A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas
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Reno frowned. “Mrs. Velarde told me you’ve lost a lot of jobs—”
Chrissy flushed. “The restaurant business can be unpredictable.” The two restaurants she’d worked for before Pete’s had both gone out of business.
“All I meant was—well, when she told me that, I wondered if Mrs. Bard’s attorney was behind it.”
Chrissy was amazed that the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “Would he do that?”
Could he do that? Chrissy asked herself. The first restaurant had closed after they lost most of their business to a sandwich truck that parked outside their doors and practically gave away gourmet sandwiches to anyone who wanted one.
The next restaurant had been closed when someone left a lit candle on a table near the stack of folded napkins.
“But one of the restaurants burned down—wouldn’t he lose his law license doing things like that?” Chrissy protested. “I’ve never met the man, but he can’t be that foolish.”
“I have met the man,” Reno said, “and I think he’ll do whatever he can to collect the bonus Mrs. Bard is offering. I have the impression the amount is very generous. And all he really has to do is convince you Justin is better off with Mrs. Bard than you. He’s talking Princeton and Yale. And I’m sure he’s not breaking any laws personally. He probably knows people who arrange things.”
“Justin would never be better off with someone else.” Chrissy grabbed hold of the only thing she could in the swirling thoughts around her. How could she compete with Princeton and Yale? She’d be lucky to afford community college. Still…“I’m his mother and I love him. I’ll never let him go.”
Reno hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until he felt the tension slowly leave his body. He was glad Chrissy sounded so adamant. “Then you’ll need to come back to Dry Creek with me.”
“What?”
Reno frowned. He hadn’t meant to say it so bluntly. He hadn’t shown a glimmer of the charm Mrs. Hargrove thought he’d shown in first grade. “That is, if you want to come.”
Chrissy was still looking startled.
“We have free sundaes in the café on Friday nights,” Reno added. He swore the temperature inside the restaurant had just risen twenty degrees. “They have eleven kinds of toppings.”
“No one has eleven kinds of toppings.”
“They count the sprinkles and the nuts.”
There was silence for a moment, and Reno began to think the impossible was happening.
“I don’t accept charity,” Chrissy said.
“It’s only a sundae.” Reno told himself he shouldn’t be disappointed. He hadn’t really expected her to agree.
“I mean coming back to Dry Creek. I don’t need anyone’s pity. Justin and I will do fine.”
“What’s pity got to do with anything? It’s an invitation.”
Reno remembered Mrs. Hargrove’s advice to be charming, so he did his best. He relaxed his frown and smiled with all his heart.
Chrissy blinked. Reno should warn a woman before he smiled like that. His smile made her lose her place in her thoughts, and she had a feeling she needed to think. “From you? Is the invitation from you? Are you asking me to come?”
“Well, yes.”
Chrissy felt as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole. Reno was sitting there and asking her to—to what? Had he seen her looking at him and admiring his eyes? Was he suggesting she move back to Dry Creek so they could live together? Or was her mother right? Chrissy’s mother had cautioned her that men would think she was more—what was the word her mother used—available because of Justin. Chrissy hadn’t believed her. But here sat Reno, with a heart-stopping smile on his face, asking her to move back to Dry Creek.
“Babies are a lot of work. I don’t have much time for fun.”
“I know what you mean,” Reno said. He looked relieved that she had changed the subject. “I have a dozen or so calves that eat up a storm. I don’t get much done except feeding them this time of year—and I need to get to the plowing if the mud ever dries up.”
“What I meant is, I don’t go out like I did before Justin was born.”
Reno wasn’t looking as distressed as Chrissy thought he should be if he was getting her message.
“I’m not going to have sex again unless I’m married.” Chrissy finally decided she might as well be blunt. “So there’s no reason to ask me to come live with you.”
“Oh,” The surprise on Reno’s face couldn’t have been anything but genuine.
“Oh.” Chrissy echoed. She wondered if she could hide under the table in her orange dress or if it was hopeless. “You weren’t asking me that, were you?”
“I never thought you would—” Reno took a deep breath. “I mean, not that if I had thought you would—I’d—of course, I’d not—”
“Would you two like more water?” a cheerful blond waitress inquired as she stepped closer to the table.
Chrissy said, “Yes.”
At the same time Reno said, “No.”
The waitress glanced at Reno’s face and hesitated. “I’ll come back.”
Chrissy didn’t blame the waitress. She would have run away, too.
“I never would suggest that you come live with me in that way.” Reno said the words slowly. Chrissy only had to look into his eyes to know he was sincere. “Of course, you probably know that I find you attractive, so it’s not that I wouldn’t want to—”
“Really?” Chrissy was feeling better already. So Reno found her attractive.
“I asked you out,” Reno said indignantly. “You were the one who refused.”
“I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant women eat.”
“So you thought I needed help and you decided to ask me to move to Dry Creek?”
Reno nodded.
“Well, I still don’t need your charity.” Chrissy crossed her arms. She’d already thought about moving back to Dry Creek, and she’d gone over in her mind any possible jobs. There were none that she could see.
“Who mentioned charity? I’m offering you help.”
“I don’t take handouts. I need a job to support myself and Justin.”
“Mrs. Hargrove thought you could stay with her.”
Chrissy blinked. “Mrs. Hargrove? Does she know about Justin?”
Reno nodded. “She’s the one who started this idea.”
“Mrs. Hargrove wants me to move there and stay with her?” Chrissy had liked Mrs. Hargrove when she met the older woman at Thanksgiving dinner at the Redfern Ranch. But Mrs. Hargrove was clearly a churchwoman, and Chrissy had always thought churchwomen looked down on unmarried mothers. She knew they had looked down on her mother years ago. “And she knows about Justin? Isn’t she worried that I don’t have a husband?”
“Not that she’s mentioned.”
“Why?” Chrissy crossed her arms. “Why would she want me to come stay with her when you and I both know she has to think I’m one of those sinners?”
Reno smiled. “Mrs. Hargrove teaches first-grade Sunday school. She thinks everyone is a sinner.”
“Well, if she thinks that, then why—”
Reno interrupted her softly. “She also knows about forgiveness and grace. She knows life isn’t always easy.”
Chrissy relaxed her arms. Maybe there were people like Mrs. Hargrove who weren’t set on judging her. “Well, if I had a job—”
“We’ll worry about a job when we get there.”
Chrissy’s cell phone rang. She kept the phone clipped to her waitress uniform, so it was still in place. Chrissy reached down to unhook the phone, and she put it to her ear. “Hello?”
“There’s a fire!” Mrs. Velarde said breathlessly. “I called the fire department, but it’s still burning.”
“Grab Justin and get out of the house!” Chrissy stood up from the table.
“Not my house,” Mrs. Velarde said, and then she took a deep breath.
Chrissy relaxed. “Just stay inside, then, until the fire department gets there.”
“It’s your mother’s house,” Mrs. Velarde continued.
Chrissy turned to Reno.
Reno had already stood and laid three twenties on the table. “Let’s go.”
As Reno drove faster than he should down the street toward her mother’s house Chrissy reminded herself that her mother was working late. Please, let her be working late, Chrissy added, and realized in surprise that it was the first time in her life that she could remember praying. It must be all this talking with Reno. She hoped Mrs. Hargrove’s God was listening to her.
The sharp, hot smell of burning wood grew stronger as Reno drove the car to the fire truck parked in front of Chrissy’s mother’s house.
“Was anyone inside?” Chrissy called out to a fireman before Reno had pulled the car to a stop.
The fireman shook his head. “Didn’t look like it.”
Chrissy slumped against the car seat. “If she had been there, she could have died.”
“They would have gotten her out.”
“I need to go to Dry Creek with you,” Chrissy said softly. “If he will set fire to my mother’s house, he will do anything. My mother’s not safe with me here, and neither is Justin.”
“I’m sure they’d never hurt Justin.”
Chrissy grimaced. “I know. All they want to do to him is take him away from me.”
Chrissy turned at the sound of another car driving down their street much too fast. The car braked and her mother stepped out and started running toward the house. “Chrissy!”
“I’m over here, Mom,” Chrissy called from the car window.
Then she stepped out of the car and into her mother’s arms.
Reno watched Chrissy hug her mother. So Chrissy was coming back to Dry Creek with him. He wished it hadn’t taken a fire to make her decide. It sure hadn’t been his charm that had swayed her in the direction of Dry Creek. Still, he’d feel better knowing she and Justin would be where he could keep an eye on them. Strangers would be easy to spot in Dry Creek.
Reno remembered the interstate that ran past the Dry Creek exit and frowned. A car could pull into the town at night and no one would notice. Chrissy and Justin would be a lot safer at the Redfern Ranch than in Dry Creek. His dog, Hunter, would frighten off any trouble from the city. Maybe once he got Chrissy and Justin to Dry Creek he could mention the safety of the ranch.
Chapter Five
The smell of burned wood and rubber hung in the air as Chrissy put a box into the trunk of Mrs. Hargrove’s car. The car was parked in the Velarde driveway, and Chrissy’s mother was inside at the Velarde kitchen table. Most of what Chrissy owned had been burned in the fire, so Mrs. Velarde had given her a cardboard box to pack what was left. Quite a few of Justin’s things were all right, because they had been with him at the Velarde house.
The only other things that Chrissy still owned for herself were several sequin-dresses from her days as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. She’d given the dresses to Mrs. Velarde to keep for the Salvation Army truck when it came by for donations. Now she’d need to wear them sometimes, even if it was only when she had her orange waitress uniform in the washing machine.
The small box fit into the trunk beside the spare tire. It wasn’t much to start a life with, and Chrissy was glad Reno had sounded as if he felt she could find a job. If she had a job, she could buy some more clothes and a few toys for Justin.
Her mother had surprised Chrissy by urging her to move to Dry Creek.
“The Lord knows you’re used to moving. I’d feel better knowing the two of you are safe,” Chrissy’s mother said as she looked over at Reno and smiled slightly. “Besides, I’ll know you’re with family there, and that makes me feel better.”
Reno frowned. “We’re not really related. Just by marriage. We’re not cousins.”
Chrissy’s mother smiled more broadly. “Oh, I know that. I meant Garrett. He’ll be there, won’t he?”
“Oh, yeah, in a few days.”
Chrissy’s mother nodded. “Chrissy has always been fond of Garrett. Besides, I may be able to move up there, too, when I wrap things up here with the fire.”
Chrissy had told the fire captain about her suspicions, and he had written everything down, even Mrs. Bard’s full name and Jared’s phone number. The captain said the fire looked as if it had started on the outside wall by the garage. There was nothing electrical around, and although they wouldn’t know for sure until they did some testing, he thought the fire had been started with gasoline. Of course, he added, whoever set it was probably only intending to scare Chrissy and her mother and not actually burn the house down. If someone had been home, they would have smelled the smoke long before the house burned.
The streetlights made shadows on the asphalt, and Chrissy was glad Reno had agreed to leave tonight for Dry Creek. She got nervous every time a car drove down the street. Would that lawyer send someone to see if she was still there?
Once, a black sedan stopped at the end of the street, and she didn’t relax until she heard the music being turned up loud. It was some old sixties music that she hadn’t heard for a long time. She recognized some Beatles songs and a Carpenters song. Then she heard the Mrs. Robinson song. It was odd music for teenagers, but who else would turn the music up like that? The black sedan wasn’t a kid car, but it might belong to one of their fathers.
Chrissy shook her head. She wasn’t used to feeling spooked, and the more miles she put between herself and Los Angeles, the better she’d feel.
“You’ll call Pete’s and explain?” Chrissy reminded her mother. Ordinarily, Chrissy wouldn’t leave a job without giving notice, but she knew Pete would be relieved to have one less employee to worry about in the sale of the diner.
Chrissy’s mother nodded. “And you call when you get to Dry Creek. I’ll be staying with Mrs. Velarde for a few days.”
It was past midnight before Chrissy strapped Justin into his infant seat and crawled into the back seat herself. “Let me know if you want me to drive.”
“Maybe you can get some sleep.” Reno came around the side of the car with a blanket and handed it to her.
“I’m happy to help drive.” Chrissy hugged the blanket to her. It smelled of peppermint, and she couldn’t wait to snuggle into its warmth. “You haven’t had any sleep either.”
“I had a nap this afternoon with Justin.” Reno slid into the driver’s seat and checked the mirrors. He frowned a minute and then opened the car door again. Standing outside, he twisted the red ball off the antenna. “This car is odd enough, but with that red thing sticking up like that, a blind man could follow us to Dry Creek.”
Chrissy fell asleep before Reno got on Interstate 15. He noticed her stir at the first sound of Justin’s crying at dawn. There was desert on both sides of the car and a string of cars behind them on the single-lane highway.
“Do you want to stop in Vegas? We’re coming up on the city.” Reno looked back at Chrissy and held his breath. It had occurred to him somewhere around Barstow that Chrissy might want to stop in Vegas and stay there with Jared or at least visit him and show him their baby. Reno knew she’d said she wasn’t returning to Jared, but sometimes people didn’t know what they wanted until it was in front of them.
“If you don’t mind,” Chrissy said sleepily. “Any gas station will do. I should nurse Justin.”
Reno started to breathe again. “No problem.”
The casinos of Vegas stood straight ahead on the road like giant cartoon buildings. In the gathering dawn they looked almost eerie with their flashing lights. Reno pulled into the next gas station that he saw also had a pay phone.
He’d decided to call Mrs. Hargrove so she could post a sign in the café asking for someone to work as her housekeeper. As proud as Chrissy was, she wouldn’t accept a job that she thought was created just for her. A sign on the bulletin board in the café when she got there should convince her that Mrs. Hargrove’s job was legitimate. Chrissy wouldn’t need to know Reno was the one paying her salary.
Chrissy sat in the back seat of the car while Reno made his phone call. She was glad he’d decided he had some things to do so that she could nurse Justin in private. She loved these moments with Justin, even though being this close to Las Vegas made her nervous. When Justin was satisfied, she rearranged her blouse and looked around.
Chrissy rolled down the car window and glanced at the other cars in the gas station. Was it her imagination, or could she hear the same songs that she’d heard when she packed up earlier to leave with Reno? Yes, there it was—the faint sound of the Mrs. Robinson song.
She looked around more closely. None of the cars at the pumps looked familiar. Besides, the music was probably from a CD, and there could be millions of copies of the song. She looked over the cars at the pump again. She didn’t see a black sedan, and that’s what had been in her neighborhood.
Chrissy was glad when she saw Reno walking toward the car. He’d gone into the minimart and was carrying a white bag and two cartons.
“I got us some milk and donuts.” Reno slid the items through the open window and into Chrissy’s waiting hands.
“Thanks. What do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I can pay.” Chrissy had about thirty dollars in her purse. Her mother was going to send the check from Pete that would cover the hours Chrissy had worked this week. “I might need to owe for the gas, but I can pay for the food as we go.”
“You don’t need to pay for the gas. I was coming this way anyway.”
Chrissy couldn’t think of any reason Reno would drive to Los Angeles. When she’d visited him on his ranch, he’d made a point of telling her that he never traveled.
“I don’t take charity,” Chrissy reminded him, reaching into her purse and pulling out two dollar bills. “Here.”
“I’m not that poor.” Reno frowned at her in the rearview mirror as he started the car. “I can pay for everything.”
If Chrissy had been looking around instead of arguing with Reno, she would have noticed that the music she’d heard had gotten a little louder, and that a black sedan pulled out from the other side of the minimart before backing up so it was no longer in view.
“We’ll split the cost of the gas,” Chrissy finally said. “I’ll pay you back when I get my check.”
Reno grunted in response as he drove the car out of the gas station area.
“You never did say what brought you to Los Angeles,” Chrissy said a few minutes later. Surely he hadn’t driven that far just to give her a ride back to Dry Creek. Of course not. He hadn’t even known she would want to move back there.
“I went to see the ocean.”
“Oh, and did you like it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You mean you didn’t stop and see it?”
Reno shrugged. “I’m young. I’ve got lots of years to go see the ocean.”
“I wish I’d known that’s why you came. I could have stayed in Los Angeles another day if you wanted to go to the beach.”
“It’s all right.”
Chrissy shifted in the back seat. “It would have been fun to show you the ocean. We could have gone to the pier and ridden the old carousel.”
“I bet Justin will like that in a few years.”
Chrissy tried to ignore the picture forming in her mind of her and Reno and Justin going on a beach vacation. That was something that would never happen. He hadn’t even said that. She knew Reno was being kind. But by the time Justin was old enough to ride a carousel, Reno would have grown tired of befriending a single mother. That was another lesson she had learned from her mother’s past. The occasional man who had wanted to date her mother was usually not interested in being an instant father, and so he hadn’t lasted long as a friend to her mother, either.
Chrissy could tell the difference in the air as soon as they drove into Montana. Justin was sleeping, and the inside of the car was peaceful. They came into the state on Interstate 15 and turned off on Interstate 90 at Butte to head east.
The farming area smelled fertile with rain and wild grass. Clouds gathered ahead of them when they passed the downtown area of Miles City and began the last miles leading to Dry Creek.
Chrissy felt her whole body relax as she watched the space around her. Now, why had she never noticed how little space there was in Los Angeles? Everywhere you looked in L.A. something stopped you from seeing very far. But here in Montana nothing stopped a person’s gaze except for the Rocky Mountains to the northwest and the gentle slopes of the mountains to the east that she knew were called the Big Sheep Mountains.
“Are there any sheep?” Chrissy asked. “In the mountains.”
“Not for years since the cattle took over,” Reno replied as he made the turn off the interstate to go into Dry Creek.
Chrissy took a deep breath. She was really going back. She hoped Reno hadn’t exaggerated the welcome she would receive. She kept pushing her nervousness to the back of her mind, since it was too late to turn back anyway. “Are there a lot of cattle in Dry Creek?”
“More cattle than people.” He paused. “I hope that doesn’t bother you.”
“Bother me? Why would it bother me?”
“Some women might find Dry Creek lacking in excitement after life in the big city.”
“Oh, look—” Chrissy pointed to the curve in the road. The gravel road widened a little at that point. Instead of snowbanks there was wild grass on the edge of the road, but Chrissy recognized the place anyway. “That’s where we met.”
She blushed. That hadn’t come out right. “I mean the night when your truck broke down—”
“—and you gave me a ride.” Reno finished the sentence for her as he slowed to a stop. “I remember. That was some night.”
Chrissy remembered that night, too. If she hadn’t been so angry, she never would have decided to drive her cousin’s truck to Dry Creek, even though Garrett had left the keys with her and given her a couple of lessons on how to shift the gears on the sixteen-wheel truck. But the minute she’d discovered Jared with another woman—in the most “with someone” sense possible—she hadn’t been able to stay in Las Vegas.
Her instincts had told her to go to Dry Creek to find her cousin, and that was all she’d wanted to do. “When I was in trouble, I always looked for Garrett.”
“He’s a good man.”
Chrissy wondered if Reno even knew that it wasn’t Garrett who had eased her pain on that trip. Reno had given her all the sympathy she needed, until by the time she left Dry Creek last fall, she’d realized she didn’t need so much sympathy after all.
That night they met, she had managed to drive the truck fine on the interstate, but once Chrissy had turned off on the gravel road into Dry Creek, the truck started to cough. She’d never seen a night as dark as that cloudless, moonless one.
She’d been half spooked by the lights of a stalled truck ahead, but also half relieved. Maybe the other driver could tell her what to do about that coughing in the motor.
Chrissy had pulled the truck as far to the shoulder of the road as she could before she’d opened the door and climbed down from the cab. She’d left Vegas in such a hurry that she hadn’t changed her dress or grabbed a coat. She was still wearing the short glittery white dress that Jared had picked out as her wedding dress.
The night air had been cold enough that her arms were covered with goose bumps. Her hair, bleached a champagne blond to please Jared and curled to sweep away from her face, had lost any sense of fashion around Salt Lake City and become so wind-blown that it looked as if she’d taken a fan to it instead of a curling iron.
At first Chrissy had thought the other truck was deserted and her heart sank. Then she’d seen the long denim-clad legs lying on the ground under the truck’s engine. When the rest of Reno slowly crawled out from under the truck, she’d stopped in her tracks.
She had expected to meet a short, stocky farmer with thinning hair who would be shy and happy to help her. Instead, she’d seen a guy who should be plastered on every month of some hunk-of-the-year calendar, and her heart had sunk even further. Good-looking men, in her experience, really didn’t even try to be as helpful as plain-looking ones.
Bringing herself back to the present, Chrissy glanced up at Reno in the mirror. She had to admit that he was confusing for a good-looking guy. He didn’t act as if he was superior. And he had certainly been helpful to her. “I’m usually not as crazy as I was that night.”