Lilac Wedding in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded and started to grin, himself. “She doesn’t know, so keep it quiet.”

      “That means I’m a grandpa!” Max whispered. He’d always said Jake was like a son to him. Then he reached over and flipped the switch on the counter that changed the sign outside to read No Vacancy. “Nobody needs to know why, but we have to do something. You’re a father.”

      “I guess I am at that.” Jake stood there, letting the amazement settle in deeper. Maybe it would be okay if he was a father as long as he wasn’t close enough to the child to mess up her life. Cat had never said anything about telling Lara about him. Maybe the girl would never know.

      Max frowned in thought. Then his face lit up. “We’ll have a birthday party. We’ve got lots of birthdays to make up for. Cake and ice cream. That should be okay.”

      “I sure feel like celebrating.” Jake held the phone more firmly in his hand and started pressing buttons. He did know one number. “I’m calling that steakhouse in the new casino.”

      “The fancy one?” Max asked. “They don’t even open until five o’clock. And they’ll never deliver. Maybe they’d do room service in the casino, but not over here. And we need to get a cake. I wonder if the child has a favorite kind.”

      Jake put the phone to his ear. “They have that cake place there, too. I’m calling the head chef. He’s always there at this time of day. And he’s a good guy. Besides, he owes me. I handled a family problem for him a while back. His son was getting in with a bad crowd at the tables.”

      Max grinned again. “Get me some of those crab cakes, too, then.”

      With that, Max turned and opened the door behind the counter. Jake didn’t have time to worry about what the older man was doing by disappearing into the storeroom, not when he had the best chef in Las Vegas on the line.

      “How do you like your steaks?” Jake called over to Cat, putting down the phone to muffle the sound of his voice. “And how do you feel about mushrooms?”

      The sight of Cat and Lara, sitting with their heads together, made something shift around inside him. He had a new purpose in life. Lara didn’t need to know who he was for him to take care of her. He’d be some family friend that came to school plays once in a while. He’d be the old man in the back of the church at her wedding and he’d give the presents with no name tag on them at holidays. He wouldn’t even need to talk to her over the years. Just making sure she had enough to live a good life would be sufficient.

      “Oh, don’t order steaks,” Cat said as she broke apart from her daughter and started to rise. “They’re too expensive. I can walk over to that burger place around the corner. That’ll be enough.”

      “Steak—well-done, medium or rare?” Jake asked again. “And stay seated. You’re not walking anywhere. I don’t want you fainting a second time. Especially not when the sidewalks are wet.”

      “I guess medium, if I have to choose.” Cat sat back down and brushed her hair away from her face. “But really, it’s not necessary. I never eat steak. And—”

      “I’m paying,” Jake interrupted, knowing what was troubling her. Before she came to the home all those years ago, she’d lived on the streets in Fargo.

      Now that her hair was drying, it was starting to fly this way and that. Jake remembered the golden-brown halo around her face. She used to look like that when she was studying her math problems. She had that same indecisive look on her face, too. As if she wasn’t sure of the right answer and didn’t want to choose the wrong one.

      “I guess it’s all right, then,” she said with a frown.

      “And the mushrooms?” he asked.

      “Canned or fresh?”

      “Imported.”

      Now she looked bewildered. “I’ve never had an imported mushroom. What kind?”

      “Porcini.” Jake repeated what the chef had told him minutes before. “They also call them the black mushroom. Don’t worry. They’re good.”

      She looked at him in full amazement now. “You’ve eaten those mushrooms? You wouldn’t even eat garlic at the home. Said it wasn’t part of your culture. You, with your Cherokee-chief grandfather. You asked the cook to make you fry bread instead. Said the Cherokee were used to their own diet and they were in this country first and should be able to eat what they wanted. Then you used the table as a drum.”

      “I guess I was pretty difficult back then,” he admitted.

      “You were persuasive, too,” Cat added as she bit her lip nervously. “The cook finally made it for you that one time. She said it was just to shut you up, but she made enough for everybody. It was like a party.”

      Trust Cat to find one of the few good memories related to that place.

      Jake finished their order by adding roasted white corn with pepper, and truffle mashed potatoes. Then he checked with Lara and ordered a chocolate birthday cake with raspberry filling for dessert. He also asked for the crab cakes to please Max and some macaroni and cheese for Lara in case she didn’t feel like eating what the rest of them did.

      “Thirty minutes,” Jake said when he hung up the phone. He’d never spent that kind of money for a meal before and he was surprised to discover it felt so good. He needed to do something to mark this day. He was a father. Maybe not a regular one with Little League and all, but it was more than he ever thought he’d be.

      * * *

      Cat brushed the hair away from her face as she sat down at the table. She couldn’t believe it. Max and Jake had put a full box of purple candles on the chocolate cake sitting in the middle of the table. The men who brought the food had laid a white tablecloth over the folding table the older man had pulled out of the storeroom. The deliverymen had put real china plates down, too.

      There was a big Happy Birthday banner taped to the counter and Jake had explained earlier to Lara that they were celebrating all of the birthdays he and Max had missed—all four of them together. For once Cat was glad for the fairy-tale book. Lara took the party in stride, as though that kind of thing happened every day for good little girls like her.

      “They’re fish,” Lara said in delight from where she was seated. She was holding up some kind of macaroni on her fork and she was right; they were fish shaped.

      “The chef thought of using one of our French cheeses,” the thickset man who had laid out most of the food said. “But then he decided the little one might be more comfortable with some nice Wisconsin cheddar.”

      “Good choice,” Cat said. All those years she’d been a waitress, she’d never seen anything like this. As for French cheeses—who had the money for that? “Thanks.”

      Right then, Jake stepped back into the lobby. He’d gone to his room to change out of his damp clothes. She and Lara didn’t have their suitcases, but they had gone to a room and toweled themselves dry.

      “Now, doesn’t he look handsome?” Max winked at her from his chair as Jake got closer.

      “I’ve never seen him in a suit.” Cat feared she was blushing, but the older man was right. Jake was breathtaking in СКАЧАТЬ