All She Wants for Christmas (Kent Brothers 1)

"What?"

"You know that's not good enough."

"And you're not my mother."

"And you know I'm going to continue to stare at you until you tell me where you were last night."

Jesus, she was like a dog with a bone. "Why?"

"Because it obviously has something to do with your less-than-stellar mood today."

"No, it doesn't."

"Then you should have no problem telling us where you were last night."

Shit.

"She's got you now, Ethan," Brody said, propping his feet up on his desk and no doubt grateful he wasn't the one under Tori's microscope this morning.

It was clear she wasn't going to give up. "I went to Riley's concert."

Tori made a face and stood. "Glutton for punishment, aren't you?"

"Huh?"

But Tori was already out the door.

Brody stood and came over to his desk, leaned against it and folded his arms. "What the hell possessed you to go to Riley's concert?"

Ethan was already nose down in blueprints again. "Zoey likes her."

"Uh huh. And you sat in the back row and sucked it up?"

"No. We had backstage passes."

"Oh. Extra-strength pain and humiliation."

"It wasn't bad. It's been ten years. She doesn't hold a grudge."

Wyatt snorted. "Bullshit. All women hold a grudge."

"Yeah, and you don't?" His brother held a deep grudge against his ex-wife, and it was affecting everything about his life.

Wyatt shrugged and took up his pencil again, effectively tuning them out.

Brody, unfortunately, didn't. "Seriously, man, what's up with you seeing Riley?"

"I'm not 'seeing' Riley. I took Zoey to her concert. Then I came home. Now I'm at work. Trying to work." He motioned his head toward the blueprints.

"But you can't deny there's some serious history between you two. And unfinished business."

"Brody's right." Tori came back in and shut the door to the office, laying the folder she'd retrieved on her desk. "You should settle it or you'll end up a grumpy old man like Wyatt."

"Again, I'm in the room," Wyatt grumbled.

"Oh, like you care what we say about you, Wyatt," Tori said as she took her seat and opened the folder. "You ignore us all anyway like you've been doing for the past two years. Go back to brooding. I'll pick on you another day."

Wyatt had no comment.

Maybe Ethan needed to try the silent approach in the future, because arguing with them was getting him nowhere. There was no business to finish with Riley.

***

"So they want to interview Ethan."

Riley's head shot up from the page where she'd been jotting down notes for a song and gaped at Joann.

"No. Absolutely not."

"He's part of your past, Riley. A big part. You've written like twenty-five songs about him."

"And no one knows that but you and Suzie and the band, and you're all sworn to secrecy. You promised."

How had they found out about Ethan?

"The producers don't know about the connection between Ethan and the songs. They just know he was your teenage boyfriend, which makes him a part of your past, a part they feel should be explored."

"No. We talked about this. No Ethan." She'd made it clear Amanda wouldn't be interviewed, either, but of course that would never happen now. "I don't want him or Zoey involved in this."

Jo took a seat in the living room across from the roaring fire. The temperature had dropped and the skies were an ugly gray outside. Riley snuggled up in her sweats, Henley shirt and thick socks in front of the fire, intent on sipping hot cocoa and working on the song she'd started on the bus ride here. She'd spent part of the day lost in her music, happy to be alone and away from the production of the biography. When she wrote she could shut out everything, including what had almost happened between her and Ethan last night.

Except her songwriting had drifted into thoughts of first love and first kisses, and that's not at all where she'd intended to go.

Instead, her idyllic moments of peace had been shattered by this. No way was she going to allow it.

"The thing is, Rye, Ethan has agreed to it."

She laid her guitar to the side, letting it rest against the chair. "What?"

"They called him this afternoon and he agreed to the interview tomorrow as long as they promised to keep his daughter out of it, not mention her and make sure she stays off camera."

"Oh, no. That's not going to work at all." She stood. "He absolutely cannot do the interview."

Jo nodded. "I'll get a staff member to contact the biographer, and then Ethan."

"No. I don't want this staffed out. I need to talk to Ethan myself." She went into the kitchen and looked around. "Surely there has to be a phone book around here somewhere."

One of her staff members grabbed it from the counter and handed it to her.

"Thanks."

She flipped through the book and found Ethan's name, dug in her purse for her cell and dialed Ethan's home phone number.

"No answer." Damn. "I'll try his parents. They might know how I can reach him."

She dialed his parents' number, and his mother picked up. It had been years since she'd spoken to Mrs. Kent. A lump the size of her tour bus lodged in her throat.

"Mrs. Kent?"

"Yes?"

"It's Riley Jensen."

She waited for silence, for condemnation, for something other than the enthusiastic response she got.

"Riley, honey! I'm so glad to hear from you. Why haven't you been by to see us yet? I'm so sorry we didn't make it to greet you when you arrived the other day, but Roger's knee is bad and I knew Ethan would be dropping Zoey off. And look at me talking your ear off and you haven't had a chance to say a word yet."

Riley breathed a sigh of relief. "It's so wonderful to hear your voice, Mrs. Kent."

"Please, call me Stacy. You're a big girl now."

"Thank you, Stacy. I was wondering if you knew where Ethan was. It's kind of important I talk to him."

"He's over here tonight. Everyone came over for dinner and game night. Why don't you swing by? I know everyone would love to see you."

Oh, right. She'd just bet his brothers would "love" to see her. "Oh, I don't know about that. If I could just talk to Ethan..."

"Well, he's in the middle of a rather rousing game of Yahtzee at the moment, so you'd better come on over. Though I realize you're a big and important star and probably busy doing something, so I understand if you can't."

It hadn't been said with malice. Stacy Kent thought Riley's dance card was full. Ha. "I'm not big and important, and I'll be right over. Thank you for the invitation."

"Great, honey. See you soon."

She hung up and wondered why she'd agreed to step foot into the lion's den.

***

As she stood outside Ethan's parents' house and stared up at the brightly blinking Christmas lights lining the roof as well as the smiling, waving mechanical Santa and snowman parked on the front lawn, Riley took a deep lungful of bitter cold air and wondered what she was doing here. She should have just asked Ethan's mother to have him call her when he was free.

But it had been a long time since she'd seen his parents, and they'd always been so nice to her.

Still, his brothers were here and she'd just bet they weren't members of her fan club.

Her knees knocked against each other and her heart slammed against her chest as she rang the doorbell.

One would

think she'd never get nervous, but since she'd come back to Deer Lake, she'd had a ton of leg-shaking moments.

Ethan's dad swung the door open. He'd changed a little in ten years, gotten a little grayer and a lot heavier, but his generous smile was still the same.

"Riley Jensen. Aren't you just all grown up and more beautiful than ever? Come on in."

"Thank you, Mr. Kent."

He shut the door behind her, then took her coat. "Everyone's in the family room. He limped next to her. "You have your choice of Yahtzee, Uno or Scrabble."

She remembered family game night, a required weekly event she'd always loved, and a tradition that obviously still continued.

Family traditions. She'd never had them because she'd jumped around from family to family. That's why she'd loved the Kents. They'd been her stability, her normalcy in a childhood that wasn't.

The house hadn't changed much. As she surveyed the Christmas tree and the decorations she remembered so well, she was struck with a pang of homesickness she hadn't felt since the day she'd grabbed a bus out of town and hadn't looked back.

The Kent home had been as much a home for her as it had been for Ethan. When she and Ethan had started dating her freshman year of high school, they'd been inseparable, which meant she'd spent much of her time at his house because she tended to bounce around here and there at foster homes. And even when she was stable, she didn't want to burden her foster family with yet another kid.

The Kents had been like parents to her--kind, welcoming, treating her like their own daughter.

She'd loved them.

And like so many others in Deer Lake, she'd left them behind without explanation and without saying goodbye.

She hadn't realized how much she'd missed them until she saw the stuffed Christmas moose on the table in the foyer, or the strings of lighted garland winding up the stairs, or the smiling snowmen who decorated Stacy's mantel. She heard the whistling of the train under the tree, remembering sitting in the living room and staring at that train for hours, marveling at the magic of a family holiday.

All of these were part of her memories of Christmases past.

Not everything in the past hurt.

She'd had good memories too.

Fighting back tears, she put on a smile as Roger led her into the oversized family room.

"Guess who I found at the front door?"

Several pairs of eyes turned and the raucous noise in the room quieted down.

The guys all stood.

The Kent brothers had certainly all grown up. Between Ethan, Wyatt and Brody, the three of them were devastating in the looks department. All of them with thick dark hair, tall and well muscled. Wyatt had dangerous good looks and a firm jaw, Brody looked like one of those sexy calendar models, all lean and lethal, but it was Ethan who caught her eye the most. It was in his eyes, the way he looked at her when she entered the room. Maybe because she'd been in love with him for half her life.