’d already been. He’d wanted the four of them to have a vacation uniquely their own.

Day one, while not yet over, seemed a success. After a buffet breakfast, they’d followed a trail into the woods. It hadn’t been too steep or overgrown for Morgan to keep up, but it wasn’t so perfectly manicured that they might as well have been walking on a sidewalk in their own subdivision. Even surly Eliza had been charmed by the sight of a mother deer and fawn in a clearing. They’d also spotted lizards, chipmunks and the white cottontail of a rabbit that’d taken off at the sound of Morgan’s delighted squeal.

Their lunch back at the lodge had been a lively exchange of everyone’s favorite moments. Now the kids wore bathing suits under their clothes, and he’d promised to take them swimming after their food had settled. They probably wouldn’t hit the river until tomorrow or the next day, but the lodge also had a good-size pool with a high, winding waterslide. He’d noticed that when Eliza ducked into the bathroom to put on her suit, she’d also wiped off that awful makeup, which he opted to see as a sign of truce.

“You can’t jump my piece from there,” Geoff said to Morgan, shaking his head over the checkerboard. “Remember how I already explained that to you?”

Geoff sounded as if he had a reserve of patience. Adam decided to intervene while that was still the case. “Who’s ready for the pool?”

“Me!” the kids chorused.

Geoff took the checkers back to the front desk while Eliza helped her little sister apply sunscreen. Once they were inside the fenced pool area, they took turns passing back and forth the tube of SPF 55. Adam prided himself on not doing an aghast double take when Eliza removed her long T-shirt and revealed an electric-blue bikini. It wasn’t so much the cut of the suit that was disconcerting-as two pieces went, he supposed it was modest enough-it was how much older she suddenly looked. His little girl, far too grown up. He wondered if there was any chance Morgan would humor him and wear a one-piece into her twenties.

They had the pool practically to themselves. A man slept beneath the shade of an umbrella, a brunette read a book on her chaise longue, and a mother sat on the steps of the shallow end while her toddler repeatedly filled with water and dumped out a purple plastic pail. The lifeguard, a boy of about sixteen, looked bored to pieces.

Or at least he did until Eliza balled up her shirt and stuck it in the duffel bag.

She’s twelve! Adam wanted to scream. Rather than do so, Adam settled for a dark glower in the punk’s direction.

Geoff and Eliza both went immediately for the waterslide, but Morgan was more tentative. She got in the water slowly, step by step, seeking frequent reassurance that her dad would stay close. Once she’d made it all the way into the pool, she wanted him to help her practice floating on her back. She made swift progress with that and had moved on to a clumsy but solo backstroke when she announced in a panicked whisper that she needed to go potty.

The nearest restrooms were in a bathhouse midway between the pool and a river dock. “Geoff, Eliza! I’ll be right back,” Adam called.

Morgan slid on her shoes, then tucked her hand in his. “I’m having fun,” she told him. “You should come on trips with us and Mommy and Daddy Dan.”

“Or maybe you can just alternate. Take turns,” he clarified. “Go somewhere with them, then somewhere else with me. That way you get twice as many vacations.”

“Okay. Hey, know what I want for my birthday?” She kept up a running commentary for the duration of their stroll, and Adam realized he didn’t even miss the hospital. He hadn’t thought about any of his patients today or wondered how his eminently qualified colleagues were doing filling in for him. Waiting by a restroom door while his preschooler cheerfully called out the name of every My Special Puppy in the Puppydale toy collection, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

It was a nonsensical, trivial moment-except that it was a moment in Morgan’s life.

On their return trip to the pool, Morgan suddenly shrieked, “Kitty!” and darted off the path. “Daddy, did you see it?”

He caught her elbow before she stumbled over a rock. “Can’t say that I did. Remember what we talked about, that animals are scared by loud noises?”

Her face puckered into a worried scowl. “It shouldn’t be here with the river down the hill and the pool. Cats can’t swim.”

“They can,” he told her. “Most of them just prefer not to. I’m sure the cat will be fine.”

She hesitated, unconvinced, but ultimately resumed her pace. It took Adam two tries to unlatch the gate because his attention was zeroed in on his other daughter. That punk lifeguard had climbed down from his elevated chair and stood entirely too close to Eliza.

Bionic-father hearing kicked in and Adam eavesdropped, only missing a few words here and there, while the kid boasted of how he’d had his driver’s license for months and planned to buy a “second generation” Camaro from a family friend at the end of the summer. Eliza-who usually rolled her eyes whenever Geoff waxed rhapsodic about automobiles-morphed into a Devoted Car Enthusiast, all oohs and ahhs and big brown eyes.

Geoff took Morgan to play on the waterslide, so Adam sat down and tried to relax. He noticed the brunette sunbather in the halter-top suit smiling in his direction; reflexively, he smiled back and she gave a coquettish little finger wave. She was attractive, he noted objectively, but she was no Brenna Pierce.

He frowned, recalling Eliza’s indignation that he might try to steal time from their family vacation to make room for romance. Definitely not. He’d unintentionally made his children feel as if they weren’t a top priority, and this trip was a major step in reversing that. Ironic, though, that Eliza had lectured him less than twenty-four hours ago when she clearly had no qualms about abandoning her family to chat up a bronzed man-child whose smirk bordered on predatory.

Reminding himself that Eliza was in plain sight and therefore perfectly safe, Adam dug a medical journal out of his bag. He even made a halfhearted attempt to read an article about the rise of robot-assisted cardiothoracic procedures. Mostly he skimmed while keeping one ear on his daughter and the punk. Minimized trauma, reduced risk of infection.

“So, have you ever, like, saved anyone?” Eliza asked.

“Sure. Just last week I jumped in to rescue a lady with a cramp in her leg. And this kid who panicked and was flailing like crazy.”

Faster recovery time, wave of the future, blah, blah, blah.

“But I’ve never given mouth-to-mouth,” Punk added smarmily. “At least, not in the line of duty. During my off-hours-”

Adam shot out of his chair, tipping it sideways with his sudden movement. It clattered against the pavement, drawing the notice of just about everyone-including his daughter and the punk lifeguard at whom he happened to be glaring. Now what, O Father of the Year?

He hadn’t really leaped up with any sort of plan. It had simply been an instinctive reaction. But judging from the mingled horror and fury settling across his daughter’s face, that explanation was not going to mollify her. Especially since it would involve him admitting that he’d been listening to her private conversation in the first place.

“Uh…” The lifeguard glanced from Adam back to Eliza, his earlier smirk gone. Looking pale beneath his tan, the kid jerked his thumb up at the elevated seat. “I’d better get back to work.”

“Yeah. Nice talking to you,” Eliza said through gritted teeth. She ducked her head, her shoulders slumping slightly as if she was curling in on herself in hopes of becoming invisible, and stalked toward her father.

Adam assumed she was making a beeline for confrontation, but her gait never slowed as she neared. Instead, she strode past, exiting the pool area. He experienced a stab of indecision so intense it was almost panic. Should he give her space? For all he knew, she was excusing herself to go to the bathhouse for an adolescent cry. That you caused. Then again, did he know for an absolute certainty that she wouldn’t do something dramatic like run away? Try to hitch back to Tennessee?

This was excruciating. In the O.R., he didn’t second-guess himself. He took decisive actions and saved lives.

“Geoff, keep your sister in the shallow end until I get back,” he called over his shoulder. Giving a girl “space” might sound like a sensitive, insightful parenting move, but Adam rejected it after a moment’s thought. She was twelve. While she might have the right to be angry with him, she did not have the same right to storm off alone into the forest or down toward the river.

“Eliza!” Though she didn’t overtly speed up to evade him, she didn’t stop, either. “Hey, I know you hear me. Slow down so we can talk about this.”

When she actually did stop, he released a tense breath. He hadn’t known if she would-or what he’d do in the face of direct disobedience.

She whipped her head around, and his heart clutched at the sight of her watery eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to be here! I could have stayed with friends while Mom and Dan are away.”

Adam tried not to take her words personally. Didn’t all children go through an “I hate you” phase as an automatic part of growing up and wrestling with independence? “This trip wasn’t about your mom needing a babysitter. It was about me wanting to spend time with you guys.”

“Do you even care what we want? Geoff was freaked out when you said you were taking us away for so long. He’s worried Gina will meet someone else before we get back. And Morgan-”

“-is having a blast. She told me so herself. I think if you give this vacation a chance, we could all have fun.”

“I was trying to! I was making a new friend. A cute friend who probably wants nothing to do with me now that you practically lunged at him from across the pool.”

“I…He was too old for you.”

She snorted. “Oh, I didn’t know there were age limits for who I was allowed to talk to!”

“I’m sorry I upset you, but I’m still your father. Rein in the sarcasm.”

When she opened her mouth to retort, he braced himself, but no scathing reply came. Her tears brimmed over, escalating quickly to actual sobs. She covered her face with her hands.

“What can I do?” Adam asked softly. “We’re together for the next eighteen days, and I don’t want it to be miserable for you. What can I do to make it better?”

She sniffed. “Just give me the room key. Please? I want to go lie down.”

“All right.” He handed over the key ring bearing the Chattavista logo-no modern key cards here. “Lock the door behind you, though. I’ll get a spare from the front desk later.”

“Fine.”

When he turned back toward the pool, he was surprised to find Geoff and Morgan watching through the fence, both their faces apprehensive.

“You guys tired of swimming?” he asked, heading toward them.

Morgan held up her hands. “I’m getting wrinkly. The lady who gave us the checkers game said she had coloring books, too.”

Fifteen minutes later, she was happily coloring pictures of farm animals back on the lodge porch. Adam and Geoff sat at a nearby table, setting up a game of backgammon.

“Geoff…when I told you guys about this trip, did you want to come?”

The teenager flinched. “Th-this trip?”

Adam got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s okay, son. You can tell me the truth.”

Geoff looked away. “I like fishing. And it would be really cool to go rafting.”

“Do you miss Gina?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” He seemed surprised by the question. “But, jeez, it’s only been two days. It’s just…most of the other guys are like that bozo back at the pool, working summer jobs to save up for a car. Not to mention cash for the movies and music downloads and stuff. Mom lets me cut lawns and stuff in the neighborhood, but she won’t let me apply for any real jobs during the school year.”

And Adam had thoughtlessly wiped out three weeks of prime earning potential. Hell. “I guess you’re at an age where I can’t say I’m sorry with ice cream?”

Geoff eyed the backgammon pieces. “Do you mind if I take a rain check on this? I think I’m gonna go back to the room and catch the Braves game on TV.”

“Sure. Don’t turn it up too loud, though. Your sister might be taking a nap.”

And then there was one.

Deflated, Adam joined Morgan and helped her polka-dot animals. She’d started with a dalmatian and decided to continue the theme with a green-speckled cow and purple-spotted sheep.

“Daddy!”

“Yeah, pumpkin?”

She lowered her voice to an excited whisper. “There it is! My kitty!”

Sure enough, peeking out from the edge of some bushes was a small, charcoal-colored cat. Adam couldn’t get a clear look at it among the leaves and branches, but he could tell there was no collar.

“Here, kitty.” Morgan made some soft noises, a combination of tongue-clucks and kissing sounds.

The feline cocked its head, then took a few tentative steps forward with its front legs low to the ground. Its mew was plaintive.

Morgan’s pale blue eyes lit up with joy. “Daddy, it answered me!” She shot to her feet, then headed down the stairs.

“Now wait just a second. You can’t just go up to strange animals.” Not that the tiny piece of fluff looked feral or rabid.

Even though his warning slowed Morgan-she stood immobile on the bottom step-it did nothing to deter the young cat. It crept forward, mewing again with more volume.

“That’s what I want for my birthday!” Morgan announced. “A real pet, not just another stuffed animal. Please, Daddy?”

Any other day, Adam probably could have found the willpower to say no, despite her beseeching expression. At this particular instant, after feeling like a failure with both Eliza and Geoff, the best he could come up with was a feeble, “It might already have an owner.”

“But if it doesn’t?” she pressed.

He hadn’t let them keep a dog at his place because he wasn’t there often enough to walk it, but weren’t cats more self-sufficient? “I don’t know, pumpkin. But…”

“But?”

“We’ll see.”

The cat, hardly more than a kitten, had reached the stairs. It propped its front feet on the step and bumped Morgan’s foot with its head. She immediately knelt down to pet it, earning a trilling purr that didn’t sound the least bit melancholy or unsure.

To Adam’s ear, it sounded triumphant.