The First Love Cookie Club (10 page)

Especially when she’d been missing out on the fun for so many years. Who knew how long their luck would hold? He might as well let her have a good time while she could.

“Okay,” he conceded, “but the second you feel winded you come and tell me.”

“Deal,” she said in that jaunty Jazzy way of hers, and held out her hand to shake on it.

Ahead of them in line waited a family of four including a teenage girl who giggled for no discernable reason, while behind them, two college-age guys reeking of beer roughhoused. They were punching each other repeatedly on the upper arms. Once upon a time, he’d been that stupid, but Travis had to wonder why the young men—who were clearly still drunk from a wild Friday night— were hanging out in Sweetheart Park where all the children’s activities were being held. Then he saw one of them wink at the teenage girl, who giggled anew, and it all started to make sense.

“Hey,” he said sharply to them. “This activity is for kids, beat it.”

“Oh yeah?” slurred one of the young Turks. “Says who?”

Travis opened up his jacket and quickly flashed his badge. They didn’t have to know it was a game warden badge. “Says me. You’re prime for a public intox charge.”

The young man held up his palms. “Dude, no offense, we were just hanging out.”

“Well, hang out somewhere away from the children. Don’t spoil their fun.”

The guy shot a lingering look at the teenage girl. The age difference between them and the girl was about equal to the age difference between Travis and Sarah. What was a huge gap between fifteen and twenty shrank from twenty-four to twenty-nine. What a difference a decade made.

“You’re too old for that,” Travis chided.

Just then a woman came hurrying up to the makeshift gate set up to cordon off the park for the events. Immediately he recognized that long blond braid and those black stiletto boots.

Sarah.

“Dude.” One of the teens nudged his buddy in the ribs with his elbow and eyed Sarah with interest. “Check out the hottie. I call dibs.”

“Now you boys are too young for a woman like that,” Travis drawled. “I think it’s time you went on down the street.”

The taller one looked like he was going to challenge Travis, but something in his eyes must have warned the kid off, because he shrugged and said, “Who cares. This is lame anyway.”

“Hi Sadie!” Jazzy waved at Sarah.

Sarah, who looked rushed, stopped to smile at his daughter. “Hi, Jazzy, are you here for the Scrooge scavenger hunt?”

“Uh-huh.” His daughter bobbed her head. “I wanna win the grand prize.”

“What’s the grand prize?”

“Four tickets to Six Flags Holiday in the Park.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Sarah said, and crossed all her fingers.

“Morning,” Travis greeted her.

“I’ve got to go.” She gestured toward the platform in the center of Piccadilly Circus. “I’m the master of ceremonies.”

He raised a hand, but she’d already turned to trot off. Hmm, had she just given him the bum’s rush? She could have at least said hello.

Sarah took her place at the microphone. It was clear she wasn’t a natural at public speaking. She read from a script welcoming visitors to the Dickens event and explaining the rules for the scavenger hunt. The participants had their choice of three lists to complete. They could do a nature hunt in the park, a store hunt at the shops on the square, or a photo hunt where they were to have their pictures taken with various people and landmarks around town. They had until three
P.M.
to return with the items on their lists.

“Which one do you want to do?” he asked Jazzy, hoping she’d go for the nature hunt.

But his daughter knew how to really make memories. “Photo hunt, Daddy, so I can get my picture taken with people.”

“Okay,” he said. “Go grab us a purple list.”

Jazzy went up to the attendant passing out the different colored lists that corresponded with the various hunts and she came back with the items for the photo hunt. The first item on the list read:
Have your photo taken with a local Twilight celebrity.
The participants could choose from Emma Parks, the actress who’d recently married local veterinarian Sam Cheek; Mayor Moe Schebly; Sheriff Hondo Crouch, Vietnam War hero; or author Sadie Cool.

“Sadie’s the one we want. C’mon, Daddy.” She took his hand and started dragging him toward the stage.

“We have to wait until the hunt officially starts,” he said.

Patsy Cross, one of the event organizers, took the microphone from Sarah. “We don’t want to make things too easy for you,” she said, “so since Miss Cool is one of the items on the photo hunt list, we’re going to give her a head start to hide or disguise herself. Don’t worry, she can’t get too far away. She’s restricted to the park and town square area, as are all the people on the photo list. But they can put on costumes, so take a second look at everyone you pass on the streets.”

Sarah slipped down off the stage and Travis watched her cross the street and go in through the back door of the Buffalo Nickel, a quaint little curio shop filled with antiques and Texas-themed souvenirs.

“Okay, participants, are you ready?” Patsy asked the crowd.

“Yea!” Jazzy hollered.

“On your mark, get set. … go!”

Everyone moved at once, racing off in different directions. Travis grabbed hold of Jazzy’s hand so she wouldn’t get lost in the stampede.

“Where’d she go, Daddy?”

“She went into the back door of the Buffalo Nickel, but I think I know where we can find her.”

“How do you know?”

“Sadie … Sarah … and I used to be friends when she was just about your age.”

Jazzy’s eyes widened. “Really? How come you’re not friends now?”

“Well …” He stalled, trying to think of a way to explain the complicated situation between him and Sarah. He put his hand to his daughter’s shoulder, guiding her down the sidewalk. “It’s not that we’renot friends, it’s just, well … I’m a bit older than she is, and when you’re young it’s hard to be friends with someone who’s not the same age as you.”

“Like me and Mitchell Addison.”

Travis peered down at his daughter. “What about you and Mitchell Addison?”

“Well …,” she said, mimicking his stalling tactic. “Mitchell has a crush on me, but he’s only six and I mean I know I look six, but I’m not and I read on an eighth-grade level and he likes comic books and …”

“You like Mitchell too.”

“Yeah, but he’s just a kid.”

Travis smiled.

“He bought me a ring,” Jazzy said.

“What?” He was surprised at the protective alarm that went off inside him. She was only eight. No reason to get worried about a kid with a crush on his daughter, but he had a sudden flash forward to the future. Jazzy was blond-haired and blue-eyed and cute as a bug, and friendly, friendly, friendly. Honestly, he’d never thought about what it would be like once she hit puberty. He’d been so focused on just getting through each day. One downside to living in the moment, the future was just around the corner waiting to blindside you.

“Okay, I don’t think he really bought it. I think he got it out of one of those claw machines. He loves to play the claw machines at the bowling alley but he tried to give it to me in front of my friends so I had to tell him I didn’t like him and didn’t want his ring.”

“Jasmine Dawn Walker, were you mean to that little boy?”

Jazzy hung her head, toed the dirt. “I tried to tell him gently.”

“You hurt his feelings.”

“Daddy,” Jazzy said miserably, “his bottom lip started trembling. I was scared he was gonna start crying. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

Travis felt sorry for both his daughter and poor little Mitchell Addison.

“It hurt me too,” Jazzy whispered. “ ‘Cause I really do like him, but I can’t be friends with him. Is that how you feel about Sarah?”

“Sort of.”

Jazzy cocked her head and looked up at him. “Do you like her?”

“I do.”

“But you didn’t like her when you were a kid?”

“I did, but it was like you and Mitchell. She was too young for me.”

“But she’s all grown up now.”

Travis nodded. “That she is.”

“Well,” Jazzy proclaimed, “I like her and I like her book. Now let’s go find her and get my picture taken so we can win this scavenger hunt. I’ve always wanted to go to Holiday in the Park.”

Something told Travis that Sarah had slipped from the Buffalo Nickel into Ye Olde Book Nook. His strongest childhood memory of Sarah was that she always had her nose stuck in a book, just like Jazzy. Although he had a feeling that if Jazzy hadn’t been sickly, she would have been a lot less bookish. His daughter was a natural extrovert, whereas Sarah was introverted.

“Let’s go in here,” he said, pushing open the door to the bookstore.

Sarah’s book was on display in the center of the store, surrounded by the best-loved books by Charles Dickens set out to take advantage of the festival crowd—
A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, The Adventures of Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities.
He’d read them all to Jazzy.
A Tale of Two Cities
was his favorite. He loved the opening line. That pretty well summed up the paradox of his life with a sick daughter.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

But now, with Jazzy looking so radiantly healthy and Sarah back in Twilight, for the moment it felt like the very best of times.

They searched through the book stacks, but didn’t come across her. Just when Travis was beginning to think he’d guessed wrong, he saw the tips of a familiar pair of snazzy black pointy-toed boots, peeking out at him from the curtain patterned with a lush tapestry of books that separated the main part of the store from the back room where the overflow was stored.

Travis laid a finger to his lips, took Jazzy by the hand, and pointed at the boots. “That’s her,” he silently mouthed.

Jazzy stepped forward and pushed aside the curtain.

There sat Sarah in an old but plush overstuffed chair made from the same bookish material as the curtain. In her hand, she held a copy of
A Wrinkle in Time.
Her long caramel-colored braid was pulled forward and it fell fetchingly over one breast. Travis didn’t mean to stare, especially not in front of his daughter, but his gaze zeroed in onthat breast, shown off so well by the blue fuzzy sweater she wore, the same color as her eyes.

“Gotcha!” Jazzy crowed. “Get out your cell phone, Daddy and snap our picture.” Without waiting for an invitation, his gregarious daughter flounced over and plunked herself down in Sarah’s lap.

Sarah had a critter-in-the-headlights-on-a-dark-stormy-night look on her face. “Get in here and close the curtain quick before we’re mobbed,” she said to him.

Travis stepped inside the cozy nook and pulled the curtain closed. Jazzy snaked an arm around Sarah’s neck while he got out his cell phone. “Say cheese,” his daughter instructed and smiled big.

After he snapped the picture, Travis turned the phone around so he could see what it looked like. There was Jazzy looking as cute as always nestled in Sarah’s lap. But what took him by surprise— hell, what took his damn breath—was the tender maternal expression on her face as if she was completely smitten with his child.

“How’d it turn out?” Sarah asked.

“Good.” He stuffed the phone back into his pocket; for some odd reason he did not want her to see the photograph.

They were in a cramped little space surrounded by books. He looked in her eyes and she looked back into his and Travis felt the crackle of something he’d never quite felt before. He kept thinking about that kiss he’d given her underneath the mistletoe and how much he wanted to do it again.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” Sarah said right back.

He rubbed a palm along the back of his neck and ducked his head. “Guess you’re tied up for the day.”

“That’s my assumption.”

He shifted his weight, knowing they should go, but wanting very much to stay here in this quiet cramped little corner that smelled of books and Sarah’s airy cologne.

“Was there something else?” she asked.

“Um, no.”
Go.
But he just kept standing there.

Jazzy was still in Sarah’s lap, thumbing through
A Wrinkle in Time.
She seemed to have forgotten about the scavenger hunt and looked perfectly content to spend the day here.

“Well, we better go hunt down more photographs,” he said.

“Photographs. Right.”

“We better hurry because …” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “People are, you know, really competitive about things like this.”

She nodded.

Damn, it was easier having a conversation with a Mason jar. Why was he trying so hard?

“I remember this story. It’s a good story. Will you read it to me sometime?” Jazzy asked Sarah.

“Sure,” Sarah said.

Jazzy snagged Sarah’s gaze. “When?”

“When?”

“Yeah, when will you read it to me?”

“Um … I don’t know.”

“How about Christmas Eve? We could make those cookies from
The Magic Christmas Cookie.
You know, the one Isabella and her grandmother make.”

“Kismet cookies.”

“Yeah, we could make kismet cookies and then you could read
A Wrinkle in Time
to me.”

“A Wrinkle in Time
is a long book, Jazzy,” Travis said. “You can’t read it in one night. And Sarah’s not going to be in town on Christmas Eve. You and I can make Christmas cookies together and we can spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s reading
A Wrinkle in Time.”

Disappointment tugged at his daughter’s mouth. “Yeah, okay, I guess that will work.”

“Maybe we could make kismet cookies another time,” Sarah suggested.

Travis’s gut tightened and he glanced at Sarah, sending her a message with his stare.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Jazzy shook her head and her mouth dipped down sadly. “The kismet cookies only work on Christmas Eve.”

“You know the kismet cookies are only a fairy tale,” Sarah said gently. “Right?”

Jazzy looked like Sarah had just told her there was no such thing as Santa Claus. “Yeah, sure, I knew that. I just thought it would be fun … you know … pretending it was true.”