Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove Series, Volume 3 (120 page)

The Randalls' rental car pulled out of the driveway just as
another vehicle turned in.

Kent. Obviously driving a rental, too. It was a bright blue
sedan, not his usual style at all.

It couldn't be anyone else. He'd phoned shortly after he'd
arrived at Thyme and Tide, and said he was on his way over.

Despite herself, Beth felt another wave of excitement. She
hadn't slept all night, trying to make sense of his unexpected need to connect
as a family again. Granted, he saw their daughters more often than she did,
since both attended college in California. But all four of them together at
Christmas… It had been a long time. Even if, as she suspected, Bailey and Sophie
were involved in this, Kent didn't have to go along with it. But he had.…

Still, she wondered if she was reading more into the situation
than it warranted; all the same, she considered scenarios of what this Christmas
would be like. Then there was Ted. He was a close friend, and while they'd
shared little more than a few chaste kisses, the relationship looked promising.
She felt it and thought he did, too.

Beth remembered Christmases when the girls were young. She
remembered laughing with Kent, the two of them shushing each other as they
stayed up half the night assembling tricycles and later bicycles and then fell
into bed exhausted. In an hour or two, Bailey and Sophie would be jumping up and
down on the mattress, shrieking that Santa had come.

One Christmas Eve they'd gone for a sleigh ride in freshly
fallen snow, snuggling under a blanket, keeping one another warm. Kent had
stolen a few hot kisses while the girls giggled and hid their eyes, complaining
that it was “yucky” to see their parents kiss.

Beth smiled. They'd had some really good years together.
Somewhere along the way, though, their lives had changed. No, their marriage
had. They'd grown apart. It wasn't any big disagreement, no betrayal or
unforeseen revelation. Instead, an accumulation of small slights and annoyances
had eventually grown from a small distance into a huge crevasse. One that had
deepened and widened over the years until they'd been unable to reach across
it....

Was it possible? Did Kent regret the divorce? Beth had more
than a few regrets herself. They'd both been so stubborn, so unreasonable, so
eager to prove they didn't need each other anymore.

Perhaps if they'd been the kind of people who yelled and
stomped around the house, everything might have gone differently. Instead, once
the subject of divorce had been broached, they'd been so darned polite.
Attorneys said there was no such thing as a “friendly” divorce, but that hadn't
been Beth's experience. Theirs had been not only friendly but accommodating and
fair. But maybe that was just on the surface. Maybe going ahead with the divorce
was
unfair
—to both of them.

She'd gotten busy at the college and Kent had his engineering
company. They'd been like those ships in the old cliché, passing in the night,
each drifting in a different direction. She had her life and he had his.

Kent claimed he found her friends stuffy and boring, and
stopped attending social functions with her. Beth decided
his
friends were snobs. He didn't seem to mind that she stayed home
when he had an event, and after a while she wondered if he'd met someone else.
It wouldn't have surprised her. Although he'd never admitted it… They were so
remote at that point, spending almost no time together. Oh, they slept in the
same bed but rarely touched, rarely communicated about anything other than
routine or functional things. Like who was picking up milk or paying the
electricity bill.

She was the one who'd suggested divorce. At first Kent had
seemed shocked. But he'd recovered quickly enough. He'd simply said that if she
wanted a divorce, he wouldn't stop her…and he hadn't.

They'd divided everything as equitably as possible, sold the
house and parted ways. It'd all been so civilized, so straightforward, as if
twenty-three years as husband and wife meant nothing.

When the final decree came through, Beth decided to leave the
academic world. She'd been seeking a geographical cure, she supposed,
considering it now. The Christmas tree farm had been the solution she'd been
looking for. She had her dogs and a menagerie of other pets, including two
canaries, a guinea pig and now the puppies. Eight puppies. She also fed a number
of feral cats. And she'd made new friends and found new purpose....

Kent—and, yes, it was Kent, as she'd expected—parked the car
and turned off the engine. Beth pretended she was busy. Too busy to even glance
in his direction. But despite herself, she was excited. Happy.

All she'd ever wanted from him was some indication that he
still loved her, that he still cared. His insistence on spending Christmas with
her and the girls, no matter how it had come about, was the first time either of
them had made a move toward the other. Could this be the start of a
reconciliation?

Her heart rate accelerated and she brushed her hair behind both
ears. She wished now that she'd worn something other than her ever-present
jeans. Dressing up a bit would've been a subtle way of letting Kent know how
pleased she was that he'd extended an olive branch. She had on a long-sleeved
shirt beneath her red V-neck sweater, which would have gone nicely with her
black wool pants. Oh, how she wished she'd put on her black wool pants.

The car door closed, and Kent stood there, looking at her.

“Hello,” she said, surprised by how shaky her voice sounded.
“Welcome to Christmas Tree Lane—and Cedar Cove Tree Farm.”

He zipped up his jacket and grinned. “The house is fabulous.
The girls were right.”

“Thank you.” The porch railing was covered with swags of
evergreen and twinkling white lights. More lights hung from the roofline,
glittering brightly in the dull gray winter morning.

The passenger car door opened and Beth saw that Kent hadn't
come alone. A lovely, young—much younger than Beth—woman climbed out. She was
tall, lithe and stylishly dressed in a full-length black coat and long,
high-heeled black boots. She towered an inch or two above Kent, who stood at
nearly six feet. Her blond, shoulder-length hair was perfect.… Actually,
everything about her seemed perfect in an urban, sophisticated way that
contrasted painfully with Beth's farm clothes, disheveled hair and
work-roughened hands.

Beth blinked and her heart almost stopped as reality hit her.
Kent had brought another woman.
They were
together. A couple. He was seeing someone else now. This little fantasy she'd
built around a reconciliation was only that—wishful thinking.

It took her a moment to recover and realize that every
assumption she'd made was completely and totally off-base. Kent hadn't come to
spend Christmas with her and the girls. His sole purpose was to show off
this…this model.

Nothing had changed. Nothing ever would.

“Hello.” Beth greeted the other woman with a forced smile and
an extended hand. “I'm Beth Morehouse. The ex-wife.”

“I know,” the woman said in a sultry voice that was sweet
enough to caramelize sugar. “I'm Danielle.”

Just Danielle? No last name? Like Cher or Madonna or
Beyoncé?

“Welcome to
my
Christmas tree
farm,” she said, placing emphasis on her ownership.

The screen door flew open and Bailey raced onto the porch.
“Dad!”

Sophie was directly behind her sister. They darted down the
stairs like young fawns in their rush to hug Kent.

Her ex-husband opened his arms, and his daughters launched
themselves into his wide embrace.

“How are my girls?” he asked, his voice warm with
affection.

“Missing you, Daddy,” Sophie murmured.

“Who's that?” Bailey asked starkly, frowning at Danielle.
Apparently, she was as shocked as Beth.

“This is Danielle Martin,” he said, sliding his arms around
each of their waists.

Oh, so there was a last name.

“What's
she
doing here?” Sophie
demanded.

“Sophie,” Beth snapped, appalled at her daughter's lack of
manners.

“Danielle's a friend from work who traveled with me,” he said
by way of introduction.

“Why don't we all step inside, out of the cold,” Beth
suggested, and marched into the house, assuming everyone else would follow.

The girls had obviously been playing with the puppies when Kent
arrived because the second the door opened they swarmed onto the porch, eager as
jailbirds to make an escape. Four were already out the door and racing down the
porch steps.

“Don't just stand there,” Beth cried to her daughters. “Help
me.”

Laughing, Sophie and Bailey hurried in one direction while Beth
went in the other. Even Kent got involved in the chase. The only one who didn't
move was Danielle. With her arms crossed, she remained immobile, as if moving a
single inch would have dire consequences.

Once the puppies were all inside the house, Beth brought Kent
and Danielle in. Danielle perched on the arm of a recliner with her feet off the
carpet. She seemed to fear that all the puppies would rush toward her at one
time.

Beth called out instructions. “Get the puppies into the laundry
room,” she told the girls. “I'll give them some treats.” This was not the way
she'd planned to greet Kent, with puppies creating havoc.

In the momentary quiet of the laundry room, Beth pressed one
hand to her chest, which felt as though it was knotted with pain. She would not,
could
not, yield to the icy tide of
disappointment or to the surprising burst of white-hot anger. Not now. Not here.
She'd rather be dipped in Christmas-tree sap and rolled in holly leaves before
she made a fool of herself in front of the girls.

With a deep breath, Beth squared her shoulders and opened a bag
of canine treats just as the girls herded in the last three pups. Whether it was
the rustle of the bag or the distinctive aroma, Beth didn't care, only that they
all came on the run. On another calming breath, she promised to deal with her
emotions later as she distributed the miniature bone-shaped biscuits.

She slowly and deliberately wiped her hands on her jeans while
arranging her features in her best hostess smile. Returning to the living room,
she motioned Sophie and Bailey to the couch and nodded at her guests. “Now,
where were we?”

The girls exchanged a puzzled look and obeyed. At Beth's
question, they fixed their gazes on their father.

“Are all those dogs…yours?” Danielle asked incredulously.

“No, no. I'm finding homes for them.”

“Where are
your
dogs?” Kent asked.
“Do you still have Lucy and Bixby?”

“Of course. They're in the heated kennel in the back.”

“It's huge. You should see it, Dad,” Sophie said, growing more
animated as she spoke. “Mom's got six dogs of her own, and she helps with the
Reading with Rover program at the library and…and she trains dogs and she just
got a puppy herself.” She was out of breath by the time she completed her
list.

“He's been sickly so she keeps him upstairs,” Bailey added.

“In your
bedroom?
” Danielle's eyes
widened with what appeared to be horror.

“You started to tell us about Danielle,” Bailey reminded her
father, turning away from the other woman.

“Well, yes.” Kent looked at Danielle. “She's a…friend.”

“A good friend,” Danielle murmured. “A
very
good friend.”

* * *

“I can't believe this.” Bailey paced their bedroom with
her hands locked behind her back. “This is all wrong! Nothing is working out
like we planned.”

“When did Dad meet Danielle?” Sophie, the practical one, asked.
“And where?”

“Why are you asking me? I don't know any more than you do.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands in her hair—as if
trying to pull out an answer—Sophie said, “Well, she wasn't there when we
visited him at Thanksgiving. And he didn't say a word about her to me, but I
thought he might've mentioned it to you.”

“I wish.” Bailey threw a scowl at her sister. “If he had, we
never would've invited him for Christmas. That's for sure. Besides, I'd have
told you. What's Dad thinking? Or
is
he thinking?
Anyone with half a brain can see she's all wrong for him.”

“She can't be much older than we are.”

“Did you see how she reacted to the puppies?” Bailey cried.
“Like they were diseased or something. Sitting with her feet in the air, as if
they'd mistake her leg for a tree trunk. Too bad they didn't.”

Sophie groaned. “And did you hear how she talked to me? Like
I'm ten years old. For a minute I thought she was going to pinch my cheek and
tell me how cute I was.”

“Dad and Danielle? It's a joke,” Bailey muttered. “A terrible
joke.”

“That's what you said about the divorce—until it happened.”

“I know. I just don't want to believe this…whatever it is.” But
she'd seen the way Danielle had looked at their father. Clearly, he didn't have
a clue. This woman was set on getting a big diamond ring from him. Bailey was
bound and determined that wasn't going to happen. Not on her watch. If ever
their father had needed help, it was now. They had to do something before he
made the second-biggest mistake of his life. The first had been going through
with the divorce.

“Well, you'd better come up with an idea fast, or you'll be
spending next Thanksgiving with Dad and your new stepmother. Just you and
Danielle and Dad. 'Cause I'm not going. I'll be here with Mom.”