Trent (Redemption Romance Book 4) (21 page)

"Daisy, come here," Trina called, though Daisy wasn't listening. I'd been there before, and the dog was sweet but not obedient. I spent a long time playing with her before, and apparently, she remembered me.

Swinging my legs down I carefully slid out, making sure not to kick the dog on my way to the ground. As my green gingham espadrilles hit the ground, Daisy transferred her paws to my bare legs, hitting me just below the cuff of my hemline. My green halter neck top sundress was loose around the middle, thankfully, since when I bent to pet the dog and remove her little claws from my thighs, it didn't pull tight or ride up. I'd be mortified if I flashed Trent's mother.

Trina was the epitome of a fifty-something woman. She was a mom for sure. Her petite frame was still rather fit, and though I'd only ever seen her casually dressed, her version of casual was much different from my own. Trina wore a pair of gray linen Capris with a perfect crease ironed on the front. Her complimenting pink linen three-quarter length top, with small gray and white flowers, matched her pink ballet flats almost perfectly. Since she had been divorced for almost fifteen years, she no longer wore a wedding ring, only a small silver watch, and pearl earrings adorned her now. Her blonde shoulder-length hair was styled beautifully, with soft waves that framed her delicate face. She wore little makeup and appeared to be allowing her hair to show her age. It was beginning to gray slightly, though mostly whiten. It looked beautiful on her. Trina Harris wasn't trying to look younger than she was, she wasn't flashy, but classically beautiful.

"Amber, sweetheart, so good to see you."

As Trina reached me on the sidewalk, I straightened from Daisy and accepted Trina's warm hug. She kissed my cheek lightly, and I returned the gesture.

"Mama," Trent greeted as he made it to our side. He wrapped the tiny woman in his long arms and embraced her with a deep and abiding love. He respected and appreciated the woman she was, and all the things she'd endured. Though she hadn't been able to keep Natalie and Trent completely safe, she had done her best. It was easy on this end of things to argue that she should have left her husband and filed for divorce early on, but as I understood it, her parents had been aging, and ill. Joseph had threatened her relentlessly, stating that he would take custody of the children.

Trina hadn't believed that he could get full custody, but she was terrified at the thought that he would even get unsupervised visitation. Joseph had beaten her down for so long that she believed him and had been terribly frightened. Regardless, she did her absolute best, and I knew that she had always been a quiet and unassuming but a loving and kind mother.

Unlike our last visit with my family, this visit was completely without heart-wrenching revelations, much to my relief. Trent's jovial relationship with his sister was amusing, and it was obvious that their mother thought so too. Natalie teased Trent constantly. She called him dude, which he professed to hate - though I thought that he secretly liked it. She confided to me that she called him that because he looked like a surfer.

Once when they were younger, the family went on vacation to Hawaii. Trent took surfing lessons and had been terrible. The surfing instructor had called out "Duuuude," every time Trent bit it, the nickname stuck. I couldn't imagine Trent being bad at anything, he was so strong, his body movements graceful. The image of him falling off a surfboard caused an uncontrollable giggle to rise up in my throat. Once I started laughing, I couldn't stop, and Natalie joined in. Trent glared at the two of us, knowing that we were up to no good.

"So, who's this guy you're seeing?" Trent asked his sister. I noticed his mom tense as if she thought he was asking her an off-limits question. I wondered just who was in her life and if she would ever tell Trent about it. Natalie shrugged and looked away, but didn't answer.

"Do I know him?" He pressed, not letting it go. I could see that he was morphing into big-brother protective mode, and I didn't think Natalie would go for it.

"No, and don't worry about it, it isn't serious." Trina's lips tightened as she looked at her daughter and I wondered what the story was there. It was obvious that Trina knew something, but she wasn't sharing.

As we gathered our things to say goodbye, Trent pulled his mother aside and spoke to her in hushed tones, so neither Natalie nor I could hear. When he climbed up into the truck, I gave Daisy one last scratch behind her ears and hugged Trina. Her arms were warm and kind, and at that moment. I felt it. She was welcoming me as a part of her family.

Once we were underway, I looked over and noticed that Trent's jaw was tense.

"Something wrong?"

"The roses," was all he said. I didn't understand what he was upset about, but I could guess. His dad had been quiet for a while, but I knew that Trent was still worried about what he'd do next. After what he shared with me so many weeks ago, about the things his father had done I figured he was right - his dad was unpredictable and evil.

As we lay in my bed later that night, he asked, "Do you have a realtor we should use or do you want me to find one?"

We had already made love, so I was completely relaxed and lying naked in his arms. Snowball, who become acutely aware when activities were heating up, hadn't returned to the bed yet, likely unsure if we were about to go for round two. He was a smart cat. Trent played with my hair as I thought about what he just said. Sure, we had talked about what we wanted in a home but hadn't set a time frame. I guessed he was doing that now.

After mentally assessing my readiness to move forward, I realized that now, there was nothing holding me back.

"I'll call Cali tomorrow, when do you want to start looking?"

He gave me a quick squeeze, seemingly relieved by my answer. "When is your day off this week?"

"Thursday and Friday."

"Good, let's try for Friday morning. Call her tomorrow and give her our list. We can go over it again in the morning if you want. That way we can make sure we have all the important stuff."

Instead of answering, I turned my head and kissed his jaw. I couldn't wait to find the perfect house, just for us.

"Are you going to sell the condo?" I asked, unsure of his answer. We talked about it some, but we both liked having it. It was paid for, and when his mom's cousins or old Marine Corps buddies came to visit, he offered it up.

"No, I don't think so, maybe later. For now, I think we'll keep it."

Cali Ferguson was a medium height, blonde haired spitfire. Her beautiful violet eyes were perfectly set off by the platinum head of ultra long hair. When at work, she wore it up in beautiful twists, knots or chignons. I bought my first house with her help. Though we had known each other forever, when she was working, she was all business. She had been able to find me the right house, for the right price in the perfect neighborhood.

Friday morning dawned as I pulled the covers back up over my head and grumbled. The night before had been a late one, and I didn't need to be anywhere for hours. I was meeting Cali later, for the first round of showings, but that wasn't until two.

The previous night the girls and I went to visit Hope and little Dylan and then went out for dinner. At the restaurant, we were joined by Chelsea, Gavin's cousin who'd recently moved to the area and Natalie, Trent's sister. The boys were all out at the bar for their weekly man-bonding, so we had plenty of time to get into mischief.

Of course, since I was there, dinner turned into drinks, and drinks turned into giggling phone calls to hot guys for rides home. We stayed local, thankfully, so they'd worked out getting the cars to homes. I was sure that the majority of us girls were thoroughly laid when we finally made it home. There was nothing like getting sweaty with the man you love after a great night of girl talk - mostly raunchy - and a few too many cocktails.

"Hey there, sweetness." Trent's soft eyes met my grumpy ones as I glared up at him when he picked the blankets up to kiss me.

"Go away," I grumbled and tried to turn away from him and curl back into my hiding place.

"Damn, you're in a mood this morning." Trent gripped my hip through the mass covering me and shook me a little. I, of course, grumbled again and burrowed under my pillow. Then I felt four small feet walking up my body, and before I knew it, Snowball found his way in my cave with me.

Trent's hand found its way underneath the covers, skimmed down my side and squeezed my ass before uncovering my neck. Moving my wild hair to the side, he kissed me. Rolling to my back, I peered up at him and fought a smile.

"Take these, sweetness." He directed, dropping two pills into my hand and motioning toward the nightstand where he had set a glass of water.

Sitting up, I did as commanded and watched Snowball burrow further under into the bed.

"I'll meet you at Cali's office at two, okay?"

Nodding my agreement, I watched his lips tip up as he turned and walked out of the room. Alone once more, I finished the water and plopped back down and slept off the excess of alcohol and copious amounts of sex.

At one forty-five I set the damn alarm, locked up the house and walked to my car. Tilting my head to one side, I looked at my little Audi, realizing that my rear tire was flat.

"Fuck," I muttered, stopping on the sidewalk to pull out my phone.

"Hey, sweets, what's up?"

"Can you swing by here and pick me up? My tire's flat." The exasperation was clear in my voice I was sure, but I had just bought new tires a few months ago. I didn't even want to know what was wrong with it now.

"What, yeah, I'll be there in a few minutes. Let Cali know we'll be late - yeah?"

"Yeah."

Clicking off, I called Cali, let her know and of course, she was understanding and gracious. Excitedly, she told me about the first house she planned to show us. She had four houses for us to see, but there was one she thought met all of our criteria. As we wrapped up the call, Trent pulled up and jumped out of the truck. Instead of walking to me, as he usually would, he went straight to my car and inspected the right rear tire.

As I walked toward him, I noticed that he was holding something small between his finger and thumb, looking between that and the tire.

"What is it?" I asked, confused. I was sure I just ran over a screw or something.

"G-can you come over to Amber's house later, like seven?" Trent barked into the phone he just lifted to his ear.

I couldn't hear Gavin's side of the conversation, but Trent's mostly consisted of the words, flat-tire, fuck and damn it. The thing that I didn't understand was why he was so irritated by a flat-tire. Once he hung up, I decided to wade in.

"Trent, I don't need you to change it, I'll call roadside services later."

"It doesn't need to be changed, honey, it just needs air." He explained, without giving any other details, or explaining his mood.

"Okay, well we should probably go, right?" I didn't know why I was uneasy, but Trent's mood was snapping around the front yard.

"Yeah," he clipped, standing to guide me to the truck. He looked over his shoulder a couple of more times and scanned the front yard before we pulled out.

"Are you going to tell me what that was all about?"

"Let's stay focused on finding a house - yeah?"

Um, what? When did he start talking like that? I felt my temper rising. I understood that something was upsetting him... but no, we weren't going to start that shit.

"No, I don't think so. Obviously, something has crawled up your ass, so why don't you tell me what it is."

"God Damn Amber! Can't you just let it go? We can deal with that shit later." He shouted, angrily into the cab of the truck. In shock and total surprise at his uncharacteristic behavior, I jumped in my seat and stared at him.

In an effort to get through the next few hours unscathed, I nodded, then realized he couldn't see me. "Yeah, okay," I told myself that I wasn't being weak and giving in. Trent's outburst was so unusual for him, I had no doubt that there was more to the flat tire than I could see.

"Come through and see the pond in the back," Cali exclaimed as Trent, and I followed her through the spacious farmhouse. It was larger than we needed but did have just about everything we'd asked for, including being set on ten acres.

Trent squeezed my hand as we gazed out over the landscape. A large pond sat nestled among an outcropping of trees. It had a small dock with a rowboat tied to it and was finished off with a pair of beautiful chaise lounges. To the right was a large detached garage, the four large bay doors were tightly shut. The exterior of the garage was painted to match the main house, a light gray with white and black trim over neat wood siding. The house's wrap around deck was painted white, and the overhangs had beautiful black ceiling fans spaced every twenty feet. It was more than I ever imagined. Sadly, the price was more than I expected, too. We hadn't given Cali a price range since we didn't know what all we would want.

I knew that Trent wasn't as worried about the price as I was. I would sell my little house, but it wasn't worth that much. His trust fund, however, was sizeable, and I figured he would try to pay for the whole thing, which I wasn't okay with.

"Can't you see it?" He whispered, leaning down to my ear. He placed a light kiss to my temple as he waited for my reply.