We Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

by Brenda Novak

  Rick scowled. “What are you talking about?”

  “Last night. I want to know where you were.”

  “That’s none of your business and you know it,” he said, shoving away from the wall to approach his desk.

  Of all his brothers, Rick was the most unpredictable. He was often angry, always strong-willed and sometimes resentful. Cole knew he shouldn’t push him—they’d been careful to respect each other’s boundaries for years, ever since their mother died—but now that the subject had been broached, Cole’s curiosity compelled him to finish what he’d started. “You’re my brother. That makes it my business. You’re different lately. Preoccupied. Vague. Are you in some sort of trouble?”

  “Trouble. You would think that,” Rick said, chuckling mirthlessly. “I forgot—you’re the only one smart enough to amount to anything. The rest of us should be damn grateful to ride on the coattails of your success. Is that it, Cole? Tell me, don’t you think that’s just a little arrogant?”

  Cole dropped his voice to warning level. “Watch it, Rick. I don’t think you’ve earned the right to judge me. I’ve always said you could do anything you put your mind to. I sat on you through high school, tried to make you finish when you wanted to drop out. I—”

  “Beat the hell out of me every time the school called to say I had another unexcused absence. How could I forget?”

  The bitterness in Rick’s voice was unmistakable now, triggering a tide of memories and emotion Cole was helpless to suppress. Did Rick still hold those years in Feld against him? Did his brother think he’d done what he had back then out of arrogance—because he figured he had all the answers? Hell, no! He’d been lucky to survive. At times he’d been so tempted to run away that he’d buried his face in his pillow at night and sobbed, despite the self-loathing such weakness had caused. But he’d stayed. He might not have done a perfect job of raising Rick, but at least he’d stayed. He’d dug in his heels and fought harder than he’d ever fought for anything in his life—even Perrini Homes—because he loved his brothers, because they were his brothers, dammit!

  “It was the only way I knew, Rick,” Cole said. “It was all I could do. I’m only three years older than you. You wouldn’t cooperate, listen to anything I had to say. Force seemed to be the only thing that had an effect on you, and to be honest, you ungrateful bastard, sometimes I resent it as much as you do.”

  Rick’s chest was rising and falling fast; his fists were clenched at his sides. “Then, maybe it’s time we gave each other some room. Maybe it’s time we started down our own separate paths, Cole. You’ve been taking care of me long enough, don’t you think?”

  Rick’s words cut Cole to the quick. After everything he’d done to keep them together, Rick wanted a separate path?

  “Is that what you want?”

  Rick nodded. “I think it is.”

  God, he couldn’t lose one of his brothers now. Surely they could overcome the past. They’d made it so far….

  For a fleeting moment, Cole contemplated apologizing. He couldn’t imagine his life, or Perrini Homes, without Rick. His brothers were the reason he’d built the business in the first place, to give them something to fall back on, to keep them from ending up like their father, who’d died a poor broken man. But something in Rick’s eyes told him an apology would never be enough. The pain Rick carried inside him was too big for “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you honestly think there’s something better out there?” Cole asked softly.

  Rick stared at him for several seconds. “I don’t know,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, “but I think that’s something I need to find out for myself.”

  He turned to the door, and Cole got up, wanting to stop him. If it had been Chad or one of the younger two who was about to walk out on him, Cole wouldn’t have been half as worried. Like all siblings, they had their disagreements, but his relationship with each of them was basically sound.

  Rick was different. If Rick walked out the door, he might never come back.

  “Rick, think about what you’re doing….”

  His brother glanced over his shoulder, one hand on the doorknob. “I knew this was coming, Cole. It had to happen eventually, because I can’t respect myself if I never risk life out from under the safety of your protective wing. And this is as good a time as any to venture forth.”

  Suddenly filled with a horrible sense of loss, Cole grasped for anything that might hold Rick until they could work things out. “But you have a job here—”

  “You built this business from nothing, Cole. You know enough about what I do to get by until you can hire someone to replace me. Maybe Jaclyn can even do my job. It will be tough at first, and I’m sorry for that, but I think we both know it’s better this way.” He opened the door. “I’ll see you around,” he said, but it came off a lot like Have a nice life.

  Then his purposeful tread sounded in the hall. The front door slammed, an engine roared to life, tires squealed.

  He was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JACLYN SAT AT HER DESK, staring after Rick Perrini’s truck long after it had disappeared down the street. She’d been able to tell by the look on his face as he’d stormed out of the office that something was terribly wrong, but he hadn’t spoken a word to her. Neither had she heard anything in the past fifteen minutes from Cole. Had he fired Rick? Had Rick quit? Was it just a brotherly spat that would mend itself before noon?

  Somehow she doubted it. The silence was too heavy, the screech of Rick’s tires too final for this incident to be anything less than serious. So what should she do now? Let it go as if nothing had happened and finish the index she was working on for the filing system? Or see if there was something she could do for Cole?

  Smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress, Jaclyn rounded her desk and walked slowly down the hall, trying to muffle the sound of her approach so she could get a look at Cole before deciding whether or not to interrupt him. Would he rather not be bothered?

  The door to his office stood open, probably just the way Rick had left it, and Cole was sitting behind his desk, staring off into space. His profile was grim, hard. He certainly didn’t look like a man who needed or wanted anyone. But then he turned, and Jaclyn saw the emotion in his eyes.

  He was hurt. Evidently, Cole Perrini was as vulnerable as any other man.

  Hesitantly, she crossed the room, wondering what she was going to do or say once she reached him. She had no idea what was wrong between him and his brother. And she didn’t know them well enough to guess. But Cole had been there for her a few days earlier when she’d been at the end of her rope, and she wanted to return the favor.

  As she drew near, she expected the tough facade he normally wore to snap back into place. She thought he’d stand up and in his most professional voice ask her what she needed. Instead, he rolled his chair back and simply looked at her.

  Stepping closer, Jaclyn tentatively put her hands on his forearm. “Are you okay?” she asked. His skin was warm beneath her fingers and she felt a sudden need to hold him, to comfort him.

  He didn’t answer. Nor did he move. He looked at her as though he was experiencing the same desire to touch as she was. Jaclyn thought he might pull her to him, maybe lay his cheek against her stomach, but the sound of Chad’s voice intruded, and she moved away. “Where the heck is everyone?” he called from the front office.

  Jaclyn took another step back right before he appeared in the doorway. “Here you guys are. What’s going on?”

  When they didn’t answer immediately, he grinned, catching on to the fact that he’d just interrupted something significant. “Doing a little dictation?” he asked, winking at her.

  Jaclyn cleared her throat and glanced at Cole, who was watching her with a shuttered expression, the pain she’d seen in his eyes just a few moments earlier now hidden, if it still existed. “I was just, um, checking on something,” she said, when a more specific reason for being in Cole’s office—and for standing so
close to him—eluded her.

  “How was it?” Chad asked.

  “How was what?” she replied, edging toward the door.

  “Whatever you were checking on.”

  “Good,” she admitted. “It was good.” Then she slipped from the room and fled to her desk.

  “WHAT’S UP WITH RICK?” Chad asked, as soon as Jackie disappeared down the hall. “He told me yesterday he’d have the checks I need to pay the cement subs for Phase II waiting on his desk, but they’re not there. When I called him on his cell to ask him why, he said I needed to talk to you.”

  Cole forced his attention away from Jackie and the longing she’d evoked when she touched him, and focused on his younger brother. “He quit,” he said simply.

  “He what?”

  “He’s going out on his own.”

  “To do what?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Is he going to build houses?”

  Cole shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Chad propped a callused hand on his hip and frowned. “That’s crazy, man. We can make a lot more together than we can apart.”

  “I don’t think it’s about money,” Cole said.

  “Then, what’s the problem?”

  The problem was the past, the things he and Rick did, the things they couldn’t forget, the things they couldn’t forgive. It was the love and the hate between two brothers, but Cole wasn’t about to explain that. Deep down, Chad already knew.

  “He’ll come around,” he said, hoping it was true.

  “I’m sure he will. Rick was with you from the start, when the rest of us were still in school. I can’t imagine him walking away now.”

  “Except, he’s changed,” Cole said. “Something’s up.”

  Chad’s eyebrows lifted. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Do you spend much time with him at night?”

  “No. We used to go out every now and then to hit a few nightclubs or maybe a movie. We’d even double-date on occasion. You know how it was—you used to go with us sometimes until you got too busy. But he never calls anymore, and when I call him, he tells me he’s already got plans. I just assumed he’s met a woman and will introduce us to her when he’s ready.”

  “He claims he’s not seeing anyone. You don’t think he’s gambling or losing his shorts in the stock market, do you?”

  “Wouldn’t that motivate him to keep his job, instead of quitting it?”

  “I don’t know. Rick’s not an easy person to second-guess.”

  “Are you saying he might be in some sort of trouble?”

  Cole shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

  BORED. BORED. BORED. God, she was bored. She’d been working for Cole more than two weeks, and every day she had less to do.

  Covering a yawn, Jaclyn checked the clock on the wall and counted the hours and minutes until five: three hours and eight minutes—six minutes less than the last time she’d looked. She synchronized her watch and straightened the few items on her desk, then stared at the phone, silently pleading for it to ring. She’d already interviewed all those who had called about the sales position and had made her recommendations to Cole. He was planning to meet with the final three candidates tomorrow, but she hated to see him hire someone so soon.

  Then the only task she’d been given of any consequence, besides the filing system index, which she’d finished long ago, would come to an end. Cole had promised to train her at some point, but ever since Rick had quit, he hadn’t had the time. He was doing his job and his brother’s, too, and was either gone on appointments or shut away in his private office until late at night. Which left Jaclyn with nothing to do but answer the phone and hope the opportunity to do another interview would break the tedium, despite all the things piling up on Rick’s desk. If only she had a few minutes of Cole’s time, or the permission to dig through the stack of work and see what she could do to help, she might be able to accomplish some of the items that needed attention, but most days Cole was too engrossed to even speak to her.

  The phone rang, and Jaclyn snatched it up. “Perrini Homes, Oak Ranch Estates.”

  It was Margaret Huntley, one of the real-estate agents she’d recommended to Cole, returning her call. Jaclyn set up a time for her to come in tomorrow and meet with him, then hung up and wondered what she was going to do until the phone rang again. Finally she picked up the receiver and called the kids.

  “Mommy, we’re fine. Why do you keep calling?” Mackenzie asked when their sitter, Holly Smith, brought her to the phone.

  “I’m just missing you,” Jaclyn said. “How’s Alyssa?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “How’s Alex?”

  “Good.”

  “Does he want to talk to me?”

  Mackenzie didn’t answer directly, but her voice nearly broke Jaclyn’s eardrum when she yelled for her brother. In the interim that followed, Jaclyn heard Holly encouraging Alex to come to the phone, but he must have refused, because Mackenzie spoke to her again instead. “He’s playing Nintendo,” she said. “He wants to know when you’re going to get to drive your boss’s car again.”

  “Probably never. Our car is working fine since I bought the new battery. There’s no need to borrow anyone else’s. Does Alyssa want to say hello?”

  “She’s outside on the patio riding her trike with Travis.” Travis was Holly’s son, an only child just six months older than Alyssa and one of two other children in the neighborhood.

  “Okay. No need to bother her. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  Mackenzie said goodbye, and Jaclyn hung up. So much for talking to the kids. They were beginning to get annoyed by the number of times she’d called. After working at Joanna’s, where she’d been running every minute, the sudden standstill was driving her nuts. She’d wanted this job so she could learn real estate and build a future for herself and her children. She didn’t want Cole paying her twenty-five hundred a month just because she was an old friend he couldn’t refuse. If only she knew more about office work, she’d start to dig through the things on Rick’s desk the way she had the filing. But she was afraid she’d mess something up or overstep her bounds.

  Unfortunately the only thing she was really good at was running a household. She could cook and sew with the best of them. She could can and bake and decorate. And she could clean. Not that any of it was very useful in her current situation. Or was it?

  Suddenly Jaclyn had an idea. If Cole didn’t have time to teach her the business and preferred to let Rick’s job go undone, maybe she could help him in other areas. Judging from the bare cupboards in his kitchen, the few meals he actually took the time to eat and the thick layer of dust covering almost everything in his part of the house, he didn’t need a secretary half as badly as he needed a housekeeper and cook.

  And she was a darn good cook.

  SOMETHING SMELLED like heaven.

  Only half listening to what Larry Schneider from the bank was saying over the phone, Cole pushed away from his desk and sniffed the air. Pot roast, with onions. Or maybe it was steak and onions, but it sure smelled like pot roast….

  “Cole?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What do you have to say?”

  “About what?”

  “About the interest rate. Are you willing to go up half a percent? Otherwise, I doubt I’m going to be able to sell this loan to the board. I mean, if I were the only one who had to approve it, that’d be different. But on a project this size…”

  Where was that aroma coming from? A barbecue outside? No, a few of the homes in the first phase of Oak Ranch had already sold due to drive-by traffic, but they hadn’t closed escrow yet. The closest neighborhood to his development was more than a mile away. Even with every window in the house open—and there weren’t any because the air conditioner was running—he wouldn’t be able to smell someone’s dinner cooking from that far away—

  “Cole? Are you there?” Larry demanded.

  “Yeah, I’m here. Wh
at was that again?”

  “What was what? I need an answer.”

  Cole couldn’t give him an answer because he couldn’t remember the question. He couldn’t think of anything except dinner. He’d been holed up in his office for nearly eight hours without breaking for lunch. He was famished and tired and annoyed about the amount of work Rick’s absence had caused, and worried about everything that wasn’t getting done—and he couldn’t figure out why his house suddenly smelled like a winter holiday in late August.

  “I’m sorry. I have to go, Larry. I think someone’s cooking pot roast in my kitchen.”

  “You think? You don’t know?”

  “It could be something else.”

  “I meant—”

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  After hanging up, Cole followed his nose out of his office and down the hall to the kitchen, where he found Jaclyn lifting a roasting pan out of the oven.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling when she saw him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “It’s four-thirty in the afternoon. You’re supposed to be in the office.”

  Her expression grew uncertain. “There wasn’t anything to do in the office. There hasn’t been for over two weeks. And I can’t imagine that you appreciate paying me twenty-five hundred a month to sit behind my desk and answer five or six calls an hour. So I brought the cordless phone in here with me and decided to make better use of myself.”

  Cole eyed the steam coming off the meat and cut-up carrots, potatoes and onions she’d just uncovered. “I knew it was pot roast.”

  She glanced up at him as she set the lid aside. “It was the only thing I could find without running to the store. I was going to ask if I could defrost the meat, but you’ve been on the phone for hours. So I called Chad on his cell, and he said to do whatever I thought would be the most helpful.”

  “And that was making dinner?”

  She shrugged. “You’ve got to eat. Restaurant food has to be getting old for you, and at least this way you’re getting something for the money you’re paying me. Hope you don’t mind.”