[Kate's Boys 03] - Mistletoe and Miracles

by Marie Ferrarella

  “It’s the carpet,” he told her with a smile. “It muffles everything.”

  Laurel wasn’t listening. She was looking at her son, aware that she’d been holding her breath.

  “Leave Mrs. Greer’s account to me,” Trent told Rita.

  It was obvious that this wasn’t what the older woman wanted to hear. Accounts and the billing were her domain. She frowned. “I take care of all the accounts, Dr. Marlowe.”

  After several years, Trent had gotten used to Rita and her rather unique ways. At bottom, as Kate had pointed out more than once, the woman was a huge asset. He smiled at Rita. “Change is a good thing, Rita. You should learn to embrace it.”

  Rita made a noise under her breath and went to get the copy paper.

  “I can pay my bills, Trent,” Laurel informed him. And then she glanced at her son. Cody seemed just as withdrawn into his own world as ever. She knew it was too soon for a miracle to take hold, but that was what made them miracles. Facing Trent, her heart rate sped up just a little as she asked, “Well?”

  “Not yet, but he will be,” Trent promised.

  Chapter Four

  Kelsey Marlowe didn’t hear the knock on her door at first. Lost in her studies—

  why did it seem like there was always another big exam looming on the horizon?—she didn’t become aware of the noise until a louder rap echoed against the wood, startling her.

  The next second, the door opened and one of the triplets peered in. Even after all these years, a first glance always made her mentally scramble for a clue to which one it was.

  Kelsey realized that it was Trent invading her space about half a beat before he spoke.

  “Hi, Kel.” He flashed a smile that was just this side of serious. “Got a minute?”

  Uncrossing her legs, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “No.”

  Open textbooks, not to mention her laptop, littered her comforter. Two of the books slid onto the floor with a grating thud. The pages she had them opened to disappeared.

  Stress and surprise ate away at Kelsey’s usual good humor. “You know, there’s a reason the door was closed.” She exhaled a huff that was filled with frustrated anger.

  “Does the word privacy mean anything to you? I could have been naked.”

  If she had been, he knew the door would have been not just closed but locked. Trent walked into the sunny bedroom. The only one of them still living at home, Kelsey had gotten the room with the best exposure. It used to be his.

  He grinned. “This from the kid Mom had to chase after because you liked running around the house naked.”

  Embarrassment threatened to change the color of her cheeks. Kelsey struggled to suppress it, not wanting to give Trent the satisfaction.

  “I was two,” she reminded him indignantly. Were her brothers ever going to forget about that? She’d gone on to get straight As in every subject in school. Why couldn’t they refer to that instead of the period of her life when her social values and awareness hadn’t kicked in yet? Trent shrugged good-naturedly. “Still, all the body parts were there.” His grin widened. “And I’ve got a great memory.”

  She frowned at him as she tossed her head, her long, straight blond hair flying over her shoulder. “Obviously all long term. Your short-term memory appears to be shot.”

  Curious, he bent down to pick up the textbook that had dropped on the side of the bed closest to the door and handed it to Kelsey. “What did I forget?”

  She took the book from him. The answer was right there in his hand and he still missed it. Men were hopeless, she thought. “That I have midterms coming up. I’m on quarters, not semesters, remember?” There was no sign of anything dawning on her brother. It figured. “I mentioned it at dinner Sunday. A dinner I had to move things around in order to make,” she added with a touch of exasperation.

  “You mention a lot of things,” he pointed out in self-defense. He’d never come across anyone who could talk as much as his sister. Someday, he fully expected the muscles in her jaw to lock up. “Most of the time, you do practically all the talking at the table.” Again, he shrugged. “I filter things out sometimes.”

  Sometimes? Kelsey laughed dryly. “How about all the time?”

  That wasn’t true, but there was no point in going around and around about it. “I didn’t come here to spar with you.”

  Sighing, Kelsey dragged her hand through a torrent of long blond hair.

  “Okay, why did you come?” she asked.

  Trent took a seat on the edge of her bed. “I need a favor.”

  She didn’t have time for this, she thought. As it was, she was only averaging about four hours of sleep a night. “And I need to learn how to do without sleep,” she lamented.

  Sympathy emerged. He wasn’t all that removed from his college years. “That bad?” he asked.

  She sighed before gesturing at the books on her bed. “Pretty much.”

  Trent got up, careful not to send anything else sliding. “Sorry I bothered you.”

  He was leaving? Without telling her what he wanted? Her sense of curiosity wouldn’t allow it. “Hey, wait, where are you going?”

  Trent stopped short of the doorway, looking at her over his shoulder. “The favor I need requires time and you obviously don’t have any.”

  Kelsey caught her lower lip between her teeth. Damn him. Trent knew how to push her buttons.

  She gestured for him to come back in. If that hadn’t worked, she would have hopped off the bed and physically pulled him back. But she didn’t have to. Trent returned under his own steam. “You came here to talk to me, you might as well talk.”

  Trying not to smile, Trent sat down on the edge of the bed again. This time the action created an undercurrent and another textbook slid off on the other side. Watching it, Kelsey struggled with a momentary desire to send all the textbooks to the floor with one grand, angry sweep of her arm. Trent’s eyes held hers. Hers were a darker shade than his. His expression was completely serious. This was important and he was making a judgment call. “I need you to tutor someone for me.”

  Something stirred within her. This was the first time any of her brothers had asked her to do something involving the vocation she’d finally decided on. Trent was treating her as an equal, as an adult. She’d finally lived to see the day.

  For as long as she could remember—after she’d given up, at seven, the notion of being the first queen of the United States, she’d wanted to become a teacher. Not just a teacher but one who worked with children who had special needs, specifically the families who couldn’t afford special schools to help their children catch up with their peers.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked, then made a guess, choosing the most common problem. “Dyslexia?”

  If only, Trent thought.

  He began by giving his sister the positive side first. “Cody’s really very bright.”

  During an extended lunch, he’d gone to Cody’s school to talk to his teachers. The ones who had taught him before the accident. Once Trent had made the teachers comfortable with his reasons for asking—and his credentials—he had gotten what he was after. Confirmation. If anything, Laurel had downplayed the boy’s abilities. Before his father’s death, Cody’d had read at a fourth-grade level while still in the first grade and, according to his teacher, Mrs. Bayon, he had been articulate, outgoing and happy.

  “But his father died a year ago and Cody withdrew from everyone,” Trent told her.

  “His grades are all down. He’s on the way to failing everything but sandbox one-oone.” He knew that would elicit pity from Kelsey and, judging from the look in her eyes, he was right.

  “Why?” she asked. “Lots of kids lose a parent early in life. They don’t all respond like this. You didn’t. Trevor, Travis and Mike didn’t. Dad told me,” she added when he looked at her, mildly curious. “What makes Cody different?”

  “Well, for one thing, he was with his father when he was killed in a car accident.”


  “Oh.” Incredibly empathetic, Kelsey instantly thought how she would have felt if she’d been in that situation. Her heart twisted and went out to the boy she hadn’t even met. That made up her mind for her. “When would you want me to get started?”

  He had known he could count on her. “As soon as possible.” And then a stab of guilt made him ask, “Can you?”

  She shrugged. “I could eke out a few hours on Saturday and Sunday,” she speculated. “Maybe an hour or two during the week.”

  He didn’t want to put her out, but he also knew in his gut that she was the right one for the job. “Anything would be great, really.”

  He sounded so enthused. A red light went off in her head. This was, after all, her brother, the one who used to plant crickets in her bed. Was this some kind of setup? At the very least, she needed reasons. “Why come to me?”

  Trent’s answer was simple. “Because you’re good at it.”

  She thought that herself. But there was a flaw in his answer. “You’ve never seen me work with kids.”

  He smiled at her. He didn’t blame her for being leery. He’d done his share of teasing when it came to Kelsey. They all had. But Kelsey could hold her own with the best of them, which was why he knew he had been right to come to her.

  “Call it instinct,” he answered. “I know when you do something, you don’t do it by half measures. And you’ve had experience, student teaching. You don’t get the kind of grades you do by slacking off.” Kate had told him all the effort Kelsey put into her projects with the children. Only a completely dedicated person would go those extra miles.

  Kelsey looked at him for a long moment, stunned. “That is probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  He grinned, nodding. “Yeah, it probably is,” Trent agreed. “Don’t let it go to your head. By the way, I don’t expect you to do this for free. I’m going to pay you.”

  “You couldn’t afford me,” she informed him. She didn’t want his money—she wanted his soul, she thought, swallowing a chuckle. “I’ll figure out some way for you to pay me back.”

  “Should I be afraid?” Trent deadpanned.

  Kelsey paused for a moment, pretending to think about it. And then she nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  He had to get going. Rising from the bed, he kissed the top of her head. “You’re the best.”

  “About time you noticed that,” she sniffed, pretending that the comment didn’t get to her.

  “I’ll get back to you and fill you in on the details,” he promised, beginning to leave. And then he remembered that he’d left out something. “Oh, one more thing. Cody doesn’t talk.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Doesn’t talk?” she echoed in surprise.

  Trent took a couple of steps back toward the bed. “Not a word since the accident.”

  He watched Kelsey for a moment. Was she going to back out? He didn’t think so, but there was always that chance. And then she sighed as she shook her head. “You do like giving me a challenge, don’t you?”

  He let go of the breath he’d been holding. “Nothing I don’t think you’re up to.”

  Her mouth dropped open for a beat, and then she rallied. “Damn, two compliments in one session and me without my recorder.”

  His hand on the door, Trent winked at her. “Next time.”

  “Yeah, like there’s going to be one,” she murmured, getting back to her studies.

  Trent closed the door behind him, grinning.

  It was early evening and Laurel almost ignored the doorbell when it rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone and she didn’t like unexpected visits these days. But the doorbell rang again and she had a feeling that whoever was on the other side wasn’t about to go away until she sent them on that route. One glance through the peephole made her quickly pull the door open.

  Laurel stared wide-eyed at the man on her doorstep. What was he doing here? How did he know where she lived? And then she remembered that she’d had to fill out all those forms at his office.

  Idiot. She upbraided herself for being so naive.

  She didn’t bother trying to force a smile to her lips. “Did I forget something?”

  He knew he should have called first. But he’d been afraid that she might come up with an excuse, or ask him outright not to come and there were things he needed to ask, things that had to be cleared up before he could go forward with Cody’s treatment.

  “I just wanted to talk to you a little more about Cody.” He was standing on her doorstep and she wasn’t making a move. A smile quirked his mouth. “Mind if I come in?”

  The question brought her around. She’d been using her body like a roadblock, unconsciously positioning it between the door and the doorjamb. Laurel pressed her lips together. What was the matter with her? She was the one who’d come to him. This was for Cody, not her. Everything was for Cody. She no longer figured into anything, she silently told herself, except as Cody’s mother.

  “Sorry.” Taking a step back, she opened the door wider. “Do you want to see him?” she offered, shutting the door again after Trent was inside. “Cody’s upstairs in his room.”

  It wasn’t Cody who could give him answers to his basic questions, it was her. He needed the answers in order to treat the boy. “No, I came to see you,” Trent told her.

  “Oh?” The single word seemed to shimmer with her barely hidden nervousness.

  She was afraid he was going to ask her about them, about why she’d walked out. As much as he wanted to, that inquiry had no place here. “I need to ask you questions. I’m asking them as his doctor, not as…”

  For a moment, his voice drifted away as he searched for a neutral word.

  He needn’t have bothered. She raised her eyes to his, valiantly struggling for a touch of humor. “My old boyfriend?”

  “Something like that,” he allowed, then admitted, “except more P.C.”

  In her opinion, people hid their true feelings far too much as it was. Feelings needed to be properly channeled and displayed, not buried under rhetoric because a crowd of people might misunderstand and possibly take offense.

  “I don’t have much use for P.C.,” she murmured, her fingers knotting together.

  “Look, Trent, maybe I owe you an explanation—”

  It was the elephant in the room. A huge elephant that took up almost all the space, sucked out almost all the air. But that was personal and he was here in a different capacity. He was here as Cody’s therapist and until such time as Laurel told him that his services were no longer necessary, Cody was his first—and only—priority here, both professionally and otherwise.

  Even if in the dead of night sometimes, when sleeplessness would stalk him, he’d lie awake and wonder why she had decided to leave him. He did his best to sound removed as well as believable. “You don’t owe me anything, Laurel. That’s all in the past and we’ve moved on. I’m here because of Cody. If I’m going to help him, I need as much input, as much information, as possible,” Trent told her matter-of-factly. Well, if he wasn’t here because of unresolved issues from the past, why was he here? “Rita had me fill out a health history for Cody while I waited.” It was a comprehensive form that demanded a complete medical history, leaving nothing out.

  Trent shook his head. That wasn’t the aspect that had his attention. “That’s not what I meant,” he told her. “You said you had Cody completely checked out physically.”

  Again, she nodded. “By several doctors. Two pediatricians and a neurologist,” she reminded him, in case he’d forgotten what she’d told him the other day. “And a G.P.”

  “No brain tumors or aneurysms, right?”

  The very question sent a shiver down her spine. She remembered sitting in the hospital, scared to death as Cody had lain, so small and pale, on the table, disappearing into the MRI machine. She’d never prayed so hard in her life.

  “No,” she breathed. “None.”

  “Then something psychological is responsible for the problem,
” he elaborated. That was, after all, why she had come to him in the first place, to find the underlying cause for Cody’s muteness. “Our daily lives, consciously and subconsciously, trigger responses, and not everyone reacts the same way to the same stimuli. For instance, an abused child—”

  Red lights went off in her head instantly. Trent had been the only one, besides her mother, with whom she had shared that dark section of her past. “Cody wasn’t abused,” she protested heatedly.

  “I’m not saying he was,” he told her. It was still a very sensitive spot with her, he thought, like a button that couldn’t be pushed. “But an abused child can go one of two ways. He can grow up to be an abuser, or he can be a loving parent in an effort to never make the mistakes his own father or mother made with him.” He looked at her pointedly. “There are a lot of contributing factors that go into making us who and what we are.”

  She was looking at him the way she used to, Trent thought for a fleeting moment. That unguarded look, because of what she’d shared with him, that had always made him want to protect her at all costs.

  He struggled to bank down that feeling. The best thing he could do for her right now was to reach her son. That was the only thing he had to focus on, the only thing he needed to think about.

  She wouldn’t allow him to approach the other subject, no matter how much she needed him to or he wanted to help her. He’d supposedly made his peace with that. Surprise.

  Trent pushed on as if nothing had happened. “So picture this as a giant jigsaw puzzle,” he suggested. “In order to put this together, I’m going to need all the pieces.”

  She took a deep breath. It made sense. She had to stop being so sensitive and just be grateful he was willing to help.

  “All right.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen and I’ll make us some coffee?”

  He followed half a step behind her, taking in his surroundings. Highly polished marble floors passed beneath walls devoid of color, decorated with paintings he had a feeling were originals, not copies. Expensive originals. It didn’t quite look like a place where someone lived, only visited on their way to somewhere else. To home.