Книга - A Rich Man for Dry Creek and A Hero For Dry Creek: A Rich Man For Dry Creek / A Hero For Dry Creek

A Rich Man for Dry Creek and A Hero For Dry Creek: A Rich Man For Dry Creek / A Hero For Dry Creek
Janet Tronstad


A Rich Man for Dry Creek All Robert Buckwalter wanted was a woman who'd love him for himself, not his money. Maybe a little town in Montana was just the place to find her–and maybe feisty Jenny Black was just the woman to show him what true wealth really was…. A Hero for Dry Creek Garrett Hamilton didn't see himself a hero– or even a man worthy of a good woman's love. But Nicki Redfern, the lovely rancher he'd been sent to protect, was making him wonder if he'd somehow found everything he wasn't even looking for….









JANET TRONSTAD

A Rich Man for Dry Creek & A Hero for Dry Creek







Published by Steeple Hill Books™




Contents


A RICH MAN FOR DRY CREEK

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

Epilogue

A HERO FOR DRY CREEK

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

Epilogue




A RICH MAN FOR DRY CREEK


This book is dedicated with love to my nieces



Julie Miller

Sara Enger

Marcy Enger MacDonald

LaRae Tronstad

Starla Tronstad




Chapter One


“J ust because he’s rich doesn’t mean he’s crazy.” Jenny Black pressed the cell phone to one ear and stood on her tiptoes to look at another dusty shelf in the old pantry. Her sister should stop worrying about Robert Buckwalter’s sanity.

She should worry about Jenny’s instead.

Jenny was the one who was crazy.

What was she thinking? Trying to cater a black-tie dinner in a place like Dry Creek, Montana. Right now Jenny was in the pantry of the town’s small café and she was desperately looking for paprika.

Jenny had made a big mistake. She should never have promised hors d’oeuvres to go with the lobsters she was serving tonight.

The ranching community of Dry Creek, tucked up close to the Big Sheep Mountains in southern Montana, was absolutely delightful. But any sane chef would have insisted the menu be switched to chili dogs and corn chips the minute she discovered the only store in town sold ten kinds of cattle feed and not one single thing for a human to eat.

Jenny had not been able to buy any of her last-minute supplies.

She’d turned for help to the couple who ran the café but they were only set up to serve hamburgers, biscuits and spaghetti. They had sugar packets, squeeze bottles of honey and those plastic packets filled with ketchup. There was not one obvious hors d’oeuvre in sight.

She was doomed.

Jenny heard an impatient grunt on the other end of the phone.

“Sorry, but if you ask me, Mr. Buckwalter is so sane he’s almost comatose.” Jenny had tried earlier to make conversation with the man. No luck. “Stuffed-shirt kind of sane. Think Dad.”

“But Dad’s fifty years old!”

“Well, Robert Buckwalter acts like he’s a hundred.” Jenny still felt a twinge of pique. The whole world knew that her employer’s son, Robert Buckwalter, was a ladies’ man. He was supposed to flirt with all women.

Jenny had expected to dodge a compliment or two on the flight over. But the man had sat in the pilot’s seat next to her the whole flight and not said anything at all once he’d made sure she’d fastened her seat belt. For which, she told herself firmly, she should be grateful. And she should be fair to the man. “Of course he’s most helpful—especially when he’s got an apron around his waist.”

“He’s got an apron on!”

“Well, he’s helping me with the hors d’oeuvres. We’ve got a hundred people coming for dinner—Maine lobsters—and I’ve had to improvise with the hors d’oeuvres.”

Improvise was putting it lightly, Jenny thought. Try egg salad on toast—which wouldn’t be so bad if she could at least find something to sprinkle on top of it.

“Robert Buckwalter the Third is cooking for you—and he has an apron on!” Jenny’s sister couldn’t let go of that thought.

“Well, it’s only some carrot stubs. It’s not like he’s whipping up a soufflé or anything complicated.”

“But he doesn’t even grill. It says that in his bio. My word, do you know how much money the man has?”

The question was obviously rhetorical and Jenny didn’t answer.

She had enough to do pushing aside spice tins hoping for some paprika.

The Dry Creek café had been abandoned years ago and left empty until a couple of teenagers had reopened it this past December on the night of the town’s first annual Christmas pageant. The original owners must have decided some supplies weren’t worth hauling out of Dry Creek because stray cans and tins had been left behind to sit quietly, collecting dust, for all those years.

“A little kitchen work never hurt anyone,” Jenny said. You’d think she was exploiting children or something. The idle rich were not a protected species.

“You’re not bossing him around, are you? Please tell me you’re not bossing him around.”

“He volunteered!”

“Good, because he is Robert Buckwalter the Third.”

“Give me some credit. I know how it is with the rich.”

Jenny didn’t have to remind her sister that, when they were kids, it was the fancy cars of the rich people who had always come to the suburban area near them to drop off their unwanted pets.

Apparently her sister not only remembered the cars, she also remembered that Jenny had been the one to shake her fist at the drivers as they sped away. “Look, Jenny, it’s important that you’re nice—you know, give him a chance to like you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Well, maybe he’ll talk to you. Tell you things. I could use some help here. I think the only reason I got my job is because you are working for the Buckwalters and my boss thought you’d be able to tell me stuff for the paper. Like this list of one hundred bachelors we’re working on. Buckwalter’s at the top, so far, and I’m counting on you to tell me about him.”

Jenny sighed. “You shouldn’t have taken the job then. It’s not right. Besides, I don’t have anything to tell. I hardly know the man.”

“He answered your phone.”

“This isn’t my phone. It’s the Buckwalter business phone. It’s supposed to be for business calls only. I’m surprised the main office gave you the number.”

A dim lightbulb hung down from the ceiling and Jenny had to squint to see the top shelf where restaurant-size spice containers were shoved behind several cans of what must be lard even though the labels were so faded they were hard to identify.

“Well, I may have said something about business—”

“What business?”

“Well, this is a business question. Something’s wrong. I’ve been working it out. The man is either crazy or secretly married. He’s always been in the tabloids. I know—I almost crashed my computer doing a word search on him. Dozens of pieces. This party. That woman. The next party. The next woman. And then—bingo—it all stops. Our top sources couldn’t even get the man to return a phone call! And they’re his friends.”

“His friends spy on him?”

“Well, you know how it is with the rich. They all do that. But that’s not the point. The point is that no one’s seen him. There’s been nothing for the last five months.” Jenny’s sister paused and then continued. “I’m hoping you know why. My editor is getting nervous. We need to decide if we’re going to make Robert Buckwalter number one on our bachelor list. Do you know what that means to be number one? Men would kill for that spot. You can make a million just endorsing stuff—shaving cream, shoes, clothes. It’s a gold mine. But we certainly don’t want to give the title to Buckwalter if he’s wacko or married. We’d look like fools who didn’t even know what was going on in the world.” She sighed. “Do you really think he could be married?”

“I doubt it—surely, he’d tell his friends if he got married.”

“Not if she was unsuitable.”

Jenny paused. She remembered she wasn’t the only one to protest those rich cars when they were kids. Her sister was there, too. “You don’t need to worry. It’s not like he married a kitten who grew up to be too much trouble. Even the rich don’t treat their wives that way.” Well, usually not, she added silently. “Besides, I thought that anything goes with the rich these days—look at that blond singer. Underwear in public. Pierced tongues. There’s not much left to be unsuitable.”

“She could be poor.”

Jenny’s lips tightened. “If that bothers him, then he shouldn’t have married her in the first place.”

“Is he wearing a wedding ring?” her sister asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t you know? Goodness, Jenny, don’t you even look anymore? Talk about him being comatose. You’re turning positively ancient yourself.”

“I am not! Twenty-nine is young.”

“If you don’t look at the ring finger, believe me, you’re old.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a ring. I remember giving him the knife, and I always check for rings—some people like to take them off so they don’t get wet.”

“You’re getting him wet! Robert Buckwalter the Third.”

“Even rich people need their vegetables washed.”

Her sister was silent for a minute before continuing. “Wait a minute. Are you sure this is Robert Buckwalter the Third? Maybe there’s been some kind of a mixup. A kidnapping or something. This just doesn’t sound right—vegetables and aprons. He doesn’t even know how to make coffee. It says that, right in his bio.”

Jenny smiled. “So far, he hasn’t made coffee, and his mother seems to believe it’s him.”

“Well, what does she say about him being gone all that time? Is she worried he’s married?”

“She hasn’t said a thing. And I don’t know why you think he’s married. Just because he kept to himself for a while, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s been to the altar. Maybe he’s just tired,” Jenny said as she spied the can of paprika and reached for it. “Five months isn’t so long to rest if he keeps a social schedule like the one you’ve talked about—it sounds grueling.”

“I never thought of that.” Her sister was horrified. “Maybe he’s worse than tired—maybe he’s sick.”

“Oh, I doubt he’s sick,” Jenny said as her hand wrapped around the can of paprika. She’d have to taste it to see if it was still good. “But I wouldn’t know for sure. I just work for him—well, really for his mother. I’m the chef—I’m in charge of parties like this one tonight. That’s it. It’s not like I know the man personally.”

“You must know something about him.”

“I know what he eats.” Jenny looked through the pantry door into the kitchen at the man in question. “Heavy into vegetables and meats—beef, lamb, duck—he likes them all.” That certainly didn’t sound like a man who was sick.

She suddenly remembered that she did know more about Robert Buckwalter than what he ate. But her sister wasn’t interested in the fact that some man had an odd aversion to her hairnet, which was a perfectly fine hairnet and required for food handling—even if it did make her look like a monk.

“There’s got to be more. Think. This is important.”

Jenny wiped the dust off the can of paprika. She’d been more mother than older sister to her three siblings and it seemed like one or the other of them always had something important that needed her help even though they were all over eighteen by now and should be adults.

She stood in the open doorway and studied the tall man that was causing her sister so much worry.

The light in the kitchen came from two bare bulbs hanging directly over the long counter that divided the square room. The kitchen walls were white. The sink and refrigerator were both forty years old and chipped. It was a humble kitchen.

Now that her sister mentioned it, Jenny wondered why the man had volunteered to help. She certainly hadn’t expected it of him. No one else had, either. Even his mother had looked up in pleased surprise when he’d demanded a knife and a bunch of carrots.

Jenny studied his profile, looking for answers.

At first glance, the man was the classic movie star ideal. The kind of actor that always wore the white hat. The aristocratic nose was perfectly balanced. The glossy black hair was combed stylishly in place. The cheekbones closely barbered. He looked like a luxury car ad. Definitely your playboy kind of a guy.

But as she looked closer, Jenny noticed some fraying. He had a bruise on the side of his forehead. It was faint, but it was there. His hair was nicely combed, but there was something off center and a little ragged about the cut. And his tan was uneven, like he might have been wearing a cap—not a designer cap with the bill turned to the back like a baseball player, but an old-fashioned cap like a farmer would wear.

My word, Jenny thought, my sister might be on to something.

Jenny didn’t think the man was sick—his cheeks looked too healthy—but Robert Buckwalter certainly had the neglected air of someone who was letting himself go to seed.

He might just be married at that.

That would certainly explain the plane trip over here. The man had insisted—not offered, but flat-out insisted—on personally flying Jenny and the lobsters from Seattle to Dry Creek in his fancy plane.

Jenny had been surprised he was going to Montana. He had just arrived at his mother’s house in Seattle from some trip that he wouldn’t explain. He looked tired and was limping. The housekeeper had his suite of rooms made up and ordered the customary orchids for his bedside table. Then the housekeeper put in the standing order for extra staff to handle the usual parties.

Robert Buckwalter hadn’t been home for twenty minutes before he canceled the orders. The housekeeper said he walked into his rooms and looked around as though he didn’t know where he was or why he was there.

Then he announced he was going to fly to Dry Creek to talk to his mother. He must have had something urgent to tell her—like maybe that he had a wife. Jenny wondered how the older woman would take the news of a strange daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Buckwalter was financing a winter camp for some teenagers from Seattle and the woman was staying in Dry Creek to be sure that all went well. It was a fine, giving gesture and Jenny respected the older woman for it.

But Jenny knew her sister wasn’t interested in Mrs. Buckwalter. There must be something useful about the man in question that she could share with her sister.

“Even if he’s not sick, I think he might have corns.”

“What?”

“You know—corns on his feet. And bad. I remember his mother commenting on some bill he’d run up for corn pads. Hundreds of dollars.”

Her sister grunted. “The man’s an Adonis. He can have a gazillion corns on his feet and who cares? No one’s looking at his feet. Have you even stopped your cooking long enough to look at the man?”

“Well, of course, I have.”

“And?”

“He’s neat, well dressed, clean—”

“Clean!”

“Well, he is—more than most.”

“I’ve got a news flash for you! He’s a whole lot more than clean. He’s hot. Drop-dead gorgeous. And if you haven’t noticed that I’m really worried about you. Might even talk to Mom about it. She always says you’re too picky—wait until she finds out you’re even picky with him. Robert Buckwalter—”

“I know.”

“—the Third.”

A timer went off in the kitchen.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” Jenny said in relief. “I’ve got egg puffs that need to come out of the oven.”

The café kitchen was noisy. A group of teenage girls, wearing prom dresses from the fifties, stood at a table in the corner laughing and folding pink paper napkins into the shape of swans. A dozen of the boys stood beside Robert Buckwalter, following his moves as they cut chunks of carrot into the closest thing they could get to a flower. The carrot nubs were more tulips than roses, but they had a charm all their own.

Jenny had forgotten the boys were from a Seattle street gang until she saw their ease with knives. Some of those boys could have done credible surgery on something larger and more alive than a hunk of carrot.

Jenny was thankful for people like Sylvia Bannister who ran a center for gang kids in Seattle, and for Garth Elkton who had welcomed the kids to his ranch for a winter camp program. Jenny had seen how peaceful the Big Sheep Mountains looked in the snow. Low mountains skirted by gentle foothills. This little ranching community was a perfect haven for gang kids.

Sylvia and Garth were giving those kids a second chance. Mrs. Buckwalter was funding the winter camp and providing the lobsters tonight, both as a thanks to the community of Dry Creek, especially to the minister who had recently gotten married, and as a reward to the teenagers from Seattle for putting down their knives and learning to dance.

Sylvia and Garth were the kind of people that deserved to be number one on some New York tabloid list, not some hotshot rich man like Robert Buckwalter who spent half his life in Europe attending art shows, Jenny told herself. He didn’t even organize the shows; he just sat there and gave away money.

Jenny felt a twinge of annoyance. An able-bodied man like Robert Buckwalter should be more useful in life. Giving away money hardly qualified as a job—not when he had so much of it. She doubted he even wrote the checks himself.

“I ruined one of the mushrooms,” a girl wailed from the sink. “Totally ruined it. The stem didn’t come out right and—”

“Not a problem. We just cut it up and put it with the stuffing.” Jenny walked to the refrigerator to get out the herbed bread mixture that went in the few mushroom caps they’d found in the café’s refrigerator bin. “Nothing goes to waste in a good kitchen. There’s always some other place for it. If nothing else, there’s soup. ‘Waste not, want not’ my mother always used to say. And remember, aprons everyone.”

The kids groaned.

Robert Buckwalter grunted. He wondered if he was crazy. He shouldn’t be annoyed with the ever-resourceful Jenny. He should be grateful to her. After all, he’d hired her because of her apparent good cheer and her complete indifference to him.

During her job interview, she’d asked no personal questions about him—no sly inquiries about how often he’d be present for dinner at his mother’s home in Seattle, or whether as the family chef, she’d be required to fly to the flat he must have in London or maybe the villa he had in Venice or the chalet he had in the Alps…and surely he must have at least one of those, didn’t he? Or maybe he just traveled around in the plane he had, the one especially designed with all the gadgets, the one she’d read about in the papers, the one they called the ultimate “rich man’s” toy?

The questions would come. They always did.

Except with Jenny.

But then, maybe she’d just been more clever than most.

“Finished with the phone?” Robert asked politely. He hadn’t been fooled for a minute by the woman who had called claiming she needed to speak to Jenny urgently about some pudding order. Pudding, my foot. The woman was no salesperson.

Why else would Jenny take the call and disappear into that hole of a pantry where no one could hear her conversation?

Not even bats would go into that pantry if they didn’t have to. Jenny had literally needed to pry the door open earlier with a crowbar. The wood was half-rotted and the wind blew in through the knotholes.

No, it wasn’t a place where anyone would go for a cozy phone conversation with a pudding salesperson.

Robert Buckwalter swore he could spot a reporter a mile off and he had a bad feeling about that call.

Maybe his time was up.

Robert knew how to keep a low profile with the press but he was off his game. He’d gone completely rustic. On the flight over here, he’d looked at all the extra knobs on his plane’s instrument panel and wondered what he’d ever need with all the unnecessary attachments he’d asked the manufacturer to add. He couldn’t even remember why he’d wanted a cup-size blender added on the passenger side.

He hardly knew himself anymore. It came from spending a whole five months as someone else.

Jenny carefully laid the phone back down on the counter where it had been when the last call arrived and then picked it up again to wipe off the dust that had followed her out of the pantry.

Robert watched her as he untied the apron strings from around himself and put the damp apron on the nearby counter. “Hope there was no problem.”

She looked up at him in alarm. “What?”

“About the pudding,” Robert elaborated grimly. She looked confused and guilty as sin. “I hope there was no problem with the order.”

“No, no, everything’s fine.” Jenny blushed.

Robert wondered what the tabloids were paying these days. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Wouldn’t want anything to go wrong with…things.”

Jenny stiffened. “I run an efficient kitchen. Everything will be fine.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll admit we are a little behind schedule, but your mother assured me that people will be late arriving because of the cold weather. And everything’s set up in the barn. Tables, chairs—the works. The kids even decorated.”

Jenny hadn’t worried when she was in Seattle and Mrs. Buckwalter had called to ask her to come cater this event. The older woman had said the party was to be held in The Barn. She’d announced the fact with such flourish that Jenny assumed it was some bohemian restaurant with theme.

Jenny was startled when they drove into Dry Creek and she saw that The Barn really was a barn, complete with hayloft and straw. Then she looked around at the few buildings in town and realized there probably wasn’t an industrial oven in any one of them.

That’s when she first knew she was in trouble. Not that it would do to admit it to her employer’s son.

“We’ll have the platters ready just as soon as those puffs cool. And the water’s heating for the lobsters. A half hour and dinner will be served.”

Robert nodded as he picked up the cell phone she had laid back on the kitchen counter. He slipped it into his pocket. His phone had a redial feature built into it. Maybe he could call the reporter and stop the story.

Robert put on his wool overcoat and stepped outside. Snow covered patches on the ground and the frigid air made his breath catch. He’d been in cold weather before at ski resorts, but the cold in rural Montana bit harder.

The back door to the kitchen led to a dirt path that was lined with garbage cans. Fortunately, the temperature was so cold the garbage wasn’t rotting. Not that Robert minded the smells of garbage anymore.

Robert wondered if he’d ever be the same again. He hadn’t intended to spend five months as someone else. It had started as the adventure of a bored rich man. He knew that. There was something supremely arrogant about shedding his identity like it was last year’s fashion.

But he had done it and wasn’t the least bit sorry.

He’d flown down to the Tucson airport last October. From there he’d headed on foot toward a little town on the Arizona/New Mexico border. He’d left his suit with his plane in a locked area of the airport. He also left his black diamond watch and his laptop computer.

He walked away wearing an old pair of denim jeans and a flannel shirt. The only thing expensive about his clothes had been his tennis shoes. He had no car. No cell phone. A dozen twenty-dollar bills, but no credit cards.

He still remembered how good it felt.

That day he left behind Robert Buckwalter III and became simply Bob. He rolled the name around on his lips again. Bob. He liked the sound of it. It was friendly in a way Robert could never be.

Robert had intended to spend a week alone in the desert at some flea-bitten motel along the highway so that he could return to his parties with more enthusiasm. He certainly didn’t intend to be stuck as Bob. He was merely cleansing his palate, not giving up the rich life he enjoyed.

But that first day he discovered Bob was the kind of guy people talked to. Robert was amazed. He’d never realized until then that people didn’t talk to him; they mostly just told amusing stories and agreed with everything he said.

They were, he concluded in astonishment, handling him. How could he have not noticed?

He didn’t have friends, he realized. He had groupies.

An old man in a beat-up truck had given Robert a ride south out of Tucson and invited him to share supper. Supper had been spicy beans and warm rice with a toaster pastry for dessert. The plate he used had been an old pie tin and the glass had been a jelly jar. The fork he ate with had a tine missing.

But the whole meal had been given in kindness and it tasted very good. When it was finished, the old man offered him a job earning twenty-five dollars a day chopping wood for his winter’s supply.

Robert had been about to refuse. He had enough money in his pocket for meals and a cheap hotel. He didn’t need a charity job. But something in the man’s eyes tipped him off and instead he looked at the woodpile and saw it was empty except for a few scrub branches.

The old man couldn’t chop anymore. He needed help. Robert offered to chop some wood to repay the man for supper.

One meal led to the next and the woodpile grew. Robert’s days found a rhythm. He slept in a camper shell by one of the old sheds on the man’s property. The nights were a deep quiet and he slept more peacefully than he ever remembered.

Each morning he woke up to the disgruntled crowing of a red rooster he’d nicknamed Charlie. Charlie had no trouble making his opinions known; he had never learned to bow down to the opinions of the rich. He didn’t even respect the opinions of nature. He seemed to be particularly unhappy with the sun each morning.

Robert didn’t want to chop wood in the chill of the early morning—and especially not with Charlie strutting around. Robert had never seen anything as cranky as that red bird in the morning. You’d think the morning had come up as a personal insult to the rooster. At least Charlie took it that way.

So, instead of listening to Charlie, Robert would jog down the hard-packed dirt road for several miles. He aimed himself in the general direction of the mountains even though they were so far away he’d never get there by running. But he liked to look at them anyway.

His morning run took him past two run-down houses with an astonishing assortment of children spilling out of each. Toddlers. Teens. Boys. Girls. One morning some of the children started to follow him on his run. Before the end of the week, a dozen kids were trailing after him and he was carrying the smallest in a backpack he made from a blanket.

It took a full week for them all to tell him their names.

It was the second week before Robert noticed most of them were running in thin sandals and slippers.

Robert almost scolded them for not dressing right for running, when he realized they were wearing the only shoes they had. The next morning he brought some old newspaper with him and had the kids each make a drawing of their right foot for him.

Later that day he hitchhiked to the nearest post office and sent an overnight package to his secretary ordering fourteen pairs of designer tennis shoes just like his.

The shoes arrived on a Monday.

It was Thursday before Robert saw the children were all limping and he realized he had forgotten socks. How blind could he be? He’d realized then just how removed he’d always been from the needs of others.

He gave money, but it was other people on his staff who actually worried about the arrangements. He, himself, paid very little attention to the needs of others. His contribution was reduced to a dollar sign. It was a picture of himself that he didn’t particularly like.

Unfortunately, others still had a fascination with his wealth and the tabloids fed their interest.

Too bad he wasn’t still living in the camper shell with Charlie, Robert thought. Charlie might like being in the tabloids.

Robert had discovered he didn’t like being in tabloids. In fact, he could honestly say he hated it more than Charlie hated the morning.

Robert removed the phone from his pocket and pushed the redial button. He wondered how much it would cost to kill the story.

Not that it mattered. Whatever it was, he already knew he’d pay it.




Chapter Two


R obert Buckwalter didn’t ordinarily notice the stars in the sky. But, standing still, holding the cell phone in his right hand, he looked up and blinked. Montana had a blackness to the nights that calmed him. He’d spent too much time in cities with all their noise and lights.

All of the commotion stopped a man from thinking.

And he needed to think his way out of this situation. Money wasn’t enough this time.

Jenny’s sister had crumbled when she realized who was on the other end of the phone. Robert had not even needed to be stern. The young woman confessed why she’d called her sister and apologized for asking questions.

She was contrite. She was abashed.

She was useless.

Robert had groaned inside when he found out why the young woman had called. He had dreaded the bachelor list even before his five months in Arizona. What sane man wouldn’t?

The bachelor list winners might as well enroll in a circus freak show. No one left them an ounce of privacy. Or dignity. Last year he’d been number seventeen. Some tabloid had printed the sizes of all one hundred men’s underwear. Ten different women had actually sent him silk boxers with their names screened on them.

And the letters! He had over a hundred letters from strange women asking him to marry them.

Just imagine if he was in the number one spot. They might as well shoot him now before his mailman filed for workmen’s compensation because of the backache from delivering those letters—a fair number of which would come with a string-tied package. Somehow the packages with string on them always included baked goods. Chocolate-chip cookies. Plum bread. One enterprising woman had shipped a pot roast in a gallon-size zipper bag because some tabloid story had mentioned he liked beef.

And the underwear givers and the cookie bakers were not even the worst of the lot. The more aggressive called on the telephone and demanded to talk to him. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. They knew how to dodge every polite refusal. His secretary was likely to quit this time around.

Maybe he should hire Charlie to take those calls.

Robert, himself, wasn’t interested in a wife that came from a list.

It was old-fashioned, but Robert knew if he ever did marry it would be a real marriage. One that lasted a lifetime. Not one based on lists or money. Odd as it sounded, he’d realized in his five months away that he wanted a wife who would want a simple home with him. Without servants and expensive antiques. Someone who would want him to mow the lawn and take out the trash. Someone who would talk to him and not just quietly pretend to find whatever he was talking about fascinating enough for both of them.

A woman like that probably didn’t even read the tabloids. She certainly wouldn’t mail him a pot roast or a pair of boxers if she didn’t know him.

No, if Robert ever wanted to live a normal Bob-like life, he needed to start it now. He needed to get off the list.

The trouble was he didn’t trust the young woman he’d spoken with to simply tell her editors that Robert Buckwalter thanked them very much for thinking of him, but could they please think of someone else for their bachelor list.

Fortunately, Robert knew one thing and that was the celebrity world. He’d been forced to learn how it worked. He knew stories were killed every day and that lists could go up in smoke with the wrong move.

As Robert saw it, he had one chance to change things and that was to make himself very unpopular. He needed to do something that would alienate women everywhere. He’d asked the woman and she’d confessed that the list was to be released on February 29. Leap Year’s Day. Women’s choice. It was already February 20. He needed to act fast.

First, a victim must be found. He found that nothing set off women better than mistreatment of one of their own. And Jenny, the chef, must know about the action so she could tell her sister who would then tell her employers. That should get his name thrown off the list and into the trash.

Robert felt better already. All he had to do was be obnoxious. His feet were still sore, but he was sure he could be sufficiently unpleasant to raise some eyebrows.

Confident that his troubles would soon be over, Robert slipped the cell phone back into the pocket of his overcoat and started to whistle.

He was almost cheerful when he stepped back into the kitchen. It wouldn’t be too hard. Before long his reputation would be back where it belonged—in tatters.

All he needed to do was find a woman to persecute.

Robert stepped into the kitchen to find it empty of everything except steam. He walked over to the stove and looked into one of the big lobster pots. It was empty, as well.

Good, he thought to himself in satisfaction, the party was starting. An audience would be helpful for what he needed to do.

The dining room of the café had been turned into a girl’s dressing room and Robert walked quickly through the haze of perfume. Makeup was scattered over the table closest to the door and several pairs of high heels were lined up along the right wall.

Robert stopped in front of the mirror taped to the inside of the door and ran a comb through his own hair. He brushed a few snowflakes off the shoulders of his overcoat. The overcoat was black. His suit underneath was black. Each cost more than most men made in a month.

Robert nodded at his reflection with satisfaction; he looked good. Every man should look good on his way to his own public scandal.

The first bite of the cold when he stepped out the front door made him step even faster. The café was just down the gravel road from the barn where the party was to be held and the space between was full of old cars and trucks. This part of Montana certainly wasn’t prosperous, he thought as he spied the old cattle truck that was parked next to the bus his mother had rented to haul all the teenagers around.

He nodded to an old man who was weaving between the cars with a bottle of beer in his hand.

“Coming to the party?” Robert looked closer at the man.

“Ain’t been invited.” The man’s beaten face looked anxious in the moonlight.

“Everyone’s invited,” Robert said firmly. The old man looked like he could use a good meal that didn’t slide down from the neck of a brown bottle. “What’s your name?”

The old man looked startled. Robert didn’t blame him. He was startled himself. Since when had he cared about the names of poor old men?

“Gossett.”

“Well, Mr. Gossett, I hope you’ll come have some dinner with us.”

“I ain’t dressed for it.”

The man was wearing a beige cardigan sweater covered with what looked like cat hair and a thermal undershirt that had a yellow ring around the band. His neck was scrawny and his eyes were bloodshot. His denim jeans had grease stains on the knees. Only the man’s boots looked new.

“This will set you up,” Robert said as he took off his overcoat and offered it to the old man. “Put that on and you’ll be right in fashion.”

Warm, too, Robert thought to himself.

The man’s startled look turned to alarm. “You with the Feds?”

“The who?”

“The FBI. They don’t think I seen them. But they’re here. Sneaking around in the dark. Watching me.”

“They’re not watching you,” Robert said gently as he offered the coat again. “I’ve heard there’s been some cattle rustling reported. Interstate stuff. It’s been going on for some time and they can’t get a handle on it. That’s why they’re here. It’s just the cattle. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Robert knew the FBI was in Dry Creek. One of their agents had questioned Jenny and himself when they’d landed with the lobsters out near Garth Elkton’s ranch the other night.

“You know who they think done it?” the man asked, leaning so close that Robert got a strong whiff of alcohol. “The rustling?”

“No, I don’t think they know yet.” Robert wondered if he should insist the man come into the warmth of the barn. With the amount of alcohol the man was drinking, it was dangerous for him to be out in the freezing temperatures. “You’re sure you don’t want to borrow the coat? You’d be welcome to eat with us.”

The man carefully set his bottle of beer on the hood of an old car before reaching out toward the coat. “I might just get me a little bit of something. It sure smells good.”

The two men walked inside the barn together.

The old man headed toward the table set up with appetizers. Robert resisted the urge to go over and visit his carrot flowers. Instead he looked around for the woman he needed.

There was a sea of taffeta and silk. Young teenage girls with heavy lipstick and strappy high heels. Farm wives with sweaters over their simple long dresses. A couple of women who looked unattached.

And, of course, the chef.

If he had his choice, Robert would persecute the chef. If for no other reason than to rattle her calm and make her take off that hairnet of hers. It was a party. She could loosen up. But the only thing he could think to do was to kiss her, and that certainly wasn’t outrageous. The media would just think he’d taken another in a long line of girlfriends. They’d yawn in his face.

No, he needed something shocking.

He looked over the teenagers and settled on the youngest one. His kissing her would raise the hackles of the tabloid world. She looked to be little more than a child, no more than twelve. Women all across the country would raise their handbags in unison to clip him a good one and he’d deserve it.

Robert went over to the buffet table. He’d look less threatening if he had one of those plastic cups in his hand. After all, he wanted to kiss the girl, not have her pass out in terror. She might be wearing lipstick, but twelve was still awfully young.

He nodded to the older woman behind the table. “I’ll have some champagne.”

The woman looked at him blankly. “I think there’s punch in the bowl.”

Robert looked over and saw the punch. It was pink.

“I don’t suppose there’s any bottled water?”

The woman shook her head no. “There might be coffee later.”

Robert nodded. He’d have to do this empty-handed. He walked over to the girl. She was leaning against the side of the barn and watching the other kids sort through some old records. Now who had those relics? He couldn’t remember ever seeing records played. Not with cassettes and CDs available.

“Know any musicians?”

The girl looked up and shook her head shyly. “Do you?”

Robert nodded. He’d be able to score a few points with this one. “Name a group and I probably know them.”

He realized when he said it that it was true. The world of the truly famous was pathetically small.

“Elvis,” the girl named softly.

“Elvis is dead.”

“I thought maybe you had known him. When you were young.”

Robert wondered if he’d fallen down a time warp. “How old do you think I am?”

The girl shrugged. “He’s my favorite is all.”

“He’ll always be the King,” Robert agreed gently. Maybe this girl wasn’t the one, after all. Her eyes reminded him of Bambi. He didn’t want to see the confusion in them that would surely come if a man as old as Elvis kissed her.

“You got a camera?” he asked instead.

“A disposable one.”

“Do me a favor and take a few pictures of me tonight. I’ll tell you when.”

“Sure.”

Robert nodded his thanks. Tabloids loved pictures like that and even sweet-eyed Bambis needed a college fund. Somebody might as well get some good out of tonight.

The lights in the barn were subdued and the whole place seemed to smell of butter and steam. Long tables were set up in the back of the barn and covered with white cotton tablecloths. Stacks of heavy plates, the kind found in truck stops, stood at the end of each table.

Several teams of ranch hands were holding big trays with a towel draped over steaming lobsters. Robert frowned at the men. Why hadn’t Jenny asked him to help? He’d had to practically demand a knife and some carrots earlier.

Jenny put a dozen silver tongs down on the head table and blessed Mrs. Buckwalter for requesting that they be brought to Dry Creek along with dozens of tiny silver lobster picks. Even Jenny wasn’t sure she’d tackle the lobster dinner with plastic forks and no tongs. “Can someone go back and get the last pan of butter?”

“I’ll do it.”

Jenny stopped arranging the tongs and looked up in panic. It was Robert Buckwalter. “But you can’t—I mean you don’t need to—”

“Well, someone needs to.”

“I can do it myself,” Jenny said. She could at least try to remember the difference in their social standing. He was, after all, her employer’s son. “You don’t want to spill butter on that suit. It looks expensive.” Jenny took a deep breath and smiled. Her sister owed her for this one. “I mean, it’s a tuxedo, isn’t it? Good enough to wear to a wedding.”

“Tonight’s a special occasion.”

“Aren’t they all?” She struggled upstream. “These receptions—nothing brings out the good suits like a reception or a wedding.”

Robert nodded. “Or a funeral.”

Jenny started to sweat. Being a news source was more difficult than one would think. “Funerals and weddings. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”

Robert looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

“I mean sometimes weddings get off to a rocky start.” Boy, did her sister owe her.

Robert nodded. “I suppose so.”

“Been to any weddings lately?”

Robert shrugged. “Not for a while. I’ve been away from the social scene.”

“Oh?” Jenny looked up brightly. Now they were getting somewhere.

“Haven’t missed it.” Robert looked toward the barn door. “It won’t take me a minute to run back to the café and get that butter.”

Jenny nodded in defeat. “It’s on the back of the stove. Be sure and use a pot holder.” She suddenly remembered to whom she was talking. “That’s a padded square of cloth. It’ll be on the counter.”

“I know what a pot holder is.” Robert didn’t add that he hadn’t known until five months ago.

Jenny stood with her back to the tables and watched Robert walk out of the barn. He was limping. Now she wondered why a man who had spent five months resting would be limping.

“Handsome, isn’t he?”

Jenny turned to look at the woman standing next to her. Mrs. Hargrove was one of the people in Dry Creek that Jenny liked the best. She’d organized the apron brigade for Jenny, using aprons from the church. Towel aprons. Frilly aprons. Patched aprons. They’d used them all.

“You’re pretty good-looking yourself,” Jenny said.

The older woman had worn a gingham cotton dress every other time Jenny had seen her. Tonight she was in a silk mauve dress with a strand of pearls around her neck. A lemon scent floated around her.

“Maybe he’ll ask you to dance,” Jenny continued. Mrs. Hargrove had said earlier that this was the first dance she’d attended since her husband died two years ago.

“Me?” Mrs. Hargrove laughed. “I was thinking he’d ask you to dance.”

“No time. I’ll be busy with the food.”

“Not when the dancing starts.”

“No, by then I’ll be busy with the pots and pans—washing dishes.”

“Goodness, no! The dishes can wait. Tomorrow’s soon enough for that. We’ll all pitch in then. That’s the way it’s done here. I might even ask old man Gossett to help us. Be good for him to get out. You’d be doing him a favor.”

Jenny had a sudden wish that she could dance. “But I’m not dressed for a party.”

Mrs. Hargrove shrugged. “I’ll bet there’s a few more dresses at the café.”

The women of Dry Creek had loaned their old prom dresses and bridesmaids dresses to the teenage girls from Seattle. For most of the girls, this was the first time in their lives they had worn a formal dress.

“He’s back,” the older woman announced.

Robert Buckwalter entered the barn doorway and stood for a moment. Jenny could see the blackness of the outside air. Snowflakes were scattered on his head and shoulders. His hands were carefully wrapped around the handle of the saucepan he was holding. He hesitated in the doorway as though he was shy, unsure of his place among the guests. His shyness, combined with the perfect balance of his face almost took her breath away. Maybe he did deserve to be the number one bachelor.

He certainly didn’t deserve to carry the butter.

“Here, let me get that.” Jenny wiped her hands on her apron and started toward him. The steam from the lobsters had made her hands clammy. “You shouldn’t have to—”

“I can carry a pan of butter.”

“Of course.” Jenny stopped. Of course he could. Why in the world was she so nervous around the man? It must be her sister. Making him sound so mysterious. Just because he was rich, it didn’t mean he wasn’t just a regular kind of a guy, too. He just had more change in his pockets than most.

“Dinner’s almost ready.” Jenny turned to talk again with Mrs. Hargrove.

The regular guy walked around her toward the table.

“Then your troubles for the evening will be over,” Mrs. Hargrove said kindly as she put a hand on Jenny’s arm. “We’re so grateful for all the work you’ve done, dear.”

Robert frowned as he set the saucepan on the table. If dinner was coming soon, he had work to do fast. He suspected people were always more easily shocked on an empty stomach. Plus, after dinner, the sounds of those records playing would mask his attempts at being outrageous.

He’d given some thought to his dilemma while outside and he’d decided age could go two ways. Instead of focusing on someone young like Bambi, he could try someone old enough to be his grandmother.

“Ah, there you are.” Robert turned back to Mrs. Hargrove. He understood she was the Sunday school teacher for most of the little people in Dry Creek. She should be thoroughly offended by a kiss from a strange man. Everyone else should be shocked, too.

He looked around for Bambi and called her over. There’d be no point in rattling the people of Dry Creek if he couldn’t shake up the rest of the country, too.

“Yes?” Mrs. Hargrove looked up at him. Her eyes were bright with curiosity. Her cheeks were pink. She must be seventy years old. She looked like every cookie-lover’s picture of Grandma.

Robert dove right in. “I love you.”

“Why, I love you, too.” She beamed back.

“What?” Robert stalled. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.

“I love all of God’s children,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “They say that’s how Christians will know each other. By the love they have for others. I John 4:7. Does this mean you’re a Christian?”

“Well, no, I—I mean I’m not opposed to Christianity.” Robert started to sweat in earnest. How had God gotten into this? “Don’t really even know much about it—”

“Well, I’d be happy to tell you.”

“Great, maybe later. It’s just that’s not what I meant when I said I love you.”

“Well, then, what did you mean?”

Robert was desperate. He looked over and nodded at Bambi. She was in position. Then he started to bend down.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Hargrove bent, too. “My beads.”

Robert heard the scattered dropping of pearls as his kiss landed smack on the top of Mrs. Hargrove’s gray head. His lips met the scalp where her hair was parted.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she bent down farther.

Now Robert couldn’t even kiss the top of her head unless he squatted down to where his kneecaps should be.

“Here, let me help you,” Jenny said as she stepped closer to both of them.

Robert wasn’t about to give up. It wasn’t ideal. But the camera was in place and he was determined to kiss someone. Even if it was Jenny.

He heard her first soft shocked breath as he drew Jenny to him. He was close enough to feel her second indignant breath as he bent his head.

The camera flashed. The talking stopped. A bead rolled.

Robert was triumphant. His big moment was recorded. He could end the kiss. But he didn’t. Something was happening.

The kiss blossomed. Jenny tasted of home. The minute Robert felt her lips tremble beneath his, he was lost. He didn’t want the kiss to end. He felt like he had caught a fragile thread of something precious he didn’t even understand.

“Mmmm, sweet. I like that—I mean you—I like you,” he whispered when he finally drew away.

“Not love?” Bright red dots stood out on both of Jenny’s cheeks. “I thought ‘I love you’ came easy enough to your type.”

Robert felt like he was coming out of a cozy cave and facing the frost of winter.

“My type?” he asked cautiously.

Jenny’s brown eyes had deepened to a snapping black. She bristled.

“The type of man who kisses his employees—whom he likes —even when he says he loves Mrs. Hargrove.”

“I don’t kiss my employ—” Robert stopped. That was no longer true. “I mean, I don’t. Well, I didn’t—”

There was an incessant ringing somewhere and a gnarled old hand reached from behind Robert. Mr. Gossett had pulled the ringing phone out of the coat pocket. “This yours?”

“You want it?” Robert asked Jenny.

Jenny’s cheeks were red still and her breathing quick. She was adorable.

Robert suspected she reached for the phone more for something to do than because she wanted to talk.

“Yes.” Jenny turned her back to him and walked a few feet away.

“You talked to him!” She looked over her shoulder in a betraying move. It was the sister. “So he knows.”

Robert knew he should pick up on the accusation Jenny had left dangling and make some strong sexual harassment statements. Publicly threaten to fire her unless she kissed him again. That would certainly knock him off the bachelor list. Women didn’t tolerate sexual harassment anymore and they shouldn’t.

But Robert didn’t open his mouth. Suddenly the list was not all that important.

He had met the woman the Bob inside him wanted to marry and she was looking at him this very minute like he was some hair ball a very unwelcome stray cat had coughed up.

Considering the set of her jaw as she talked to her sister, Robert figured he had as much chance of ever kissing her again as he had of teaching that stray cat to dance a tango.




Chapter Three


“H e kissed you! You’re telling me he kissed you! Robert Buckwalter the Third kissed you!”

Jenny’s sister was screeching so loudly Jenny had to hold the cell phone away from her ear. She’d slipped outside so that she could finish the phone conversation in private. She shivered from the cold.

“After he kissed Mrs. Hargrove,” Jenny said as she wiped one hand on her chef’s apron. The coarse bleached muslin steadied her. She was a chef. An employee. “He’s my boss. He can’t kiss me. He didn’t even say he loved me.”

“Love! He loves you!” her sister screeched even louder.

“No, he didn’t say that—that’s what I’m saying. He didn’t even attempt to be sincere.”

“But he kissed you.”

The Montana night was lit by some stars and a perfectly round moon. Silver shadows fell on the snow where the reflection of the barn light showed through the barn door and two square side windows. A jumble of cars and trucks were parked in the road leading up to the barn.

“Maybe he did it because I talked to you about him. Maybe there’s some servant’s code I breached when I told secrets about the master. You know, maybe it’s a revenge thing.”

Jenny could hear the pause on the other end of the phone. The silence lasted for a full minute.

Finally her sister spoke. “Have you been taking those vitamins Mom sent you?”

“Well, yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re getting old. First you don’t even wonder about whether or not the man is married and now he kisses you—Robert Buckwalter the Third actually kisses you—and you think it’s for revenge!”

“Well, it could be.”

“Men like him don’t kiss for revenge! They use lawsuits. Or buyouts. Corporate takeovers. They use termination. He could fire you. But not kisses! Kisses are for romance.”

Jenny snorted. “I smell like fish and my hair is flat. No man’s kissing me for romance.”

“You’re in your chef’s apron?” Some of the bubble drained out of her sister’s voice. “With that funny hairnet on?”

“And orthopedic white shoes because I’m standing so much. And no makeup because the steam from the lobster pots would make my mascara run. And I even have a butter stain on my apron—not a big one, but it’s there in the left corner.”

“Then why is he kissing you?” her sister wailed and then caught herself. “Not that—I mean you’re real attractive when you’re…well, you know—”

“Those are my thoughts exactly. I might pass for someone in his social circle when I’m dressed up—heels, makeup, the works.”

“You looked real good in that black dress you wore last New Year’s.”

“But in my working clothes, I’m more likely to attract a raving lunatic than a rich man.”

“Are you sure you don’t have some exotic perfume on? One of those musk oil scents?”

“Not a drop.”

“Well, this isn’t fair, then. A man like this Buckwalter fellow shouldn’t go around kissing women just for kicks. He could hurt their feelings.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s so rich he doesn’t need to worry about anyone’s feelings. Especially the feelings of his employees.”

It was the dumped pet thing all over again. The rich were rich enough to be selfish. They didn’t care about their pets. They didn’t care about other people. That was all there was to it. The normal courtesies of life didn’t apply to people like Robert Buckwalter.

Jenny looked over toward the barn. Mrs. Hargrove stood in the open doorway watching her anxiously. She was motioning for her to come back inside.

“I think they need me.” Jenny waved Mrs. Hargrove back into the warm barn. “It must be lobster time. Talk to you later.”

“Call me.”

“I will—wait.” She’d just thought of something. “When you talked to Robert Buckwalter earlier, did you tell him he was number one on the list or did you just say you were thinking of making him number one?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell him he was number one. I said maybe, but I didn’t say it had been settled. That’s not decided. Besides, it’s confidential.”

“I see. Thanks. I’ll call you later.”

Jenny slipped the cell phone into the front pocket of her chef’s apron. Well, that explained everything. Robert Buckwalter thought a kiss might nudge him into that first-place position. Cozy up to the sister of someone with influence on the list and—presto—he’s at the top. It was a game as old as mankind.

The heat inside the barn enfolded Jenny when she stepped across the threshold. She rubbed her arms. She’d been so angry she hadn’t noticed the goose bumps that had crept up her arms. It was freezing outside.

“There you are, dear,” Mrs. Hargrove said. The older woman stepped toward her. “I was worried. I forgot to tell you that there’s been a threat of kidnapping tonight. Garth Elkton has cautioned all the women to stay inside.”

“A kidnapping? Here?”

Jenny looked around in astonishment. She couldn’t imagine a less likely place for a kidnapping. The teenagers had strung pink and white crepe paper from the rafters, making Jenny feel as if she were trapped in Candy Land. Dozens of ranchers and their wives sat at the long white tables at the back of the barn. Some of the ranchers had arms as big as wrestlers. What kind of army would it take to kidnap someone from here tonight?

“But who—?” Jenny asked.

“Garth Elkton got a strange call warning him that someone was out to get his sister.”

“Francis!” Jenny had met the woman earlier and liked her instantly. “But who would want to kidnap her?”

Mrs. Hargrove leaned close. “Some folks say it’s an old boyfriend of hers. But I don’t believe them. Flint Harris is a good boy. I always thought Dry Creek would be proud of him one day.”

Jenny looked over at the string of men standing along the far side of the barn. Most of them wore dark cowboy work boots and had the raw look of a new shave on their faces. “Which one is he?”

“Why, none of them, dear. Flint Harris hasn’t been in Dry Creek for almost twenty years now.”

“Well, then, surely he’s not a threat.”

Mrs. Hargrove shrugged. “I’ve never believed he was. Everyone’s so wound up about this cattle rustling that’s going on that we’re making fools of ourselves, I’m afraid. Folks are saying now that the FBI thinks that someone from Dry Creek is tipping off the cattle rustlers. Imagine that! It’s rattled a lot of folks, but I don’t set much store by it. It’ll all blow over. But it’s best that you be careful. If you need to go over to the café, let me know and I’ll get one of the ranch hands to go with you.”

Jenny nodded. “I think we have everything we need to get started.”

Steam from the lobsters kept the air inside the barn moist and Jenny could smell the coffee someone had set to brew.

Mrs. Buckwalter took charge, thanking everyone for coming and asking Matthew Curtis, the newly married minister, to say a blessing on the celebration meal. He agreed and asked everyone to join hands.

Jenny offered one hand to Mrs. Hargrove and the other to a young girl with rosy cheeks standing next to her.

The whole town of Dry Creek held hands and then closed their eyes.

“For the blessings You have given, we thank You, Lord,” the minister prayed. He held the hand of his new bride, a fresh-faced redhead that people had been calling Angel all night long. “For this food eaten with friends, we are most grateful. Keep us in Your love. Amen.”

“And thanks for my money, too,” the young girl at Jenny’s side whispered quietly, her eyes still squeezed shut.

Jenny hadn’t noticed that the girl wasn’t holding someone’s hand on the other side of her. Instead she was clutching a green piece of paper that looked like a check.

“Maybe you should put that with your coat.” Jenny nodded her head in the general direction of a few chairs near the door that were haphazardly piled with coats. “You wouldn’t want to lose your allowance.”

“I don’t get an allowance,” the girl whispered. “But I don’t need one now, because I’m rich.”

“We’ve got a lot to be grateful for.” Jenny smiled down at the girl. What did it matter if the girl kept her few dollars in her hand if it made her feel better?

“I’m especially grateful for him,” the girl whispered again.

Jenny followed the girl’s gaze and it led her straight to the tuxedoed back of—“Robert Buckwalter!” Jenny looked down at the girl in alarm. The sweet young thing’s face glowed in adoration. “What’s he done to you?”

Jenny looked at the broad shoulders of the man who was causing trouble. It wasn’t enough that he’d kissed Jenny and Mrs. Hargrove, he’d obviously kissed others, too.

Robert looked perfectly at ease, talking with a couple of teenage boys who were fidgeting with their ties. It almost looked like he was giving them a lesson in how to make a tie bearable.

Jenny wished he would turn around and face her. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying to scowl at a man’s back as it would be to scowl at his face.

Folding chairs had been pulled close to the long table. People everywhere were walking toward the chairs and sitting down.

Jenny looked over and caught the eye of one of the ranch hands. She nodded for him to begin serving the lobsters like they had arranged earlier.

“I’ll be right with you.” Jenny was in charge of bringing the melted butter to the table, but it would take a minute for the lobsters to make the rounds and she had something to do before she served it.

“Excuse me,” Jenny said. Her eyes were level with the back shoulder of Robert Buckwalter and she could feel the stiffness in her own spine. That poor innocent girl was no match for a man like this and Jenny felt she must protest his flirtation with her.

The man turned around. “Jenny!”

Jenny almost stumbled. The man said her name with joy.

“I know this is a party—” Jenny kept her eyes focused on Robert Buckwalter’s chin. She didn’t want to lose her nerve. She had stuck up for her younger siblings for years. She’d stick up for that young girl. “—and a dance at that. But you’re an adult and you have to know that a child—well, you’re old enough to be her father and I think you should remember that.”

“I’m old enough to be whose father?”

Jenny lifted her gaze from his chin to his eyes. If she didn’t know better, she would say he was puzzled. And his eyes were distracting. A clear sky blue. They made her dizzy and annoyed at the same time.

“All of them,” she snapped. “You’re old enough to be father to all of the kids here.”

“Well, that’s stretching it, but if it makes you feel better, I assure you I’m not father to anyone—especially no one in this room.”

“You shouldn’t kiss them then.”

Jenny kept her voice low. She hadn’t forgotten about the teenage boys who were standing close enough to hear what she was saying if she wasn’t careful.

Robert had no such need for privacy. “Kissing? When?”

Suddenly the air became supercharged.

“Kissing!” A teenage boy yelled out and then gave a piercing basketball whistle. “Hey everybody—he’s gonna kiss her again!”

Jenny paled and she looked back at Robert. His eyes had deepened from sky blue to a midnight blue. And he was starting to grin.

“You shouldn’t have mentioned kisses,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Jenny felt as if she’d landed in a science-fiction movie. She turned around. She was suddenly surrounded by twenty, maybe thirty teenagers and they were all noisily aiming cheap disposable cameras at her.

“I suppose we should blame my mother. She bought them the cameras so they could take pictures of the wildlife in Montana.”

“But what do they want with us? We don’t even live in Montana. I grew up in Seattle. I don’t even know what the wildlife here looks like. I’ve never seen an elk, or a mountain sheep, or—”

“I think,” Robert said, as he touched her shoulders and turned her around until she was facing him again, “they want to see this.”

Robert dipped his head toward her and Jenny’s heart stopped. She knew he meant to kiss her. It was obvious. But she couldn’t move. She meant to move. Her mind assured her of that. It was her feet. Her feet had betrayed her and turned to stone.

Robert’s lips met hers and Jenny’s feet melted. She could hardly stand. She put her arms on his shoulders more for support than anything.

Ahhh. It was sweet. Very sweet.

Jenny felt like she went to a distant place where there was nothing but this man kissing her. Everything else was fuzzy. Then she saw a bright light. And heard a faint click. Then another click. This is it, she thought. Her heart was giving out. The end was always described as coming with a bright light. She wasn’t sure about the clicking. She should have paid more attention in Sunday school. She bet Mrs. Hargrove knew about the clicking. Jenny only hoped it didn’t have anything to do with that other place. Could it be fire crackling? She really should have paid more attention.

Then the light wavered and Jenny blinked.

The kiss stopped.

She glanced up and saw his face. Robert Buckwalter looked as stunned as she felt.

“It’s the cameras,” Jenny finally whispered. She wasn’t dying, after all.

“I heard bells.”

“No, it was just the clicking.” Jenny pulled away from him slightly so she could check her feet.

Her feet would work, Jenny assured herself as she pulled away farther. She suddenly needed more room. “I’ve got to see to the butter.”

“Are you going for it again?” one of the teenage boys yelled out. “I’ve still got five shots left on my camera. Might as well fill it up.”

“Yeah, me, too,” another boy added.

“I heard bells,” Robert Buckwalter repeated slowly.

“You heard clicking,” Jenny said forcefully. She took a deep breath. “To you it sounded like bells. To me it sounded like the fires of…” She took another quick breath. “Just how gullible do you think I am? I’m not doing anything about that list, so you can just forget this—this—” Jenny waved her hand, but could not finish the sentence. This what? This earthquake? This landslide? Everything seemed more something than simply this kiss.

“Besides, I have the butter to serve,” Jenny said with dignity as she pulled herself away. She congratulated herself. Her feet worked perfectly well.



The lobsters were all eaten and the butter dishes empty before Robert felt free to escape from the party and sit on the steps leading out of the barn door.

He was a mess. Some love song was filling the barn with swaying rhythm and dozens of couples were dancing together. He should be dancing. He should be in there dancing with the woman who had turned him inside out, but he wasn’t. Jenny was bustling around making sure everyone had coffee. Everyone, that is, except him. He was sure she wouldn’t offer him any even if he stood in front of her like a beggar with an empty cup.

One thing was clear—Jenny had little use for Robert Buckwalter. What wasn’t clear was if she could love Bob instead.

“Mind if I join you?”

Robert looked up to see Matthew Curtis, the minister, coming out of the barn.

“Help yourself.” Robert moved over on the steps. The steps were wooden and had been swept clean of snow even though they were still cold enough to make a man notice when he was changing spots. “There’s room for both of us on these steps.”

“I could get us chairs from inside,” Matthew offered as he turned to go back in the barn. “That’s what I should do—get us some nice folding chairs.”

“I haven’t seen anyone else use folding chairs.”

“Well, we don’t, but you’re—”

“I’m what?”

Robert wondered how much trouble he could get in if he took a swing at a minister. “Go ahead, tell me. I’m what?”

The night air was damp. Snow wasn’t falling, but the air was heavy with the promise of a blizzard later. Clouds covered most of the stars and half of the moon.

Matthew turned and stepped down next to Robert. “I’d guess right now you’re a man who’s just feeling bad. Want to talk about it?”

Robert realized he did. “You might not understand how it is with me.”

“No, probably not,” Matthew agreed as he settled onto the steps. “Can’t say I’ve ever had the problems of a rich man.”

“What makes you think it’s got to do with money?”

Matthew shrugged. “Just a guess. You’re rich. That’s got to be a burden—although I’d guess it’s a little less of a burden after tonight.”

Robert looked at him.

“All those rolls of film you bought from the kids must have set you back a pretty penny. I heard them saying you were paying one thousand dollars for each picture they got of you kissing Jenny. I heard them cameras each take twenty-four shots. One of the kids is still kicking himself for taking three shots of the decorations before you started your kissing. Can’t blame him. I almost got a camera myself and started taking pictures. That’s going to be a half-million-dollar kiss when you’ve paid off all the kids.”

“Does Jenny know about this?” Robert wasn’t so sure he wanted her to find out about this when she was carrying around a pot of hot coffee. She might be inclined to throw some of it his way without benefit of a cup.

“No. The kids are keeping quiet like you asked. They’re tiptoeing around her. But they’re so excited, they’re going to burst if they don’t tell someone. I’d guess a few of the adults know. And they’re all wondering why—”

“It seemed like a good idea.” Robert paused. The air was cold enough to make puff clouds of his breath. “It started with Bambi. I thought she should go to college someday.”

Matthew nodded. “You’re a generous man. That should make you feel good.”

“It should.”

“But it doesn’t?”

“It’s not enough. The way I see it, I’m missing something.”

Matthew nodded. “Go on.”

“I have too many friends. No, that’s not right. They’re not really friends. They’re only people who like me because I’m rich. Because I have all the toys. Each one of those kids in there has a better friend and is a better friend to someone than I am. That’s a hard realization to come to. If I died, it’s not me people would miss, it’s my toys.”

“You planning on dying?”

“Well, no, not anytime soon.” Robert realized it was hard to pin down the hollow feeling he had. “But if I did—”

Matthew nodded again. “What’s troubling you is that you need to be part of the kingdom and you’re not.”

Robert stopped. He’d heard there were militia groups in Montana. He wondered if he’d stumbled across one. They’d sure love to recruit a rich man like him who could buy them enough ammunition to start a small war.

“The kingdom?” Robert asked cautiously.

“Sure, the kingdom of God,” Matthew said calmly. “It’s all that will fill up that empty feeling. When you’re ready, we’ll talk about it.”

“I don’t think it has to do with God.”

Matthew grinned as he stood. “I know. You think it all has to do with that cute chef inside who’s in need of a dance. If you don’t ask her, somebody else is going to beat you to it.”

“She won’t dance with me.”

Matthew grinned even wider. “Well, maybe not the first time you ask her. But you’re Robert Buckwalter the Third. Way I hear it, you know about all there is about charming women.”

The minister stepped inside the barn and Robert stood up and brushed himself off before following him.

The minister was right. He did know how to charm women. He just wasn’t sure charm would work with someone like Jenny.

The music was softer now. Even the kids were slowing down.

Robert went over to the refreshment table and got a glass of punch to work up his nerve. Jenny was still flitting about filling up coffee cups for those people who were sitting around the edge of the dance space and talking. He’d studied her pattern. She needed to return to the refreshment table to refill her thermal pot after every tenth cup. She was due back any minute now.

When she came back, he would ask her to dance with him.




Chapter Four


“W ell, I hope you’re happy now,” Jenny said as she set the thermal coffeepot down on the refreshment table and glared at Robert Buckwalter. “Throwing your money around like it’s confetti.”

Robert stiffened. He looked around at the teenagers dancing. He hoped no one had told her what he was buying with the money. None of the dancers were looking at him in apology. “No one else is complaining.”

“Of course they’re not complaining.” Jenny turned to the big coffeepot and twisted the knob on its spigot so it would slowly fill the smaller thermal coffeepot. The mellow smell of brewed coffee drifted up from the pot. She looked up and continued her conversation. “What do you expect? They’re teenagers. They love money.”

“Money has its uses.”

Jenny switched off the knob. The small pot was full. And she was tired to the bone. She’d been a fool. There for a blinding moment she’d thought Robert Buckwalter was a regular kind of a guy who just happened to be rich. What kind of rabbit hole had she fallen down? She should know better. No one just happened to be rich. Money changed everyone. “Not everything in the world revolves around money.”

“I know.”

“You can’t buy friends with money—not even the friendship of teenagers.” After Jenny said the words, she corrected herself. Those teenagers certainly spoke of Robert with enough enthusiasm to count him a friend. And the checks were awfully big. She’d seen one of them.

Robert grinned. The kids had managed to keep his secret. Jenny didn’t know why he’d been throwing checks around. “I didn’t give them the money so they’d be my friends.”

“Well, with the size of those checks—they should be something.”

“I’m hoping they will be something someday.”

Jenny looked at him suspiciously.

“Something for themselves. I’m hoping they’ll go to college—maybe learn a trade—be good citizens,” Robert explained. “Grow up to be their own something. What’s wrong with that?”

Jenny was silent for a moment. “Nothing.”

Her sister was right, Jenny thought in defeat. She, Jenny M. Black, was turning into one of those fussy old women. Picking a fight with a perfectly innocent man just because he’d given away some of his money. And that wasn’t even the real reason. The real reason was the kiss. And that was just as foolish. In his social circles, a kiss was nothing more than a handshake.

“Who you give money to is none of my business,” Jenny said stiffly as she put the lid back on the small coffeepot. “I owe you an apology.”

“I’ll take a dance instead.” Robert held his breath. He’d seen the loophole and dived through it, but it wasn’t a smooth move. He’d done better courting when he was sixteen. He had no polish left. He was reduced to the bare truth. “I’ve been hoping you’d save a dance for me.”

Jenny looked at him like he was crazy. “Save a dance? Me? I’m not dancing.”

“And why not?”

Jenny held up the coffeepot. She hated to point out the obvious. “I’m here to see that others have a good time. That’s what your mother pays me to do and I intend to do it. I, for one, believe in earning my money.”

“I could pa—” Robert started to tease and then stopped. He didn’t know how she’d twist his offer to pay for a dance, but he could see trouble snapping in her eyes already. “My mother doesn’t expect you to wait on people all night.”

Robert looked over to where his mother was talking with Mrs. Hargrove. They were sitting on two folding chairs by the door to the barn. If his mother wasn’t so intent on the conversation, he knew she would have already come over and told Jenny to take it easy.

“You’re not going to ask her, are you?” Jenny looked horrified.

“Not if you don’t want me to. But if you’re so determined to give people coffee. I could pass some around for you. With two of us working, it’d take half the time. How much coffee can everyone drink?”

“I can manage.”

“No one should be drinking coffee at this time of night anyway.” Robert wondered if he’d completely lost his touch. She shouldn’t still be frowning at him. Any other woman would be untying those apron strings and smiling at him by now.

“It’s decaf.”

“Still. There’s all this punch.” Robert gestured to the half-full bowl of pink punch. The color of the punch had faded as the evening wore on, and the ice had melted. The plastic dipper was half floating in the liquid. “Pity to see it go to waste.”

“The punch drinkers are all dancing.” Jenny looked out at the dance floor wistfully. The only people left drinking coffee were the single men, mostly the ranch hands from Garth Elkton’s place. The teenagers had downed many a cup of punch after dinner, but they were all dancing now.

Robert followed her gaze. “The kids are doing their best, aren’t they?”

The swish of taffeta skirts rustled all along the dance floor. A long, slow sixties love song whispered low and throaty from the record player. Most of the teenagers were paired up and dancing with a determined concentration that Robert applauded. He even saw one or two of the boys try a dip with their partners. Now that was courage.

“They remind me of an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie—all those colors swirling around.”

The old prom dresses were lavender, slate gray, buttercup yellow, forest green, primrose pink—and they all seemed to have full skirts that trailed on the plank flooring of the barn. Their skirts reminded Jenny of a bed of pansies.

“We could be swirling, too—” Robert held out one hand for the coffeepot and the other for Jenny’s hand.

The light in the old barn had been softened when the music started. Someone had turned off a few of the side lights and shadows crowded the tall corners of the structure. The air was cool and, by the sounds of it, a winter wind was blowing outside.

When Jenny had looked outside earlier, she’d thought that the snow falling in the black night looked like a snow globe turned upside down—with the barn at the center and an old-fashioned waltz playing while the snow fell around the globe.

“I can’t dance in this.” Jenny brought her mind back to reality. She gestured to her chef’s apron. Her broad white apron was serviceable for working with food, but it had nothing of taffeta or silk about it. Even Ginger didn’t dance in coarse cotton. “And there’s my hair—”

“Your hair is beautiful. You just need to get rid of this.” Robert reached over and lifted Jenny’s hairnet off her head.

Jenny’s hands flew up. “But that’s my hairnet—the health code.”

“No one needs a hairnet for dancing.”

No, Jenny thought, but they did need air in their lungs. She felt dizzy. She could almost hear her sister’s squeal of delight if she knew Robert Buckwalter had plucked the net off her hair and asked her to dance.

But Jenny had always been more practical than her sister.

Jenny knew that Prince Charming didn’t even notice Cinderella until after the Fairy Godmother had given her a whole new look. Men, especially handsome men like the one in front of her, just didn’t dance with women with working shoes and flat hair. Not even the coachmen would have danced with Cinderella if she’d arrived at the ball with a net over her hair and an apron around her waist.

“I should change.”

Jenny’s hand had already found its way into his and now she was twisting away from him to go do something as foolish as change her clothes.

“You’re fine.” Fine didn’t begin to cover it, Robert thought to himself. Jenny’s eyes, usually a dark brown, had lightened to a caramel. She had a dazed look about her that made him want to dance with her in a quiet corner instead of in the middle of a throng of teenagers.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful, he decided after a moment. He’d seen dozens of women whose features were more perfect. But he’d never seen anyone who looked like Jenny. He could almost trace her thoughts in her eyes. She wasn’t trying to hide who she was or what she thought. He wondered if she even knew how rare that was. Or how compelling.

“But my hair…” Jenny frantically tried to fluff her hair up a little. It was all about bone structure. With flat hair, the small features on her face made her look like a Christmas elf. With just a little bit of fluff, she managed to look merely petite instead of childish.

Robert captured her hand and calmed her.

“Your hair is—” He’d been going to say “fine.” But then he felt the cloud of her hair fall against the back of his hand. “—incredible.”

“It’s brown.” Jenny shook her hair away from his hand. No wonder he was in the running for the number one bachelor. He was a charmer, all right. “Plain brown and flyaway on top of that.”

Robert shook his head. “I’d say more chestnut than anything, golden highlights. The kind of hair the masters used to paint in all those old European pictures. Mona Lisa colors.”

“Next you’ll be saying my apron is the latest fashion from Paris.”

Robert could see the amusement begin in her eyes and he could feel her relaxing.

“Just see if it doesn’t catch on.” Robert guided her closer so they could waltz. He felt her momentary resistance before she moved toward him.

“I used to love to dance.” Maybe the shadows will hide my apron, Jenny thought to herself as Robert started them on their way.

“Ever dip?”

Jenny shook her head. “And don’t you dare. I’d feel foolish with everyone looking.”

“Everybody’s too busy to care.”

Jenny looked around at the other couples. It was true. Almost. “The ranch hands are watching.”

Robert looked at the cluster of men standing by one of the side heaters. Half of them held coffee cups in their hands. A few of them did seem to be looking at him and Jenny, although he’d wager they weren’t interested in her apron. The dismay he saw in the eyes of a couple of them told him they’d been waiting for the coffee passing to stop so they’d have their own chance at a dance with Jenny.

“They’ll just have to get their own dates,” Robert stated firmly as he gathered Jenny a little closer and inhaled. She smelled of some very pleasing scent. He’d guess cinnamon.

Jenny almost stumbled. “Date?”

Robert looked down at her face and smiled. “You. Me. Dancing. That’s a date, isn’t it?”

“But we can’t be on a date.” Jenny stopped dancing.

“Why not?”

“You’re my boss.”

“I’ve never paid you a dime. You work for my mother.”

“It’s the same difference,” Jenny sputtered. “Besides—” she hated to sound like her sister, but there it was “—I’m Jenny, the chef, and you’re Robert Buckwalter the Third.”

“You can call me Bob.”

“What?” Jenny hadn’t realized how close Robert had pulled her until she’d stopped dancing.

“Bob. Call me Bob.”

Jenny looked up at him skeptically. He smelled faintly of some expensive aftershave. The tie around his neck was pure silk and probably Italian. His suit had to be hand tailored. “You don’t look like a Bob.”

Robert gently started Jenny dancing again. He liked the way she felt in his arms. Her head reached his chin. Not too tall. Not too short. Just right. “What does a Bob look like anyway?”

Jenny was silent a moment. “Plaid shirt. Sneakers.”

Robert started to chuckle. “I can’t do much about the shirt right now, but I left my sneakers in the bus when we drove over. I could go get them if it’d make you happy. We could both go.”

“It’s dark out there.”

“The stars are out.”

“Mrs. Hargrove said we’re supposed to stay close to the barn.” Jenny tried to hold on to her propriety.

Jenny remembered how soft the black sky was outside. Shadows layered over shadows amid the cars and trucks parked in the middle of Dry Creek. The bite of the air would be cold and sharp enough to make the inside of the bus a cozy place to talk. A much too cozy place when all was said and done.

“She’s just worried about that kidnapping rumor.” Robert watched the temptation play across Jenny’s face. He could watch her for hours. “But only a fool would kidnap anyone in a cold spell like the one tonight. There’s three feet of snow out there in some places.”

“I suppose.”

Robert noticed the frown didn’t go away. “If you’re worried about me, don’t be. I’m a gentleman. You can trust me.”

Jenny snapped back to reality. “You’re not a gentleman. You’re the bachelor of the year.”

Robert came back to reality with her. “I am? Have you talked to your sister? Have they decided?”

“No.”

“The whole thing is cruel and unusual punishment.”

Jenny nodded. She supposed the waiting and suspense did seem like that to him. He must really want the slot. “My sister says the winner will be able to write his own ticket with the advertising companies.”

Robert groaned. “I’d forgotten about that part of it. I may need to fly Charlie in to take those calls after all.”

“Who’s Charlie? Your attorney?”

Robert started to chuckle. “No, Charlie is an acquaintance of another kind.”

“Oh.” Don’t tell me he has an agent, Jenny thought in dismay. He certainly had the looks to go into modeling. But somehow, she was disappointed. “I hope you draw the line at underwear.”

Robert blinked. “Underwear?”

“You know, in the endorsements. I wouldn’t want to see you in a magazine in your underwear.”

Jenny felt the blush creep up her neck. He didn’t have to look at her that way—like she was picturing him right now in his underwear. “I just think it wouldn’t be a good example for the kids around here.”

“You’re worried they’ll grow up to be underwear salesmen?” Robert was entranced. He’d seen precious few blushes in his day. That must say something about the kind of women that usually flocked around him.

“Well, it’s not very steady work.”

“I don’t know about that. People always need underwear.”

If they hadn’t been talking, Jenny was sure she would have noticed that the music had stopped.

She did notice the loud voices from the front of the barn near the door.

A woman’s voice called, “Francis? Anyone seen Francis?”

There was a loud shuffling as the boots of the ranch hands who were sitting by the heater hit the floor with a united thud.

A man’s rough voice demanded, “Garth? Where’s Garth?”

Finally one of the teenage girls opened the barn door from the outside and shrieked, “Kidnapping! They were right! There’s a kidnapping! We saw the truck—we saw them!” The girl’s face was white, but Jenny couldn’t tell if it was from the outside cold or from shock.

“Come in, dear. Tell us what you saw.” Mrs. Hargrove was drawing the girl inside as Jenny and Robert arrived at her side.

“Bryan and I were outside looking at the stars when we heard a gunshot.”

“I told you that was a gunshot,” one of the ranch hands muttered to another.

“Are you sure it was a gunshot?” Mrs. Hargrove put a jacket around the shivering girl. “It might have been a car misfiring.”

“But there weren’t any cars running. Not even that big truck was going when we heard the shot,” the girl insisted. “Besides, I know the difference between a gunshot and a car backfiring.”

Mrs. Hargrove took a quick, assessing look at the girl. The girl was tall and skinny with a light brown skin that could signal almost any race. Finally, the older woman nodded. “We’d best call out the sheriff.”

“The sheriff? Where’s he off to anyway?” one ranch hand said.

“Some guy called in an emergency from the Billings airport,” another answered. “Something to do with some VIP.”

“I think the guys with the guns are in that big truck that just left,” the girl continued. “Bryan saw something shiny that looked like a gun.”

“Where’s Bryan now?” Robert asked the girl quietly. Something about the whole story didn’t seem right to him. Any teenage boy he knew would be in here claiming the glory of the moment. But there was no Bryan.

The girl bit her lip.

Robert looked around. There were a lot more dresses than tuxedoes in the crowd.

“Where’s Bryan?” he asked again.

“He wanted to be sure. I told him it was a gunshot, but he wanted to be sure before he told everyone.” The girl’s brown complexion went a little yellow and she swallowed hard.

“Where is he?”

“He took the bus to follow them.”

“Mercy!” Mrs. Hargrove put her hands to her mouth. “When they have guns! And the boy all alone.”

“I don’t think he’s quite all alone,” Robert said grimly as he looked over the teenagers again. Then he looked at the girl. “How many other guys are with him?”

The girl looked miserable. “Ten.”

“Lord have mercy,” Mrs. Hargrove said again.

“We’ll have to catch them,” Robert said, looking over at the ranch hands. He recognized the men’s faces from the ride into Dry Creek on the bus that was now in hot pursuit of the cattle truck. None of them would have a vehicle here. “Who’s got a pickup we can borrow?”

“You can take ours,” one of the farm wives offered as she bent to fumble in her purse for the keys.

“Anyone call the sheriff yet?” Robert asked as he eyed half a dozen of the ranch hands. “I don’t suppose anyone here has a hunting gun in their truck?”

“We called the sheriff,” Jenny said with a nod to another one of the ranch women. She held up the cell phone that had been resting in her apron pocket. “But he’s tied up at the Billings airport with some woman who came in, named Laurel Carlton or something like that.”

“Laurel?” Robert paled. “Here?”

Well, this is it, Jenny thought. Robert certainly looked uncomfortable with the thought of this woman, whoever she was. Maybe her sister was right and he was married after all.

“Fred has a gun,” one of the ranch hands yelled from the other side of the barn. “Uses it to scare off coyotes on his place.”

“It’s an old rifle—draws a little to the left,” the man explained as he walked fast toward the door. “But I’ll get it. It’s better than nothing.”

“I think everyone should just wait for the authorities,” Mrs. Buckwalter said. “Let them handle it. A gun can be a dangerous thing.”

One of the ranch hands snorted. “Tell that to whoever’s in the truck. We can’t wait for the sheriff. They’ll be long gone by the time he gets here.”

“He’s right,” Robert said.

The farm woman with the pickup pressed a set of keys into the palm of Robert’s hand. “The tank’s half-full.”

The other men looked at Robert. He nodded his head at five or six of the sturdiest-looking ones and they, almost in unison, dipped their heads to drop a kiss on their wives’ cheeks before starting toward the door.

Now that’s what marriage is about, Robert thought to himself. The automatic, comfortable affection of settled love. Having someone to kiss goodbye when you’re going off to war or even just heading to the store.

Seeing all those kisses made him feel lonely enough to be brave. What could it hurt?

Jenny was talking to Robert’s mother, her head bent slightly to hear his shorter mother. The dark wave of Jenny’s hair lay on her neck. Wisps of hair moved with his hand as Robert brushed the hair aside. He hoped to get Jenny’s full attention. He’d kissed Mrs. Hargrove on her hair part earlier and had no more appetite for hair kisses.

Jenny looked up. His mother looked up. Satisfied, Robert bent his head to kiss Jenny on her cheek. Her skin was soft as a petal. He could hear her surprised gasp even though it was little more than an indrawn breath.

“I’ll be fine,” Robert assured Jenny quickly, overlooking the fact that she hadn’t asked.

“You’re not going with them,” Robert’s mother said. Jenny still seemed a little dazed. The older woman repeated, “You can’t possibly be thinking of going with them.”

“I’ll be fine.” Robert moved to kiss his mother, as well. “Don’t worry.”

“But they have guns!” Mrs. Buckwalter said, as though that settled everything.

“I’ll be back,” Robert said as he started to walk toward the door. “Just tell that sheriff to get back here.”

“But he can’t go.” Mrs. Buckwalter repeated the words to Jenny as they watched Robert go through the barn door. A gust of cold wind blew in as the men stepped outside.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.” Jenny echoed her son’s words for the older woman’s benefit.

“But this isn’t like him.” Mrs. Buckwalter looked at Jenny. “He’d told me he was a changed man, but…” Her voice trailed off. “I thought he meant he was going to move back to Seattle or take up watercolors or get engaged or something sensible—not take off looking for men with guns.”

Jenny tried to smile reassuringly. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”




Chapter Five


J enny left the cell phone with Mrs. Buckwalter and walked over to the refreshment table to see how much coffee was left in the big pot. She had a feeling punch wouldn’t be enough for the men when they came back.

“The sheriff’s coming back as soon as he can,” Mrs. Buckwalter reported as she joined Jenny over by the table. “Which probably won’t be soon enough to do any good so I called in some of the other authorities around.”

Jenny looked up. “I didn’t know there was anyone else around here but the county sheriffs.”

Mrs. Buckwalter grunted. “There’s some fool FBI agent riding around on a horse.”

“On a horse!”

“And his boss is here in some kind of a Jeep. They both travel a bit unconventionally I’m afraid but—”

“I don’t care if they get here in a flying saucer,” Jenny said as she lifted the smaller pot of coffee to start making the rounds. “Just as long as they get here fast.”

“You’re really worried, aren’t you?” Mrs. Buckwalter looked at Jenny as though she were seeing her for the first time.

“Of course.” Jenny blushed. “Anyone would be.”

“But you’re particularly worried about my son.”

“Only because I know him a little better than the others.”

“I see.” Mrs. Buckwalter started to smile. “You know, I’ve never known my son to kiss a woman on the cheek before.”

Jenny grimaced. She didn’t need a reminder. If she ever had any illusions of being irresistible, that kiss certainly dampened them. It wasn’t a passionate kiss. A Boy Scout could have done better kissing his grandmother. “I think he’s just trying to be democratic. Being a regular Joe.”

Mrs. Buckwalter looked up questioningly.

“I mean Bob. He wanted me to call him Bob. I think he’s trying to be one with the people or something. And he focused on me because I’m—” she straightened her shoulders “—because I’m of the class that works for a living.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with working, dear. I haven’t raised Robert to be a snob.”

“No, but I can’t imagine he has many friends who scrub vegetables for a living. I mean, sure he knows people who work, but they’re probably stockbrokers or lawyers or something classy.”

“My dear, you’re a very classy chef. I dare anyone to make a crème brûlée that surpasses yours,” Mrs. Buckwalter said indignantly. “But I don’t think it’s that at all. I’m beginning to think it’s something quite different. He did ask me if I’d brought the family album with me. I was thinking it was because my anniversary would have been next week if my husband had lived. Robert knew I’d have it with me for that day.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Buckwalter smiled wistfully. “My husband’s been gone a long time now, but the album brings it all back to me. All three generations of Buckwalters are in the album—my husband and I especially. There are pictures right up to the final anniversary we celebrated seven years ago. My husband just kept adding pages to the thing. The Buckwalter men have a knack for knowing right away the women they want to marry. My husband has a picture of the first time we met—at a charity auction back in 1955. We were both there with other people, but he managed a picture anyway. We were saving something at the time. A local park, I think. Long before it was fashionable to save anything. There we were. It’s a picture I treasure.”

“What a lovely way to remember the past.” Jenny saw the soft light in Mrs. Buckwalter’s eyes and envied the woman. The older woman didn’t talk often about her late husband, but Jenny had wondered before if she thought of him. She frequently had that same half smile on her face when she seemed lost in thought.

“They’re coming back!” one of the teenage girls yelled from the hayloft. Several of the girls had climbed the steps up to the loft so they could watch the road from the small window there. “I see lights coming this way! And a horse!”

“Thank God,” Mrs. Buckwalter said, all memories gone from her face. She turned to Jenny. “Can I help with the coffee, dear? Or anything else? My experience with crises is that they always make people hungry and thirsty.”

Jenny laughed. “I’ve got plenty of coffee. And there’s enough of that cake left for another round.”

Mrs. Buckwalter was right. The ranch hands were the first ones through the door, their boisterous good humor relieving the last of the fears of the women inside.

“We got them. Everyone’s back safe,” one stocky man stopped to announce on his way to the refreshment table. “But it’s colder than blazes out there. Hope there’s some coffee left.”

Jenny started pouring coffee into the thick porcelain mugs that had been brought over from the restaurant. Thankfully the restaurant had been well stocked with dishes when the young engaged couple decided to reopen it this past Christmas. Linda and Duane, the couple, had volunteered the use of all the dishes for tonight’s party and Jenny believed they would use every single one of them. There would be an enormous number of dishes to wash at some point and, as far as she could tell, there wasn’t an automatic dishwasher anywhere around.

The barn door was opened and a damp cold filled the dance floor. Not that anyone was thinking about dancing. The music had stopped when the men left earlier and only the sound of muffled talking was heard now.

“The guy on the horse is bringing in the kidnappers,” one short rancher offered to Jenny as he held his cup out to be filled. “He had some fancy moves, I don’t mind telling you.”

“The FBI agent?” Jenny was trying not to watch the door as it kept opening, but she couldn’t help but notice that Robert wasn’t back yet.

“Don’t know what he is.” The rancher picked up a stuffed mushroom as he held his cup in the other hand. “Didn’t say nothing about who he was. Buckwalter seemed to know him, though. They made a fine team.”

The rancher put the mushroom in his mouth.

“Glad it all worked out.” Jenny wondered if they’d need more paper napkins.

The rancher didn’t seem inclined to leave the refreshment table. He picked up a carved carrot piece and eyed Jenny shyly. “That fella Buckwalter—noticed you dancing with him. Are you—you know—”

Jenny looked up from the napkins.

“—you know, involved?”

“Mr. Buckwalter and me?”

The rancher beamed. “Guess not if you still call him Mister. I figured you weren’t—what with all his money and everything. But wanted to be sure. Never held with moving in on another man’s territory, not even when anyone could see the two of you are from different worlds. Guess you’re free then.”

Jenny started to protest, but the man didn’t stop to draw a breath.

“My name’s Chester, by the way. The boys call me Harry on account of Chest. You know, Chest, Hairy—”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“Not that there’s any problem. With my chest, I mean. I got just the right amount of hair. You got nothing to worry about with me. I got me n-o-o defects. Just a regular kind of guy. That’s me.”

“I’m sure you’re a fine man,” Jenny moved a platter of toast squares to the back of the table. She’d take those over to the kitchen and make some new ones. She looked up at Chester. “But I’m too busy right now to visit.”

“Maybe later?”

“There’ll be cleanup later. Dishes.”

The rancher looked dismayed. “I suppose I could help, even though with the touch of arthritis I get in my joints—well, I’m likely to be more trouble than good to you.”

Jenny looked up and smiled. “I’ll do fine with the dishes. Thanks anyway.”

The barn door opened this time to a loud grumbling noise. A steady stream of frigid air blew into the barn making the pink streamers hanging from the beams start to sway.

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees, but no one complained about the cold. Everyone was looking at the three unkempt men who reluctantly stomped into the barn, swearing as they were forced by their captors to come inside.

Jenny recognized two of the three men who were holding the shoulders of the prisoners. Garth Elkton was one. His top ranch hand was another. The third man, a stranger who obviously hadn’t been to the dance because he wasn’t in a suit, seemed to be in charge.

Jenny looked past all those men and saw nothing but the snow falling in the black night outside. The teenage boys had come inside minutes ago. The ranch hands all seemed to be back. Men and women were giving each other quick hugs of relief. A dusting of snow had settled on the walkway outside the barn and it was covered with a score or more of large boot prints. There were no other figures standing in the doorway waiting to come inside.

“That Buckwalter fella must be still parking the bus—if that’s who you’re looking for,” the rancher who had stood at the table offered quietly. “He was the only one who knew how to drive the bus after the kids stripped the gears. Guess it’s on account of him flying planes. We would have had to walk back if it weren’t for him. He nursed the bus all the way back. He’s not a bad guy for a rich man.”

Then a final man appeared in the doorway and Jenny relaxed. Robert. I mean, she corrected herself, Mr. Buckwalter, was back safe. “No, he’s not a bad guy.”

“I wish you luck with him,” the rancher offered quietly.

“Oh, no, I’m not—I mean there’s no need—”

Just then Jenny heard the cell phone ring. The ring was faint and hard to hear over the talking of the ranchers and teenagers. She remembered Mrs. Buckwalter making a call so she assumed the older woman still had the phone and she was right.

“This is for you,” Mrs. Buckwalter shouted to Jenny as she moved through the couples who were now brushing snow off of each other. The older woman was weaving between couples and getting closer to the refreshment table but she continued to yell, “Something about a pudding order that’s late—”

Jenny winced. She was a full ten yards away from Robert. But she could hear his low chuckle over the murmured conversation of everyone else.

“Tell your sister hi,” Robert called over to her. “And tell her I want a case of chocolate pudding with sprinkles if they have such a thing.”

“Your sister sells pudding, dear?” Mrs. Buckwalter asked as she handed the phone to Jenny.

“She will be if she’s not careful,” Jenny said as she took the phone and stepped behind the refreshment table where it was quieter.

“I heard that,” Jenny’s sister said when Jenny put the phone to her ear. “And rest assured, I won’t need to be looking for a new job. My boss is very happy with what I’ve discovered.”

“And what would that be?” Jenny kept her voice low so that no one else could hear. Six or seven of the teenagers had drifted over to the refreshment table and were staring down at the punch bowl trying to decide whether or not to scoop some of the watered-down beverage into their plastic cups.

“Well, for starters, I know where Robert Buckwalter the Third is.”

“Any number of people know that. It’s not a secret.”

“Well, none of the other tabloids know where he is these days. And I know something’s up. I told my boss that the man was very touchy about talking to the press.”

“He thought you were a pudding salesman, for Pete’s sake. It had nothing to do with the press.”

“Still, I think he’s hiding something. Some secret.”

“Well, if he is, it’s his to keep. I, for one, am not going to ask him another thing about his life.”

“Oh, you’ve been talking to him?”

“No, I haven’t been talking to him.”

“Oh.” The disappointment in the voice of Jenny’s sister was more personal than professional. She was suddenly Jenny’s little sister again. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe after that kiss…”

Jenny couldn’t help herself. She darted a quick look over her shoulder to be sure that no one was close enough to hear. “Well, he did ask me to dance.”

“You danced with him!” Jenny’s sister shrieked.

“You danced with Robert Buckwalter the Third! Wait until I tell Mom! You really danced with him.”

“It was a short dance,” Jenny was forced to admit. “The kidnapping sort of got everyone distracted.”

“Kidnapping! Somebody kidnapped him! Why didn’t you say so! Now that’s a newsbreak.”

“No, no, not Robert. It was someone else. He didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s all tied up with some rustling that’s going on.”

“Oh.” Jenny’s sister paused. “Rustling? You mean for cows? You’re sure the kidnappers weren’t really out for him and they just grabbed the wrong person or something. I mean if you were going to kidnap anyone, he’d be the one to pick. He’s got more money than the president of the United States. He certainly has more money than some cow.”

“Yes, I’m sure. He wasn’t the target.”

Jenny sensed someone standing slightly behind her before she heard the man clear his throat. She looked up.

“Make sure she knows I didn’t even know the kidnap victims,” Robert said firmly. Snowflakes were melting on his hair and he still looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a catalog. “Make sure she knows the kidnapping had nothing to do with me. It would have happened if I hadn’t been here.”

“That’s what I told her. I said you wouldn’t have even gone with the men if it hadn’t been for the bus. I mean your mother rented it and all.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.” Robert frowned. How is it that he had never noticed Jenny’s eyes turned a snapping black when she was annoyed? Fascinating. He wondered if she was annoyed with her sister or with him. Maybe she thought he should have ridden to the rescue on a horse like the FBI agent instead of worrying about a big old bus. He guessed a bus wasn’t very dashing. If that was it, he needed to explain. “I would like to think I would go to anyone’s aid if they were being kidnapped. It wasn’t just the bus.”

“What’s this about some bus?” Jenny’s sister asked on the phone. “Was it a school bus? Were there kids in danger? That would make a good angle.”

“There is no angle. Robert—I mean, Mr. Buckwalter—was just driving.”

Robert frowned deeper. He wasn’t sure he liked the turn this conversation was taking. Granted, he didn’t want his life splattered all over some tabloid in the morning, but he didn’t know that he cared to have Jenny dismiss his efforts so lightly.

“It wasn’t just easy driving,” Robert finally said. “The gears had been stripped. I had to get everyone back here. It was cold enough out there to freeze to death if we didn’t get back.”

There, that should let her know his actions were important, he thought.

“What’s that?” Jenny’s sister spoke forcefully in Jenny’s ear. “Put the receiver out more. I need to hear. I got the part about the kids in the school bus almost freezing to death. This is great. My boss will love this story.”

“There is no story,” Jenny said firmly.

“But what about the children?”

“There are no children.”

“Well, then, what was the school bus doing? Work with me here, Jenny. It’s not like this won’t hit the local papers anyway. School bus kind of stuff always does. This is practically real news.”

“Listen, to me—there are no children. There was no school bus.”

“Well, then, give me a little something. Right this minute—what is Robert Buckwalter the Third doing?”

“He’s just—” Jenny looked up at Robert. The snow had melted and his hair was wet now. His cheeks were still red and his nose was white. His hands shivered slightly as he held a cup of coffee in them. “He’s just warming up.”

“Ohhh, that’s a good quote. Can I use that? Sources close to the man said that he is warming up and looking to be hot again.”

“Absolutely not!”

“Well, then, can I talk to him? Ask him if I can do an interview.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t—”

“Just ask him. Please.”

“Oh, all right.” Jenny began as she put her hand over the receiver so her sister could not hear the conversation. “I know you won’t want to—that’s why I only said I’d ask. Not that you’d agree.”

Robert watched the blush creep up Jenny’s face again. Her eyes had lightened again until he could see the caramel highlights in them.

“I’ll do it,” Robert said.

“But I haven’t asked—”

“Oh.”

“Not that you might not want to anyway. You might be able to sway the decision on the bachelor list and if that’s what you want—”

“Did she give any hint of that?” Robert’s face came to attention. “That she’d be willing to speak to the editors and plead my case?”

Robert wasn’t sure that Jenny’s sister could do anything to get him off that list, but if she was anything like Jenny he didn’t want to underestimate her.

“I’ll let you ask.” Jenny held out the phone. She was defeated. Why try and protect the privacy of Robert Buckwalter when he obviously wanted people all across the country to read about him as they stood in line to buy groceries? She suddenly wished she had told her sister he was hot.

Robert took the phone from Jenny’s hand.

A faint siren filtered into the barn and could be heard even over the commotion caused by the three kidnappers being tied up on the barn floor against their wishes.

“I want to negotiate,” Robert said into the phone. “Agree to my terms and we’ll talk.”

Jenny looked up. “You have terms?”

Robert nodded emphatically to Jenny as he continued speaking into the phone. “That’s right. I’ll cooperate if you cooperate. And I assure you you’ll get your story somehow.” He listened and then grinned. “Yes, something with pictures. It might take me a day or two to work it out first. Talk to the editors. See what they say.”

Jenny felt stiffer than she could remember feeling for years. Terms. He had terms. He was planning to sell his soul and become an underwear model.

Jenny almost missed the barn door opening once again. If it wasn’t for the siren growing louder and then stopping, she wouldn’t have paid much attention. But then she heard the booming voice of Sheriff Carl Wall.

“Where are they?” the sheriff demanded as he stomped into the room carrying two large suitcases.

“Careful with those.” A platinum blonde stepped daintily behind him. “Those are alligator skin cases.”

Jenny had never seen such a woman. Now there was somebody who could get away with modeling underwear. She was tall, thin and reeked of style. She was just a touch haughty and Jenny knew without a doubt that the hair color she wore was not her own.

The FBI agent seemed to share Jenny’s suspicions that the woman was not one of the locals and he walked over to the woman. “I’ll need to see some identification.”

“Identification?” The woman stopped. She managed to look very offended. “I don’t need any identification. I’m with him.”

The woman pointed at Robert Buckwalter.

Jenny saw Robert flinch. He’d quietly pressed the off button on the cell phone, hanging up on her sister. That meant that whatever was going to be said now was something that Robert wanted to be kept from the press.

This is it, Jenny braced herself. That woman spells a secret if anyone does.

“Now, Laurel, you know that’s not—”

The FBI agent appeared to have no patience. He looked at Robert. “She’s with you?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘with’—I know Laurel, of course. Our families are, well…My mother knows her better—so, no, I wouldn’t say ‘with.’”

“It was ‘with’ enough for you on Christmas!” Laurel staged a pout that would have done justice to a Hollywood starlet.

Jenny nodded to herself. Of course.

“I didn’t see you on Christmas!” Robert protested. It was colder than an Arctic winter inside this barn and he was starting to sweat. “I haven’t seen you for months!”

“Well, maybe not this Christmas,” Laurel agreed prettily. “You were a naughty boy and didn’t come to my party. And here I’d counted on you.”

Jenny started to breathe again. He hadn’t seen her for months.

“I never said I would come,” Robert said wearily.

He’d never said he would come. Jenny started to sing inside.

“Don’t worry, I forgive you. I figure we have lots and lots of Christmases to spend together.” Laurel stepped close and smiled at Robert confidently. “Laurel knows these things.”

Jenny dropped the teaspoon she held in her hand. She wondered if Laurel did know these things. If the other woman did, she was ten steps ahead of Jenny who couldn’t seem to figure out much about anything.




Chapter Six


“B ring those bags over here.” Laurel looked behind her and spoke sharply to Sheriff Wall who was standing staring at Laurel. The sheriff looked down at his arms as though he’d forgotten they were attached to his shoulders let alone that they held two expensive bags.

Jenny looked around. The sheriff was not alone in his fascination with Laurel. The ranch hands had forgotten all about the hot coffee they’d been lining up to get. By the looks on their faces they no longer needed the coffee to warm them.

“I need my lipstick.” Laurel pouted for the benefit of the men standing around. “My lips aren’t used to weather like this.” She shivered delicately. “Why, it’s terrible out there.”

Silence greeted her pronouncement.

“It is cold at that, ma’am,” one of the ranch hands finally ventured to say.

Laurel smiled up at him. “You really should pick better weather for doing these cow things.” She turned her head so her smile hit Robert. “What is it they called it—the rustle or something?”

“Rustling,” Robert said dryly. “You’re talking about the cattle rustling that has been going on around here. A hundred thousand dollars worth of loss so far. Interstate stuff. Enough to put some of these ranchers under. The FBI is working on the case now. It’s serious here.”

“Well, they need to plan it for a warmer time of year, don’t you think?” She appealed to the sheriff who was bringing her bags to her. “Maybe you could talk to the people in charge of the rustling. Ask them to do it in the summer instead. We could have a lawn picnic then with umbrellas and iced tea.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sheriff Wall replied automatically. He looked worried. “Where do you want me to set these bags?”

Laurel looked around, her eyes finally settling on the refreshment table.

Jenny winced. The refreshment table had looked better when the evening began. The teenagers had wrapped the legs in swirls of pink crepe paper and had twisted streamers from the table edge to the floor all along the front of the table. But those streamers were gone now, leaving stubby pieces of tape behind. And the lace tablecloth borrowed from Mrs. Hargrove had a half-dozen brown circles where some coffee cup had spilled. The punch bowl still stood in the center, even though only an inch or two of liquid remained in its bottom.

“I can’t put my bags there,” Laurel appealed to Robert. “They’re genuine alligator. They’ll get wet with that stuff.” She pointed to the punch bowl.

“If they’re alligator, I expect they’ll be fine if they get wet.” Robert shook his head. He added in disgust, “The skin’s been wet before when it was on the alligator. I can’t believe you’d buy alligator skin luggage anyway. Aren’t they some kind of endangered group or something?”

The other men were more forgiving and more eager to please. One of the ranch hands took off his vest and laid it over the tablecloth. “Here. I think your bags are beautiful. And don’t worry. You can put your bags on this. Won’t hurt my old vest any.”

“Why, aren’t you kind?” Laurel gushed at the man and then looked over at the sheriff. “You can put them there.”

The sheriff set the bags on top of the vest and then ducked his head, mumbling something about getting back to the kidnappers.

“Kidnappers?” Laurel looked up with the first genuine expression that Jenny had seen on the woman’s face yet. Laurel’s smile was gone and she looked twenty percent smarter. “I thought you said they were cattle rustlers.”

“Well, they’re also kidnappers,” the sheriff said somewhat sourly.

“Oh, dear, I knew I shouldn’t have come here to this end-of-the-world place where there aren’t even police to protect me from the criminals that run loose.”

“I’m the law around here.” The sheriff stomped a little louder than he needed to on his way over to the tangle of kidnappers that were waiting for him on the floor. “I protect all the citizens of Dry Creek.” He smiled up at Laurel. “And the visitors, too, of course. I take good care of visitors.”

“But there’s only one of you.” Laurel looked aghast just thinking about it. “The Seattle police force must have thousands of people working. And they’re trained. Police academy and all that.”

“I’ve got my GED. I know it’s not the same as a high school diploma, but I know the same information. And I read those police magazines every month. And not just the free ones they send. Sometimes I buy the ones off the shelves at that big drugstore in Billings. Just don’t go listening to anyone spouting off about that hit man that came here after Miss Glory. There was no way I could have known he’d dress up like Santa Claus and come to the church pageant just like he belonged—”

“Hit man! You had a hit man, too. Right here in Dry Creek!” Laurel fanned her cheeks with one hand. “A girl like me just isn’t safe.”

“No one can get into Dry Creek that easily,” Robert said, trying to stem her rising hysteria. When he said it, he looked at Laurel more closely. It was true. Dry Creek wasn’t the easiest place to get to in the middle of a February blizzard. What had prompted Laurel to come?

“I’m sure we’re all safe,” Jenny added. She was standing behind the refreshment table still pouring coffee. The line of men wanting a cup was finally moving forward. The heat from the coffee urn had added a moist flush to Jenny’s face and she was beginning to wish she had her hairnet back so that her hair would stay in place.

Laurel turned to Jenny and scrutinized her briefly before dismissing her. “Well, I’m sure you’re perfectly safe, dear. But rich people have extra perils and anyone can see I have money.”

“What anyone can see,” Robert interrupted icily, “is that you don’t have the manners you were born with. Look around you. Money isn’t the measure of a person. Some of these people will never have an extra dime and they’re still better people than you or I will ever be with our silver spoons and our trust funds.”

One of two of the ranch hands looked at Robert in appreciation.

“Say what you want.” Laurel stepped over and snapped open one of her small alligator suitcases. “But I’ve never heard of anyone pulling a gun on someone else because they wanted to steal from a better kind of person. They’re after people with money and that’s it.”

Laurel lifted the lid on her suitcase and a wave of perfume hit the air.

The man holding his coffee cup out to Jenny strained to see over her shoulder so Jenny turned to see what the attraction was. There she saw it. Row after folded row of satin and silk lingerie. Some trimmed with lace. Some appliquéd. Slips. Nighties. In peach. Ivory. Lavender. White.

“And you’re worried about the kids becoming underwear salesmen,” Robert said quietly as he moved closer to Jenny. “I’d say she’s set up for a sales tour of all fifty states.”

The amused tone in Robert’s voice cheered Jenny up considerably. He might be rich. But he surely could still see through a woman like Laurel.

“Didn’t you pack any real clothes?” Robert finally asked. “You certainly can’t survive a blizzard with that kind of stuff. You need long johns and sweaters with maybe some sweatpants and wool scarves.”

“Oh, I had two other boxes of clothes, but they got lost in the airport baggage system somewhere. I expect they’re at the Billings airport by now. Anyway, they’re going to send them out when they can,” Laurel answered cheerfully. “Not that they have any of those blizzard clothes in them. I brought some special-occasion clothes instead.”

Laurel looked at Robert with a glance he could only call sweetly possessive. It made him nervous. He’d known Laurel for years. They’d actually gone to school together, so he was better prepared for her games than most. He knew the sweetness was an act. He just didn’t know why she was playing up to him. “There are no special occasions planned here.”

“We’ll see.” Laurel smiled smugly.

Laurel shut the lid on her suitcase and swung around a little designer purse. “You know, I think the lipstick is still in my purse. Silly me. I didn’t need to rummage around in that suitcase after all.”

Laurel pulled a long gold lipstick tube out of her purse along with a small mirror. She looked over at the men. “I don’t suppose one of you would hold this mirror up for me, would you? I just don’t feel right unless my lipstick is fresh.”

The request almost caused a fight among the ranch hands until Laurel turned and asked. “Robert, would you help me?”

Robert grimaced. Yes, this was Laurel at her best. What could he do? If he didn’t hold the mirror, a half dozen of those ranch hands would go home tonight with black eyes. And the punch bowl might get broken. He happened to know the bowl was a favorite of Mrs. Hargrove’s.

“Why don’t you prop the mirror up on that ledge over there?” Robert pointed. The barn, even though it was now a community center, had been built for working cattle and still showed the marks. “See, you can see where the stall used to be?”

Laurel gasped. “You expect me to use the remains of a cow stall!”

“Well, there hasn’t been a cow along that wall in ten years. I don’t see the harm.”

Laurel tried to contain her annoyance, but it showed. Her normally pink cheeks got a little redder. Her baby blue eyes narrowed. Her chin jutted out in a stubborn angle. Then she took a deep breath and smiled sweetly back at Robert. “You’re right, you know.”

Laurel turned to walk over to the ledge and Robert watched her. She was definitely up to something.

“Anyone else want coffee?” Jenny asked the men standing around the table. They were blocking the way for the other people who wanted something to drink by standing there and watching the blonde.

“I’ll take another cup,” one ranch hand said with a sigh. “She’s way out of my league anyway.”

“Well, of course she is, Kingman,” another ranch hand responded as he got back in line, too. “She’s way too pretty for any of us. But we can still look. She’s like a picture in one of those fancy magazines.”

“Yes, she is,” Jenny agreed. She knew how the ranch hands felt. Sometimes you couldn’t help being drawn to someone even though you knew you didn’t have a chance in a million of anything happening.

“She shouldn’t have come here,” Robert said as he looked over the people of Dry Creek. Some ranch hands were still drooling over Laurel as she dramatically rubbed her lipstick on repeatedly. He’d lay odds there’d be some sharp words exchanged among those boys before the night was over. The teenage boys weren’t far behind the ranch hands and the girls were looking like they were ready to mutiny. Even the married farm couples looked uneasy. “Laurel doesn’t belong in a place like this.”

Jenny lifted her chin. She’d emptied the coffeepot and the line had ended. “There’s nothing wrong with this place.”

“I didn’t mean—” Robert was brought back sharply. “Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this place. It’s a great place full of great people.”

“Just because it used to be a cow barn doesn’t mean it’s any less of a place,” Jenny continued like he hadn’t even spoken. “It’s a place filled with friendship and good people—well except for them maybe.” She nodded her chin at the kidnappers who were now neatly tied at one side of the barn. “And who knows—even they might not be so very bad when all is said and done.”

“I agree.” Robert moved closer to stand beside Jenny. He didn’t know how to say what he was thinking. “I like the people here. I like that this used to be a cow barn.”

“It’s because you’re slumming, isn’t it?” Jenny said quietly. The punch bowl was now empty so she pulled the ladle out. “Getting a dose of real life before you settle down in some mansion somewhere with a perfect wife and perfect kids.”

“That’s not it at all.”

Jenny had a sudden fierce wish to have her hairnet back. She knew now why she was always so insistent on wearing it even in food situations where the health code didn’t require one. It reminded her of who she was in the situation. She was the chef. She knew her place. She wasn’t a guest.

“Excuse me.” Jenny forced a smile. “I better start cleaning up or I’ll be here all night.”

“Well, you’re not going to clean up alone,” Robert protested. “Tell me what to do and where to start.”

“You can’t help—not in that tuxedo. You’ll ruin it.”

“I don’t care about the tuxedo.”

“It’s wasteful to ruin a ten-thousand dollar suit doing dishes.” Jenny felt her jaw set. If she needed any reminding about the difference between herself and Robert Buckwalter, this was certainly it. He could ruin an Italian tuxedo just because he wanted to do something else at that point in time.

Robert looked down at the suit. It probably had cost over ten thousand dollars. But who needed a suit like this, for goodness’ sake? He’d just never given any thought before to how much he spent on clothes.

“Even taking in the punch bowl won’t work. It’s sticky with sugar and almost impossible to carry without holding it against yourself,” Jenny said as she reached for the bowl herself. “What you could do is gather up the coffee cups while I take the bowl to the café and rinse it out.”

“You can’t go outside alone.”

“Why not? The kidnappers are caught.”

“These guys are caught. There could be more out there.”

Jenny looked up. Someone had put another slow song on the record player. But no one was dancing. She could tell that the party was winding down. “I think with all these people here they would have spotted a stranger.”

“They didn’t spot Santa Claus when he was the hit man and almost got that woman—the one they called Dry Creek’s angel,” he protested. “Besides, I’d prefer to come with you.”

Jenny shrugged as she put on a jacket Mrs. Hargrove had lent her for the evening. “It’s just across the parking lot.”

“You need someone to open the doors anyway.”

Robert followed Jenny to the barn door. The sheriff and some of the other men were squatted down on the floor in one corner talking to the kidnappers.

“Think they’re the last of the lot?” Robert asked the men as he stood by the door.

The sheriff nodded. The man looked a lot more competent dealing with the kidnappers than when handling Laurel and her luggage. “I’m sure we’re safe for now anyway. He—” the sheriff jerked his head at the FBI agent “—thinks someone in Dry Creek is an inside informant on this rustling business, but even if that’s true we should be safe tonight.”

Robert nodded his thanks as he opened the door for Jenny.

The stars were no longer showing in the night sky and flakes of snow steadily blew in from the north. The men had stomped down much of the snow earlier but the boot prints were filling with the latest batch of snow.

“I doubt half these cars will start,” Robert said as he looked at the twenty-some odd vehicles parked around the barn.

Robert had never felt cold like this before. He’d given his coat to the old man earlier and had insisted the man keep it. Now he was glad one of the ranch hands had pressed a wool jacket into his hands as Robert was heading out. Even with the jacket, his heart pounded faster to keep warm. He’d swear his eyelids were freezing.

“They’ve got jumper cables,” Jenny said through chattering teeth.

A dim light was on in the café’s porch and Robert opened the porch door quickly. Even though the porch was boarded together and the wind blew in through some of the holes, it was several degrees warmer inside.

“Let me get the door,” Robert said as he reached for the main door. “Do you have a key?”

“It’s not locked. They left it open for us tonight.”

“Then you better let me check it out first. Someone could have come inside.”

In the yellow light of the porch, Jenny could see her breath come out in white puffs. Her lips were stiff from the cold and she felt snowflakes melting in her hair.

“But what would you do anyway if someone was in there? You don’t have a weapon.”

“Well, neither one of us has a weapon.”

“I have this bowl.”

“You wouldn’t dare break Mrs. Hargrove’s bowl over someone’s head. From what I hear, that bowl has served the punch for every wedding in this community for the past forty years. It’s practically a tradition all by itself.”

“It is a nice bowl. Heavier than it looks, too. Real cut glass.”

Robert had bent low and was looking in the glass panes of the café door. It looked like the only upright shadows inside were from chairs although it was hard to tell because the girls had used the café as a changing room and there were T-shirts and jeans everywhere. “I’m going in. Give it a minute and then follow.”

The doorknob was as cold as any metal Robert had ever gripped. But it turned easily and he stepped into the café. The air inside still smelled of cooking. He thought it was the stuffed mushrooms he smelled.

Robert flipped on the overhead light for the café and saw that the jumble looked undisturbed from the last time he had walked through. “Let me check out the kitchen first before you come in.”

Without waiting for an answer, Robert walked toward the back of the room where the kitchen door was. The café was small so he reached the other side with a few strides. The light in the kitchen revealed all was safe there, as well.

Robert heard the cell phone ring on the porch. It must still be in Jenny’s apron pocket. He’d bet a punch bowl full of pudding that it was Jenny’s sister calling. Which reminded him, he owed her a story. Assuming, of course, that she was able to get him off that cursed list.

“For you,” Jenny called as she walked across the café and into the kitchen. “It’s my sister.”

Jenny listened as Robert and her sister talked. Robert paced as he walked. Up and down the cold kitchen. His cheeks were red from the temperature and his dark hair was wet where snow had melted now that he was in the relative warmth of the kitchen. He looked excited though, wheeling and dealing with her sister. He said goodbye with laughter.

“Your sister is something,” Robert reported as he hung up the phone. “Those editors will have their hands full with her.”

“She is, isn’t she?”

The outside door to the café opened and Jenny and Robert both stiffened until they heard Mrs. Hargrove. “I hope you’re not doing dishes at this time of night.”

The kitchen door opened and the older woman stood there with a wool scarf wrapped around her head and a blanket thrown over her shoulders like a shawl. “We’ve had so much excitement tonight, the dishes need to wait. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Enough snow is predicted to close all the roads. We’ll have nothing better to do than dishes. I’ve already asked Mr. Gossett to help us. It’ll help settle him down. He’s been anxious lately.”

“But if the roads are closed, we won’t be able to get to the café from Garth’s ranch,” Jenny said. “And I can’t leave the two of you with all these dishes.”

“I’ve got extra rooms at my house. You’re both welcome to spend the night at my place.”

“Robert doesn’t need to,” Jenny began in alarm. A man like him shouldn’t be helping with cleanup.

“I’d be delighted.” Robert accepted the older woman’s invitation.

Robert grinned. Things were working out better than he could have hoped. He’d have some talking time with Jenny tonight and tomorrow.

“I already invited your friend—” Mrs. Hargrove smiled at Robert.

Robert’s grin froze.

“—or fiancée, I guess I should say. Considering that she brought a wedding dress with her to Dry Creek.”

“She brought a what!”




Chapter Seven


“N ow, Laurel, you take the room at the top of the stairs and to your left. That’s next to mine. Robert, you’ll have the couch in the living room. And Jenny, the room down that hall has a bed in it already made up. That room is closest to the furnace and should be toasty.” Mrs. Hargrove smiled at Jenny. “It’s my sewing room and the bed in there is my best. You’ll need a good night’s sleep after all you’ve done today, dear. Such a wonderful dinner party.”

“Thank you,” Jenny whispered. She could have slept under a cardboard box in some old alley. A sewing room would be heaven. She was damp, cold and tired. She just wanted the day to end. She didn’t know whether or not she believed Robert’s vehement protests that he wasn’t engaged to be married to anyone, but she did know she was ready to be alone. She’d been right not to trust a rich man with any tiny bit of her heart.

The walk across the snow to Mrs. Hargrove’s house hadn’t been long, but Jenny felt like it had taken an eternity. She didn’t have snow boots so she had to follow in the footsteps Mrs. Hargrove made. But it wasn’t just the snow that seeped into her shoes that made her cold and tired.

It was all of this. She glared at Robert. She just wasn’t cut out for this—the kind of roller-coaster life that people like Robert and Laurel seemed to lead. Jenny was a simple person and liked to deal with people who were straightforward—people you could trust to be who they said they were. Not something like this.

Who really knew who was engaged to who? It was like the dating game with extra doors for people to pop in and out of whenever they took a fancy to do so.

The bottom line was that Laurel said she had a wedding dress sitting in a box at the Billings airport. That was part of the special-occasion clothes she’d talked about earlier. The sheriff hadn’t had room to bring the box to Dry Creek in his patrol car. But there it was—waiting in Billings.

No woman traveled around with a wedding dress unless she had a reason. And if Robert Buckwalter III was getting a visit from a woman who was so sure of herself that she brought a wedding dress along, why was he kissing another woman? Especially when the kiss was a whopper of a kiss like the one Jenny had gotten from him.

Not that any kiss meant anything to a man like Robert, Jenny took a deep breath and reminded herself. She knew the rich kissed everyone, from their hairdressers to their dog trainers. A kiss from a rich man meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. A handshake was probably more sincere.

Robert watched Jenny walk down the hall. Her back was military straight. He knew she hadn’t believed him about Laurel even though he’d said everything he could to convince her he wasn’t secretly engaged to Laurel or anyone else. He certainly didn’t know anything about a wedding dress!

To make it worse, Jenny wouldn’t come right out and say she didn’t believe him. She just kept repeating that it was none of her business and it didn’t matter whom he married or what kind of a dress the woman wore.

Robert knew there was a world of difference between “I believe you” and “it doesn’t matter.” Especially when Jenny had pulled that hairnet of hers back on like it was armor.





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