We Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

by Brenda Novak

  She thought he’d decline. She actually hoped he would. Considering their professional relationship and her dependence on it, she’d be stupid to become too friendly with him. What if he made advances and she had to rebuff him, like Rudy? She couldn’t afford to lose her job again.

  “Are you sure I wouldn’t be imposing?”

  Jaclyn cringed. According to everyone she’d ever known in Feld, Cole had a taste for illicit affairs, and she’d just invited him to dinner.

  “It’s no imposition,” she heard herself say. “Alex, why don’t you set an extra place?”

  For once Alex obeyed without complaint, saving Jaclyn from any embarrassment in that area, so she took heart. As long as Cole was going to join them, the least she could do was pretend to want him there. “Can I get you drink?” she asked, holding the door while he stepped inside. “A glass of wine? Some soda?”

  “I’ll have a cola if you’ve got one. Is there anything I can do to help with dinner?”

  “No. It’s just about ready. Why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable?” She gestured toward the living room.

  He did as she suggested, and Jaclyn dashed into the kitchen to pour his drink. She called Mackenzie to come and take it to him, then finished the salad she’d started before mixing the zucchini bread. Her dinner looked pretty sparse with only a main dish and a salad. It certainly wasn’t something she was proud to feed to company, but Cole was here whether she liked it or not, and she had no time to improve the fare—or her appearance.

  She glanced quickly at her reflection in the window above the sink and tried to fix her falling ponytail. Without a brush, her efforts proved futile.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself, giving up. She wasn’t trying to impress Cole. She couldn’t afford to get too close to him, anyway.

  While she bustled around making the salad dressing, Jaclyn could hear Alex in the living room telling Cole all about his soccer team. From the sounds of it, her son was dragging out photos of the previous years, along with all his trophies. Then the girls started bringing their dolls and accessories to show him, and by the time dinner was on the table, Cole was surrounded by toys, trophies and stuffed animals.

  Chuckling to herself, Jaclyn realized her children would probably scare Cole away long before she had to say anything.

  “I hope you weren’t overwhelmed by the kids,” she said, while Alex and the girls washed up. “We don’t have company very often.”

  “I practically raised my younger brothers. Kids are nothing new.”

  He smiled as he stepped over the clutter, and Jaclyn grudgingly admitted to herself that she liked it when he smiled. He had great teeth, a strong chin and high cheekbones, but his appeal extended to more than his good looks. The Cole she’d known in high school had been bold and flirtatious, downright cocky. The mature Cole had confidence that ran deeper—and he was all the sexier for it.

  He was quite a package, she decided. Tough, renegade boy turned self-made man. It was no wonder Rochelle had fallen so hard for him, poor thing.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, catching her looking at him as they seated themselves at the table.

  “I was just remembering you as the boy I knew in school,” she said, telling him only a portion of the truth and hoping the warmth that infused her cheeks wouldn’t give away the fact that she’d actually been admiring him—and feeling sorry for his ex-wife at the same time.

  “Have I changed?”

  “I think so.”

  He studied her for a moment. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Is Jaclyn Wentworth a different person from Jackie Rasmussen?”

  “Probably not entirely.”

  “Sometimes I look at you and I see Feld High’s carefree prom queen.”

  Jaclyn smiled, remembering her moment in the sun, too, but her smile wilted when he continued.

  “At other times, I see a sadness in your face that I never saw before, and I wonder who or what put it there. I’m guessing it was Terry.”

  His expression was so intense, Jaclyn couldn’t break eye contact. She hadn’t expected him to be so direct. At work they kept their conversations to simple greetings, good wishes and the weather. Half the time he acted as though he’d rather she not be around. But the one thing consistent from the beginning was the impression he gave that he didn’t want to talk about Feld, didn’t want to revisit the old days. Which was perfectly fine by Jaclyn. So why was he suddenly bringing up the past?

  He looked as if he was about to say something more, but the kids came flooding back, jabbering at the top of their lungs, and he seemed to think better of it. He turned his attention to passing her their plates so she could dish up the food, then listened attentively to Alex and the girls, who talked throughout dinner about school, the toys they wanted for Christmas and how mean Mr. Alder had ruined their great water fight.

  When the girls left the table to play with their Barbies, Alex stayed to tell Cole about the fun he’d had during the summer going to Sand Mountain with his father.

  “I used to go out there when I was a kid, too,” Cole told him. “My brothers and I didn’t have a Quad runner or sand rail, but we used to climb the mountain in my truck. One time the engine stalled at the worst possible moment, and I was sure we were going to roll.”

  “Did you?” Alex asked, his eyes wide with interest as he pushed his plate away.

  “No, I managed to get it started again, and we slowly backed down.”

  “Did your dad get mad at you when he found out how close you’d come?”

  “He didn’t find out,” Cole said.

  “What about your mother?”

  Cole hesitated long enough to make Jaclyn wonder if Alex’s questions were bothering him. She couldn’t remember Cole’s mother, or his father, for that matter. She doubted she’d ever seen either of them. They didn’t get involved in community activities, didn’t come out to the high-school football games the way her parents and Terry’s had. Cole was sometimes there, with one or two of his brothers in tow, but he didn’t play on the team. He teased the girls, and winked at Jaclyn, even though he knew everyone around her would tell Terry. And he heckled the cheerleaders and usually left with one of them afterward.

  Jaclyn knew Cole and his family had been poor, guessed they were proud, but that was about it.

  “She was sick. We tried not to tell her things that would upset her,” he said.

  “What was wrong with her—?”

  “Alex,” Jaclyn interrupted, “why don’t you go in and turn on the television? It’s seven o’clock. There might be something good on.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Cole said. “She had multiple sclerosis.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a disease that does different things to different people. For some reason, my mother went downhill pretty fast. Only five years after they diagnosed it, she couldn’t walk or use her hands. In another five years, she couldn’t see or talk.”

  Alex looked horrified. “What could she do?”

  Jaclyn cleared her throat, wishing her son could read the clues in Cole’s body language. They were saying, loud and clear, that his mother was a sensitive subject. But Alex was just a child, and his curiosity blotted out all else.

  “She could only hear,” Cole told him. “And sometimes she’d try to laugh.”

  Trailer trash. In light of his mother’s illness, the epithet Terry’s crowd had reserved for Cole and his family seemed particularly cruel. That Jaclyn hadn’t taken a stand against it made her feel ashamed.

  “Where is she now?” Alex asked.

  “She died a year after I graduated high school.”

  “What about your father—?”

  “That’s enough questions,” Jaclyn said, and she knew the firmness in her voice had finally gotten through to her son, because he scowled at her. “Go watch some television.”

  “Aw, Mom. I was just talking to him.”

&nbs
p; “Do as I say,” she insisted.

  When Alex finally left the room, Jaclyn turned back to Cole. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” she said. “I didn’t know. That must have been very difficult for a boy your age.”

  “It wasn’t my age that made it difficult,” he said, but when she pressed him for his meaning, he added, “It’s ancient history. I’d rather not go into it.”

  Jaclyn stood and started clearing away the plates. “Then, what would you like to talk about?” she asked. Now that she’d let him in and fed him dinner, she found herself strangely reluctant to see him leave. He’d been kind to the kids and was easy to have around, and it had been so long since she’d had dinner with a man.

  He helped her carry the plates into the kitchen. “What about the days since then?”

  “What about them?” she asked, rinsing off the food.

  “What happened to you and Terry? You were head-over-heels in love in high school.”

  “We had a lot of problems,” she answered. “His father was one of them.”

  Cole finished clearing the table while she took the zucchini bread out of the oven. “So, Burt was a problem, huh?” he said when they were both in the kitchen again.

  Jaclyn wasn’t surprised Cole remembered him. The whole town knew Burt Wentworth. The whole town revered him. “Yeah. He was so controlling, so blind when it came to Terry. He refused to let him grow up, and Terry didn’t have the confidence he needed to make his own decisions. I tried to convince him that we’d be better off on our own. I was sure Terry would take responsibility as a husband and father if we could just get away. And I felt like a guest living at his parents’ place. I know it’s tough for others to understand, because I had everything I needed—materially. But I hated it. We had no privacy. His parents knew about every argument we had and silently disapproved of me saying anything when…” Jaclyn let her words trail off. She’d been about to blurt out the whole story of Terry’s many affairs. She’d had so few chances to talk, to really explain what she’d been through, that she’d nearly forgotten Cole would have no sympathy for her in that regard—at least, not if he’d done the same thing to Rochelle.

  “When what?” he prompted.

  “Never mind.”

  He looked at her, obviously curious about her sudden retreat, but Alyssa and Mackenzie entered the kitchen at that moment and saved Jaclyn from having to confront the question in his eyes.

  “You said we could call Daddy tonight,” Mackenzie said.

  Ordinarily Jaclyn would have asked the girls to wait a few minutes until she’d finished the dishes. But she needed the distraction, so she picked up the phone and dialed. “Did you see if Alex wants to talk?” she asked.

  Mackenzie nudged her sister. “Go tell Alex we’re calling Daddy.”

  Alyssa headed to the living room. Mackenzie took the phone, and Jaclyn and Cole returned to the dishes. After a minute, Mackenzie came into the dining room, where Jaclyn was balling up the tablecloth so she could take it to the laundry, and announced that her daddy wasn’t home.

  “Can we call Grandpa and Grandma?” she asked. “They might come get us.”

  Jaclyn doubted they would. They hadn’t been to Reno yet, and she didn’t really want them to start coming now. Her life was much more pleasant since she didn’t have to deal with them directly, but she hated to disappoint the children. “They go to bed pretty early,” she said, stalling while she tried to make up her mind.

  “Not this early,” Alex said, coming around the corner with Alyssa.

  Evidently Alex had changed his mind about calling Feld. Since the divorce, his moods shifted quite often. One minute he was angry with Terry, the next he was upset at her. “You want to talk to Grandpa?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I guess so.”

  Hoping it might do him some good to touch base with his grandfather and receive whatever reassurance Burt might offer, she swallowed a sigh and agreed. “Okay. Come here.”

  This time when she dialed, she handed the phone to Alex and waited to hear what Burt would say. Cole stood at the entrance to the kitchen, looking mildly curious, one shoulder propped against the doorway. The girls wiggled expectantly at her side.

  “Hi, Grandpa, it’s Alex…I know, it’s been a long time. I miss you, too. Where’s Daddy? How come he doesn’t come get us…What?”

  Alex looked at her, and Jaclyn knew her name had been mentioned. She doubted it was in a positive light. With Burt, it never was.

  “I don’t know. She just never has. Dad always comes to get us…I guess I could ask, but…I know…maybe she will…hang on.”

  Pulling his ear away from the phone, Alex turned to her. “He wants to see us,” he said.

  A trickle of unease crept down Jaclyn’s spine. “Great. When’s he coming?”

  “He says it’s your turn to drive us out there.”

  Her turn? Alex made it sound as though she was under some sort of obligation, but it had always been up to Terry to do the driving if he wanted to see the kids. She glanced at Cole, wishing for a moment of privacy, and he seemed to understand because he stepped into the dining room.

  “Honey, I would if I could,” Jaclyn said, lowering her voice. “But my car is old and not very reliable. I don’t think it would be wise to drive so far out of town. We could get stranded in the desert.”

  “You drive your car to work every day.”

  “Right, but work is only fifteen minutes away. If I break down, I can always call someone. Out in the desert, there won’t be anyone to call. I don’t have a cell phone, and I’m not sure there’s coverage out there even if I did.”

  “So?”

  “It’s too dangerous, Alex. Aren’t you listening to me? We’d have the girls with us. The tires on the car are nearly bald, and it’s been running hot—”

  “You always have some excuse. I haven’t seen Dad for a month, but you don’t care!”

  Jaclyn was conscious of Cole standing in the other room. He’d given her some space, but she seriously doubted he was out of earshot. Her house wasn’t big enough to avoid his hearing Alex’s high-pitched voice.

  Why did this have to come up tonight?

  “It’s not my fault that you haven’t seen him, Alex, and you know it,” she said.

  “Then, whose fault is it? Dad’s?”

  Yes! Jaclyn wanted to scream the word, but she was the adult in this situation and was determined to act like one. Tempering her response to something kinder, she said, “I don’t want to place blame. It just hasn’t worked out.”

  “Come on, Mom. The car will make it,” Alex pleaded.

  “I promise you, honey, I’d take you to Feld if I could, but I can’t. What if something went wrong? We’d be in real trouble.”

  Alex narrowed his eyes at her and spoke into the phone. “You were right. She won’t do it. She won’t ever let us see our dad!”

  Jaclyn opened her mouth to refute the unfair claim, just as Cole stepped back into the kitchen.

  “Tell your grandpa to wait up,” he said. “You’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

  “What?” Jaclyn gaped at Cole.

  “We’d better start out before it gets too late,” he told her.

  “You’re driving us there? To Feld?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? My car will make it.”

  “But it’s a long drive. We won’t get back until late tonight, and then there’s the problem of getting the kids home tomorrow.”

  “Won’t Terry bring them?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not even home so we can ask him.”

  Alex put on his “please, please, please” face. “Can’t you guys just stay?”

  “Where?” Jaclyn asked.

  “With Grandma and Grandpa,” Mackenzie supplied, as though the answer should be obvious to everyone.

  Jaclyn tried not to blanch openly. “No, guys, listen. Staying overnight is too much to ask of Cole.”

  She expected Cole to concur by claiming he had somethin
g to do come morning, but he didn’t. He studied one child’s hopeful face, then each of the others before turning to Jaclyn and cocking an eyebrow in challenge. “Feld has a motel or two, if I remember right. I’m sure we can manage a couple of rooms for the night, if you’re up to it.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked, knowing everything rested on his answer. She couldn’t say no now, not without adding credibility to Alex’s charge that she was being less than cooperative when it came to letting them see their father.

  Cole grinned and mussed Alex’s hair. “Go pack your bags,” he said. “All of you. I’ll run by my place and be back to pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  FELD.

  God, he was going back. Cole couldn’t believe it. When he’d left, he swore he’d never return, yet here he was, driving through the desert, the lights of Feld just ahead. Worse, he had his high-school prom queen and her children in the car and was taking them to see a family that had always treated him and his brothers with scorn. And he was staying the night. What on earth had possessed him to volunteer for this assignment?

  He could have let Jaclyn take his truck, he thought. Then he’d be sleeping in his bed right now, comfortable in the world he’d created, safe from the part of his life he’d rather forget. But she could have gotten a blowout or something, even in his vehicle. No, he’d had to take them. He was caught the moment he’d heard the tears in her son’s voice.

  Or maybe he was caught long before that. Maybe he was caught the moment he’d run into Jackie at Joanna’s. He’d known instinctively that someday she’d stir up old painful memories, make him confront Feld one more time.

  Cole stifled a groan and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She’d dozed off twenty minutes ago, her face serene in the amber glow of his instrument panel. The children slept, too, while he hurtled ever closer to the demons of his past.

  The lay of the land, the streetlights and the buildings on the outskirts of town instantly brought back his senior year and the year after—the year his mother died. But it was the smell that made the memories crowd so close he could scarcely breathe. Sagebrush and dust and fried chicken from the takeout diner combined to create a scent that was uniquely Feld, a scent that hadn’t changed in ten years.