Kat Attalla Special Edition (57 page)

"Tonight I won't offer."

"Then I will." He dropped a kiss on her pouting lips and went off to do his daily work.

He hadn't known at the time if her invitation had been a serious offer or just polite. Despite a blatant mutual attraction Kate guarded her emotions too carefully to read. He played it safe rather than chance offending her. Maybe Trevor was right after all. Some things are worth the risk.

* * * *

The towering steeple rose majestically above the stores in the small town center. Two stained-glass windows framed the massive oak doors and meshed perfectly with the stone facade of the hundred-year-old church. Kate pulled alongside one of the many pickup trucks and cut the engine.

As she stepped out of the jeep, the church bells begin to chime, calling people to service. She gave Chloe an encouraging pat on the back and walked towards the entrance. The idea to come along had been Chloe's, but Kate noticed that the girl had become sullen and withdrawn during the last few minutes before their arrival.

The large crowd of people grew silent. A new person in town caused a bit of curiosity, and she was used to being stared at. Polite Sunday smiles greeted her, some genuine, some phony. Yet the curiosity seemed more directed at Chloe.

Whatever questions they wanted to ask, or answers they hoped to find, would have to wait until after the hour-long service. Chloe saw someone she apparently knew, and pulled Kate into the building so quickly that she didn't have time to introduce herself.

While the priest preached to the congregation, Kate stood and knelt in all the right places, but she couldn't keep her mind on the holy gospel. Jake apparently knew that Chloe would be a source of speculation, which explained his reluctance to send her with Kate. Chloe remained perfectly still, holding the long green palms in her trembling fingers, and kept her eyes on the white-robed priest.

During the course of the service, Kate noticed an older couple across the aisle turning frequently. The same people that Chloe had conspicuously avoided before the start. Who were they to cause such distress in the girl without uttering a single word? As the older woman turned for the fifth time, Kate smiled broadly and waved an enthusiastic hand at her. Someone giggled, another snickered, but she and Chloe were no longer the focal point of the nosy woman's attention.

"Let's go, Kate," Chloe whispered, the moment the last "go in peace" was spoken.

"Who are they?"

“My grandparents.”

The infamous grandparents! Jake's nemeses. Now she knew why Jake didn't want her bringing Chloe to mass. Kate searched for a side exit to avoid a direct confrontation. With only one exit, she knew it would take divine intervention to evade the woman waiting just outside the door. Chloe's brisk steps had Kate running to keep up.

"Chloe Callahan. You stop right there." The shrill voice cut through the air.

The young girl tensed. Her hand clenched around the green palms, cracking them in two. She pivoted slowly to face her grandmother. "Hello, Nana."

"You can tell your daddy, from me that I don't care if he did send you to church today. I know he was at the bar on Friday with that no-good brother of his. We'll just see what the welfare board has to say about that."

"There ain't no law that says he can't go to the bar, Nana. He's over twenty-one."

The older woman shook an angry fist in the air. "There is a law that says he can't leave a child alone until all hours."

"She wasn't alone. She was with me," Kate said. Jake's seeming paranoia about leaving Chloe alone in the house was truly justified. The woman had his every move monitored. "And he picked up his daughter at the very respectable hour of nine-thirty."

Chloe sighed in relief.

Her grandmother gave Kate a scathing glare, but she didn't carry on with her tirade when so many engrossed onlookers heard the declaration. "Didn't your daddy teach you any manners, Chloe? Who is your friend?"

"Kate. This is my grandmother, Ruth Sweeney, and my pop, Joseph. Kate rents Uncle Trevor's house."

"A pleasure," Kate lied, offering her hand.

Joseph Sweeney shook her hand, but Ruth ignored the gesture. "Where is your uncle living?"

Chloe grabbed Kate's arm. "I think you should speak to my father. Come on, Kate."

"You can tell him I will," Ruth vowed. "Next thing you know, he'll have that father of his taking up roots when he gets paroled, if they don't hang him first."

"Ruth! That's enough!" Joseph finally said, but not before Chloe dropped Kate's arm and took off in the direction of the parking lot.

Kate bit off a caustic rebuttal so as not to make a bigger scene. For all his faults, Jake fought to keep his child when the easier road would have been to let her grandparents raise her. "If you'll excuse me."

Kate turned and walked to the jeep. She opened the passenger door and motioned for Chloe to get out. "I'm depending on you to introduce me to people."

"Why? They'll have you packing your bags for
New York
like my mother did."

"Is that what you think?"

Chloe nodded.

"You're wrong. I know about what happened with Trevor. He told me himself. And your father told me about your grandparents yesterday. Not everyone is as judgmental as they are."

Kate could see the skepticism in the girl's eyes. Jake had his reasons for keeping to himself, but he didn't notice that Chloe couldn't live like that, too.

"I think you wanted to come with me because you were hoping that people might finally accept you. But they aren't going to give you a chance until you give them one."

"How do I do that?" Chloe asked.

"You start by letting them know you. There's a bake sale in the church basement. Let's buy a cake."

Chloe jumped down and scuffed her feet against the asphalt parking lot. "You make better cakes then they do."

"It's for a good cause. It's called public relations. So when I pick out the ugliest-looking cake, you make sure you agree that it's irresistible."

Chloe smiled. "That's easy, Kate. Mrs. Johansson’s fruitcake. It's legendary in Tannersville. No one ever buys it."

"Then we best hurry. My Granny back in
New York
just loves fruitcake. I wouldn't want to miss it."

"Really?" Chloe's voice pitched as if she found the concept of anyone eating fruitcake inconceivable.

"Absolutely. We don't have to tell anyone that Granny is a cocker spaniel with a sweet tooth."

Chloe stopped and threw her arms around Kate's neck. "I love you."

Kate hadn't felt so touched in years. She swallowed the lump in her throat and sighed. "I love you, too."

* * * *

Jake jabbed the needle into his finger for the third time. He hated sewing buttons and had almost given in to Trevor's joking challenge that he asked Kate to do it. He tried to keep busy to stop himself from worrying. He was gaining a new perspective on the hell he had put his dear mother through.

Where were they? Mass had ended an hour ago. It only took twenty minutes to return from town. Something must have happened to upset Chloe. He should have followed his instincts and refused to allow her to go. He tossed the shirt, needle, and all onto a chair and went out to the porch. The noon sun cast a glare on the blacktop road that wound through plowed fields as far as the eye could see. An empty road, with no sign of life on the horizon.

"Afraid she kidnapped your daughter, Jake?"

Trevor sat high on a ladder across the yard, working on the gutters of his house. His sardonic grin was something that had brought them to fists on several occasions over the course of their bizarre relationship-that neurotic love-hate bond of identical twins that knew each other too well.

"You know Ruth and Joe go to mass every Sunday. What if they said something to Chloe?"

"I'm sure they did. But she can handle it, Jake. Or are you more worried about what Kate might find out while in town?"

He started to loosen his collar, but stopped when Trevor laughed again. "Grow up," he grunted.

"Me? I haven't had one of those marks on my neck since high school."

"Jealous?"

"You're damn straight. If I had known she was that aggressive, I might have asked her out myself."

"Shut up." He didn't like Trevor talking about Kate that way, even in jest.

Trevor came down from the ladder and folded it up. In his typical carefree manner, he found the opportunity to razz his brother more important than any work that had to be done. "So can I expect to be getting my house back anytime in the near future? Perhaps a switch with Kate?"

"You can forget that. I'd find myself back in court."

Trevor flopped down on the front stairs. "You could always marry her."

"I've known her four days."

"It only takes a minute to know if something's right."

"Oh, yeah. We have so much in common." Jake raised his hand in an imaginary toast, holding his pinky out. "Could you see me dressed in a tux and sipping champagne with the
New York
jet set?"

"What I see is a woman who gets up at six every morning to watch cows being milked as if it was an opening-night performance of the New York City Ballet. Someone who seems just a little bit happier and more relaxed with each passing day. Just because you wouldn't be comfortable in her world doesn't mean she couldn't be comfortable in yours. You put up the barriers, Jake. Not her."

"She's so damn rich. You know what people would say?"

"And we both know they don't talk about us now." Trevor's wry sense of humor never deserted him. Although Jake would never admit it, he admired his brother's ability to laugh at life's disappointments. "You can breathe now, Jake. They're back."

Jake gathered his wits and went to check on Chloe. He braced himself for another of her introverted silences. Instead, she came bouncing from the jeep like a child returning from a carnival.

She grabbed on to his arm in a fit of giggles, gasping for air so she could tell her story. "It was so funny, Dad. . . . You should have been there. You would have thought Mrs. Johannsen won the lottery when Kate bought her fruitcake."

Jake made a grimace of distaste. "The fruitcake? The dreaded fruitcake?"

"The very one. Here, I made you this," she said, pressing a cross of palms into his hand. "On Easter there's a midnight mass. Can I go?"

"Maybe," he said, not wanting to commit to anything until he had a chance to speak with Kate. "Were your grandparents there?"

Chloe crinkled her nose and then shrugged it off as no big deal. "Oh, yeah. Nana said she's gonna talk to you, so be prepared." She turned towards the jeep, a smile lighting her face. "What's taking' you so long, Kate?"

"This fruitcake weighs a ton," Kate complained, holding the offending object away from her body. She joined them and offered the cake to Jake. "You did say I should bring a cake for dinner, didn't you?"

"You can bury it in the compost heap. After that, I need to talk to you. Chloe, why don't you get changed." He looked at his daughter and noticed something different. "Where did you get that dress?"

Chloe did a small pirouette to show off the full swirl of the peach-colored dress. "Kate gave it to me. All my ones from last year were too small."

"You better give it back before you ruin it."

Chloe wrapped her arms possessively around her body. "She said I could have it. It doesn't fit her anymore."

"No! You don't ask people for their clothes," he said, feeling a bitterness churning in the pit of his stomach.

"It's all right. I said she could keep it," Kate said.

"And I said no. She doesn't need your castoffs. If she needs a dress, I'll buy her one."

Chloe looked as dazed as Kate, but she didn't dare disobey her father. "I'll bring it back in a few minutes, Kate."

Kate nodded sadly.

Jake waited until Chloe cleared off and turned a furious scowl on Kate. "Don't do that again. Don't give her your things."

"I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd be upset."

"Why? Do you think I'm so hard up that I need you giving my kid clothes?"

Her eyes got wider and she blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. "No."

"Then what were you thinking?"

Patches of red stained her cheeks. She looked everywhere, except at him. "It was a trade, Jake. She gave me overalls that were too big for her, and I gave her a dress that was too small. I'll give her back her things and it won't happen again."

His jaw dropped and he felt as if he'd been hit in the gut. He was, literally, when Kate shoved the cake at him.

"Bury it yourself."

He stood alone in the center of the yard, with a lead brick of a cake only Kate would be crazy enough to buy. Or kind enough. He could just imagine Mrs. Johansson’s face when someone finally bought one of her cakes.