Lilac Wedding in Dry Creek

“I’m looking for a man. Jake Stone. He lives there.”

Max gave a start and his bulging eyes went to Jake as if he was waiting for some signal as to what he should say to the woman.

Jake would have been happy to oblige, but something had happened in his brain and everything was going in slow motion. It sounded as though the woman’s words were coming from a great distance. He needed to sit down, but he couldn’t move. His boots kept him rooted to the place where he stood.

“My name’s Cat—I mean, Cathy Barker. If you know where I could find the address, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d point me in the right direction. I had planned to take a taxi from the airport, but none of them had a child’s safety seat so I just left our luggage in the claim section and we started to walk. They said it wasn’t far when they told me how to find the street.”

Max’s face turned a little purple at her flow of words.

“You’re …” He started to sputter and then stopped. Finally, he pointed. “That’s him. This is the address right here.”

Everything was silent for a moment.

“Jake?”

The hesitation in the woman’s voice brought Jake to his senses. He didn’t want to stand with his back to her like a fake statue, not when Cat might just be passing through and only wanted to say hello. He bluffed at the poker tables in one casino or another almost every night. He should be able to school his face into some semblance of normalcy and turn around and greet his old friend.

“Mommy, is that him?” the girl asked.

Jake felt his breath catch in his throat. He forced his lips to stretch into a smile as he turned around.

There she was. Cat. She hadn’t changed a bit, he thought, as she stared up at him, her green eyes growing large and her delicate face turning pale. Her chin still jutted out as if she expected a fight, but her golden-brown hair had been blown around enough to show she didn’t even have the strength to battle the wind on her own. And that was before the rain had plastered every strand of hair to the side of her head. He’d always protected her and he felt like doing it now.

“I …” Cat started to say something, but stopped.

“Mommy?” The small voice grew more incessant and worried. Jake glanced down and saw that the girl had a plastic, gold tiara clamped onto her damp blond hair. She wasn’t much taller than the stool behind Max’s counter and her pink cheeks made her look like a cherub in some old European painting. She had gold glitter sticking on her shoes, too, in spite of the rain. Jake was going to say something to soothe her, but then she reached for her mother’s hand.

He looked up in time to see Cat’s eyes start to close. If he hadn’t stepped over to catch her, she would have drifted all the way to the floor. As it was, she didn’t weigh more than a feather when he lifted her in his arms. He wanted to ask when the last time was that she’d eaten a decent meal. He hadn’t seen her for five years and she certainly hadn’t gained an ounce in all that time. He wondered what she had spent all of the money he mailed her on. It certainly hadn’t been food, not when she’d just fainted the way she had.

Jake caught the subtle scent of lilacs as he looked down. He’d presented Cat with a whole case of lilac soap for her eighteenth birthday.

“Mommy?” the girl said again, but this time the word had an edge to it, as though she was frightened.

Cat’s little girl stared up at him, expecting something.

“It’ll be all right,” he assured her. “Your mother just needs to eat something.”

He remembered Cat had fainted a time or two when she first came to the youth home. The nurse said it was because she hadn’t eaten then, too.

The child nodded. Her curls were starting to bounce, but her blue eyes still watched him closely. It seemed she didn’t quite trust him, even if she wasn’t withdrawing from him. She reached up to steady her tiara, not saying anything.

He stepped past the girl and carried Cat over to the sofa. He laid her down on the vinyl sofa, arranging her head so it rested on one sofa arm while her feet curved up on the other one. The upholstery creaked softly as it adjusted to her being there.

Cat had run away from the youth home the day after he gave her the lilac soap, taking every one of the bars with her. She must be almost twenty-three now. She was only a few months younger than him.

He reached for her face, hoping to bring her back. “Cat?”

Her skin was wet and cold from being outside, but he felt his fingers tingle where they touched her. He took his Stetson off and set it on the back of the sofa. Then he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. It wasn’t proper, but he couldn’t help himself. This was Cat.

“Are you a prince?” Suddenly the girl was beside him. She sounded suspicious and she moved even closer, as though she wanted to be sure she could see everything he did.

Jake leaned back and looked over at her in surprise. “A what?”

He’d been called many things in his life, but never that.

The girl’s tiara was crooked by now, but she didn’t seem to notice. “In Sleeping Beauty, the prince kisses the princess and she wakes up.”

“I don’t think …”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you’re not doing it right. Kiss her again so her eyes open.”

Jake looked back down at Cat. Her daughter had a point. The first kiss certainly hadn’t moved any mountains.

“On the lips,” the girl instructed him as he started toward her mother’s forehead. “It has to be on the lips for it to work. It says so in my book.”

Who was he to argue with an expert? Especially one who had a book to back her up.

Cat felt Jake’s lips brush hers, but she couldn’t rouse herself enough to respond. She’d had that dream so many times, and it never turned out to be real. Only, now her heart was racing and she felt the chill of the vinyl sofa under her and the gentleness of his hand when he caressed her cheek. Everything else was a kaleidoscope of colors, but maybe it wasn’t just her imagination this time. She’d taken her heart medication this morning, hadn’t she? She tried to remember and the moment started to come back. She’d flown from Minneapolis with her daughter, Lara, because time had become so important and the bus would have taken too long.

Had she heard Lara talking about a prince? The first thing Lara had packed in her suitcase was the book of fairy tales she’d received at Christmas. She loved those stories. It was the thought of her daughter that made Cat fight all the way back to awareness. Everything she did these days had to be about Lara.

Jake’s hand rested against her face. She hated to move because he might take his hand away. But she willed her eyes to open. She saw Jake frowning down on her, his black eyes almost setting off sparks, he was looking at her so intently. She blinked and he came into focus. Yes, he was even more handsome—and fierce—than she recalled.

No wonder Lara thought he was a prince. His thick black hair was styled back, longer than she remembered it. And far more sophisticated than it had been at the youth home. He’d spent some money on having it cut. His face had been thinner back then, too. Now it was filled out with all the muscles and power of a man in his prime. He still had what he called his “Cherokee nose,” inherited from his Native American grandfather. Jake wasn’t the lanky teenager who’d been her gallant defender in the home, but she would have recognized him anywhere. His eyes gave him away. No one looked at her like Jake did. He saw inside of her.

She wondered for the first time if she would have come here even without Lara. She was suddenly glad to see him just in case the heart surgery didn’t go well. He’d been the best friend she’d ever had and she wanted to remember his face forever.

“Could I have something to drink?” she whispered.

Then she closed her eyes. She didn’t fear the possibility of death, but she did fear what would happen to Lara without her. Before she left Minneapolis, she’d had a conversation with the chaplain at the hospital where she hoped to have her surgery. The man had led her back to the God she’d known briefly as a young girl.

Her faith helped her accept what was happening. Her heart was defective and had been since she was born. It’s just that now it was critical that something be done. The doctors wanted to do surgery right away, even though she might not survive it. Finally, she told them all that everything would need to wait until she got her daughter settled.

She opened her eyes and saw a new face looking down at her. The older man from the counter was now standing next to Jake.

“I have coffee right here,” he said as he handed a cup to Jake. “I can get her something stronger than coffee if I need to. But it’s supposed to wake people up so I figure …”

Cat wasn’t used to strangers worrying about her and she wanted to tell the older man that she appreciated his concern, but it was too much effort.

“Just water,” she managed to say. She should take one of the heart pills the doctor had given her, if she could find a way to take it without alarming either of the men. She wasn’t ready to tell Jake everything yet. Let him get to know Lara a little first. She had to believe that, if he spent enough time with her daughter, he would be willing to take care of her if needed. She had no one else to ask and she couldn’t let Lara go into the foster-care system. Jake would understand that.

“I’ll be right back.” The older man rushed away to get her what she needed.

Cat felt Lara’s hand on her arm and looked over to see that her daughter had squeezed in front of where Jake was kneeling. Everything about her was pale next to the blackness of his hair and the light brown color of his forehead, but they looked good together. As though they belonged. Cat put her own hand over her daughter’s.

“I’m fine, pumpkin.” The words were hard to form, but she kept working at it. “I just need to catch my breath.”

Lara smiled, her blue eyes dancing in quiet delight.