Mistletoe Mommy

Chapter Twelve

“Thank you,” Eliza mumbled as they left the drugstore. “That was embarrassing, but it would have been worse with my dad.”

“You’re welcome. I realize that kids-young women,” she amended, unlocking the car doors, “probably hate it when adults say this, but I know how you feel. My mom wasn’t around for my first period, either.”

It had been mortifying. Even though Brenna had taken the same health classes as her peers and had, in theory, known what to expect, her first thought had been I’m bleeding to death! It had hurt.

“Where was your mom?”

“Don’t know,” Brenna confided. “Still don’t. She brought me to Mistletoe and married Fred just a few months later-Fred is Josh’s dad. Then she took off for the store and none of us ever saw her again, although Fred did find a note afterward.”

Eliza’s jaw dropped, her own misery temporarily forgotten. “She just left? And she didn’t even tell you goodbye? That’s way worse than being twenty minutes late for the sixth-grade graduation ceremony or being a no-show at the father-daughter volleyball picnic.”

Brenna knew that if Adam had missed an event for one of his kids, it had to have been something critical that kept him. He’d probably been off nobly saving a life, people around him yelling Clear! or Clamp! or Stat! the way they always did in medical dramas. But still, she empathized with the sense of loss the girl must have felt.

“Now that I’m older, I realize that even though her leaving hurt badly for a long time, it might have been for the best.” By the time they’d reached Mistletoe, Brenna had already become tense and brittle, afraid to form attachments. Who knew when they’d pick up and go again? How long a current boyfriend would last? When her mercurial mother might turn on her? “In fact, her disappearing like that might even have been her way of protecting me. Maybe she did it because she loved me.”

“Pfftt.” Eliza snorted. “Whatever. It still sucks.”

Brenna laughed. “Yeah. It still sucks.” She turned her key in the ignition, relieved when the car started. For what she’d paid to mortgage it out of the garage, the vehicle should be so finely tuned it could qualify for the Indy 500.

“You hungry?” Brenna asked. “We can swing by a drive-through somewhere.”

“Nah.”

“Forget dinner, then. What about just a chocolate milk shake? Great cure for cramps,” Brenna added. A decent milk shake helped keep her from killing anyone at the wrong time of the month.

Eliza perked up a bit. “Yeah, okay. Sounds good.”

They were nearly to the lodge and happily slurping down shakes when Eliza resurrected the topic of Brenna’s mom. “You’re really not mad at her?”

“Why should I be? Letting anger fester hurts me more than it hurts her, wherever she is.”

“I guess. Did you know she was going to leave? Was it out of the blue, or did she sort of slowly slip out of your life before going for good?”

Brenna’s gaze flitted to her young passenger. “How do you mean?”

“Like ignoring you. Not calling when she was supposed to. Guess that didn’t matter, since you lived with her.” Eliza’s gaze slid to the hands clasped tightly in her lap. “My mom got a divorce because Dad wasn’t really paying attention to anything but work. You’d think he would have apologized, sent flowers.”

Maybe, but relationships were complicated and there had probably been other factors at play. Brenna kept the thought to herself, not wanting to discourage Eliza from safely venting.

“But it didn’t help much. Even if he showed up, half the time he’d get an emergency page.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “Does it make me selfish that sometimes I didn’t care who he was off saving, that I just wanted him to be with me?”

“I don’t think so. You’re completely entitled to want your dad’s love, and his time. But, honey, your father is nothing like my mom. She was…unwell. He isn’t going anywhere. He’s crazy about you three. Don’t you think this trip is proof of that?”

Eliza eyed her skeptically, then shrugged. “He’s been my dad for nearly thirteen years. This trip is twenty days.”

BY THE TIME they reached the lodge, Eliza was barely smothering her yawns. She shuffled toward the Varners’ suite with the appearance of someone who was sleepwalking. Adam must have been listening for them, because he opened the door just as Brenna started to knock.

Brenna handed the girl the bag of feminine supplies they’d purchased, including some neon-bright fingernail polish and a fashion magazine for young women.

“Thank you,” Eliza said. “And, Dad? Sorry I was a pita today.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Pita?”

“You know, PITA? Pain in the…Anyway, I’ll try to do better.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “Go rest up for our white-water rafting adventure tomorrow afternoon. That is, if you think you’re up to it?”

“Wouldn’t miss it!” Despite her fatigue, the genuine anticipation in her voice was unmistakable.

“Well, just let me know if you change your mind. I’m flexible.”

With Eliza preparing for bed and Morgan and Geoff engrossed in a rented movie, Adam was free to walk Brenna back downstairs. He seemed in no hurry to get rid of her, though.

Nodding toward the two-person swing on the veranda, he said, “Sit with me for a few minutes? Or do you need to rush back out and do more pet visits?”

“I have four more tonight, but they can wait another twenty minutes.” She’d gotten up so early that morning, before the sun, that when she’d returned home this afternoon, it had been with optimistic plans of catching a catnap. Now she didn’t have time for that.

Besides, being alone with Adam rejuvenated her. She experienced something like adrenaline, but warmer and less jittery. She was alert, her senses heightened by his nearness.

The swing jostled under their combined weight, and Brenna let herself sway toward him. Until meeting Adam, she hadn’t realized how deficient of touch her life had become. Her animals considered a pat on the head or a belly rub a crucial part of the day, but except for occasionally shaking hands with a new client or maybe hugging someone at Sunday family dinners, it had been too long since Brenna had been this close to another human.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I don’t know what we would have done today if you hadn’t come along.”

“Oh, you would have muddled through. It would have been awkward, possibly hostile on her part, and you would have made a silent pact never to speak of it again…but you would have handled it.”

“Is she okay?” he asked.

Brenna nodded. “I helped her select some over-the-counter pain medicine. She said she didn’t have any weird allergies that she knew of and wasn’t currently taking anything. I gave her a crash course on her best options if she wants to go rafting tomorrow. I also…talked to her some in the car. Not just about this.”

He straightened, looking not only curious but nearly reverent, as if Brenna were about to hand him the Holy Grail of Understanding Your Adolescent Daughter. “Yeah?”

“She’s ticked off at you,” Brenna said bluntly. “But more than that, she’s scared you won’t be around for her.”

He clenched a fist against his thigh. “I suppose I deserve that. Sara and I were practically kids ourselves, newly married when we got pregnant with Geoff. She did such a beautiful job handling motherhood while I finished up med school. I don’t mean to make excuses, but the hours for an intern are hellish. Once you make resident, they upgrade you to merely purgatorial.”

“Adam. You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“I know. I just…Do you mind my telling you about this?”

“No, I like hearing about you. Even the imperfect parts,” she assured him.

“I specialize in those,” he drawled, looking angry with himself. “I didn’t mean to take Sara for granted or dump everything on her. I think it truly didn’t dawn on me that she needed help. She had the kids organized and scheduled, knew just where she wanted everything and who liked what favorite bear or blanket. When things got bad enough that she complained, I really did try to pitch in. And I ended up feeling as if I were just in the way, like an intruder in my own family.”

Brenna had some experience with feeling like the outsider, a jarring angle in the family circle.

“I know I’ve screwed up,” he said. “But I didn’t realize I’d screwed up so badly that my own daughter is afraid I won’t be there.”

“Well-” she caught her bottom lip between her teeth “-I may not have helped. I was trying to relate, told her a bit about my own childhood.”

Adam tilted back to better see her expression. “Problems with your dad?”

“My mom.” Her voice was barely audible. I never talk about this. For good reason. People threw around words like healing and closure. Closure? That was a laugh-the woman was God knows where on the globe. Assuming she was even still alive and well.

Brenna swallowed hard. “My mom brought me to Mistletoe when I was around Eliza’s age. She met Fred Pierce, Josh’s father. His own divorce hadn’t been final all that long, and I think they rebounded into each other.”

“Had your parents been divorced long?” Adam asked quietly.

“I never knew my dad. She left him when she was pregnant with me.” Leaving people, her great legacy. “I think…I don’t know, but I think she was sick. For months she’d seem okay. There would even be days where she was better than okay. Waking me up in the middle of the night and asking me if I wanted to go on an ‘adventure’ with her. One time when we lived in Kentucky, it was to go out in the first snowfall of the season. We found a twenty-four-hour store and bought chocolate bars. It was midnight, and I was gorging on chocolate and having a snowball fight with my mom.”

Brenna stopped, her throat tight. For some reason, it hurt more to remember candy bars in the snow-had she ever told anyone about that?-than it did to recall being abandoned.

“At times like that, I thought she was the best mother in the world. I was awed by her. But then there were her short-tempered moments. A lot less fun,” she said sardonically. “And long periods of time where she was quiet. I don’t remember seeing her cry, but she was just so damn palpably unhappy. I used to wonder if it was somehow my fault. Then she’d announce she was getting a new job or that we were going to move to a new apartment, instead of renewing our lease. The change of scenery usually helped. When Fred met her, she was having one of her better times. She seemed stable for a while.” Brenna had dared to hope that Mistletoe was some kind of magic place. It had certainly seemed that way through a child’s eyes.

“I’m guessing that stability didn’t last?” Adam’s voice was comforting. Deep, compassionate, but not thick with the oppressive pity she’d feared.

She shook her head. “I could tell it was going to fall apart. She started getting restless, irritable. I was trying to get her attention one day to find out if I could go to a slumber party, and it was like I couldn’t get through to her. So I just kept saying ‘Mom,’ repeatedly, louder and louder. She slapped me. I don’t think she meant to.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Brenna.”

“Neither of us told Fred about that. She was gone a week later, and I…I really liked Mistletoe. I loved having a little brother and not being an only child. And maybe because he was already a father, I bonded with Fred a lot faster than I did with the other men who’d been in her life. When I thought the cycle was starting all over again, I was terrified I’d have to give them up. But I didn’t. She just took off for parts unknown. Without me.”

The memories with her mother in them were crystal clear to this day, but the memory of Fred handing her the note, so Brenna could see for herself that her mom had no intention of coming back-that she didn’t want me-was hazy. Like something warped and half-remembered from a bad dream.

“By the time Fred could legally divorce her, his first wife was sick and they were already headed down the path to reconciliation. I had something new to be terrified about. At least my mother’s ‘Dr. Jekyll, Mrs. Hyde’ cycle was a known quantity. But Maggie? I guess I’d read too many fairy tales with evil stepmothers, because the entire time she and Fred were dating, I expected her to insist it was either her or me. But Maggie’s wonderful.”

“I should expect so. For you to turn out the way you did in spite of everything speaks to their being loving parents-and your being an extraordinarily strong woman.” Adam gave her an assessing look as if seeing her for the first time. Or as if he was glimpsing something he’d overlooked before.

Brenna squirmed under the penetrating scrutiny. But she relaxed slightly as he began trailing his hand up and down her back. Lord, his touch felt good.

“Most people,” he concluded, “having gone through that kind of emotional turmoil, wouldn’t become as bighearted as you are, so generous and giving.”

Brenna snorted, then checked herself. Been spending too much time with Eliza. “You haven’t known me that long. Kevin and I split up because I was too aloof and inaccessible.”

“Inaccessible? You? Did he suffer some kind of trauma to the head?” Adam’s confusion seemed authentic rather than feigned on her behalf.

She chuckled, snuggling closer. “You’re good for my self-esteem.”

“Brenna, you’re a beautiful woman with the smarts and discipline to start her own successful company, you’re good with animals and children, and you kiss like no one’s business. Why would your self-esteem need my help?”

She thought about telling him that he saw her differently from others because, with him, she was different. Maybe it was easier to be herself with Adam because she’d always known he was leaving. Since there was no chance of him becoming a long-term fixture in her life, there was minimal risk. Or was it more than that? He evoked reactions from her other men didn’t.

She didn’t know why. Nor did she care to analyze it further, her psyche having been sufficiently probed for one night. “You’ve been a great listener, and I’m looking forward to seeing you Tuesday night, but I should be going.”

“One kiss goodbye?” he asked.

In answer, she pressed closer to him. He tilted her chin up with his finger and captured her mouth.

White heat flashed in her blood, purging unpleasant memories and emotional uncertainties, leaving only sensation. She gripped the front of his shirt with both hands and held on for the ride, kissing him back urgently, coasting on a rising swell of desire. Adam leaned into her as if he couldn’t get close enough, and somehow she found herself in a nearly horizontal position, the swing rocking hectically beneath them.

She felt as if she were drowning in the most pleasurable way, breathing in only Adam, letting him blot out all else. Submerged in bliss and craving more, she slid his hand to her breast and arched into his palm.

If they’d kept going at that frenzied pace, she might have ended up making love to him right there on the front porch of the Chattavista Lodge.

Instead, they both sprang apart when, around the corner, the door to the main entrance opened and shut. Breathing hard, they stared at each other, wide-eyed in the shadows. Brenna remembered how Quinn had spoken of “sparks,” but this hadn’t been some tiny ember alighting randomly where it might become more or might just as easily be snuffed out. This had been a tidal wave of pent-up need that she’d never even noticed until she was in Adam’s arms.

“That was your idea of a goodbye?” she asked incredulously. Because it had felt much more like hello, the start of something cataclysmic and inevitable.

“If I was doing it wrong,” he said with studied innocence, “I’d be happy to practice until I get it right.”

“Wow, you doctors really are perfectionists.” Her blithe tone was an act, because inside she was reeling.

If being with Adam got any more perfect, how would she merrily bid him farewell in a week?