Page 11 of Mariah

“Movies and ice cream?” Tessa asked.

“We did that last week,” Jade pshawed. “It’s gonna be something different.”

“Ummm maybe an amusement park?” Ellie guessed with a frown.

“That’s too far away unless you count the one at Circus Circus. I don’t think Baze would take us there,” Jilly piped up. “What do you think it is, Mariah?”

Mariah shrugged. “I think… I’d rather be surprised.”

“Surprised by what?” Baze asked, coming up behind them holding his own bowl of sugary chocolatey cereal.

“Daddy,” Luna explained, “we were just trying to guess what you might have planned for Mariah’s birthday.”

“Ah, I see. Well, you could keep guessing, or I could just tell you,” Baze answered with a wink. “So what’s it gonna be, Mariah?”

She grinned. “Tell us please.”

“We are going to a petting farm! You’ll get to feed and cuddle baby cows and goats and chickens and bunnies and pigs and sheep and whatever else they have there!”

Mariah’s mouth dropped open and her eyes welled with tears. She missed her animals back home, and it had been years since she’d gotten to see any of those things. “Really?” she cried. “A petting farm? Really truly?” Jumping from her seat she ran up to Baze and tackled his waist with a tight hug before looking up at him with questions in her eyes.

“But how? We’re in Vegas!”

“It will be a couple hours’ drive,” he admitted. “But not too far, and we’ve got several hours. However we do need to be back here for dinner, so we better get going. Put your bowls in the dirty dish tray and let’s head out.”

Her friends raced to do what they were told—Margo even took Mariah’s bowl for her, but Mariah still had questions. As they lined up at the door, she looked down at her fancy dress and frowned. “Wait! Don’t we need to change?”

“I don’t think so,” Baze answered jovially. “You look beautiful. Maybe a bit overdressed but it will make for some very cute pictures.”

“But what about my shoes? They’ll get ruined!” Mariah extended one foot in the air in front of her to point at her white Mary Janes.

“I have muck boots in the car as well as jackets, diaper bags and extra snacks,” Baze informed her. “Don’t worry. I already thought of everything. Now can we please go?” He motioned for her to join her friends and she hustled into action, smiling up at him.

“Yes, Mister Daddy. We can go now. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love my birthday surprise.” She was glad it wasn’t shopping, mini golf, a movie or any of the things her friends had mentioned. Baze had picked the perfect activity for her, and she was so excited she almost forgot to be mad at Chef Graham.

Almost.

Graham

Graham stuck his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on crafting the perfect orange roses for the top of Mariah’s cake. He absolutely hated cake decorating and he could have—probably should have—just ordered one from any of the fancy bakeries up and down the strip, but he wanted to make it himself. For Mariah. Hopefully, the fact that he sucked at it and it was an all-day project for him would make up for the fact that it would probably look like a toddler had decorated it. He finished the last rose, wrote Happy Birthday Mariah across the top in orange icing and glanced at the clock just as Knox poked his head in.

“Margo says they are about an hour out, so I’m gonna start decorating. Boss said you had the decorations?”

“They’re in the office.” He inclined his head toward the back of the kitchen where a small room near the walk-in boasted a built-in desk, a straight-backed chair and a rack for his coat.

Knox pushed past him as he entered, looking over his shoulder at the cake as he passed. “Dude. That looks like a five-year-old decorated it.”

“I’m a chef, not a baker,” Graham lamented. “And most especially, not a cake decorator, no matter how hard I try.”

Knox laughed. “Well, that’s the truth, but Mariah is gonna love it anyway.” He wiggled his fingers around the box he was holding as he left the kitchen.

Graham hoped she did love it. He’d done it for her. When Baze had mentioned throwing a birthday party, he’d jumped at the chance to make the cake, without thinking it through until it was too late.

He’d needed the whole day to work on it so he’d ended up breaking his promise to make her favorite breakfast—opting instead to fix breakfast for dinner, which he was starting now. He’d been here early this morning working with all the doors and the partitions sealed when Mariah and the rest of them came down for breakfast and though he couldn’t see her, he could almost feel her disappointment.

That was hard enough. Add in the fact that he had very mixed feelings about making Mariah a special menu in the first place, and even more so the cake he’d volunteered to bake, and he’d been a wreck all day, with nothing to think about but Mariah and what she was doing to him.

She’d gotten under his skin on day one. And he’d been fighting to regain the upper hand ever since. And just when he thought he had it and he’d reminded himself how much trouble Littles were and how he wasn’t ready to have another one, she’d do something adorable like randomly breaking into song while she cooked, or something where he’d go into auto Daddy mode like when she cut her finger on a broken dish. Or like today, when she went and had a birthday.