We Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

by Brenda Novak

  “Want to come with Mommy and Mackenzie, Alyssa?”

  “No, I’m staying here with Cole,” Alyssa answered, and slipped her arms tightly around his neck.

  For a moment Cole was tempted to peel her away, hand her to her mother and get out of Dodge, fast. The child felt sweet and soft in his arms, and smelled like baby shampoo, but he didn’t need her blue eyes fixed on him, making him feel that much guiltier for planning to walk away after the game. He’d always had a weakness for Jackie. He’d always wanted her. But he couldn’t let that tempt him into screwing up the rest of his life. He’d just unsnarled the damage caused by the first twenty years.

  Taking Mackenzie with her, Jaclyn scaled the bleachers, then disappeared around the corner. Cole glanced across the stands to see what the Wentworths were doing and caught Terry watching him. Only he didn’t look angry, as Cole expected. He looked…thoughtful, almost sad.

  Sighing, Cole shifted Alyssa on his lap. “Don’t you want to go see your daddy?” he asked.

  She peeked around at Terry, then shook her head. “I’m going to stay here. With you.”

  “Great,” he muttered.

  Fortunately she didn’t question this response. She just curled up in his lap as content as a cat bathing in the sun, until her mother returned.

  “I brought you a cola,” Jaclyn said.

  “Thanks.” Cole accepted the drink and shared it with Alyssa and Mackenzie, both of whom clamored for it immediately.

  “Grandma and Grandpa and Daddy came all the way from Feld to see you,” Jaclyn told the girls. “Why don’t you take them some of your popcorn?”

  Alyssa was still reluctant to get down, but when Mackenzie ran off with the popcorn, she finally followed her sister, which left Cole and Jaclyn alone for the first time since Alex had brought him to her door.

  “I’m sorry about what happened when we arrived,” Jaclyn said.

  Cole took a sip of his soda. “No problem.”

  “I should have told you that Burt threatened to cut off the child support if I saw you anymore. Then you could have been prepared.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said, but he wondered if that was true. Would he have opened his big mouth and shouted out that he was going to marry Jaclyn if he’d known he was walking into an ambush?

  “About what I said up there.” He cleared his throat, which suddenly felt rather tight, then plunged ahead, deciding that it was best to address the subject as soon as possible and clear the air. “About…you know, marriage.”

  “Yes?” She faced him, her expression blank enough to make Cole believe there was still hope for an easy out. She didn’t seem hopeful or upset or overly eager. She seemed perfectly okay.

  Taking heart, he went on. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. There’s a lot we’d have to consider before making a big decision like that one.”

  “I understand,” she replied. “We all say things we don’t mean once in a while.” She shrugged. “I enjoyed seeing the shock on Burt’s face. It was worth it. Anyway, we’ll just wait a few weeks and reinforce that our plans have changed. It won’t be a big deal.”

  She smiled reassuringly, but it was her indifference and willingness to let him backpedal that bothered Cole. After what had happened between them, wasn’t Jackie even remotely tempted to make their relationship permanent? Isn’t that what most women wanted? Rochelle had used sex to trap him, she’d lied to him and manipulated him, all for a ring on her finger. Jackie, on the other hand, had much more reason to want the financial and emotional support of a spouse, yet she asked for nothing. Was it because of the mistake he’d made with the trucking secretary? He’d known it would affect Jackie’s opinion of him, but he also believed a woman who cared about him would be willing to forgive him. Had she been the one who’d made the mistake, he’d definitely let the past go and give her a chance to prove herself. But then, he hadn’t gone through what she’d gone through.

  “What are you saying?” he asked. “That you wouldn’t want to marry me even if I asked you?”

  She looked down at the field and started clapping. Alex’s team was just coming back on. “I don’t have to worry about you asking me,” she said after a moment. “You don’t want to get married, remember?”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, sorely missing the determination behind that conviction. He’d been going back and forth on the marriage issue for weeks now, but the more Jackie slipped away from him, the more eager he was to bind her to him.

  And the less committed he became to bachelorhood.

  “THAT WAS QUITE A GAME,” Jaclyn said, standing outside her house with Cole beneath the pale arc of a streetlight. “I’m so glad Alex’s team won.”

  Alex had gone inside to change out of his soccer uniform, and the girls had soon followed, convinced, when Cole and Jaclyn did nothing more than talk in the chilly night air, that there had to be something more interesting on television.

  “Terry and Burt weren’t too happy when they left the game,” Cole said.

  Folding her arms across her body to help her lightweight jacket keep her warm, Jaclyn tilted her head back to admire the night sky. It was only eight o’clock, but the days were getting shorter. Thanksgiving was less than a week away. She could hardly believe how fast the months were passing. When she’d started working for Cole in mid-August, getting her real-estate license had seemed so far into the future. Now she was two days away from taking the test.

  “Poor Alex. He was hoping to go with them. But they said goodbye and hurried off,” she said. “And I doubt they’ll be coming back again very soon.”

  “Do you think Burt will call once they reach home?”

  “There’s no telling what Burt will do.”

  Cole shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the side of his Navigator. “Do you want me to stay for a while, just in case?”

  The words were spoken casually enough, as though he was merely being polite, but Jaclyn got the distinct impression his offer stemmed from something deeper than courtesy. He wanted to stay, and as much as Jaclyn wished otherwise, her desire to let him had nothing to do with protection from Burt Wentworth. When she was with Cole, the whole world seemed right, as though she’d started a journey long ago and finally reached the ideal destination.

  But that’s my heart talking, not my head, and my heart’s been wrong before.

  “There’s nothing Burt can do to hurt me, at least not tonight.” She offered him a weak smile. “It will take him a few days to marshal his force of attorneys.”

  “You don’t think he’ll back off?”

  “Maybe.” She grinned. “Now that he believes we’re getting married.”

  She thought she saw Cole blush, which wasn’t something that happened often, but the shadows covering his face made it difficult to tell for sure. She did know he hadn’t been his smooth-talking, confident self ever since claiming he was going to marry her. Fortunately she understood that he’d said it in the heat of the argument. Even if she’d taken him at his word, she would have realized he regretted what he’d said when he clammed up and wouldn’t talk through most of the game.

  “What about Terry? He’ll just let his dad do whatever he wants?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t know. Terry was very bitter last year and very much a part of the court battles, but he seems to be losing his zeal for the fight. Maybe he’s finally reconciling himself to the fact that I’m not coming back, no matter what he does.”

  “Or maybe he’s met someone else.”

  Jaclyn thought about that. “I doubt it,” she said after a moment. “The kids never mention anyone. Neither does Terry.”

  “Would it upset you?”

  “If he was seeing someone else? No. I keep hoping he’ll do exactly that and move on with his life, but he claims there will never be anyone to replace me. When he says things like that, I can’t help wondering what happened to all the other women he wanted when we were married.”

  “I guess they were
more desirable to him when they were off-limits.”

  Jaclyn wanted to know if Cole could identify with those feelings. Is that what had enticed him to break his own marriage vows? Is that what appealed to most philanderers? If so, she couldn’t relate. To her, an affair seemed fleeting and selfish and cheap.

  “I guess,” she said. She really didn’t want to dwell on Terry’s extracurricular activities because she had to face the fact that Cole had the same reputation. And there were times—lots of times—when she didn’t want to acknowledge that. Times like now, when he looked so appealing in his faded blue jeans and Ralph Lauren sweater, the dark stubble of a day’s beard on his jaw.

  “What about Alex?” he asked. “You think he’ll be okay? He didn’t seem to know what to do when he had his father and grandparents on one side of the bleachers, and you and me on the other.”

  “I know. I’m sure he was afraid his father would take it personally or get angry if he spent too much time with us, but he likes you, so he was naturally drawn our way.”

  “He’s a good boy.”

  “He’s coming along. He still has some issues with the divorce, but he knows I love him and want what’s best for him. I’m hoping that will eventually conquer the negative. It has to, doesn’t it? I mean, otherwise, parents wouldn’t stand a chance of raising healthy, well-adjusted individuals—not with all the things that go wrong in life. Very few people have a perfect childhood.”

  Cole’s gaze fell to the ground. Taking one hand out of his pocket, he kneaded the back of his neck as he asked, “You think love is enough?”

  “I think it can compensate for a lot of things. It’s a lack of love that really hurts a child—or anyone, really.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything, his expression serious, as though he was pondering something important.

  “What are you thinking about?” Jaclyn asked.

  “I was just wondering if it’s ever too late.”

  “For what?”

  “For someone to receive the love they need.”

  Surely some people received too little love too late, she thought. But weren’t there others out there, millions, who could still be whole and healthy if only they had someone to care about them? “That would probably depend on a lot of things,” she finally replied.

  “Yeah.” He sighed and jammed his hand back in his pocket, then looked at her. “I want to see you,” he said.

  The sudden change in topic took Jaclyn by surprise. His statement was simple and sincere, and she wanted to respond to it. Except that dating Cole went against everything she’d been telling herself for the past three months. She was finally out and on her own. Why break down now?

  “I think we’ve already established that it’s probably best—”

  “To what?” he interrupted. “Give up on what we feel?”

  Evidently Jaclyn was far more transparent than she thought. “What do we feel?” she asked.

  “That’s what I want to find out. And don’t tell me you don’t feel anything. I know better.”

  “How?”

  “From your birthday.”

  Jaclyn raised a challenging eyebrow. She hadn’t made any protestations that night.

  “Come on,” he said. “When we made love, I wasn’t alone emotionally any more than I was alone physically.”

  It was Jaclyn’s turn to blush. She might not have made any protestations of love on her birthday, but she hadn’t held anything else back. To get the conversation on safe ground again, she said, “I’m just trying to make good choices. It’s so important now that I’m on my own with the kids.”

  “I understand. That’s why I let you pull away the first time. But now, I’m not sure it’s such a good choice.”

  “So what do you want? To see a movie once in a while, you and me? Or are you interested in including the kids?”

  He shrugged and gazed toward a car turning at the corner. Headlights swung toward them, then away as the vehicle pulled into a driveway up the street.

  “Why can’t we do both?” he asked. “I don’t have any expectations. Let’s just start at ground zero and try not to decide the ending before we finish the beginning. I’ll promise to take things slow, if you’ll promise to trust me.”

  Trust him? A known philanderer?

  “I’m not sure I can do that.”

  “I’m not like Terry,” he said.

  Jaclyn had wanted him to say those words ever since she’d run into him at Joanna’s. She’d wanted to hear him claim his innocence, or at least declare his reformation, but he’d never offered any justification for his past, and he didn’t now. He just looked at her with hope shining in his eyes, willing her to believe him.

  Somehow his silence went a lot farther toward breaking down her defenses than any amount of talking could have done.

  “I know you’re a lot stronger than Terry in many ways,” she said. “You wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what you’ve accomplished if you weren’t, but—”

  He grasped her by the shoulders and stared down at her. “I won’t cheat on you, Jackie,” he said, then he kissed her.

  Jaclyn closed her eyes, savoring the feel of Cole’s lips on hers. His breath fanned her cheek and his hand cupped the back of her head, but it wasn’t a passionate kiss. It was soft and sweet and endearing, and it begged her to believe in him.

  The smell of his aftershave filled her nostrils as his tongue met hers, tasting like mint, and Jaclyn felt her resistance crumble. She could try to trust him, couldn’t she? It wasn’t so much to ask.

  Breaking off the kiss long before Jaclyn wanted him to, he lifted his head and smiled down at her. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  Heart beating in her throat, Jaclyn gazed into eyes that were dark and intense beneath an unruly lock of black hair, and knew she couldn’t refuse him. It’s only a date, she told herself. No big deal. I can back out at the first sign of trouble.

  Oh God, who was she kidding?

  “Why don’t you come for dinner at six?” she heard herself say.

  “I’ll be here,” he promised with a grin. Then he got in his truck and drove away, leaving Jaclyn standing in the street, still hungry for his touch, still aching for his embrace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HE’D BEEN A FOOL to insist Rick make the first move to heal the breach between them.

  Letting his engine idle, Cole sat outside Rick’s place and stared at his own reflection in the dark windows of the house. He’d left Jackie’s nearly two hours ago, but it had taken him that long, and nearly four cups of coffee at the local Denny’s, to work up the nerve to come out to his brother’s. Now he just needed to summon the courage to approach the door.

  It’s a lack of love that really hurts a child….

  Cole took a deep breath and let that statement swirl around in his mind some more. Is that where he’d failed Rick? Did Rick know how important he was to Cole? Or had Cole given his brother everything except what a child needed most?

  It was certainly possible. Cole wasn’t much for psychology. After surviving his childhood with his sanity intact, he hadn’t wanted to delve inside his head or anyone else’s, for fear of what he might unearth there. But looking back, he could certainly see how a young boy in Rick’s situation—acting out like he was—could get his signals crossed. For years every exchange Cole had with his brother had been negative. Maybe Rick didn’t know Cole cared. Maybe he’d never known.

  “Shit,” Cole grumbled, killing the engine. If Rick didn’t know, he needed to tell him, but it wasn’t going to be easy. He and his brother just didn’t communicate on that level. They never had.

  But if that’s what stood between them…

  Getting out, Cole approached the door and rang the bell. Rick’s car was in the driveway, but all the lights were out. He was probably asleep, which meant Cole would wake him—again. He considered waiting for morning, an option that was certainly growing in appeal, but decided he’d better say what he’d come to say and be don
e with it. Or he might never get it said.

  Nothing happened for several minutes, so Cole rang the bell again.

  Finally the porch light came on and Rick opened the door, wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants. “Cole?” he said, scratching his head.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me you’re not here to ask about the game last Sunday.”

  “No.” This time Cole wasn’t going to say anything about sports or business or the past. This time he was going to set the record straight between them, once and for all.

  Except, he couldn’t talk. Now that the moment had arrived, his heart was making such a racket, he could scarcely hear above it, and his eyes—damn them—were starting to water.

  “I wanted to tell you something,” he said.

  Rick’s expression remained guarded. “What? If it’s about work—”

  “It’s not about work. It’s…”

  Suddenly Cole couldn’t fight the tears filling his eyes, and his chest tightened to the point that he could scarcely breathe. But he wouldn’t let himself turn away. Because worse than being a thirty-two-year-old man standing on his brother’s doorstep and crying like a baby was the fear that his brother didn’t know, had never known, how he truly felt.

  Hands clenching and unclenching, he said, “I love you, dammit.”

  It came out as a hoarse whisper. A pathetic attempt. Cole cleared his throat and forced his next words, loud and clear, past the lump that threatened to choke him. “I…have always…loved you.”

  Then, too embarrassed to wait for Rick’s reaction, he turned on his heel and left.

  STUNNED, RICK STOOD in the doorway and watched the taillights of Cole’s Navigator disappear from sight. He’d never seen his brother cry—not when their mother died, not when their father died a year later, and not when he divorced Rochelle. Through the most difficult part of his life, Cole had always been strong and aloof and practical. The entire family had leaned on him, and he’d pulled them through.