The voice of a young girl sounded uncertain behind him.
He’d been mistaken in thinking it was a suitcase beside the woman, Jake realized. He was usually more observant, but the rain on the windows had made it difficult to see. Still, he didn’t turn around. He figured a woman with any sense would be shepherding her little one out of the Starling about now. One good look at the run-down hotel would be all it would take to give a mother with a young child second thoughts about staying there. The place had heart, but the color from the linoleum had faded away to nothing over the years. He should give Max some money to replace the linoleum with carpet. Jake had the money to give and Max had been good to him over the years.
“Can I help you?” Max finally asked as he looked past Jake. He must have expected the woman to be gone by now, too. “Our business is mostly by the month. There’s a nice family motel around the corner and down a block, though. It’s a little more expensive, but they’ve got a small pool. Ask for the spring special and they’ll treat you right.”
“I am looking for 3762 Morgan Street,” the woman said. “I think it must be a house or an apartment. I didn’t see any numbers outside your place and I wondered if you’d know how close I am.”
Jake lost all feeling in his body before she got to the street name. He knew that voice as well as he knew his own.
“You got a package or something?” Max asked, suddenly cautious.
“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