Praise for Janet Tronstad and her novels

“A Baby for Dry Creek shows how losing a parent can affect a young child for a lifetime. This sweet romance is both suspenseful and entertaining.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Janet Tronstad’s quirky small town and witty characters will add warmth and joy to your holiday season.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on A Dry Creek Christmas

“Janet Tronstad pens a warm, comforting story that brings joy to its characters.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek

“Amid angels, Christmas pageants and unknown danger, Ms. Tronstad creates a very enjoyable story about learning to believe and love again.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on An Angel for Dry Creek

A Baby for Dry Creek & A Dry Creek Christmas
Janet Tronstad

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

A BABY FOR DRY CREEK

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

A DRY CREEK CHRISTMAS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

JANET TRONSTAD

grew up on a small farm in central Montana. One of her favorite things to do was to visit her grandfather’s bookshelves, where he had a large collection of Zane Grey novels. She’s always loved a good story.

Today, Janet lives in Pasadena, California, where she works in the research department of a medical organization. In addition to writing novels, she researches and writes nonfiction magazine articles.

A Baby For Dry Creek

For I was hungry and you gave me food;

I was thirsty and you gave me drink;

I was a stranger and you took me in.

—Matthew 25:35

This book is dedicated with many fond memories to my forty cousins, both the Norris side of the family and the Tronstad side of the family. Thanks for the good times!

Prologue

Chrissy Hamilton figured her life couldn’t get much worse. On the morning of what was supposed to be her wedding day, she had found another woman in her fiancé’s bed. And that wasn’t even the worst part. After she’d stomped out of Jared’s bedroom and driven almost all the way to Dry Creek, Montana, in her cousin’s truck, she’d met a man who made her knees melt so fast she wouldn’t have cared if an entire cheerleading squad had been camped out in Jared’s bed.

Of course, nothing could come of her attraction. She was two and a half months pregnant and just about as confused and miserable as an eighteen-year-old in trouble could be.

Besides, if Chrissy couldn’t trust the man she’d loved since she was fifteen, she certainly wasn’t going to risk trusting some Montana rancher she’d just met.

It was too bad about the rancher, though. With his black hair and sky blue eyes, Reno Redfern was the sexiest man she’d ever seen. Which was one more reason to leave Dry Creek.

Seven and a half months later

Dry Creek did not have a postmaster. It didn’t even have a post office. Everyone knew that. Still, the letter addressed to the postmaster sat there on top of all the other letters the mail carrier had left on the counter of the hardware store this cold spring morning. The mail carrier hadn’t even looked at the letter before crawling back into the postal truck and heading down Interstate 94 to the next small Montana town on his busy route.

The hardware store sold everything a rancher needed, from weed killer to waterproof gloves, and most of it was sitting on long wooden shelves that lined the walls. A stack of ceramic mugs stood on a cart beside the stockroom door and the smell of brewing coffee welcomed customers every day of the week except Sunday, when the store was closed.

Of course, not everyone was a customer. The hardware store served as an informal community center, and some retired ranchers, like Jacob, spent most of their waking hours there arguing about cattle prices and waiting for the mail.

“Who’d be writing to our postmaster?” Jacob asked as he lifted the first envelope and read the address. He had been a rancher for sixty of his seventy-seven years, and his gnarled fingers showed it as he held up the letter.

“We don’t have a postmaster.” Mrs. Hargrove also waited for the mail. She didn’t sit, like the men, preferring to stand on the rubber mat by the counter so her muddy boots didn’t dirty the wood floor as the men’s boots were doing. She would rather distribute the mail herself, since she could do it more efficiently than Jacob, but she was a fair-minded woman and Jacob had gotten to the mail counter first.

In addition to Mrs. Hargrove, a half dozen ranchers were waiting for their mail, and the door was opening to let more into the store. Each time the door swung back or forth, a gust of wind came inside. As usual, spring had started out cold, but everyone had expected it to warm up by now. Most of the ranchers said they could still smell winter in the air and they didn’t like it. They should be planting their fields, and it was too muddy to even plow.

“We might not have a postmaster, but we got us a letter,” Jacob said as he put the envelope up to the light and tried to see through it before lowering his eyes and looking around at the others. “From a law firm. In California.”

“What would a law firm want with our postmaster? We haven’t broken any laws.” Another retired rancher, Elmer, spoke up from where he sat by the black woodstove that stood in the middle of the hardware store. The morning was chilly enough that a small fire was burning inside the stove.

As he was speaking, Elmer stood up and frowned.

The inside of the hardware store got quiet as Elmer slowly walked toward the counter. The people of Dry Creek had a large respect for the law and an equally large distrust of California lawyers. They also knew that Elmer had an instinct for trouble, and if he was worried enough to leave his chair, they were worried, too.

“I keep telling folks we need to get a more regular way of sorting the mail,” said a middle-aged rancher, Lester, as he looked up from the bolts he was sorting along the far wall. He scowled as he took up the old argument. “You’re not supposed to see other folks’ mail—it’s not legal. The FBI can get involved.”

“The FBI has better things to worry about than who sees your seed catalogs,” Elmer said as he finished walking over to Jacob and looked down at the letter the other man still held. “Besides, no one in California would care how we sort through our mail. Would they?”

“Well, open it up and read it to us,” Mrs. Hargrove finally said. She had a raisin bread pudding baking in her oven and she didn’t want the crust to get too brown. “We haven’t got all morning.”

Jacob took out his pocketknife and used it as a letter opener. Then he cleared his throat and carefully read the entire letter aloud word by word. Jacob had always been proud of his speaking abilities, and he hadn’t had many chances in his life for public performances. If there hadn’t been so many people gathered in the hardware store, he probably would have listened to what he was saying instead of just focusing on getting all the words spoken correctly and loudly the way Mrs. Baker, his first-grade teacher, would have expected.

,!

Joseph K. Price, Attorney-at-Law

918 Green Street, Suite 200

Pasadena, California 91104

Dear Dry Creek Postmaster,

I’m writing to request your help in locating a man who lives in your community. Unfortunately, I do not know the man’s full name, so I cannot write to him directly. The nature of my business is this man’s relationship with a young woman, Chrissy Hamilton, and her new baby. It is the paternity of the infant that I wish to establish.

Miss Hamilton was in your community last fall. I am hopeful you will know the young man who spent the night with Miss Hamilton in her cousin’s truck. The man’s first name is Reno. If you can supply me with the man’s full name, I assure you that my client, Mrs. Bard, will be happy to reward you (you have no doubt heard of the family—they own the national chain of dry cleaners by the same name). I realize this is an unusual request, and I want to assure you that no one is asking the man to assume financial responsibility for the baby. Quite the opposite, in fact. Mrs. Bard is anxious to adopt the baby should it be proven to her satisfaction that her son, Jared, is the baby’s father. I apologize for the unorthodox nature of this request. It would not be necessary if Miss Hamilton were more cooperative. But she is young (eighteen, I believe) and does not yet see the full advantage to herself in this arrangement. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours truly,

Joseph K. Price, Esq.

The whole store listened and then stood still in stunned silence for a moment.

Finally Elmer spoke. “Our Reno?”

“Nothing says Reno’s the baby’s father,” Mrs. Hargrove cautioned, and then her voice softened. “Imagine, a baby.”

“Where is Reno, anyway?” Elmer looked around. “He’s usually here to get his mail by now.”

Chapter One

Reno Redfern stopped his pickup in front of the hardware store in Dry Creek. He was late and splattered with thick gray mud. Hopefully someone would have sorted the mail by now, and he could quietly pick up his few bills and get back to the ranch and shower. If he had been paying more attention to the road, he wouldn’t have slipped into the ditch and ended up with the wheels of his pickup stuck in the mud.

Reno shook his head. He’d made it a point to thank God repeatedly for the rain—what rancher wouldn’t?—but he was working on being honest in his dealings with God, and so far he hadn’t been able to say anything polite about the mud. The mud just lay everywhere, making the ground look forlorn and generally being a nuisance.

Reno had liked the first part of spring well enough. The cold of winter had eased up a little and he could walk from the house to the barn without pulling his cap down over his ears. But later, for some reason, everything had turned to mud. The mountains were no longer covered in snow, but the grass hadn’t taken hold yet either. Gray clouds hung in most of the skies, and the air was wet even when it wasn’t raining. The worst part was the deep clay that trapped everyone’s wheels.

Reno frowned as he opened the door to his pickup. The one good thing he could say for the mud was that it matched his mood these days. If it had been a normal Montana spring with endless blue sky and those tiny purple wildflowers blooming beside the gravel roads, he wouldn’t have been able to take all the love and sunshine flowing around the Redfern Ranch now that his sister, Nicki, had settled into married life.

At first Reno had wondered in alarm if he were jealous of Nicki’s wedded bliss. But that wasn’t it. He just missed the way things used to be.

There was such a thing as too much happiness, Reno finally decided, and his sister proved it. Nicki was so sweet these days it made his teeth ache. If she weren’t so sweet, he probably wouldn’t miss the old Nicki so much.

But as much as he tried to bring Nicki back to her senses, he couldn’t. He couldn’t even get her going on a good argument about cattle prices and fertilizer, and those used to be her favorite topics for heated discussion. But now all she wanted to talk about was curtain fabric and love. She had a perfectly good rancher’s brain that was turning to sentimental mush, and he was powerless to stop it.

And she wasn’t content to limit her new sentimental thoughts of love to herself and her new husband. Oh, no—she had started to speak of marriage with a missionary zeal that made Reno nervous. He had seen the speculation in her eyes several days before she came right out and asked him if he’d like her to set him up.

Set him up! Reno still couldn’t believe it. He and Nicki had had a pact. Neither one of them was going to get married, at least not for love. Of course, they’d made that vow when they were ten and twelve, a good four years after their mother had left their father and they’d heard every day since about the damage love could do from their father’s own bitter lips.

Besides, even if Reno decided to take leave of his senses and look for a wife, he didn’t need his sister doing the looking for him. There were plenty of women who wanted to date him. Granted, he wasn’t exactly in touch with any of them at the moment, but that was only because he was busy feeding the new calves and, well—things.

“I’m getting around to it.” Reno had set his glass of water down on the kitchen counter when Nicki asked her question. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m doing fine.”

“Really, you’ve met someone you want to date?”

Reno scowled. She didn’t need to sound so surprised. “Well, no, but I will—”

“When you have time,” Nicki finished for him, and shook her head. “I know as well as you do that there’s never any extra time when you’re ranching—you have to make time for what’s important.”

“Getting the alfalfa planted is important.”

“With mud like this, you can’t even plow. That’s why Garrett and I decided to go to Denver. There’s nothing to do right now.”

“I can change the plugs on the tractor.”

“Or you could do something fun for a change, like maybe go down to Los Angeles and pay a visit to Chrissy Hamilton.”

Reno was struck dumb. Chrissy was the cousin of Nicki’s new husband, Garrett Hamilton. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you’ve been, well, morose since Chrissy visited here last fall. That’s not like you.”

Morose? Ever since Nicki had married her trucker husband, she’d started learning a new word every day. Reno didn’t like to discourage anyone who wanted to learn. Still…“That’s not because of Chrissy.”

Well, Reno admitted to himself, it might be a little bit because of Chrissy, but it wasn’t in the way his sister thought.

Chrissy had come to Dry Creek last fall looking for Reno and Nicki’s mother. Before Chrissy moved back to Los Angeles, she had been a waitress in the Las Vegas casino where their mother worked. The two had become friends, and Reno could understand why.

If Chrissy was upsetting to him, it was only because she reminded him of his mother. Both women had that high-wattage, bright-color sway that went with a place like Las Vegas. They wore fancy sequin dresses with the same ease that women in Dry Creek wore their aprons.

It was clear that neither his mother nor Chrissy belonged in Dry Creek, and that’s why Chrissy had bothered him. Really the only reason she still bothered him, he told himself.

Nicki looked at him as if she didn’t believe him. “You’re not still afraid to get married, are you?”

“Huh?”

Nicki had the grace to blush. “I know we both said we would never get married, but we were kids. What did we know?”

“We knew what Dad told us.”

“Ah, well, he only saw one side of being married. If he’d known there were people out there like Garrett, who can really love someone, he wouldn’t have wanted us to stay single all our lives.”

Reno decided he shouldn’t argue with his sister on this one. “I suppose he might have been okay with you marrying.”

Nicki looked relieved. “And you, too.”

Reno doubted all of it. He had known his father. But he held his tongue.

“Anyway, here’s Chrissy’s address and phone number,” Nicki said as she pulled a piece of paper out of her jeans pocket and set it on the kitchen counter. “You could at least call and talk to her—or write her a letter or something.”

With that, Nicki turned and walked away.

She might as well have left a stick of live dynamite on the kitchen counter.

Reno just stared at the paper.

He didn’t tell his sister that he didn’t need to call Chrissy or write her a letter to find out if the two of them were destined for some kind of wedded bliss. For even a little bit of bliss to happen, the woman would have to like him, and it appeared the very thought of dating him made Chrissy Hamilton want to cry.

Even someone as lovestruck as his sister would have to agree that was not a good sign. Fortunately, no one knew about him and Chrissy.

When Chrissy had been at the ranch last fall, he’d decided to invite her to eat dinner at the café in Dry Creek with him. He hadn’t thought it was any big deal. He’d spent the afternoon convincing himself that just because her green-gray eyes made him want to take up painting storm clouds, that was no reason to think he was interested in anything but getting to know someone who could tell him more about his mother.

He’d even stopped himself from wondering about Chrissy’s lips once he decided they looked as soft as they did because of some sort of Las Vegas beauty trick.

No, he’d put all that aside. Dinner was just a logical thing. Hamburgers and fries for two hungry people at the café in Dry Creek. Maybe spaghetti and garlic bread, if they had it. He’d started out by saying there was no reason to go to any trouble and change clothes and they both had to eat, so would she like to come with him to eat at the—

That’s as far as he’d got before she’d given him a stricken look and started to cry. He hadn’t known what to do but take her in his arms and let her sob against his last clean shirt. After the first burst of tears had ended, she’d pulled back and looked embarrassed. Her cheeks had been pink, and her eyes had dared him to ask about her tears.

Before he could say anything, she’d thanked him for the invitation in a businesslike voice and added she was sorry she couldn’t date him. She was also sorry about the shirt, she said, and added that a little bleach should take the mascara out.

By then he couldn’t say he hadn’t been asking her out on a date, so he’d just thanked her for the laundry tip. He hadn’t added that he was surprised. He’d never figured someone like Chrissy would know anything about laundry.

Fortunately, no one knew about any of this, and Reno wasn’t about to tell anyone. He picked up the slip of paper from the kitchen counter, intending to crumple it up and throw it away. He should be glad Chrissy wasn’t interested in him.

Reno was cautious when it came to women. Even if he hadn’t had his father to remind him of how fickle women could be, his mother had taught him that some women just weren’t meant to live on a ranch.

Life on the Redfern Ranch could never compete with the excitement of a big city. Ranch life was plain, good living, and that was all Reno wanted, but he knew there was no theater, no fine dining, no museums, no upscale shopping.

A Vegas cocktail waitress like Chrissy would never stay in a place like Dry Creek any more than his mother had. Oh, Chrissy might think it was quaint and amusing enough for a week or so, but in the long term she’d leave. Dry Creek would never be enough for her.

Yes, throwing away that piece of paper his sister had left on the counter was the only sensible thing to do. Reno said those words to himself, but for some strange reason he didn’t listen. Instead, he folded the piece of paper into a small square and put it in his shirt pocket.

He told himself he’d throw it away tomorrow. When tomorrow came, he told himself it wouldn’t hurt to wait until the next day.

That was two weeks ago Monday, and he no longer even bothered to lie to himself. Every day when he changed his shirt, he moved that piece of paper to the new pocket.

Reno shook his head. This past Saturday he’d actually looked at a map to see which freeways he’d need to take if he drove down to Los Angeles. He’d gone so far as to remind himself he’d never seen the Pacific Ocean and had a good reason to drive down to Los Angeles, quite apart from seeing Chrissy. A man ought to see the ocean some time in his life.

Reno scraped his feet on the porch of the hardware store. At least no one in Dry Creek knew about that slip of paper in his pocket or the foolish thoughts going around in his head. He wouldn’t have had any peace if they did. Sometimes it felt as if he had a dozen grandparents, each one of them anxious for him to date someone so they could plan a wedding and then begin the more serious business of knitting baby booties.

Reno didn’t know why the seniors in Dry Creek were so set on babies. But all he heard these days were wistful remarks that, given all the marriages in Dry Creek lately, it sure was a shame there weren’t any babies.

No, he didn’t want the people of Dry Creek to know he was even thinking of visiting Chrissy. They’d start putting their hopes on him, and he’d only let them down.

Chapter Two

Reno opened the door. The hardware store was silent, and for a brief second the light was such that Reno thought no one was inside. Then he saw all his neighbors, and they saw him. It was a toss-up as to who was more startled.

“It’s that clay mud,” Reno finally said as he stepped inside. They were looking at him as if he were covered with tar or something toxic. “I guess I look a little odd.”

“You look just fine,” Mrs. Hargrove declared stoutly as she smoothed down the skirt of her checked gingham dress. Mrs. Hargrove had to be eighty years old, and she’d worn the same set of gingham dresses since the late 1950s. She had one in every color of the rainbow. A good dress, she told folks, never wore out as long as you took care of it. Over the dress she wore a black wool sweater that had been stretched out by too many washes. She had rubber boots on her feet and a paperback mystery stuffed into the pocket of her sweater.

Reno stopped and stood still. If Mrs. Hargrove had to defend him that strongly, he must look worse than he thought. She’d been his Sunday-school teacher years ago, and she was loyal to her students. He’d been in the first grade when he’d realized that she fussed with her hair or her dress on the few occasions she was nervous. She’d done it when Randy McCall asked where Eve got her babies from, and she was doing it now.

Mrs. Hargrove reached up and patted her gray hair to make sure her bun was secure. She could have saved herself the effort. Mrs. Hargrove’s hair wouldn’t dare misbehave, any more than the first-grade boys would have years ago.

“If someone will just hand me my mail, I’ll step back to the porch,” Reno offered as he looked down. He must have left giant tracks on the clean floor or something, but the floor was already muddy, and not with his footprints. “I’ll have to remember this one for April Fools’ Day. I don’t think Lester got this much of a reaction when he dressed up like Elvis and went to the café for breakfast. Who would have thought he was that much of a clown?”

Lester stood up from where he was kneeling beside the bottom bin of the nail rack. He was a short, wiry man who seldom spoke, and he cleared his throat before he started to talk. “I may be a clown sometimes, but at least I would financially support a baby if I had fathered one.”

“Huh?” Reno wondered if he had missed something. Lester was Reno’s closest neighbor, and he looked as if he’d screwed up all his courage to speak. “Since when do you have a baby?”

“Sometimes a man can have a baby and not even know it.”

At least six people in the room sucked in their breath.

“Hush, now,” Mrs. Hargrove finally managed to say. “It’s none of our business. Just because we’re all used to seeing everyone’s mail as it comes in, it’s no reason to meddle.”

Reno wondered what she was talking about. Everyone in Dry Creek meddled. It was one of their most endearing traits. It meant they cared.

“That letter was addressed to us,” Jacob said indignantly. “We weren’t reading anything but what was meant for us. We’re the ones who take turns passing out the mail in Dry Creek. We’re the postmaster.”

“Still,” Elmer muttered as he walked back to his chair by the stove, “it’s not our business. Of course, in my day a young man was raised to do the honorable thing and marry a woman he got with child.”

“Lester got someone pregnant?” Reno finally asked. The last he knew, Lester had been courting Nicki. That was before she married Garrett, of course, but still Reno didn’t like to think of Lester playing his sister false. “I thought you were planning on marrying Nicki.”

If Reno’s voice rose a little, he figured no one could blame him. A man was supposed to defend his sister’s honor, even if she was off being a trucker along with her new husband.

Lester took a step forward. “Not me, you fool. You’re the one with the baby.”

Lester could as well have said that Reno had a castle in Spain or a boot growing out of his head. “What?”

“Now, remember the letter didn’t say that Reno was the one,” Mrs. Hargrove cautioned. “For all we know, he didn’t even have those kinds of thoughts about Chrissy Hamilton. The Reno I know is a good boy.”

Reno choked. He wished he had a little more mud covering his face so no one could see his guilty flush. How did you tell your old Sunday-school teacher that you’d stopped being a boy a dozen years ago? He sure didn’t want to start telling Mrs. Hargrove about the jumble of thoughts he had about Chrissy Hamilton.

Even though he knew Chrissy wasn’t the one for him, he still found her attractive. Well, maybe more than attractive, if he was strictly honest about it. Something about Chrissy reminded him of the time as a boy he had been fascinated by a picture of cobras in some catalog that had come to the ranch.

Not that Reno was worried. He had been smart enough not to order a cobra from that catalog when he was nine years old and he was smart enough now to avoid Chrissy. Just because he was drawn to both of them in some mysterious, crazy way didn’t mean he had to do anything about it.

Besides, Mrs. Hargrove was right about one thing. It wasn’t anyone else’s business anyway.

“Chrissy is a fine-looking girl,” Elmer volunteered as he sat down in his chair by the stove. His voice was thoughtful. “Reno would have to be blind not to see that.”

“Well, that’s true,” Mrs. Hargrove conceded before she turned back to Reno. “But that doesn’t mean he’s the father of her baby.”

“Chrissy has a baby?” Reno felt the streak of mud start to dry and crack on his face. His voice had grown hoarse and he had to clear his throat. He felt a strange disappointment. “I suppose she’s married to that Jared fellow by now, then.”

Jacob frowned as he looked down at the letter in his hand. “Doesn’t sound like she’s married to anyone.”

Reno had known Jacob all his life. The man had taught him how to rope a calf. But Reno didn’t believe him on this one. Chrissy might have been mad at her boyfriend when she was in Dry Creek, but Jared had significant money, and a woman like Chrissy would weigh that in the scales before she called it off. Reno figured there was some misunderstanding. He held his hand out for the letter. “Let me see.”

Jacob handed him the letter.

There was silence for a minute before Mrs. Hargrove said, “You know, maybe one of us should write to Chrissy and invite her to come to Dry Creek with her baby.”

Reno snorted. He didn’t want to hurt Mrs. Hargrove’s feelings, but Chrissy would probably rather move to the moon than to Dry Creek. She likely thought it was the backside of nowhere, and she was right. Just because the people of Dry Creek liked the middle of nowhere didn’t mean Chrissy would. “We don’t have any shows or nightclubs or anything. Shoot, we don’t even have a proper post office.”

Reno returned to reading the letter.

“We have the café,” Jacob answered. “And the Christmas pageant every year.”

“Pastor Matthew’s sermons have been downright entertaining lately with some of his stories about the twins,” Mrs. Hargrove added. “I think he’s almost as funny as that guy on the television everyone talks about. Any new mother would enjoy that.”

“She could play with those calves of yours, too,” Jacob added. “They’re pretty cute—especially the ones you’re feeding with that fancy bucket of yours.”

Reno looked up from the letter. He had finished it. “Well, she should be happy. Sounds like she’s going to get a handsome payment.”

“Reno Redfern!” Mrs. Hargrove said. “I can’t believe you think that sweet girl would give her baby up to that lawyer!”

“Well, she wouldn’t be giving it to the lawyer. The baby would go to Mrs. Bard. How bad can living with your grandmother be?”

Reno couldn’t help but wish he’d had a grandmother who would have taken care of him when his mother left. “She probably bakes cookies and everything. The baby will be fine.”

Mrs. Hargrove drew herself up indignantly. “Don’t you know anything about a mother’s love?” Then she gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Reno forced himself to smile. “That’s okay.”

It wasn’t Mrs. Hargrove’s fault his mother had left him and Nicki when she left their father. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not all women were good mothers.

“I should have insisted that father of yours bring you to town more often when your mother left,” Mrs. Hargrove muttered. “Just because the two of you looked fine, I shouldn’t have assumed your poor little hearts weren’t broken.”

“Nothing was broken,” Reno said. “Lots of people have it worse in life.”

Reno had made his peace with the fact that his mother had left when he was six. He’d had his father and he’d had Nicki. He’d done just fine.

“But still—”

“I’m sure Chrissy and her baby will be fine.” Reno wasn’t sure which topic he wanted to discuss less, his mother or Chrissy.

Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “Still, if they were to come here—”

“I’m sure she doesn’t want to move here,” Reno repeated.

“Well, still, there’s the baby to think about. It’s our Christian duty to at least invite Chrissy. Someone needs to write her a letter and ask. It’s the hospitable thing to do for someone in trouble and—and—I’m beginning to think that’s what God would want. He always said we should offer hospitality to the stranger who’s in trouble.”

Reno looked at his former Sunday-school teacher. She was eyeing him the way she had in the first grade when she wanted volunteers to answer a question. She wasn’t playing fair by bringing God into this, and she probably knew it.

“I think God was talking about feeding strangers when they show up in town and are hungry. So far every person who drives through Dry Creek seems to be pretty well fed. But if they’re not, I’ll leave word with Linda and Jazz at the café to give them something to eat and add it to my bill.”

Mrs. Hargrove frowned. “Hospitality is about more than food—God also told us to take in people who are in trouble.”

“Well, God usually brings them to your doorstep. Chrissy is thousands of miles away.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “We can’t just write a letter. How will she get here?”

“She’s not coming.” Reno ground his teeth and searched for a change of subject. “Lots of mud outside, isn’t there?”

No one answered him.

“You know, Reno has a point, though,” Jacob agreed. “Usually God would do something to give a person a clue. Even Reno can’t just go driving down there to bring her and the baby back here. He doesn’t have the poor girl’s address.”

Reno reached up to make sure the pocket on his shirt wasn’t on fire. Keeping quiet wasn’t exactly a lie, but he didn’t want to deceive anyone. “Well, even supposing I did have an address for her, people in Los Angeles move around all the time. How long would an address be good, anyway?”

Jacob frowned as he pointed to the letter Reno still held. “Come to think of it, I bet that attorney would have her current address. Sounds like he’s keeping a close eye on her.”

Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “It’s settled, then. Someone will have to go see if Chrissy wants to come here.”

“I’ll go,” Lester volunteered from where he stood counting nails to put into a brown paper bag.

Reno looked at Lester suspiciously. The man had an eagerness about him that Reno didn’t trust. “It’s a long way down to Los Angeles.”

Lester grinned. “Yeah, but it’s a long way back, too. If she says she’ll come back here, I figure it’ll give me time to court her.”

“What? She’s half your age,” Reno said. “You can’t date her.”

“She’s single.” Lester looked surprised. “I’m single. What’s your problem? She’s not that much younger than your sister, and you didn’t object to me dating Nicki. Besides, some women like older men.”

“No, Reno’s right,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “We can’t be sending some man down there who’s going to make her nervous. We need to send someone safe. Like Reno. He wouldn’t ask her out. Why, he’s almost family, now that I think of it.”

“Almost family—” Reno choked.

“She’s Garrett’s cousin,” Mrs. Hargrove explained patiently. “Garrett is married to your sister. That means Chrissy is almost your cousin.”

Almost cousins. Reno groaned. It wasn’t fair. Family was the cornerstone of the Redfern Ranch and it had been for generations. Mrs. Hargrove knew he’d never refuse to help someone who could claim to be family. If he did, he’d be breaking one of those family rules that the Redferns had held on to since the turn of the past century.

Reno gritted his teeth. Usually he was proud and grateful to be part of a family that had lived on the same land for so long. But sometimes, like today, the rules of the family were not ones he wanted to keep.

“And she’s got that poor little boy with only half of his rightful parents,” Mrs. Hargrove continued, as though she were just chatting.

This time Reno did groan aloud. He had a weakness for babies who didn’t have a full set of parents. This wasn’t a family rule; it was all his own.

“All right, I’ll go,” Reno said before his good sense kicked in.

“What about those calves of yours?” Lester asked. “With your sister and that new husband of hers gone, there won’t be anyone there to feed them.”

“Oh.” Reno had forgotten about the calves. Usually when a set of twin calves was born, one of the two was a runt that was visibly smaller and weaker than the other calf. The mother would often ignore the runt and feed only the stronger calf. The Redfern Ranch had a bumper crop of twins this year, and it took Reno four or five hours a day just to keep the runts fed.

Some ranchers figured the runts were too much trouble to keep alive and left them to live or die as nature saw fit. But Reno didn’t agree with nature on this one. He always brought the runts into the barn and fed them a special formula from a bucket he’d made that had an agricultural nipple so the calves could nurse easily.

Keeping those calves healthy was one of the most satisfying things he did as a rancher, and he’d long ago realized that he identified with the poor motherless things. He couldn’t leave them. They’d die without regular feeding.

“I can see to them,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “Do me good to get out on a farm again.”

“There’s no need. I can feed them,” Lester said reluctantly. “If I’m not the one that goes to get Chrissy, I can do that much. That’s what neighbors are for—especially when it’s too wet to plow. Besides, it’ll give Reno a chance to tell Chrissy what a good neighbor I’ve been.”

Reno forced his lips into a smile. “You’re the best.”

“Good.” Mrs. Hargrove nodded as if it was settled. “Then Reno can bring Chrissy back.”

“She might not want to come.” Reno felt he should remind everyone of that fact. He certainly didn’t intend to give Chrissy a sales pitch. He would make the offer to satisfy Mrs. Hargrove, but he didn’t expect Chrissy to actually agree to it. “Los Angeles is her home.”

“Oh, you’ll convince her.” Mrs. Hargrove smiled. “You could always get the other kids to do whatever you wanted.”

“That was in the first grade.”

Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “A boy never loses that kind of charm.”

Reno grunted. He felt about as charming as the mud on his feet.

Mrs. Hargrove’s smile wavered and she looked a little uncertain. “Well, at least you will be sincere. And tell her we have free sundaes at the café on Friday nights.”

Reno doubted there was a woman anywhere who would move across three states just to get a free sundae. He turned to leave the store. He’d go back to the ranch and show Lester where the milk buckets were. “I’ll be on my way in a couple of hours.”

“Good.” Mrs. Hargrove nodded and then cleared her throat. Her face went pink and she patted at her hair again. “You know, Reno, it’s none of my business if you and Chrissy—you know—if you’re the baby’s father. I just want you to know that even if you and Chrissy got off on the wrong foot, God can still make a good life for the two of you if you let Him.”

Reno pushed his cap down on his head. He didn’t need to look around to know that every man in the hardware store was staring at the floor. They were all used to talking about calves being born and cows artificially inseminated. They weren’t a delicate group. But none of them was comfortable talking about any of those activities with Mrs. Hargrove. He decided to spare everyone further speculation about his love life. “I’ll call when I get down to Los Angeles. My pickup should make it in three days.”

“Your pickup?” Mrs. Hargrove frowned. “You can’t take your pickup. You need a back seat with seat belts for the baby’s car seat. You’ll have to borrow my car.”

Mrs. Hargrove drove a 1971 Dodge compact the color of old mustard. It smelled of foot powder and wouldn’t go faster than fifty miles an hour. The junk dealer in Miles City had given up offering Mrs. Hargrove cash for the car and grumbled he’d have to charge her a tow fee when she finally came to her senses and gave up on the old thing. Still, the car never refused to start, not even in thirty-below weather, and that was more than some of the newer cars did.

“I could rent a car,” Reno said as his mind began to calculate the cost. Three days down and three days back. It was the price of the feed supplements he was giving those runt calves. Some years that would be fine. But this year money was tight.

“Don’t be foolish. My car’s sound as a tank. It’ll get you there and back.”

Reno frowned. If he had any lingering hopes that Chrissy would surprise him and want to move back to Dry Creek, Mrs. Hargrove’s car would remind him how unlikely those hopes were. A stylish woman like Chrissy wouldn’t go to her own funeral in Mrs. Hargrove’s car. She certainly wouldn’t pack up her belongings and ride across three states in it. “I’ll take it. Thanks.”

“Tell Chrissy she’s in my prayers,” Mrs. Hargrove said.

Reno nodded as he walked to the door. “I’ll do that—if I get a chance.”

He doubted he would be given a chance. Chrissy had not seemed drawn to the church when she was here last. He was pretty sure prayers would fall into the same category as mustard-colored cars when it came to women like Chrissy.

“I know she’s never gone to church much,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “But now that she’s a mother she might want to—be sure and tell her there’s a good Sunday school program for the little one.”

Reno had a sudden vision of Chrissy sitting beside him in a Dry Creek church pew and it made his mouth dry up with the shock of it. He shook his head to clear his mind. He didn’t need something like that vision rattling around in his head.

The church in Dry Creek was a place of peace for him. After his mother visited the town last fall and Reno had started the process of forgiving her, he had been drawn to the church he’d last attended as a child.

Reno had never really stopped believing in God during those years when he didn’t go to church. He’d just stayed home to keep his father from drinking. For some reason, his father had insisted Nicki attend church, but he’d given Reno a choice. When he’d realized his father was drinking when he was alone at the ranch, Reno had found reasons to stay home on Sunday.

Until now he hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to sit in church with a wife beside him. Reno had a sudden empathy for the loneliness his father must have faced on those Sundays long ago after his wife left.

Reno cleared his throat. He was as bad as Mrs. Hargrove. He needed to keep reality in mind. “She might decide not to come.”

“Use your charm.”

Reno grunted as he opened the door and stepped back out into the cold air. Fortunately he didn’t need to worry about charm when it came to Chrissy. He wasn’t likely to be given the chance to talk to her long enough to be charming. All he hoped was that he had enough time to give the invitation from Mrs. Hargrove so that he could honestly tell everyone he’d asked the question. That’s all Mrs. Hargrove and God could expect.

Chapter Three

Chrissy looked out the big windows of Pete’s Diner to the busy street outside. Something was making her edgy today, and not even the steady pace of orders from Pete’s regulars could keep her mind focused. It must be because she’d seen that funny cap this morning. The man wearing the cap had told her he was from North Dakota. She smiled, because it was the same kind of cap that Reno wore in Dry Creek, Montana.

Whatever possessed her to remember that cap she didn’t know. She also didn’t know why the cap was so appealing. She’d always thought a Stetson on the head of a cowboy was the only kind of hat that would make a woman’s heart race; but that farmer’s cap that Reno had worn made her question all she knew about men’s headwear.

If someone had told her she’d fall for a man in a cap, she would have said they were crazy. Especially a forest-green cap that advertised a yellow tractor, of all things!

But the cap sat on Reno’s head, and that made all the difference. Reno had the chiseled bone structure of a Greek statue and the smooth grace of a man who was used to working outdoors. He wasn’t just tanned, he was bronzed. He didn’t need a cap to make him look good. He made the cap look good.

Chrissy caught her reflection in the small mirror the other waitresses kept by the kitchen door. She wished she could say the same for herself. These days she didn’t make anything look good. She wondered if Reno would even recognize her if he saw her again.

Reno had known her when she still glimmered with her carefully applied Vegas look. Back then, she’d worried about whether her nail polish matched the dress she was wearing that night. She had regular manicures and pedicures and facials. She worried about the bristles in the brush she used to apply just the right shade of blush to just the right area on her cheekbones.

She always looked as much like a fashion model as an ordinary woman could.

At Pete’s Diner, she’d stopped wearing blush. The heat from the kitchen gave her cheeks more than enough color. As for nail polish, she’d given up worrying about what color would even go with the fluorescent-orange uniforms Pete insisted his waitresses wear, and so she left her nails unpolished. Instead of a facial, she was lucky to get a good session of soap and water before Justin woke up.

Now she used lip balm instead of lipstick and kept her hair pulled back. In short, she was a fashion disaster and couldn’t muster up enough energy to even care much about the fact.

She’d actually debated dyeing her hair to match her natural color and letting it grow back brown just because it would be so much easier to take care of that way.

Funny how having a baby can change what is important, Chrissy thought as she picked up a salad order for table number eleven. She’d applied for the job at Pete’s because it was close to her mother’s house and she could use her breaks to walk home to nurse Justin. She hadn’t even cringed at the neon-orange uniforms. She’d have worn a chicken suit if it meant she’d be close to her baby.

Besides, she’d never liked the flash of Vegas all that much. Her whole time in Las Vegas had been spent trying to be the woman Jared wanted her to be. Not that Chrissy blamed Jared. She knew a man liked to have a glamorous woman on his arm, and she had been determined to please Jared. She’d never been a natural beauty, so she knew she had to work at looking good. She’d spent hours at cosmetic counters talking about the latest eye shadows and lip liners.

Now she didn’t have time to do what it took to be fashionable. It was enough if her slip didn’t show. The important people in her life—her baby and her mother—cared more about her smile than her makeup, anyway.

Chrissy’s mother had been more supportive throughout Chrissy’s pregnancy than Chrissy had dared to hope. Chrissy knew from the moment she knew she was pregnant that telling her mother about the baby would be harder than telling Jared.

Chrissy had been a problem to her mother since the day Chrissy was conceived. She was in the first grade when she first heard the word illegitimate. She couldn’t even pronounce the word, and she had no idea what it meant. When she asked her mother about it, her mother had told her it meant Chrissy was a special gift from God and that she shouldn’t worry about that word.

The next month her mother had decided they should move.

Until Chrissy was thirteen, she and her mother had moved almost every year. It was small town to small town to small town. In each town her mother talked about going to the church there, but they never did. Chrissy didn’t know how old she was when she sensed her mother was actually afraid of churches.

Finally her mother decided they’d move back to the Los Angeles area. Big cities, her mother told her, were more forgiving of unmarried mothers on welfare.

In Los Angeles her mother found the courage to go to a church she’d gone to many years ago, and she was happy. She repeatedly invited Chrissy to come to church with her.

Chrissy had refused. She’d finally figured out that her mother had been afraid of churches because of the way people had treated her when she was pregnant with Chrissy. Her mother might be ready to forgive church people, but Chrissy wasn’t.

The closest she’d been to a church recently was the time she’d walked up the steps of the church in Dry Creek looking for a place to sit while she waited for the café to open one morning.

Ah, Dry Creek.

Dry Creek had occupied her mind since she’d left there last fall. She supposed it was unfair to fantasize that the place was her real home, but she did nonetheless.

For some reason, Pete’s Diner had reminded her of Dry Creek. With its worn vinyl booths and fluorescent lights, it looked as solid as the café in Dry Creek. The diner sat squarely between two retirement homes and it had a loyal group of customers. Business here would never be bustling, but it was steady.

When she got the job, Chrissy felt she’d finally landed on her feet. Her mother could stop worrying about her. Chrissy didn’t need to ask to know the worries that were going through her mother’s mind. Her mother didn’t want her to be a welfare mother. She didn’t want Chrissy to have to accept the pity of others because she needed their charity. So the job at Pete’s was important. It showed she could take care of herself and Justin.

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.

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.”

“I thought you were an angel,” Reno said simply.

Chrissy glanced up again and saw Reno looking back at her. Since she was in the back seat to be close to Justin, she and Reno had carried on long conversations through the mirror for two days now. Chrissy kind of liked the flirtatious way it made her feel.

“It was dark out.”

Reno grinned. “And you sparkled with all that glitter on your dress. It was an honest mistake. I didn’t think to check for wings.”

“Not many angels pull up in a sixteen-wheeler truck.”

“They do when your own truck is dead and it’s cold enough outside to freeze your toes off.” Reno paused. “I never thought of it, but I owe you for the ride that night.”

“Of course you don’t owe me,” Chrissy said a little more sharply than she’d intended. Justin moved in his sleep and lifted his fist up to his mouth.

“You keep saying you owe me for this trip we’re taking right now. If you owe me for this ride, then I owe you for that ride.”

“It’s not the same,” Chrissy said softly.

“You might have saved my life. It was cold enough that night for a man to freeze to death. So I owe you for more than just the ride. I owe you for—preventive medical services.”

“You would have found a way to keep warm.”

Chrissy blushed. She suddenly remembered the way Reno had kept them warm that night. He’d wrapped blankets around them both individually and then wrapped himself and his blankets spoon fashion around her on the small bed in the back of the cab of her cousin’s truck. Chrissy couldn’t ever remember feeling so warm and safe.

“Well, I’m willing to call it even between us if you are,” Reno said. “I won’t pay you for that trip and you won’t pay me for this one.”

“I can’t pay you anyway until I get my check or find a job,” Chrissy pointed out as she reached over to rub Justin’s back. He was starting to wake up, and she liked him to know she was there. “So until then we can call it even.”

Reno grunted as he turned the car’s wheel to the right. “We’ll call it even—period. I don’t want you giving your wages to me.”

As Reno made the wide turn, Chrissy saw the small town of Dry Creek come into view in the distance. “We’re almost there.”

The sky was partially cloudy, but there was no wind. She could tell because someone had white sheets hanging on a clothesline and they did not move. The snow flurries that had covered Dry Creek most of the time she was here last were gone. In their place were broad stretches of mud. Someone had put wooden planks around so people could walk without stepping in the puddles. She noticed two extra-wide planks in front of Mrs. Hargrove’s house. No doubt someone had put them there so the older woman would be able to walk more easily.

The planks were an act of kindness that touched Chrissy. Dry Creek wasn’t a dressed-up town like Las Vegas, but the people here cared about each other. Chrissy wondered if they could care about her and Justin, as well.

She didn’t want the trip to end. She’d been comfortable thinking about going to Dry Creek, but she wasn’t so sure she was comfortable actually arriving here.

Reno had entertained her with stories of what had been happening in Dry Creek since she’d been there last. She learned about his new calves and Mrs. Hargrove’s arthritis that was sometimes so bad she couldn’t peel potatoes. He told her about Lester dressing up as Elvis on April Fools’ day and the Friday sundae night at the café.

He even told her about going to church again and what that had meant to him. He talked about forgiving his mother for leaving the family all those years ago. He told her he’d never quite understood about grace when he’d been a young boy, but now that he was a man he felt humbled by it. He wasn’t so much forgiving his mother, he said, as trying to see her as she was, the way God might see her.

Chrissy didn’t quite understand what he was saying, but she couldn’t doubt his sincerity.

For the first time ever, Chrissy began to wonder if God could be real. She’d had people talk to her about God before, but never with the matter-of-fact directness Reno had. He talked of God as naturally as he would the sky or the mountains. Chrissy knew beyond a doubt that God was real for him, because Reno didn’t make a big deal of trying to convince her of anything. Reno talked about God with the same warmth he used when he talked about Mrs. Hargrove or his sister, Nicki.

As Reno was telling her about the different things that were happening, he’d pass along greetings to her from various people in Dry Creek. He said that Elmer had asked him to tell her he’d buy her a cup of coffee when she came to town. And Linda from the café had asked Reno to tell her she was looking forward to Chrissy coming to town.

During all the days when they talked, Reno had not indicated anyone had a negative thought about her coming to the area. But Dry Creek was a small, conservative town. She was sure she’d find her share of turned shoulders and unwilling welcomes. It had been just eighteen years since her mother had had a bad experience in a small town because she was an unmarried mother, and eighteen years wasn’t that long ago.

“I should comb my hair,” Chrissy said. As she recalled, churchwomen were big on combed hair. “Or roll it into a bun or something.”

“Your hair looks fine,” Reno said.

“You’re right. It’s this orange dress they’ll think is strange. No one wears an orange dress this bright. They’ll think I’m nuts.”

“They know about the fire. Nobody cares what you’re wearing. Besides, Linda wears those kinds of colors all the time.”

Chrissy reached for her purse anyway. A touch of light lipstick couldn’t hurt.

“We’re here.” Reno slowed the car to a crawl. “We might as well get something to eat at the café.”

Chrissy forced herself to look out the windows of the car and take a deep breath. The people of this town had been friendly to her when she’d been here last fall. If the fact that since then she’d had a baby without the benefit of marriage made any of them treat her any differently, then they were the losers, not her.

“There’s not as many houses as I remember.” Chrissy forced herself to concentrate. She could do this. “The town’s smaller than I thought.”

“Yeah,” Reno said curtly. “One café. One store. Seventeen houses. Seventeen and a half, if you count the Andersons’ basement. One church. That’s it. No growth expected. Not even a post office.”

Chrissy lifted her head. She’d taken on bigger challenges and done fine.

Reno watched Chrissy get ready to face Dry Creek and his heart sank. She looked as if she was getting ready to walk the plank. Was it really that bad to live in a small town like Dry Creek? “It’s not like you’ll need to be here forever.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, the lawyer is going to give up sooner or later. Then you can move back to Las Vegas.”

“Oh.”

“Or L.A. if that’s where you want to go,” Reno said as he parked the car in front of the café and took the keys out of the ignition.

“But I don’t have a job in L.A. anymore.” Chrissy reached over to unbuckle Justin from his car seat.

Speaking of jobs reminded Reno that he hadn’t called Mrs. Hargrove since he’d talked to her when they stopped in Las Vegas. He hoped she had remembered to put a notice on the bulletin board in the café asking for a live-in housekeeper.

Reno opened the back door for Chrissy. “Here, let me hold Justin while you get out. And he’ll need a blanket. It’s a little chilly out here.” Reno had held Justin many times over the past couple of days, but he continued to be surprised every time Chrissy handed him the baby at how small Justin really was. This time was no exception. Chrissy had assured Reno several times that Justin was a healthy weight for his young age, but Reno still wanted Dr. Norris to check Justin out.

“Remember, if you take a job, you need to ask for this Thursday off so we can take Justin to the doctor in Miles City.”

“I can’t ask for a day off the first week of the job.” Chrissy stepped out of the car and stretched. “We’ll have to postpone the doctor’s visit until the next week.”

“Well, we’ll wait and see.” Reno didn’t say that Mrs. Hargrove wouldn’t care what day Chrissy took off. After all, he wasn’t supposed to know about the job that was posted inside on the bulletin board.

“He sure is an agreeable little guy,” Reno said as he looked down at the baby. “Look at him smiling.”

“Babies that young don’t smile. Its just gas. It says so in the baby books.”

“Those books don’t know everything. I can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s smiling at me.” Reno hated to give the baby back to Chrissy. It suddenly hit him that this was probably the last time he would get to hold the little one. “He knows I’m the one who taught him how to make a fist.”

“I think that’s pretty natural. So he can suck his thumb.”

“Yeah, but I showed him how to hold his fingers so he can get a good grip on a baseball when he’s older.”

Chrissy smiled as she held out her arms for Justin. “He’ll appreciate that.”

Reno gave the baby to her. “If you ever need someone to watch him, let me know.”

Reno figured he was due some visitation rights. After all, he’d changed Justin’s diapers several times on the road. That should give him some rights.

“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

Chrissy squared her shoulders as she cradled Justin to her. Reno figured she was preparing herself to face Dry Creek. He only hoped she would give the place a chance.

Chapter Six

Chrissy stepped through the door that Reno held open for her and entered the Dry Creek Café with her baby cradled in her arms. She took a deep breath. It was midmorning and she’d made it home. She remembered the smell of baking biscuits and coffee from when she’d been here before. And the black-and-white checked floor had been in her dreams on more than one night. Six or seven tables were scattered around the café like before.

But something was different. Three tables were pushed next to the large window overlooking the street. Lace half curtains covered the bottom of the large window and matched the white tablecloths covering each of the three tables. In the place where bottles of ketchup sat on the other tables, silver vases stood filled with pink silk flowers. Matching pink napkins were placed beside the silverware on those tables. A wide aisle separated the three tables from the rest of the more casual ones.

Chrissy nodded. That was clever. It made the place feel as if had two restaurants instead of just one.

“Linda thinks we need more class,” Reno said as he turned to leave the café again. “I’m going to bring in the diaper bag in case you need anything. I’ll be right back.”

A delighted shriek made Chrissy look toward the door that led to the kitchen, and she saw Linda stand still for a moment in the open doorway before she came rushing toward her. “You’re here!”

Chrissy felt her heart smile. It sounded as if she had one friend in Dry Creek besides Reno. With the two of them by her side, she’d be fine.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see the baby!” Linda whispered as she stopped about a yard from Chrissy and then tiptoed closer. Linda had a butterfly tattoo above one eye and a copper-red streak in her dark hair. “Is it sleeping?”

“No, he’s awake.”

“So it’s a boy.”

Chrissy nodded. She decided she had no reason to feel self-conscious about her orange dress here. Linda was wearing a purple velvet dress and a large pink apron.

Linda just stood grinning at her. “And you! How are you? You know, I meant to write, but I lost your address and then I forgot to ask Garrett for it again and, well—” She stopped to take a breath. “You’re here!”

“It’s good to be back,” Chrissy said. “I thought about writing you, too, but there was the baby and then I was working and—well, it’s good to see you.”

Chrissy knew Linda and her boyfriend, Duane “Jazz” Edison, were running the café to earn enough money to buy a farm of their own so they could get married. Unless Linda had had a birthday since Chrissy was here last, Linda was twenty.

“Now, sit down and tell me about the baby,” Linda said as she motioned to one of the tables with the flowers on them. “What does he like to do? Are you nursing him or is he on the bottle? I want to know everything. I love babies.”

The door to the café opened again, and Reno came in with the diaper bag.

“Well, Justin eats good, so he’ll be growing fast,” Chrissy reported.

“He’s going to be a baseball player someday,” Reno added as he set the diaper bag on the floor at Chrissy’s feet. “He’s got a good grip in his fingers. Don’t you, big fella?”

Chrissy watched as Reno ran his thumb softly over the smooth skin on Justin’s tiny hand. “I can feel him practicing his pitches already.”

Justin gurgled in response to Reno’s words.

“That’s right,” Reno murmured.

Chrissy’s throat went dry and she had to swallow. Where had she been for these past days? She hoped Justin wasn’t becoming too attached to Reno. Was it possible for a baby to even do that? Chrissy remembered how painful it had been for her when she was young and her mother’s boyfriends would leave. The first few times it happened, Chrissy didn’t understand and thought the men had disliked her for some reason. She didn’t want Justin to have that same hurt in his life.

“The baby seems to like you,” Linda said quietly to Reno.

“Yeah.” Reno grinned as though he’d been given a first-prize ribbon.

“Justin just likes the sound of men’s voices,” Chrissy added quickly. She was beginning to see just how complicated this all was.

She had more to worry about than whether Justin was becoming attached to the sight of Reno. She also had to worry about the hurt Justin could do to Reno.

Reno might not recognize the speculative look in Linda’s eyes, but Chrissy did. Linda was wondering if Reno was Justin’s father. Of all the things Chrissy had worried about in coming to Dry Creek, this was one that hadn’t occurred to her. Reno had told her about the letter that had come to the Dry Creek postmaster, but she didn’t believe anyone in Dry Creek would seriously believe Reno was the father of her baby.

“The baby’s father is still in Las Vegas, you know.” Chrissy would rather talk about almost anything than Jared, but she wanted the record to be straight in this small town. If she had to talk about her past with someone here, she’d rather it was Linda than anyone else.

“That’s got to be hard,” Linda said as she reached over to give Chrissy’s shoulder a squeeze. “So it was the guy you were engaged to…”

Chrissy nodded. “But it’s all right. We’ll be fine, Justin and I. Just as soon as I get a job.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Linda jumped up. “Getting a job won’t be a problem in Dry Creek. We have a bulletin board over here for jobs.”

“Really?” Chrissy asked as she turned to Reno. “Will you hold Justin for a little bit while I look at the ads?”

Reno nodded as he put out his arms and accepted the baby.

If he hadn’t been distracted by Justin, Reno would have noticed right away that something was odd. As it was, it took a few minutes of the excited chatter over at the bulletin board before it dawned on him that Mrs. Hargrove’s posting for a housekeeper wouldn’t generate that much enthusiasm.

Reno stood up and walked closer to the bulletin board that was on the west wall of the café. He couldn’t believe his eyes. There had to be a dozen notices scribbled on index cards and tacked to the board.

“Here’s one that looks interesting,” Chrissy was saying. “Dancing instructor wanted for gentleman. Twenty dollars an hour.”

Linda nodded. “Jacob put that up. He said he was thinking he’d like to be able to dance the next time someone has a wedding in that barn south of town.”

“We did line dancing at that wedding,” Reno interrupted. “There’s nothing to learn. You just put your foot where the caller tells you to put it. In. Out. Whatever.”

“Before you got there, we had waltzing,” Linda said.

“I can waltz.” Chrissy was still running her fingers down the cards lined up on the board. “Here’s one that calls for someone to do some mending.”

“Elmer swears he’s got a dozen shirts with no buttons on them,” Linda said. “He said he’s flexible on the timing of it, too. He’s lived without buttons for a while now. He just wears a sweater over everything. But with summer coming, he wanted some shirts to wear that don’t require a sweater.”

Reno looked at the cards in astonishment. Had everyone in town listed a job on the board? It sure looked like it. What were they doing? Everyone knew there were no jobs in Dry Creek.

“Ah, here’s one for a cook/housekeeper,” Chrissy said. “That sounds promising.”

Reno relaxed. Finally she was looking at Mrs. Hargrove’s notice.

“But where’s the Wilkerson place?”

“Lester’s?” Reno’s voice came out so loud it made Justin start to fuss. Without thinking, Reno started to slightly rock the baby where he stood.

“Now, now.” Chrissy turned and started to coo. “It’s all right.”

Reno wasn’t sure if Chrissy was cooing at him or Justin. “Why’s Lester advertising for a cook?”

“Well, he is alone out on his ranch all the time. He could probably use some help,” Linda said as she gave Reno a look that said he shouldn’t be making this so difficult.

Reno grunted, but didn’t back down. “The man eats from cans. All he does is heat it up. Hash. Chili. Soup. It’s all the same. A cook would be wasted on him.”

“I don’t know,” Chrissy said thoughtfully as she held out her arms for Justin. “He did seem to enjoy that pie at the big Thanksgiving dinner at the ranch last fall. I make a pretty good apple pie, and I think that’s his favorite.”

Reno frowned as he handed Justin to her. He didn’t like the thought of Chrissy making pies for Lester. “If he wants pie, he can come to the café.”

“We don’t serve pie,” Linda reminded him.

“And it’s a live-in position,” Chrissy said as she cradled Justin upright against her breast. “That way I wouldn’t have to pay rent anywhere, and Justin will have a place to play.”

“Justin can’t even walk yet. It’ll be a good six months before he needs a place to play,” Reno protested, and then thought a minute. “How long do you plan to work for Lester, anyway?”

Chrissy leaned in to see the card better. “I don’t know. It doesn’t say what the salary is. All it gives is a number to call.”

“I’ll call him,” Linda offered as she walked toward the kitchen. “You just keep looking.”

“There’s got to be a better job there,” Reno said as he started to scan the notices to find Mrs. Hargrove’s. “Something closer to town.”

“I don’t mind being out of town.”

“You say that now. But the wind blows something fierce out there on the ranches. And the solitude. Some days you don’t see another soul. Just horses, with a few chickens thrown in for excitement.”

“Well, I’d see Lester,” Chrissy reminded him as she rocked Justin against herself. “Three times a day at least for meals.”

Reno ground his teeth. “Lester doesn’t talk much, though. You’d be bored in no time. He doesn’t have a television. He doesn’t get any magazines except for the Farm Journal.”

Linda opened the door from the kitchen and came back into the room. “The job pays eighty-five dollars a week and room and board.”

“That’s not enough,” Reno said firmly as he went up close to the board and scanned the notices. When he found the one he was looking for, he put his finger right next to it. “There. That’s the job for you. A housekeeper for Mrs. Hargrove. Room and board included.”

Chrissy walked over to look up at the small, neatly penned notice that Mrs. Hargrove had tacked to the board. She Chrissy shifted Justin in her arms so she could read the announcement better. “But her job only pays seventy-five dollars a week plus room and board.”

“I’ll pay the extra ten,” Reno said. Lester must have read Mrs. Hargrove’s notice and decided to outbid her. “That way you won’t lose money by working for Mrs. Hargrove.”

Chrissy tipped her head up at him suspiciously. “Why would you do that?”

“Yeah, why would you do that?” Linda asked along with Chrissy.

“Ah.” Reno ran his hands over his hair. He was guessing Mrs. Hargrove hadn’t told Linda about their plan. “Because Mrs. Hargrove is an older lady and she needs the help more than Lester does.”

Reno hoped Mrs. Hargrove never heard about this conversation. She didn’t think of herself as old, and she’d snap at anyone who implied she was not able to take care of herself.

Chrissy was still looking at him funny.

“And I know Mrs. Hargrove can’t afford to pay you any more herself because she’s on Social Security, so I want to help.” Reno smiled. “She’s been good to me, and I want to do something for her.”

“I noticed the other day that her porch needs fixing,” Linda offered.

“Thanks. I’ll go take a look at it.” Reno gritted his teeth. Whose side was Linda on? “I should have checked the porch myself before I headed down to Los Angeles. Those old boards usually have problems about now.”

“She said you usually do it and don’t take any money for it,” Linda said.

“In the past we’ve settled it with her giving me a plate of her homemade chocolate chip cookies.”

“Well, of course, if all she has is Social Security, she can’t afford to pay anyone,” Chrissy said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t feel right taking any money from her, and I don’t need cookies. I’m sure I can help her with what she needs when I’m not working at Lester’s.”

“But you can’t work at Lester’s,” Reno said. He could see the question in Chrissy’s eyes and knew it was on the tip of Linda’s tongue. He needed to focus. Ah, he had it. “He’s a single man, and it wouldn’t be proper for you to live in the same house with him alone.”

Chrissy’s face turned red. “I hope you’re not suggesting I would do anything but bake pies for the man.”

“No, I didn’t mean that at all.” It had to be about sixty degrees inside the café. There was no reason for Reno to be sweating. “I just mean you have to think of Justin.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of Justin,” Chrissy said coolly.

“Besides, you’re talking about Lester,” Linda said as though he’d suggested Chrissy was willing to date a troll.

Reno bowed his head in defeat. “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a week plus room and board to work at the Redfern Ranch.”

“Doing what?”

“Well, I like pies, too—and there’s the house.”

“You don’t need a housekeeper. I can’t take a job that’s just charity.”

“I have the calves to feed.” Reno looked up and thanked God silently. Yes! That was it. “The poor things need someone to take care of them, and I’ll have to start plowing any day now. Who’s going to take care of them?”

“Don’t they have their mothers to take care of them?” Chrissy didn’t look convinced.

“Not these calves,” Reno said mournfully. “They’re all alone in the world. No mother. No father.”

Reno hoped his prize bull forgave him although it was true that the animal had never shown any interest in his offspring, so the calves actually had no father when it came to having someone care for them.

“Oh, the poor things,” Chrissy whispered as she glanced down at Justin, who was sleeping in her arms. “It’s bad enough not having a father, but not having a mother, too, would be just awful.”

Chrissy broke off with a stricken look at Reno. “I’m sorry, I forgot about your mother.”

Reno stopped the triumphant war whoop that wanted to come rushing out of his mouth and he managed to wince instead. “It is hard. Not everyone understands.”

“Of course they don’t,” Chrissy said soothingly.

“So you’ll take on the feeding of the calves?”

“Well, I suppose it is more important than baking pies for Lester,” she agreed. “Although his would have been more convenient, since it was room and board.”

“My job includes room and board, too,” Reno offered.

“Oh, no, you convinced me that wouldn’t be proper.”

“Oh, it’s different with Reno,” Linda said smoothly. Reno thanked her with a smile until she added, “Mrs. Hargrove was saying that he admitted in the post office the other day that he feels only family feelings for you on account of the fact that you’re almost cousins.”

“Almost cousins?” Chrissy asked faintly.

Reno could see Chrissy was surprised. He was shocked himself. “I don’t remember saying anything quite like that.”

“Oh, well, Mrs. Hargrove goes for the essence of what a person says,” Linda said with a wave of her hand. “You know how it is—sometimes you’re not even sure what you mean, and then Mrs. Hargrove sums it up for you and it’s right on the nose.”

“I see.” Chrissy swallowed. “Well, I’ve never had an almost cousin before…”

“What about Garrett? He’s your cousin,” Linda said as she adjusted the salt and pepper shakers on a nearby table. “Just pretend Reno is Garrett.”

“I could do that, I guess,” Chrissy said.

Reno frowned. He didn’t like the fact that Chrissy could make a promise like that so easily. He sure couldn’t promise to see her through the eyes of a cousin any day soon.

“I don’t see why you’re looking for a job anyway,” Linda said as she moved to another table and swung out a chair for Chrissy to sit down. “If that guy in Vegas is the baby’s father, shouldn’t he be paying enough child support to take care of you both? I thought you said he had a trust fund or something.”

“He does,” Chrissy said as she sat in the chair. “But it’s complicated. To get child support, I need to claim he’s the father, and if I do that, I’m worried Jared’s mother will have a better case to get custody.”

“But you’re the mother. She can’t just take your baby away from you.”

“She’s already got some attorney trying to find out things about me so he can say I’m an unfit mother.”

“And if that doesn’t work, he’s trying to scare her into giving up Justin,” Reno added. “Someone set fire to Chrissy’s mother’s house just before we left L.A.”

“You’re kidding?” Linda said as she looked from Reno to Chrissy. “Some lawyer would do that?”

Reno nodded. “He might not do anything himself, but he’d pay people to cause some damage.”

“Wow.” Linda frowned. “He’s serious. I thought he was just some kind of crazy guy who wrote letters to stir up trouble.”

“I still have the letter,” Reno said as he patted his shirt pocket. “I’m keeping it in case we want to get a restraining order on him or something.”

“It’s not the lawyer I’m worried about—it’s the people he hires that scare me,” Chrissy said. “I’m glad Justin isn’t old enough to walk or crawl. I’d be a nervous wreck every time he went out to play.”

“Oh, surely the lawyer will give up after a while. He can’t care that much,” Linda said.

“It’s Jared’s mother who cares. And she never gives up. Oh—” Chrissy stopped in surprise and turned toward Reno. “I never thought about that—that’s why you didn’t want me to take the job at Lester’s and stay at his place, since he’s not married. You were worried Mrs. Bard might use it against me in a custody battle.”

Reno grunted. He should have thought of that. “You can never be too careful.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about Mrs. Bard when you’re in Dry Creek,” Linda said firmly. “We’ll take care of you and Justin. We keep an eye out for strangers.” Linda paused. “Well, except for a few times when things have gotten out of hand.”

Reno grimaced. He could tell from the look on Linda’s face that she was remembering the time a stranger had come to Dry Creek and dressed up as Santa Claus so he could get close enough to the woman who was playing the angel in the church Christmas pageant to try to shoot her. Come to think of it, Linda had felt sorry for the man in the Santa Claus costume and given him a free spaghetti dinner from the café before the pageant.

Linda looked at Reno. “I guess she’d be better off out at your ranch.”

Reno nodded. “My dog, Hunter, doesn’t let strangers get too close unless I give him the all-clear sign.”

And I’ll be there, Reno thought. He remembered that what had saved the angel was that Pastor Matthew had risked his life to save hers. Even Reno had been touched by their story of love and happiness.

“I don’t really think the lawyer would send someone up here. Do you?” Chrissy asked as she looked from Reno to Linda. Justin seemed to sense his mother’s fear, and started to fuss.

“Of course not,” Reno said quickly as he scowled at Linda.

“You’re perfectly safe here,” Linda added when Reno finished.

“It’s just that I keep hearing that music playing in my head,” Chrissy said as she put Justin to her shoulder and looked over at Reno. “Remember after the fire, there was that black car with a few guys in it, and they were playing those old songs from the sixties—it sounded like a CD or something. I remember because they were playing that song—how does it go…the Mrs. something one—”

“Mrs. Robinson?” Linda asked as she stood up from the table. “I don’t believe it. They’ve called here.”

“Who?” Chrissy asked as she started patting Justin on his back.

“Some guy called asking how to get to Dry Creek, and he had that music playing in the background. I think he was on a cell phone—we don’t always get good reception here if someone is on a cell. Usually we don’t even get the call, but sometimes it comes through and sounds faint like this one.”

“They called here?” Chrissy looked over at Reno.

Linda nodded. “We finally got the phone for the café listed under Dry Creek Café, Dry Creek, Montana. We thought we should ask for reservations for our new dinner section.” Linda motioned to the three tables in front of the window. “I’m so sorry. We never would have gotten a listing if we’d known.”

“Did he say where he was when he called?” Reno walked over to the window and looked out at the road leading into Dry Creek. He saw a puff of dust in the distance, but it looked like a pickup.

“He asked for directions from Salt Lake City,” Linda said, and then looked over at Chrissy. “And I invited him to try the café while he was in town. He said they would, so he must have someone with him.”

“We should call the police,” Chrissy said, and then bit her lip. She stopped patting Justin on the back, and he started to cry. “Of course we can’t do that. No one’s done anything. It’s not a crime to play sixties music.”

“We’ll tell our deputy sheriff anyway. He can keep an eye out for strangers,” Reno said as he held his arms out to take Justin. “And we’ll tell the men at the hardware store. Not much gets by Elmer and Jacob.”

Chrissy gave the baby to Reno, and she stood up and started to pace.

“You’re safe here,” Linda said. “We have a neighborhood watch program going—well, not the official thing, but we watch who comes and goes. Not that there’re many strangers anyway.”

“I do feel safer here than in Los Angeles,” Chrissy admitted. It made sense that there would be fewer strangers here and fewer chances for mischief. “My nerves just need to settle down.”

Chrissy stopped pacing at the window. She could see the Dry Creek church across the street, and the Big Sheep Mountains were in the distance. The Montana landscape didn’t offer many places for a criminal to hide. She should feel safe here.

Then she glanced over at Reno. He was rubbing Justin’s back.

Maybe she was relaxing too soon. The lawyer wasn’t the only man she needed to worry about while she was here.

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