Brenda Novak - We Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

“I have three kids,” she said. “Alex is almost eleven, Mackenzie is five and Alyssa is three.”

“So the divorce is fairly recent.”

“Very. It’s final today.”

He raised his brows and looked around the restaurant, obviously taking in the fact that after twelve years and three kids, this was where Jaclyn Wentworth found herself.

Shame warmed Jaclyn’s cheeks. Waiting tables wasn’t exactly where she’d hoped to be at thirty-one. She’d wanted to be a wife and mother, to help Terry run the ranch, to grow old and gray with him. She’d never dreamed she’d need to be more than that. But life had a way of sending one scrambling for Plan B.

Not that her backup plan included waitressing forever. She was hoping to find something else once she got on her feet, someplace she could work during school hours, instead of nights and weekends. She just hadn’t found anything yet that paid enough to support her little family.

She shot a look at Cole’s friend, who was watching her curiously, before asking Cole, “You still driving semis?”

He chuckled. “No, I gave that up when I got divorced.” As though her momentary distraction had reminded him that he hadn’t introduced his companion, he said, “This is Larry Schneider with Reno Bank and Trust. Larry, this is an old friend of mine from high school, Jackie Rasmussen.”

“Jaclyn Wentworth,” she corrected, smiling a greeting at Larry. Everyone she knew in Feld called her Jackie, but she’d started using Jaclyn when she moved to Reno. She would have switched to her maiden name, too, but she didn’t want her last name to be different from her children’s.

“What are you doing now?” she asked Cole, even though part of her didn’t want to know. He looked successful sitting there in his tailored suit. He’d escaped Feld and landed on his feet. For that she was envious. Especially because she’d just taken a flying leap and landed in the gutter.

“I build houses.”

“You’re a contractor?”

Larry gave a genial laugh. “Not quite. Cole takes a pretty hands-on approach to his job, but he’s not a contractor. He’s a developer. And a damn good one. Haven’t you ever heard of Perrini Homes?”

Jaclyn shook her head. “I’ve lived here less than a year.”

“Well, he’s got a subdivision near the golf course. Four-and five-bedroom homes. You should drive by and take a look if you’re ever in the market.”

Jaclyn doubted she’d be able to afford a home of that size in the next twenty years. She barely managed to pay the rent on the house they lived in now. It was only eight hundred square feet and older than the hills, but she’d rented it for the yard. Accustomed to wide-open spaces, she refused to raise her three children in an apartment.

“I’ll do that,” she said.

“I’d like to build a small development a few miles east of here,” Cole said. “In Sparks. That’s why I’m coming, hat in hand, to Larry, here.”

Larry adjusted his silverware and smiled. “And I’ll probably give you what you need. I’ve financed several of your projects already, haven’t I?”

Working outdoors with his contractors explained the tan. A meeting with his banker explained the suit. “Sounds like things are going well for you,” Jaclyn said.

Cole shrugged in a nonchalant manner. “Well enough, I guess.”

The couple at one of her other tables kept swiveling their heads, looking for her and, no doubt, their check. And the food for table two was probably ready. She needed to get moving. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked Cole.

“I’ll have an iced tea.”

“It’ll be just a minute.”

Jaclyn left, feeling Cole’s gaze trail after her. Who would’ve thought she’d run into him again? Especially here, now, when even pride was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

She ducked into the kitchen and quickly tallied the tab for table three, but by the time she brought it out, the man was already standing.

“We’ve been waiting for ten minutes while you were busy flirting with that guy over there,” he said loudly enough for half the restaurant to hear.

Aware of the attention he was drawing, Jaclyn flushed. “I’m sorry.” She wanted to deny that she’d been flirting with anyone, but she handed him his bill and began to gather up the plates, instead. Sometimes it was smarter to simply apologize. She didn’t want a scene, not with Cole Perrini less than ten feet away. And not while Rudy Morales, her manager, was on duty.

“I think we deserve a break here—for the wait,” he persisted. “You’ve made us late for a movie.”

Then, why didn’t he pay his bill and hurry off?

The woman who’d eaten with him lowered her eyes, a sure sign that he was making a fuss over nothing.

“I couldn’t have been longer than five minutes,” Jaclyn said. “I just ran into an old friend, that’s all.”

“Well, maybe you should visit with your friends when you’re on your break.”

“I’ve apologized,” she said. “If it’ll make you feel better, skip the tip.”

“I wasn’t planning on leaving a tip.”

Jaclyn felt anger course through her. This guy was an opportunist, and he was trying to take advantage of her. Her natural instincts prompted her to stand her ground. But the nagging worry of how she’d support her children if she lost her job kept her voice cool and polite. Rudy was already looking for any excuse to write her up.

“What if I send home a couple of pieces of pie with you? Will that help?” she asked.

“I don’t want pie. I think you should comp our meals.”

“For waiting five minutes?” Jaclyn asked. “You never even told me you were in a hurry.”

“I don’t have to give you my schedule when I sit down to eat. Now, are you going to work with me, here, or do I have to speak to your manager?”

A knot of unease lodged in Jaclyn’s belly. When she’d first started working at Joanna’s, Rudy had pursued her pretty aggressively. She’d gotten firm with her refusals, and he’d had it in for her ever since. “Fine. I’ll take it out of my tips,” she said. “Why don’t you just go ahead and leave?”

“That’s more like it,” the man replied, slinging an arm around his companion and starting for the door. “Jeez, what kind of place are you running here, anyway?”

“It’s a restaurant,” a male voice replied. “In a restaurant, you order, you eat and you pay. Then you tip, generously.”

Jaclyn looked up to see Cole Perrini towering over them all, and knew her day was about to go from bad to worse. Rudy would hear and…“This is my problem,” she said quickly. “I’ll handle it.”

“Yeah, let her handle it,” the guy said. “We were just on our way out.”

Cole smiled and lifted his hands, but he blocked their path, and a certain hardness in his eyes belied his casual stance. “That’s fine. You pay your bill before you go, and we won’t have a problem, right?”

The man’s face turned scarlet. He sputtered for a moment, looking as though he’d press the issue, but a glance at Cole’s superior size and build seemed to convince him. Throwing a twenty on the table, he grabbed his companion by the arm and stalked out, pulling her along with him.

Before Jaclyn could say anything, Rudy appeared.

“What’s goin’ on here, Jaclyn?”

Jaclyn watched the door close behind the couple, then picked up the money and the bill. “Nothing, why?”

Rudy glanced doubtfully at Cole, who smiled and shrugged.

“That guy was an old friend of mine,” he said, then made his way back to his seat.

WHAT WAS JACKIE RASMUSSEN—Jaclyn Wentworth—doing here, waiting tables?

Cole went through the motions of eating and tried to make a halfway-decent pitch for the funding to do the Sparks project, but he couldn’t concentrate. Seeing Jaclyn brought back the most painful years of his life—memories that crept in between each sentence he spoke, wove through the whole conversation like an invisible thread. For the first time in eight years, he couldn’t shut out Feld and the stifling, hot trailer he’d lived in there, the cloying smell of illness, his poor mother, pale and dwindling, his hungry brothers and absent father. And Rochelle. God, Rochelle. Just the thought of her made his throat feel as if it were closing up.