He looked to his daughter. “Where are we sitting today, Cupcake?” His daughter liked to pick a different one each time they came in.
“Over here,” she exclaimed, skipping to an empty table halfway across the room.
He followed, sitting on one of the chairs with its bright red padded vinyl seat. The bell over the restaurant’s front door jingled, drawing Nathan’s gaze in that direction. Two young women he’d never seen before stepped inside. Both looked to be in their midtwenties. The first had straight, dark hair that stopped at her shoulders. The one walking in behind her had long, red-gold hair that shimmered like flames under the fluorescent lighting of the diner as she moved toward him.
He tipped his cowboy hat with a polite nod as they walked by. “Ladies.” Then he removed it, placing it on the seat of the empty chair beside him.
Both offered up warm smiles, but where the first woman remained focused on finding a table, the fiery-haired woman slowed, her topaz gaze lingering in his direction for a long moment before she continued on to where her friend had slid into an empty booth.
The way the woman had studied him had Nathan wondering if they hadn’t crossed paths somewhere before. Surely, he would have remembered a face like hers if he had. Especially, those eyes. He’d never seen any quite that color. Like warmed honey with flecks of gold mixed in.
Lizzie returned with their menus and two glasses of ice water. “I’ll give you a couple of minutes to look the menu over.”
“Appreciate it,” he told her, opening one of the menus as she walked away. Try as he might, Nathan couldn’t keep his gaze from sliding over to the booth the two women were seated in. The one with the darker hair sat with her back to his and Katie’s table. The other, the one whose searching gaze had come to rest on him for the briefest of moments, faced his way. Her attention, however, was now focused solely on her friend and the conversation they had immediately fallen into, giving him plenty of opportunity to study her more closely.
Delicate features made up her face with the exception of her boldly lashed amber eyes. Bow-shaped lips pursed together as she cast a glance out the window beside her. A second later, perfectly straight, white teeth were sinking into her bottom lip as if she were deeply troubled by something.
It was none of his business, but Nathan found himself wondering what she was worried about.
“Daddy,” his daughter whined from across the table, drawing his attention back to the task at hand.
“Have you decided?” he asked her with a smile.
“Strawberry! Strawberry! Strawberry!”
Nathan chuckled as his daughter bounced up and down on the padded booth seat, excitement lighting her face. “I thought chocolate was your favorite milk shake flavor.”
She stopped bouncing and looked up at him from across the table. “Daddy, it’s a girl’s peroggertiv to change her mind.”
His eyes widened at the unexpected response. “Prerogative?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “That’s what I said.”
“So you did,” he chuckled. “You know, that’s a mighty big word for a six-year-old.”
“Almost seven,” she reminded him. “And Granny Timmons says it every time she breaks her one-cookie-before-supper rule and gives me another one.”
Nathan couldn’t help but smile. Suddenly, Lizzie hurried back to the table. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I had to handle a carryout order.” She flipped open the order pad in her hand and poised her pen over it. “What can I get for the two of you?”
Dragging his focus back to the menu, he said, “Hmm...let’s see. We’ll take three super dogs, ketchup on one, mustard on the other two, a large order of fries and a strawberry milk shake.”
“Will that be all?”
He cast a glance at his daughter over the top of his menu. “How about we make that two strawberry shakes? But we’d like those after my little Cupcake here eats all her dinner.”
“You’ve got it, Mr. Cooper.” Shoving her pencil behind her ear, Lizzie went to place their order.
“Daddy, do you got to go back to work?” his daughter asked, her tiny lips forming a soft pout.
He nodded. “For a little while, honey.”
Her small shoulders sagged at his response.
Guilt tugged at him. “Tell you what. I’ll see what I can do about taking the whole weekend off so you and I can do something special. How’s that sound?”
Her face lit up. “Can we go Christmas shopping?”
An all-too-familiar twinge moved through his heart. One that came every year during the holidays. He didn’t want to shop for presents or put up endless strings of Christmas lights to make his house festive. If it were up to him, he’d bypass the season altogether. But he couldn’t do that to Katie.
“How about we take a walk over to The Toy Box after dinner and start putting together your wish list? Then maybe we can see a movie this weekend.”
“I already know what I want,” she replied with a toothy smile.
He leaned forward, arms folded atop the table in front of him. “Let me guess. You want a new swing set?”
She shook her head, sending her head full of dark brown curls bouncing. “Nope.”
“A doll?”
“Uncle Logan just bought me a new dolly. Guess again,” his daughter urged with youthful impatience.
Rubbing his chin as if in deep thought, he hemmed and hawed for several seconds before saying, “I know. You want a giant pink pony?”
Katie giggled. “That’s silly, Daddy.”
“Okay, I give up. What do you really want for Christmas?”
She leaned forward, folding her arms just like his were and said determinedly, “I want a mommy.”
Nathan was speechless. She’d had a mommy. And he’d had a wife. How could he make Katie understand that no other woman could ever fill the void left behind when Isabel died?
“You have your daddy,” he pointed out, trying to sound unaffected by the turn in their conversation, when in truth he was anything but.
“I know, but Bettina’s mommy braids her hair every morning before school.”
“I can braid your hair.” He’d done so for three of the birthday parties Katie had been invited to that past year and had done a pretty good job of it if he did say so himself.
“But her mommy makes a French braid.”
He hated feeling like he had somehow failed his daughter. Something he never wanted to do. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Her eyes lit up. “About getting me a mommy?”
“About learning how to French braid your hair.”
She sank back against the padded seat, crossing her tiny arms. “But I want a mommy.”
“That’s not gonna happen, Cupcake,” he told her, fighting to keep the turmoil going on inside him from his voice.
Her stubbornness kicking in, his daughter lifted her chin and pouted.
“Katie,” he began, only to be saved from saying anything else as Lizzie came back with their orders, instantly distracting his daughter from her mommy quest. Thankfully. Marrying again was not an option for him.
And it never would be.
* * *
December first had finally arrived. Alyssa McCall walked her best friend back to her SUV, a tight ball of anxiety in her stomach.