A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas

And then two minutes ago, one of the other waitresses had told Chrissy that Pete wanted to see her in his office.

Don’t think it’s bad news, Chrissy told herself as she knocked on the door outside the office. Just because she’d been caught in the rush of layoffs at other restaurants lately, it was no reason to panic. There had to be a dozen reasons that Pete might want to talk to her. Maybe the fry cook had told him it had been her idea to offer a shaker of salt substitute on the table along with the regular salt and pepper.

“Come in.”

Pete was probably grateful that she was concerned about his customers’ health, Chrissy told herself as she took a deep breath.

“Please sit,” Pete said as he looked up from some papers. Pete had been a semipro football player before he bought the diner thirty years ago and, even with the gray hairs on his balding head, Chrissy thought he still looked as if he would be more comfortable on a football field than behind a desk.

“You wanted to see me?” Chrissy sat down on the folding chair opposite Pete’s desk.

Pete nodded and then swallowed. He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“Is it about the salt substitute?” Chrissy asked. She couldn’t stand the silence. Please, let it be the salt substitute. “I haven’t heard any customers complain. Except for Mr. Jenkins. But he thought it was sugar and put it in his tea.”

“Oh, yes, the salt substitute.” Pete looked relieved. “It’s never too early to pay attention to good health. I should have thought of offering a salt substitute years ago. Someone mentioned it to the dietitian at the retirement home down the street, and she recommended us to some of the residents who’d never been here before.”

“So business is good.” Chrissy was starting to feel better.

“It’s never been better. That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, I—”

Chrissy’s cell phone chose this moment to ring. She told herself to ignore it. But she’d gotten the phone only so that Mrs. Velarde could call her. Mrs. Velarde lived across the street from Chrissy’s mother and was baby-sitting little Justin temporarily. Chrissy was having as much trouble keeping baby-sitters as she was keeping jobs. She knew the call was about Justin.

“Excuse me,” Chrissy said finally as she reached around to unclip the phone from her belt. “I need to get this.”

She turned her shoulder slightly and said a low hello into the cell phone.

“There’s a man,” Mrs. Velarde almost shrieked into the cell phone. “You told me to watch out for a man prowling around, and he’s here!”

“Jared’s there?” Chrissy was shocked. When she had warned Mrs. Velarde to watch out for Jared, she had never expected him to make the drive down from Las Vegas to see Justin. The bond that had held her and Jared together in high school was no longer even a thread.

Jared had learned that money could buy friends since he’d gotten access to his trust fund, and he no longer needed Chrissy. With his new friends, his life had unraveled even further in the months since Chrissy had left him. He’d told her he was glad she was gone, because now he could date women who really knew how to party.

Chrissy had told him that he was a fool and she was sorry he was the father of her baby.

No matter how isolated Chrissy had felt in high school, she had never turned to the drug crowd for friends. Jared was using drugs, and he had made it very clear he wasn’t interested in being a husband and or a father.

But as much as Jared wanted to avoid the baby, Jared’s mother was adamant in her desire to know more about Justin. She had given up on Jared ever entering the family business, but she obviously had hopes she could start over and train a baby to be a more obedient heir. So far Jared had refused to tell his mother that Justin was his son, but if Mrs. Bard offered Jared enough money, he might decide to confirm what his mother already suspected and help her try to claim custody of Justin. “You’re sure it’s him?”

“Well, I don’t know what Jared looks like, but there’s a man parked in front of my house who keeps looking over at your house. He even went up and rang the bell once, but no one answered, of course, with you and your mom both at work.”

“You’re sure he isn’t a deliveryman or something?”

“There’s no uniform. Besides, he’s young and good-looking. No one else comes to your house who is young and good-looking.”

“I guess it could be Jared. Or someone else his mother has hired.”

Mrs. Bard made Chrissy nervous. Mrs. Velarde had already told her that a private investigator had been asking questions about Chrissy in the neighborhood. It had to be someone working for Jared’s mother.

“You want me to call the police?” Mrs. Velarde asked.

“He hasn’t done anything yet, has he?”

“He sits out there.”

“Does he look like someone on drugs?”

“No. He just sits.”

“That’s probably not Jared, then. Maybe he’s a salesman and will go away in a minute or two. Just keep Justin inside until I get home.”

Mrs. Velarde grunted. “I’ll keep my baseball bat by the door, too. Nobody comes to see our Justin without his mama here.”

“Call if you need me.” Chrissy said goodbye and flipped her cell phone shut before she saw the concerned frown on Pete’s face.

“Trouble at home?” Pete asked.

Chrissy didn’t bother to deny it. He knew that much already. And the trouble would only get worse. Mrs. Velarde was scheduled to leave for Florida next week to move in with her daughter, and so far Chrissy had not found someone else to take care of Justin while she worked.

“My neighbor who is watching Justin is worried. I may need to leave for a few minutes and go home if she calls again.”

“You’re welcome to use the delivery car to drive home. Take as much time as you need.” Pete rubbed his hands over his head. “I’ve never been able to offer the best salaries in the business, but I’ve always tried to be flexible.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I’ve always looked at the staff as family, which is why it’s so hard to—”

Chrissy wanted to put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear what was coming next. “But business has been good.”

“Business has never been better,” Pete agreed. “And your idea with the salt substitute is one of the reasons.”

Chrissy decided she didn’t need her hands over her ears after all. Maybe the reason Pete had called her into his office was to thank her for the suggestion.

“It was a simple idea,” Chrissy said.

Pete nodded. “But it has made all the difference. That’s why I wanted you to be the first to know the news.”

Chrissy felt a sudden unease. A thank-you would be nice, but it wasn’t actually news. “Are we changing the menu again?”

Pete chuckled. “I don’t think I’d live long enough to do that even if I weren’t moving to Arizona.”

“What?”

Pete winced. “I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that. I never was any good at things like this. Actually, I wanted to thank you. The extra business we have because of the salt substitute must be what finally made the diner look attractive enough to find a buyer. A real estate agent called me last week.”

“I see.”

“The offer is just too good to turn down.”

“Will the new owner keep the place a diner?”

“They’re thinking along the lines of a tea shop. Crumpets. Scones. That kind of thing.”

“I see.”

“They’ve promised they’ll have a job for every one of my staff. I wouldn’t sell otherwise.”

Chrissy started to breathe again. She’d already lost two waitress jobs because business was bad; she didn’t want to lose another because business was good. “Do the others know?”

“I’m going to tell them when the shift changes at three this afternoon. That way, everyone will be here.”

Chrissy heard a bell in the kitchen. “That must be my last order. I better get out there.”

Pete nodded.

For the next hour Chrissy was too busy with hamburgers and chicken strips to worry. And then she got a second call from Mrs. Velarde.

“I’ve got to go,” she said to Pete as she walked to the door of the diner.

He nodded and tossed her a set of keys. “Take the delivery car.”

Reno decided everything he had ever heard about crime in Los Angeles was true. Here he was in broad daylight, parked in a residential area, and it sounded as if a dozen police sirens were all going off at once. It had been enough to wake him up from his nap, and he was tired enough to sleep through an earthquake.

Tonight he’d check in to a hotel by the ocean and get a good night’s sleep before he left to go back. He’d pulled into Los Angeles early this morning and had gone directly to the office of Joseph Price, Esquire. Reno didn’t know why he’d decided to visit the lawyer. Maybe he just wanted to be sure Chrissy hadn’t already accepted the offer before he went to the trouble of trying to find her with the address he had.

He hadn’t been in the lawyer’s office five minutes before Reno regretted stopping. Chrissy was no match for the man, and Reno would have been happier not knowing that fact.

Reno’s distrust of the man only deepened when the lawyer talked about the educational opportunities Mrs. Bard was hoping to give Chrissy’s baby.

“She’s prepared to pay the costs for a private education, from military boarding school to graduate school at Princeton or Yale—she’s even got her eye on some kind of exclusive kindergarten for the gifted in Boston,” the attorney said as he offered Reno coffee in a china cup.

“No, thanks,” Reno said. “I thought Mrs. Bard lived in Los Angeles. Is she moving to Boston?”

“She doesn’t need to move to Boston.” The attorney set the cup of coffee on his own desk. “Fortunately, the school is a live-in situation. Twenty-four-hour care and mental stimulation. The baby will grow up to be a genius.”

Reno grunted. “Even a genius needs a home.”

The attorney took a sip of coffee. “The Bards own a house in San Marino and another in Vail. The boy won’t lack for a place to visit during his school breaks. And there’ll be adequate supervisory care.”

Reno didn’t like the sound of this. What kind of grandmother was this woman? “It takes more than a house to make a home. Isn’t Mrs. Bard going to bake him cookies?”

The lawyer laughed. “Mrs. Bard doesn’t bake anything. She’s a very busy woman.”

“Too busy for a little boy?”

“Don’t worry. Mrs. Bard is hoping to make the boy her heir. That should tell you how she feels. Her only concern is that the baby is Jared’s son. That’s why she hired our firm. She’s paying us a handsome bonus if the baby is Jared’s son, so of course, we’re hoping it is.”

The lawyer started to lift the cup again.

“How much of a bonus?” Reno asked.

The attorney stopped with his cup halfway up in the air and looked at Reno. “You certainly ask a lot of questions. Why are you so worried about this baby, if you’ve never even seen him?”

Reno smiled slightly. He could see the lawyer was beginning to think that Reno might really be the father of Chrissy’s baby. It was the first time in the conversation that the question had even seemed to arise. “Let’s just say I want to make sure everyone is happy.”

The lawyer studied the cup he held in his hand. “I see. Well, I can assure you Mrs. Bard will want to share her happiness with everyone if we prove to her the baby is Jared’s son. So if she’s happy, we’re happy. Of course—” he paused “—if someone else had reason to believe he could be the baby’s father, we would want to make him happy, too.”

“You’d pay me off?”

The lawyer shrugged. “I didn’t say that, now, did I? I’m just pointing out that there’s no way to really prove who the father is without a blood test, and Miss Hamilton refuses to agree to that. I’m afraid Chrissy is both stubborn and foolish. She refused to list Jared on the birth certificate or even to say he’s the father, so she can’t press for child support. At her age, with only a high school education, she’ll never be able to support the baby herself, not working as a waitress like she does.”

“But—” Reno started to protest.

The lawyer waved his hand. “Oh, I have to admit she’s a gutsy young woman. She bounced back real fast when she lost her last two jobs. But how much longer can she move from job to job? It might be okay now that she’s living in her mother’s house, but how long will that last? She won’t find a decent place to rent in Los Angeles on her salary. And that’s just now. She’ll certainly never be able to afford private schools and college. We’re really doing her a favor to help her recognize that the baby is better off with Mrs. Bard. It’ll save Miss Hamilton years of hard work and heartache. Mrs. Bard is even willing to pay her enough so that she can go to college herself and make something of her life.”

“She has made something of her life.” Reno stood up to leave. “She has the baby to prove it.”

Reno left the lawyer’s office with a sour taste in his mouth and drove to the west side of Los Angeles. The lawyer had at least confirmed Chrissy’s current address. After Reno knocked at the house’s door and no one answered, he went back to the car to wait. It was hard to get comfortable in the compact space of Mrs. Hargrove’s car, but he managed. His waiting had turned to napping when the sirens penetrated his sleep.

Reno saw the woman open her door and wave a baseball bat at him at the same time that the police cars came around all the street corners and headed straight for him.

Reno woke up all the way. People in Los Angeles sure knew how to get a man’s attention.

“Come out of your car with your hands up,” the loudspeaker on top of one police car blared out as the cars pulled to a halt and turned off their sirens.

Reno counted four police cars blocking him in.

Reno hadn’t trained a half-wolf dog without learning when to move easy. He put his hands up in plain view and nudged the car door open with his elbow. He couldn’t even guess what law he’d broken. Maybe people didn’t park in front of houses in Los Angeles, especially not in rusted-out cars with red plastic balls on their antennas. Mrs. Hargrove had put the red ball on the antenna one winter when the snow was particularly high, and she hadn’t bothered to take it off.

“I can move the car if you want,” Reno called out as he shouldered the door open and stepped out. “And that red ball, it’s just a plastic thing from some gas station.”

“Keep your hands where we can see them,” the voice on the loudspeaker demanded. Apparently the police in Los Angeles took their parking tickets seriously.

Chrissy’s heart stopped when she saw the police cars parked in front of her place. Four cars! Whoever was in that car must have tried to take Justin. That was the only thing that would make them send four cars. She knew Mrs. Bard had hired an attorney to try to take Justin away from her, and Chrissy had begun to wonder if Jared’s mother would try kidnapping the baby if she got frustrated enough.

Chrissy knew Mrs. Bard could offer her baby all of the advantages money could buy. Sometimes Chrissy felt selfish for even refusing to consider the woman’s offer—until she remembered that Jared had had those same advantages, and look how unhappy his childhood had been.

Chrissy pulled her car up behind a police car and got out to rap on its window.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

The policeman inside looked up from the report he was writing and rolled down the window. “What do you think you’re doing? Keep your head down. He could be armed. Get back to your car and wait.”

Chrissy saw the police put handcuffs on some man standing beside an old car. They were all on Mrs. Velarde’s lawn. Chrissy could see only the back of the man the police had cuffed. It wasn’t Jared, but the man did look familiar. Mrs. Bard must have hired one of Jared’s friends.

“I’m not going back. My son’s inside that house.” Chrissy pointed to the house where Mrs. Velarde lived. Chrissy thought she could hear Justin’s cry from here. She was glad to see that the baby-sitter had drawn the drapes to the house.

As Chrissy checked the house she saw Mrs. Velarde standing on the porch with the baseball bat in her hand. She had a housedress on, and her hair was in curlers.

“Go back inside!” Chrissy shouted.

Even though she was watching Mrs. Velarde on the porch, Chrissy also saw the man who was being handcuffed turn at the sound of her shout and look over at her. It was enough to make her eyes turn from the sitter.

Oh, no! Chrissy looked at the man in astonishment. He had a cap on his head that hid his face from the sun, but she didn’t need to see his face to know the man who stood there was the last man on earth she wanted to see. Or, rather, it was the last man who would want to see her.

She hadn’t realized until she’d been seeing her physician for a while that spurts of idiotic tears were perfectly normal for a pregnant woman. She’d never cried before in her life, but when she was pregnant, she’d cried over everything, even dinner invitations from handsome men that she couldn’t accept.

“What’s he doing here?” Chrissy whispered.

“Dealing drugs, we think,” the policeman answered from inside the car. “Or maybe just using them. We don’t know.”

“Reno Redfern?”

The policeman nodded. “That’s what he said his name is. I’m running his plates now to check it out. Do you know him?”

Ten minutes later Chrissy poured Reno a cup of coffee in Mrs. Velarde’s kitchen.

“I’m so sorry,” the baby-sitter repeated as she wiped her hands on her apron. There were open cardboard boxes sitting in the kitchen with pots and pans in them.

“It’s my fault,” Chrissy said. “If I hadn’t been so paranoid about Jared showing up, I wouldn’t have kept asking Mrs. Velarde to keep an eye out for a man on drugs.”

Chrissy tried to ignore the boxes. What was she going to do with Justin when Mrs. Velarde moved to Florida?

“Well, I guess most people don’t park in front of your house and then go to sleep,” Reno offered.

“I thought you were out on some overdose,” Mrs. Velarde admitted as she drew a circle around her head with her finger to signify “crazy.”

Reno took another gulp of his coffee. “No harm done. I’m glad you’re suspicious of strange men hanging around.” He turned to Chrissy. “I don’t know if you’re aware that Jared’s mother has hired a lawyer to investigate you.”

Chrissy nodded miserably. “Don’t tell me she sent someone to Dry Creek, too.”

Dry Creek was the one place that she’d felt was beyond Mrs. Bard’s reach. Not a day had gone by since Chrissy left Dry Creek that she hadn’t thought about that little town. She’d go to sleep at night with the picture of it in her mind. She’d even made up a little lullaby about the town that she sang to Justin.

Chrissy looked up from her hands. “I’m a good mother, you know. I might be young, but I love my son and we’re going to do just fine.”

Chrissy knew she’d never give up her rights to Justin. She didn’t know much about rashes and formulas. She didn’t make much money, but she’d find a way to avoid welfare. Maybe someday she could save enough to buy a small restaurant. She’d be a respectable member of the community. Justin wouldn’t regret that she hadn’t given him to his grandmother to raise. Besides, she knew how to make Justin smile, and she intended to devote her life to seeing that he was happy.

Reno nodded. As it turned out, he hadn’t needed to worry about what to say to Chrissy when he met her. The police had sort of taken care of that. But he couldn’t seem to get the conversation into position so he could ask her about moving to Dry Creek.

“It sure looks like you have everything under control.” Reno nodded his head in the direction of Mrs. Velarde. “You’ve got someone to take care of Justin if you want to go out to dinner after work—” Reno swallowed. Now, why had he mentioned dinner? That had nothing to do with moving to Dry Creek.

“Work!” Chrissy set down her glass of water and looked at Reno. “I’ve got to run. But I’ll be back—my shift ends in two hours. Can you stay till then?”

Reno nodded. He’d driven over a thousand miles. He needed to ask the question. “I could even take you out to dinner when you get back.”

Reno saw the surprise in Chrissy’s eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was a good surprise or a bad surprise.

“Oh, there is no need to eat in a strange place,” Mrs. Velarde offered. “I’m making meatball soup.”

Chrissy left Mrs. Velarde’s kitchen before the tears could start. Reno had asked her to dinner again. Of course, this time it might not be a date as much as it was a way for him to find something to eat in a strange city, but it still made her want to cry. She wondered why that was. The doctor hadn’t said the tendency to tears would continue after Justin was born.

Chapter Four

When Chrissy got home, Mrs. Velarde announced that the soup was not enough for dinner. “Better you should go out to eat with Reno. A nice man like him, he needs a full meal. Maybe some fish. I’ll watch the baby until your mother gets home.”

Chrissy didn’t like to rely on her mother for child care. Her mother had made enough sacrifices all her life for Chrissy.

“Mom’s working late tonight,” Chrissy finally said. “Some last-minute meeting. I should take Justin with us.”

“Nonsense.” Mrs. Velarde shooed her out of the kitchen and into the living room, where Reno stood holding Justin. “The baby will be more comfortable here. Mr. Reno—he has been so kind, playing with the little one and cutting the onions for the soup so I don’t cry the onion tears. And me—I almost had him arrested. Now he must eat.”

Mrs. Velarde stopped to beam up at Reno.

“But I’m not even dressed for dinner.” Chrissy looked down at the orange uniform she still wore. Pete had the eye of a football player, and he believed a uniform should be seen from a distance. The orange dress was obviously not something to wear on a date—if Reno was in fact asking her out on a date, and not just looking for someone to guide him to a good restaurant.

“You look fine,” Reno said as he handed Justin to Mrs. Velarde. “I hear there’s a great seafood place at the end of Mullen Drive. Matt’s Galley. Mrs. Velarde said it’s a favorite of yours.”

Chrissy knew enough about men to know that they would at least look at a woman before saying she looked fine if they were heading out on a date. Well, she supposed that was her clue. This wasn’t a date. They were just two people who were hungry for seafood.

“How was work today?” Reno asked.

Chrissy noticed the candle at the table cast shadows on Reno’s face, but it did nothing to dim the startling blue of his eyes.

“They’re going to turn the diner into a tea shop.” Pete’s announcement had been hard for most of the staff. Some of the waitresses had worked for Pete for ten years or more. “But Pete assures us we’ll all have jobs with the new owners.”

Chrissy found it hard to concentrate on talking about her job.

She wondered if Reno could be any better looking. Back in Dry Creek when she’d been out at the ranch, Reno’s good looks just sort of matched the scenery. The sky had stretched from east to west with nothing but the Big Sheep Mountains to stop it from reaching down to level ground. The ground itself had been golden with fall colors. Even the air had smelled rich with the promise of moisture. Reno’s good looks had just blended into the countryside, and no one seemed to particularly notice them any more than they noticed the sky or the mountains.

But here…Chrissy knew it was unusual for three different waitresses to ask if they needed more water within the space of five minutes. It was clear that Reno was getting plenty of notice. Not that he seemed to be paying any attention. Chrissy was glad he wasn’t, even if this wasn’t a date.

The waitresses at Matt’s Galley wore snappy shorts and black nylons, which made Chrissy feel even more dowdy in her orange dress. The dress didn’t even fit properly, since it was a size too big. She’d bought the uniform secondhand from one of the other waitresses rather than buy a new one of her own. Tonight she wished she’d spent the extra twenty dollars.