Chapter 2

Trent - Chapter 2

Trent tried to focus on what the doctor was telling him, but for the most part his mind was stuck on two words: heart attack. He'd had a mild heart attack, and he would have more if he didn't turn his life around, and soon. He looked at his dad when he snapped his fingers in front of his face.

"He's talking to you. Are you listening?" Nodding, Trent looked back at the doctor. He still didn't have a clue what he was talking about, so he looked at his dad again. "He's telling you how lucky you were that someone was there that could help you. Been up to any of us standing around with our thumbs up our collective bottoms, you'd be a goner about now. He was just telling you what sort of changes you're gonna make or you'll be dead. And you will make changes, boy, or so help me...I can't do that again."

"Mr. Calhoun, I never said that. All I was saying was had he not have the proper care right when it happened, he'd be in worse shape than he is."

Trent nodded. He knew that much. Someone had performed CPR on him when his heart had been in an irregular rhythm. And by them doing that, he'd been able to live, keep oxygen to his brain and his heart pumping like it should have been. Trent looked at the doctor and wondered if the man would just shut up a moment and let his mind grasp what had been said to him.

"Trent?" He looked at the doctor, just realizing that he might have closed his eyes for a moment. They were giving him something powerful, he had to admit that. Usually, meds didn't even faze his kind. "Trent, I need to talk to you about this. I sent your father away for a moment so we could talk."

"He can be a little much." Doctor Sawyer nodded and smiled. "Am I going to be all right? I mean, right now I feel sort of loopy if you want to know the truth."

"We're giving you some pretty heavy doses to keep you calm. You don't have a lot of that in your life, do you, son?" He told him that he'd been trying to keep himself in shape. "That's not what I mean. You're fit and in good shape basically, but not your mind or heart. You need to...I was going to say relax, but it's more than that. You need to talk. To someone that isn't a family member. Blow off steam to someone you can trust. Run as your wolf when you need to. Get out of the office more than you do. Go out on a date."

"You mean get laid." The doctor smiled. "My father. He said something like that to me the other day. I'm not sure he's the right man to suggest something like that, but he did. He's only been with my mom forever. He doesn't understand how hard it is out there for a man like me to date."

Dating and going out with a woman for the sole purpose of getting laid wasn't the same thing. Dating meant you liked the woman; at least that's the way he equated it. You took her to dinner, a movie, or even something as simple as a boat ride. The kind of women he usually went out with wanted no more to do with marriage and long-term relationships than he did. Trent wanted it, wanted it all, but he'd been working too hard to even think about that lately.

"No, I would imagine that it's not. But you need to. Not just to get laid, as you said, but to get away from work. Go fishing with someone. Where there is no cell service. Let your wolf have more time in the woods. Regain that feeling of being one with nature. You've lost that along the way of becoming a great man." Trent started to tell him that he and his wolf were just fine, but the doc looked around the room with a quirked brow. "Don't bother telling me that you've got this, Trent. You just had a minor heart attack at thirty-three. You don't have shit together but your business, and that's killing you."

The doctor stood up and moved toward the door. Trent lay there for several seconds before he called him back. "Am I really going to be all right now? If I get my ass together and do what you say, will I be okay?"

"Yes. But you have to make some major life changes, Trent. Starting today. No more eating what you please. I'm to understand that you had nearly a dozen biscuits before this happened?" Trent nodded, embarrassed. "You can eat what you want in moderation. And if you have fun, you can do more of that sort of thing. In moderation. You do remember what that is, don't you? Fun, I mean? When was the last time you went on a vacation? Not a business trip where you ate at restaurants because it was convenient, and slept poorly in a hotel. A vacation where you did site seeing, ate at some place you might have read the menu over first. Went to a museum because you wanted to."

"I don't remember." He nodded at him. Trent didn't think he understood. "I just bought a house. Increased our business by nearly triple, and took on two companies that I'm going to have to walk away from because I don't trust the man at the other end. That's a lot of leg work."

"Do you have people working for you?" Trent told him that he had a few hundred. "And they can't do this for you? They can't take over some of the stress and strain for you? If you don't delegate, Trent, you're going to be pushing up flowers and out of work permanently."

He lay there for a long time after he was left alone, just thinking about everything and nothing at all. Trent didn't delegate, not even to his own brother, who had been begging him for more involvement in the business since he'd partnered with him. Trent even did his own payroll, when he knew there were companies out there that could do it in half the time and for very little cost when compared to how much time he spent on it. He was, in a word, stupid.

Someone came into the room a few minutes later. Trent had closed his eyes and didn't look up when the person cleared their throat. It was a female, that he knew, and that she smelled of medicine. When she touched his arm he felt her warm fingers as she grazed them over his elbow, but he still didn't look.

"They just checked my blood pressure a few minutes ago." Nothing. Opening one eye, he looked at the woman standing just a few feet away from the bed and realized his mistake. Sitting up in the bed and looking at her, his first thought was that she was gorgeous. The second was to wonder who she was there for, because he was a lucky guy. "I thought you were a nurse. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Your father sent me to see you." He nodded, wondering what his dad was up to now as she stepped closer to him. "He said that I should introduce myself."

Her scent made his wolf snarl at him. When he moved along his skin, tearing at him, Trent only had a moment to try and control him before the woman took two steps back. His wolf snarled at him again, and Trent tried to calm him. The women turned to the door, her face full of fear, and Trent leapt from the bed to stop her. She was his was all he could think about.

Before he could touch her, or whatever he intended to do, he found himself lifted up by his neck and his airway being cut off. The huge fucking vampire in front of him looked ready to tear his throat out when he snarled at the girl to run. The door opening and closing had his wolf nearly take him.

"My mate." The man stared at him for several seconds before he lowered him to the floor. He didn't let go of him just yet, but his talons were no longer biting into his skin. "She's my mate. I have to get her."

"You'll do no such thing." The sharp shake had Trent fighting dizziness, but then he was let go. Staggering, he nearly fell, then was lifted up and laid in the bed by the vampire. "You frightened her, and she called to me. In all my years of being with her, she has never had a reason to call out to me in fear."

"I need to touch her." Trent didn't just need to touch her…he had to or he'd die. And the need was making him hurt. Then he looked at the man and thought for a second. "She.... My dad did this, didn't he? Sent her in here and made me think she was.... This is some sort of joke, isn't it? She's not really my mate, and someone is just playing tricks on me again."

"I don't think she would find this funny. Do you?" Probably not, but he didn't say that to the vampire. "Noah Stark, at your service. And if she is your mate, you will have a great many things to explain to her. Me as well, but more importantly her. I love her, you see, and I will not see her harmed. Not again, and certainly not by a man that thinks to claim her."

~*~

Christine had no idea what had happened to her son since he was released from the hospital, but she was sure that whatever it was, she could fix it. She loved her sons more than she did her own life and hated to see one of them like this. Sad, lonely...depressed. Even having his favorite things made for him didn't seem to make him come out of it. When TJ, her husband of nearly forty years, came into the office with her, she knew that he had seen it too.

"The doctor told him to take on a new life or die." Christine knew this as well. And she thought that her husband might want to do the same. Well, "want" might have been the wrong word, but he needed to take some precautions as well. She could not live without him either. "He's moping around like he's lost everything. I don't know what to do for him."

"He needs to go home." That much was apparent. He was her son, and she loved him to death, but he needed to go home and begin whatever he was supposed to be doing. And away from her too, she realized. "I can't help him...well, I can, but I think that's not doing him a bit of good. He needs to make his own way in this. We can't do it for him."

"I think you might be right." She was always right, but didn't point that out to her husband just now. It was a joke between the two of them and had been for some time. "He needs a good talking to first. When you going to do that?"

"Me?" TJ nodded. "I see. And this talk, will it be along the lines of him getting his ass in gear and getting out of our house? Or did you want me to be harsh with him?"

"Just get his dander up a little. You can do that. All he does is look at me like I'm not even there. I don't like that." No, Christine thought, her husband would not like being ignored. "You suppose he might need me to set him up again?"

"You do and I will leave you." She knew what TJ had done in hiring a date for Trent. He swore to her that he'd had no idea, but she wondered. While she loved her husband, she worried about where his mind was at times. "I'll talk to him and then we'll go from there. He needs to get on, not sit around here where I'm waiting on him hand over foot."

Christine made her way to the deck, where her son was currently sitting, after asking Meggie to make him a sandwich. She'd missed the young girl, Joe, a great deal the last few days, wondering if her being there might have brought her son out of his funk. Just someone to talk to or to argue with. Christine didn't care at this point.

Trent had been on the deck off and on since he'd come home from the hospital three days ago, and she wondered if he was going to move back in with them. He couldn't. Not now. The doctor had told them that he needed to move, do things for himself. And living with them wouldn't get that for him. As soon as she sat down, Trent started talking.

"He said that he loves her. I'm not sure what I should do now." Before she could ask him who or what he was talking about, he continued. "I had no idea what to think when my wolf recognized her before I did, so I scared her. And she called for Noah. Now she's gone and he's pissed off and in love with my mate."

"Joe? Joe Samuels is your mate?" He nodded without looking at her. "Trent, are you sure? Well, that's a silly question, of course you are. That's the reason for the long face and moping around here, I take it?"

"She and Noah are leaving soon. If they haven't already. Max Ford is giving him some trouble, so they have to move before he hurts them. He wouldn't...Noah wouldn't give me much in the way of information about her because he said that was up to me." Christine stood up and walked to stand in front of her son. Telling him to stand, she slapped him hard across the face. "What the hell was that for?"

"Did he say he was in love with her or that he loved her?" Without waiting for him to answer, she did for him. "He loves her. Like I do you...most of the time anyway. Right now I want to turn you over my knee and paddle you but good. And don't you think I can't do it either. Noah and Joe, the two of them have been together for decades, he told us that. And here you sit on your bottom, acting like...well, I'm not sure what you're acting like. A spoiled child perhaps? Maybe a baby who's not had a nap? A wolf gets one shot at this, and you're letting it slip through your fingers like it's nothing. Or is it nothing to you?"

"I don't know what this is." He sat back down. "I thought Dad had set it up. And before you hit me again, you know that I have good reason to think that. The man is positively insane to keep me between the sheets for some reason. And then Sawyer comes in and tells me that I need to get out more. Date and see the world with other people. Women, he meant. I was thinking about that, really I was, about how I've not had a vacation in ten years. I don't even enjoy going on business trips because I'm there for as little time as possible. I don't delegate, either, but do it all myself, even ignoring the pleas of my partner, my own brother who I trust with my life to take on more. Then this beautiful woman comes in and I scare the crap out of her by letting my wolf rule my head. To be honest, Mom, I'm thinking that she might be better off without me."

"Why?" He looked at her then, and it twisted up her heart to see him like this. Broken, she thought. Her son was broken. "Trent, why do you think this girl would be better off not loving you?"

"I'm not a nice person. I don't know how to be friendly. I have no friends to speak of but family. And most of the time, I'm sure you want to bash my head in. Or slap me around a bit." He winked at her and smiled. "She had Dad eating out of her hand in only a few days, and a vampire that risked coming out in the sunlight to save her. I don't know how to be that person she needs."

"Oh Trent, what the hell are you thinking?" He looked at her, and she wanted to hit him and hug him at the same time. "As your mother I hate to say this to you when you're down like this, but get up off your ass and fix this. I don't care if you have to hire friends to figure this out. Go to this girl on your hands and knees, but you fix this with her. You will never get another chance at happiness if you don't go and find her."

She stood up, and so did he. When he looked like he was going to say something she put up her hands. It was time to cut the strings with him, and no better way to do that than to simply cut them.

"You have two hours to get your things and move back to your own home. I'm not going to be picking up the pieces when this all hits the fan. Go and sulk or whatever it is you're currently doing to find your mate away from me. Or don't find her." She turned her back on him to go into the house, her heart breaking with each word. "I didn't raise you to be a coward. And from where I'm standing, not only are you that, but you are wasting your life too."

As soon as she entered her house, she turned to the stairs and ran up them to her bedroom. Closing the door behind her, she leaned heavily against it and let the tears fall. Christine knew as surely as she was standing there that she'd done the best thing for her son, but it didn't lessen the pain of it.

An hour later, feeling no better about what she'd done, Christine went to see if he had left. TJ was standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for her, and she was worried that something had happened. When he slammed his hand down on the banister and told her he was mad at her, she paused in mid-step and waited.

"You ran him off." She pointed out that he'd told her to. "Yeah, I did, but not by telling him that he wasn't welcome here. You know how mad he was when he left here? Powerful, let me tell you."

"Did he tell you that Joe is his mate?" That shut him up. "I see. So all you know is that he left here mad and not any of the details. Well, Trent James Calhoun the fifth, I'm not going to stand for you treating me this way. You have less time than your son had to get out of my house. Leave here right now."

"You're kicking me out of my own house?" She told him she was kicking him out of her life too. "You can't do that. I'm your mate. You can't...what do you think you're doing?"

"What I need to." She walked down the steps and to the door. After opening it, she looked at her husband. "Get out of here before I hurt you. And you know that I will too."

"Honey…Christine, you don't—"

"Don't you dare honey me, you overbearing jackass. I did what I thought needed to be done. I came down here for support, after doing what we talked about. You hear one thing from our son, one small part of what we talked about, and you get mad at me. Well, I got news for you, I slapped him too. You want to do that to me as well?" He told her that he'd never hit her. "No, but you'll hurt my heart without any provocation, won't you? Get out of here, TJ. I don't want to see you right now."

As soon as he left, still trying to sweet talk her, she went to her office and sat behind her desk. Christine had no idea what she was supposed to do now, but she knew that she wasn't going to be pushed around. Reaching for a tissue, she wiped at the tears just as her cell phone rang. Right now she didn't want to talk to any of them and turned her ringer off when it stopped. Then for good measure, she turned the entire phone off.

"Stupid men. I wish we'd had all girls now." Looking at the last family picture that had been taken of them all, Christine stuck her tongue out at it. Crying harder now, she turned her back on the picture and everything else that she had to do today and felt sorry for herself. It was something that she rarely did. "Like that's going to solve a damned thing."

The laugher made her turn and then stand. The man standing there hadn't been invited in, and she wasn't sure what he wanted. "Can I help you?"

"There is no need for you to worry, my dear lady. I have not invaded your home; I could never do that anyway. I am here to speak to you about our children. Joe is...she is very upset with me, and your son, I'm afraid, has hurt her. Perhaps unintentionally, but he has all the same."

"Your child? You mean Joe. I guess...all right, you only think of her as your child. I'm sorry, I'm a little upset at the moment. Also you should know, my son isn't any happier with me. I have resorted to violence, and I'm not proud of myself over it." He laughed again. "I don't think this is the least bit funny. And how is it you're here if you say you've not invaded my home?"

"I am but an image that I can project where I need to be. It is still bright in the day for me, but I wanted to speak to you on Joe's...well, not her behalf, but here I am for her. I fear that if she knew that I was here, she would be a great deal madder at me than she is now. I have pointed out that you have but one chance in life to find your other half, and she is wasting it by hiding out with me." Christine told him she'd said the same to her son. "Ah, so we are thinking alike. I knew that you were a brilliant woman."

Christine wasn't sure about that. She had thrown out her mate too. "What is it you think we can do? And just so we're on the same page here, I'm not going to shove them in the same room and hope they come out on top of this."

"My dear, that is precisely what we must do. The nature of the beast, so to speak, is for him to claim his mate. What better way to have that happen than to toss her to the wolf?" She sat back down at her desk and thought about what he was proposing for them to do. "Joe is ready to leave when I do, if I do. But now that she'll be living here for the long term, I've changed my mind. I have told her, and this was just an idea that I had dancing around in my head, that I had to think about things. I would like to finish this with Mr. Ford. He has become somewhat of a nuisance to me and my household. But short of killing him, which might happen anyway, I need to make sure that he does not follow me to the next place, nor does he hurt my Joe."

"Trent said you told him you loved her." He said that he did. "Love her, or are you in love with her?"

"At one time, many years ago, I thought to take her as my own, change her into what I am so that I might have someone to call mine. But as the years went by and her loyalty to me grew, I knew that the only thing that I could do for her was to keep her safe. Changing her into a monster, such as I am, would not have served any purpose but to stem my loneliness. But she has kept that at bay simply by being who she is. So I have taken her into my heart, but only as a father would a child." He smiled at her, and Christine thought it the saddest thing she'd seen, even more so than her own son's sadness. "She saved my life and that of another man even though she cared for neither of us. Offered up her life giving blood to save me after begging for a man that was killed soon after when another wanted the scraps that he'd pulled from the trash. So yes, I do love her, and might be just a little in love with her, but not the way I think that your young Trent can love her."

"I'll do it." Nodding and feeling good about this now, she asked him what she had to do. "I can't hurt them, neither of them. Joe has come to mean a great deal to me, and Trent is my baby boy. I know that he's far from being a child, but he is mine."

"I understand that more than you can know, my dear lady. But all that we need to do is get them together. I'm sure that nature will do the rest." Christine hoped so. She wanted her son happy. "Now. We must think where to lock them in. It should only be for a small amount of time. A few hours at most."

"Trent needs to take a vacation, doctor's orders, and I know just the place he needs to go. There is a lovely cabin just up the mountain on our property. I can have it readied for them in a couple of days. You can tell Joe that you want her to hide out from this Ford person. She'll do that, won't she?' Noah said that she would, for him. "Good. I'll start on that now. I'll let you know when I'm ready. I'll tell him that he has to remain there for a week. He'll do it. He needs to suck up a little to get back in my good graces. I think this will work. I really do."

So it began. When Noah left her, Christine thought that she had to do one more thing before she got the house ready. And that was to make up to her mate. She'd treated him terribly, and she knew it. Reaching out to him, Christine started crying.

I'm so terribly sorry. I love you with all my heart, and I'm so sorry. He told her he was as well. I love you. And right now I need your help with Trent and Joe.

Anything, love. Anything you need. She hoped so. What they were about to do was terrible but necessary. Can I come home now? I'm so sorry for what I said to you. You were right, as usual, and that is what gets me all riled up. I'm so sorry.