[Kate's Boys 03] - Mistletoe and Miracles

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Nice house,” he commented politely.

  Rather than agree or thank him for the compliment, Laurel looked around as if she hadn’t seen it earlier. She shrugged and said, “Big house.”

  “You don’t like it?” he asked. Then why was she staying? It seemed like a logical question, but he kept it to himself.

  “This was Matt’s house,” she told him. “I moved in after we were married.” She’d wanted a home that they had chosen together, but Matt had told her this was far better. Nothing needed to be done. And so, she had left no mark on it.

  Why would you marry him and not me, Laurel? “So you never felt as if this was really your home?”

  A protest rose to her lips, but then she shook her head. There was no point in pretending. He was right. This wasn’t home, not really. Not even after all these years.

  “No.” And then she smiled. “You’re good.”

  Trent easily deflected the compliment. “That was pretty much a no-brainer.”

  The kitchen, off to one side, was the kind that most gourmet cooks only dreamed about owning. A professional range was located beside a stainless steel industrialsize refrigerator.

  Laurel noted the way Trent looked around. “Matt liked to do a lot of entertaining here,” she explained, then added, “Clients.”

  His interest was already aroused. “What did Matt do?”

  “He owned several companies,” she answered, then realized how vague that sounded. But Matt had been vague whenever she’d asked him about his work. “To be honest, I never could pin him down to specifics. He’d give me a lot of doubletalk when I asked.” She opened the refrigerator and took out a container of coffee, placing it on the granite counter. “But there was always a reason for him to be on the road.” She paused, her eyes filling with tears. “That was what was so bad about what happened. He was finally trying to bond with Cody when…” Her voice trailed off.

  And then she rallied, squaring her shoulders, pulling herself together before Trent’s eyes.

  The coffeepot made a guttural noise, announcing that it was done.

  About to open the refrigerator again, Laurel stopped and looked at him over her shoulder. “You still don’t take cream or sugar, or has that changed?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “That hasn’t changed.”

  Laurel nodded. “Nice to know that some things haven’t.”

  Chapter Five

  “But he already has a tutor,” Laurel protested. They were still in her kitchen, sitting at the table opposite each other like strangers. Or opponents. The small talk had gotten progressively smaller, until it had disappeared altogether like a wish that couldn’t be granted. In the face of her protest, he asked pointedly, “Is Cody making any progress?”

  From what he’d gathered at their initial meeting, he already knew the answer to that—which was why he’d approached his sister about taking over. Laurel frowned, looking down at the now cold coffee. The cam lights overhead shimmered along the liquid’s surface, winking and blinking like fairies with a secret. She sighed. God, she was doing a lot of that lately, she thought.

  “No. Not yet.”

  He measured his words slowly, watching her face for an answer. “How long do you want to wait before you decide to try someone else?”

  She thought of the ads she’d read regarding the network of tutors she’d hired. They all promised results in the blink of an eye. There’d been more than several

  “blinks”

  already. It was hard to be patient when she felt the word forever whispering along the perimeter of her mind. What if Cody stayed like this for the rest of his life? Laurel answered Trent’s question with a question. “And this tutor is good?” she asked.

  “Yes. I can personally vouch for her.”

  Her.

  Was he talking about someone he was involved with? Laurel wondered. And why in God’s name would that make her discontent? Did she think his life was just going to stand still? That Trent would now be exactly as she’d left him? Her life had gone on. There was no reason in the world to believe that his hadn’t. And yet, that was what she had believed. Damn, maybe she should have found a psychologist for herself, as well as her son. You can’t go home again.

  “Then, you know this tutor well?” she heard herself asking, words scraping along a dry throat.

  “As well as anyone can know anyone,” Trent told her and then grinned, remembering his exchange with Kelsey just before he had come to see Laurel.

  “I’ve even seen her stark naked.”

  The second the words were out, he realized what they had to sound like to Laurel. That he was romantically involved with this tutor. Was that a glimmer of sadness in her eyes? Did it matter to her what he’d done with his life since she’d left it? Most likely not. It was just a reflection of wishful thinking on his part, he told himself.

  “She was two at the time,” he explained quickly, punctuating his statement with a laugh, “and I’m talking about my sister.”

  “Kelsey?”

  Okay, either his imagination was working overtime, or he heard relief in her voice. Or maybe just incredulity. The last time Laurel had seen Kelsey, she had been a rather obnoxious fourteenyear-old, always popping up where she wasn’t wanted and fussing loudly when she was asked to leave. He could remember one time when he could have literally wrung her neck. She had ruined what could have been a very romantic scenario.

  “She’s not the same bratty fourteen-year-old she was back then. There’s been a huge change in the last seven years—for the better,” he emphasized. “We actually like her now.”

  Seven years. It had been that long, hadn’t it? Seven years could be an eternity for some. Especially if those seven years had been spent living in an ivory tower, feeling cut off and isolated from the world.

  Matt had kept her like that, away from her friends until they’d moved on. It had taken her a while to realize how controlling he was, not just of his empire, but of her, as well. He had felt he owned her the way he owned the companies he helmed. He had kept the latter until he had lost interest. He had been set to do the same with her

  —until death had stopped him.

  “Kelsey’s getting her degree in special education,” Trent said. Laurel wondered if he’d detected her thoughts drifting away for a moment. “And she’s very passionate about her work. I think she can help Cody catch up, especially being as gifted as he is.”

  The description caught her by surprise. “Are you going by what I told you?”

  But even as she asked, she played back his words in her head. Trent had said is, not if. That meant he was sure. After just one session? That didn’t seem possible, since Cody had kept his silence during the whole fifty minutes. Trent would have told her if Cody had said a single word.

  “You’d be slightly biased,” he allowed with a smile. “No, I talked to his teacher, the one he had before the accident,” he qualified before she could ask. “Beth Bayon had nothing but praise for him. She thought it was awful that he’d shut himself up like that.”

  He was about to tell her that weekends worked best for Kelsey, but a loud crash from somewhere within the house interrupted him. As if that were some sort of a signal, Laurel was on her feet instantly.

  “Cody.”

  It was the only word that broke from her lips as she ran out of the kitchen. She raced up the stairs before Trent could catch up to her. He hurried behind her and together they entered Cody’s room.

  He’d never seen a child’s room that was so large. Its walls were lined with books, toys, games and everything imaginable that a boy could want. It struck Trent that there was nothing left to desire. Every wish that a six-year-old could utter appeared to have already been granted. The video-game console that was the current rage and last Christmas’s “musthave” gift was lying upside down on the floor where Cody had obviously sent it sailing in a fit of anger. Its connections to the wide-screen flat-panel TV were severed, a casualty of the same surge of fury. Co
dy stood in the center of the bedroom, his face red with rage and an impotence that prevented him from channeling his feelings properly.

  “Cody,” Laurel cried again, falling to her knees beside the boy. She threw her arms around him and tried to hug him to her, offering comfort the only way she knew how. Avoiding eye contact, Cody shrugged out of her grasp, swung ninety degrees to his right and kicked the console. Before he could kick it again, Trent picked up the console, holding it out of range.

  “Has he done this before?” he asked when Laurel looked at him in surprise.

  “No.” A desperation thickened the walls of her throat, threatening to close off her windpipe. She could feel it filling up with tears. She struggled against a wave of hopelessness. It was going to get better. It had to. “No,” she repeated, “this is something new.” Again she put her arms around Cody. This time she held on as tightly as she could. Cody couldn’t shrug her off. “Cody, please, stop,” she pleaded. “I love you.”

  “He knows that,” Trent told her gently. He looked down at the console he held. Despite Cody’s angry punt and its unscheduled trip through the air to the floor, it looked remarkably none the worse for wear. He raised his eyes to Laurel’s. “This shouldn’t be in his room.”

  Freeing her son of her embrace, Laurel rose to her feet. “But that’s the only thing that seems to hold his attention. Besides the cars.” She glanced over to a pile of toy cars in various stages of destruction. He used to love those cars, she thought sadly.

  “Fine,” Trent acknowledged. “But this—” he raised the console slightly “—should be in the family room. He should be in the family room,” he added, nodding at Cody,

  “not sequestered in his room.”

  Sensitive, she bristled. Trent made it sound as if she’d sent Cody to his room as punishment—or because she didn’t want to see him. “I don’t send him there, he wants to be there.”

  Trent watched her for a long moment. “You’re the mother, Laurel,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “Where do you want him to be? Out of sight, or where you can see him?”

  He knew the answer to that, she thought angrily. Why was he even bothering to ask? Did he think she was some addle-brained woman for whom motherhood was a burden? “Where I can see him, of course.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait of her angry voice but went on talking quietly, stating what she already knew in her heart to be true.

  “Then it’s up to you to put him there. If this is what he likes to do—” he indicated the console with the game still loaded inside it “—then it should stay in the family room.”

  “Matt hooked the console up for him.” It was an advanced model. She remembered how excited Cody had been. And how Matt had looked at her in the midst of it all as if to say, See, what do you have that could possibly compete with what I can give him? “I don’t know how to attach it to the set in the family room,” she confessed.

  “Neither do I,” Trent told her honestly.

  He looked down at the boy, who had calmed down remarkably, to the point that it hardly seemed possible that he’d displayed such a flare of anger only minutes before. The boy had a great deal of pent-up anger inside. They needed to find a proper way to channel it so that it could be purged without harm.

  “How about you, Cody?” he asked. “Do you know how to hook the console up to the television set?”

  Laurel looked at him as if he were delusional. “He’s only six,” she protested.

  “You’d be surprised what they can do these days,” Trent told her, never taking his eyes off the boy. Ordinarily, he’d ask to see the manual. Handy enough himself, he’d hooked up his Blu-ray player recently and sincerely doubted if this video-game console were all that different. But he thought that this might be a way to get the boy to come around, and he wanted to see what Cody would do. After a beat, still not making eye contact or even acknowledging Trent’s presence, Cody put his hands on the video console and drew it away from him. Instead of leaving his room, he turned around as if he intended to reconnect the device to the television.

  Trent quickly stepped in front of the boy, blocking access to the set.

  “Sorry, champ. New rules. It can’t go there. If you want to play video games, you’re going to have to hook the set up downstairs—so that your mom can watch the games with you if she wants.”

  Cody’s eyes darted toward his mother, but it happened so quickly that it might have just been a trick of the lighting. A small sigh escaped the boy’s lips. But rather than surrender the set, this time he headed out the door into the hall. Trent saw Laurel looking at him, a half-hopeful expression on her face. Her silence begged for a confirmation. Rather than say anything, Trent gestured for her to follow Cody. Trent fell into step behind her.

  By the time they got to the family room, Cody was already plugging in the console and attaching the connecting wires that he’d ripped out upstairs. Trent crossed over to the boy as he watched what Cody was doing. “Great job, Cody.”

  Praise came easily to his tongue because of the way he’d been brought up. Kate had never doled out praise sparingly. Rather than criticize, she had always focused on the positive, on the things her children had done that pleased her rather than on the things they had neglected to do. It didn’t take much time for there to be far more of the former and a great deal less of the latter.

  Trent followed her example in his practice. Good mental health began with a good self-image. He needed to reinforce the one Cody had of himself.

  “It would have taken me a lot longer to do that,” he told the boy. “And only if your mom knew where the instruction manual is.”

  Cody still didn’t look at him, but Trent noticed that the boy’s slim shoulders appeared to be a little straighter now, rather than slumped the way they had been just a few minutes earlier in his bedroom.

  “You want to show me how to play the game?” Trent asked. “My sister likes to play video games to relax, but I never got into the habit. Maybe I should,” he continued amiably. Trent paused to look at the disc label that peeked out of the console. Letters streaking across a lightning bolt. “Blaze of Glory,” he read. “Is that your favorite?

  ”

  Rather than answer, Cody switched on the set, then the console and planted himself, cross-legged, before the flat-panel, a control pad in his hand. He took a position off to one side, to leave room for Trent if he wound up joining him.

  Nothing happened by accident. Trent took it as a good sign.

  “Is there another control pad?” Trent asked. Cody made no response, his fingers dancing along the left and right sides of the control pad. Trent looked at Laurel.

  “Do you know if…?”

  “Matt bought two,” she remembered. “He was going to play with Cody, I guess, but like a lot of other things, he never managed to get around to it. I don’t know where it is,” she apologized.

  “That’s okay.” He glanced over his shoulder. Cody’s attention was on the screen and the cars whizzing by at top speed. For now, he’d accomplished enough, Trent thought. He’d gotten the boy to come out of his room and interact with him, however distantly. He felt more than satisfied. Taking Laurel’s arm, he guided her to the far side of the room to talk to her in private. “I can get one for next time.”

  She looked at him in surprise. He intended to come back? Here? “Next time?”

  Trent nodded. Turning so that he could keep an eye on the boy, he told Laurel, “I think it might do him more good if I work with him in familiar surroundings. He’ll feel less threatened and that way he might let down his guard a little sooner.”

  Oh, if only, Laurel thought. “So, you’ll be coming here to see Cody, instead of my going to your office with him?” It was a question that really didn’t need an answer, except that she needed to hear it. Needed to come to terms with it. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Trent being here. It felt too personal, might unlock too many things that weren’t adequately buried.

  “Yes.” Trent stu
died her face. There had been a time when he had known it better than his own. When he could almost read her thoughts. Until he couldn’t. “Is that a problem?”

  What was wrong with her? This wasn’t about her, about them or even about mistakes that couldn’t be undone. This was about helping Cody. Only about helping Cody. She squared her shoulders before answering. “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “No, why should it be?”

  “You tell me,” he said. “Do you feel like I’m encroaching on your territory?”

  Laurel crossed her arms over her chest. He could always read her like a book, she thought. He’d guessed without any effort at all. The truth of it was, they were already getting too close, too personal, and he hadn’t even begun the bulk of his work with Cody. Who knew how long that would take? To have Trent here was an invasion of her space. It made her feel—what? She thought, searching for the right word.

  Vulnerable? Nervous? Excited?

  Matt hadn’t been gone a year. How could she feel this kind of antsy anticipation when her husband hadn’t been dead even for twelve months? Things had not been good between her and Matt for a long time, she reminded herself. And he hadn’t been the man she’d thought he was. Still, she couldn’t shake a feeling of guilt, as if by having Trent here she were somehow dishonoring Matt’s memory.

  He was going to take Cody from me. Remember that. Why should I feel guilty about anything when it comes to Matt?

  “Laurel? Laurel, are you all right?” Trent asked, concerned.

  He was gazing at her with uncertainty. He probably thinks I’ve become a space case. Pulling herself together, she blocked any further thoughts as she flashed him a reassuring smile.

  “I’m fine,” she told him with feeling. “And I have no problem with you coming here. Why should I?” she bluffed. “The only thing I want is to have Cody back the way he used to be, before the accident. And whatever it takes to get him there is more than fine with me. So, yes, you can come here and, yes, you can bring Kelsey if you think that she can help him more than the tutor that I got for him.” Laurel paused and looked at him pointedly. When she spoke again, her voice was low, as if she were imparting a secret meant just for the two of them. “I trust you, Trent, I always have.”