Wanted A Real Family(23)

Amy nodded, smiled shyly at Jase and ran into her room.

“You’ll have a chance to meet Liam Saturday night,” Jase assured her. “That’s one of the reasons I came over.” He pushed a small envelope across the counter. “That’s your official invitation. There will be increased security around and you’ll need to have that with you.”

“Do you get many gate-crashers?” she joked.

“You’d be surprised. Once in a while a celebrity shows up and we’ll have a tourist or some paparazzi try to get in to take a look. My father guards his privacy and he knows others do, too.”

“Do you guard yours?”

“Usually.”

Sara pointed to the baked cookies cooling on a rack. “Interested?”

“Sure am,” he said with a look that made Sara wonder if he was interested in her, too. If he was handing her an invitation to the Raintree Soiree, they weren’t having a date. She was simply attending a party thrown at his house. That settled that question.

“Speaking of privacy, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you,” Jase said.

Amy ran in, her pink Disney-princess nightgown swirling around her. “Cookie time?”

Jase took a cookie from the rack and offered it to her. “My guess is that you’re going to need milk to go along with that.”

“Three milks, coming up!” Sara wondered why Jase would want to talk to her about privacy. She’d soon know.

After cookies and milk all around, Sara said to Jase, “It’s past Amy’s bedtime. Do you mind if I put her to bed before we talk?”

“Can Jase read me a story?” Amy asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, honey, he might not want to.”

But Jase seemed to be considering her daughter’s request. “I can read you a story. What’s your favorite one?”

Amy took his hand and with her cookie in the other, pulled him toward her bedroom, chattering about the books she liked most. Sara didn’t know how she felt about Jase being part of the bedtime ritual. Conrad had never chosen to take part in it. He was either working late at the store or at his home computer and that had always caused such mixed feelings inside her. On one hand, she admired him working so hard to give them a good life. But on the other...had she chosen a man who wouldn’t put fatherhood first? For her, putting Amy to bed was one of the best parts of motherhood.

The buzzer rang on the stove and she called to Jase and Amy, “I have to take the cookies out. I’ll be right in.”

A few minutes later, Sara stopped in the doorway to Amy’s room. Both Amy and Jase were sitting on her single bed. Jase hardly fit, propped against the headboard with his long legs stretched out in front of him. Amy sat close to him, engrossed in his reading of Clifford, the Big Red Dog. The book was one of her favorites and Sara was mesmerized by the sound of Jase’s voice, too, as he put expression into the words and let Amy study the picture on each page.

Whether he wanted to believe it or not, Jase Cramer was daddy material. He was so good with kids. Yet a distant father and unfaithful fiancée made him doubt his ability to be part of a family. Certainly that double combination was enough of an impediment, but Sara had the feeling there was something else Jase wasn’t telling her. Something more. What had happened to him in his childhood before he’d come to live with Ethan? Did he ever talk about that?

Amy’s room always made Sara smile. Even though they hadn’t lived here that long, it was pure little girl. The pink-and-white gingham spread and curtains reflected Amy’s bright personality. Her colorful toys were stacked on shelves along the closet wall. There was also a blue egg crate, specifically for the doll someone had donated and the clothes that fit her. Moppy, the stuffed dog that Jase had given Amy, was already tucked under her daughter’s arm as she sat beside him on the bed.

In some ways, Jase looked out of place here. He was so masculine in a girlie-girl room. But in other ways, specifically the way he related to her daughter, he absolutely fit in.

Jase looked up and saw her standing there. There was a flicker of something in his eyes. Sara wasn’t sure what that was about. In so many ways, he was a mystery to her. Knowing about a person didn’t mean knowing a person. How well she understood that...how well Conrad had taught her that.

Entering the room, Sara perched on the rocker on Amy’s side of the bed until Jase finished the story.

When he closed the book, Amy reached over and hugged him. “You read good.”

He was tentative at first, and then he hugged her back. “You listen good.” Easing off the bed, he stood and set the book on the nightstand. Then he laid his hand on Amy’s head and pulled a pink ribbon from under her earlobe. “Look what I found,” he said. “You can tie this in your hair and look as pretty as your mom.”