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Chrissy looked up from her hands. “I’m a good mother, you know. I might be young, but I love my son and we’re going to do just fine.”
Chrissy knew she’d never give up her rights to Justin. She didn’t know much about rashes and formulas. She didn’t make much money, but she’d find a way to avoid welfare. Maybe someday she could save enough to buy a small restaurant. She’d be a respectable member of the community. Justin wouldn’t regret that she hadn’t given him to his grandmother to raise. Besides, she knew how to make Justin smile, and she intended to devote her life to seeing that he was happy.
Reno nodded. As it turned out, he hadn’t needed to worry about what to say to Chrissy when he met her. The police had sort of taken care of that. But he couldn’t seem to get the conversation into position so he could ask her about moving to Dry Creek.
“It sure looks like you have everything under control.” Reno nodded his head in the direction of Mrs. Velarde. “You’ve got someone to take care of Justin if you want to go out to dinner after work—” Reno swallowed. Now, why had he mentioned dinner? That had nothing to do with moving to Dry Creek.
“Work!” Chrissy set down her glass of water and looked at Reno. “I’ve got to run. But I’ll be back—my shift ends in two hours. Can you stay till then?”
Reno nodded. He’d driven over a thousand miles. He needed to ask the question. “I could even take you out to dinner when you get back.”
Reno saw the surprise in Chrissy’s eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was a good surprise or a bad surprise.
“Oh, there is no need to eat in a strange place,” Mrs. Velarde offered. “I’m making meatball soup.”
Chrissy left Mrs. Velarde’s kitchen before the tears could start. Reno had asked her to dinner again. Of course, this time it might not be a date as much as it was a way for him to find something to eat in a strange city, but it still made her want to cry. She wondered why that was. The doctor hadn’t said the tendency to tears would continue after Justin was born.
Chapter Four
When Chrissy got home, Mrs. Velarde announced that the soup was not enough for dinner. “Better you should go out to eat with Reno. A nice man like him, he needs a full meal. Maybe some fish. I’ll watch the baby until your mother gets home.”
Chrissy didn’t like to rely on her mother for child care. Her mother had made enough sacrifices all her life for Chrissy.
“Mom’s working late tonight,” Chrissy finally said. “Some last-minute meeting. I should take Justin with us.”
“Nonsense.” Mrs. Velarde shooed her out of the kitchen and into the living room, where Reno stood holding Justin. “The baby will be more comfortable here. Mr. Reno—he has been so kind, playing with the little one and cutting the onions for the soup so I don’t cry the onion tears. And me—I almost had him arrested. Now he must eat.”
Mrs. Velarde stopped to beam up at Reno.
“But I’m not even dressed for dinner.” Chrissy looked down at the orange uniform she still wore. Pete had the eye of a football player, and he believed a uniform should be seen from a distance. The orange dress was obviously not something to wear on a date—if Reno was in fact asking her out on a date, and not just looking for someone to guide him to a good restaurant.
“You look fine,” Reno said as he handed Justin to Mrs. Velarde. “I hear there’s a great seafood place at the end of Mullen Drive. Matt’s Galley. Mrs. Velarde said it’s a favorite of yours.”
Chrissy knew enough about men to know that they would at least look at a woman before saying she looked fine if they were heading out on a date. Well, she supposed that was her clue. This wasn’t a date. They were just two people who were hungry for seafood.
“How was work today?” Reno asked.
Chrissy noticed the candle at the table cast shadows on Reno’s face, but it did nothing to dim the startling blue of his eyes.
“They’re going to turn the diner into a tea shop.” Pete’s announcement had been hard for most of the staff. Some of the waitresses had worked for Pete for ten years or more. “But Pete assures us we’ll all have jobs with the new owners.”
Chrissy found it hard to concentrate on talking about her job.
She wondered if Reno could be any better looking. Back in Dry Creek when she’d been out at the ranch, Reno’s good looks just sort of matched the scenery. The sky had stretched from east to west with nothing but the Big Sheep Mountains to stop it from reaching down to level ground. The ground itself had been golden with fall colors. Even the air had smelled rich with the promise of moisture. Reno’s good looks had just blended into the countryside, and no one seemed to particularly notice them any more than they noticed the sky or the mountains.
But here…Chrissy knew it was unusual for three different waitresses to ask if they needed more water within the space of five minutes. It was clear that Reno was getting plenty of notice. Not that he seemed to be paying any attention. Chrissy was glad he wasn’t, even if this wasn’t a date.
The waitresses at Matt’s Galley wore snappy shorts and black nylons, which made Chrissy feel even more dowdy in her orange dress. The dress didn’t even fit properly, since it was a size too big. She’d bought the uniform secondhand from one of the other waitresses rather than buy a new one of her own. Tonight she wished she’d spent the extra twenty dollars.
Reno frowned. “Mrs. Velarde told me you’ve lost a lot of jobs—”
Chrissy flushed. “The restaurant business can be unpredictable.” The two restaurants she’d worked for before Pete’s had both gone out of business.
“All I meant was—well, when she told me that, I wondered if Mrs. Bard’s attorney was behind it.”
Chrissy was amazed that the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “Would he do that?”
Could he do that? Chrissy asked herself. The first restaurant had closed after they lost most of their business to a sandwich truck that parked outside their doors and practically gave away gourmet sandwiches to anyone who wanted one.
The next restaurant had been closed when someone left a lit candle on a table near the stack of folded napkins.
“But one of the restaurants burned down—wouldn’t he lose his law license doing things like that?” Chrissy protested. “I’ve never met the man, but he can’t be that foolish.”
“I have met the man,” Reno said, “and I think he’ll do whatever he can to collect the bonus Mrs. Bard is offering. I have the impression the amount is very generous. And all he really has to do is convince you Justin is better off with Mrs. Bard than you. He’s talking Princeton and Yale. And I’m sure he’s not breaking any laws personally. He probably knows people who arrange things.”
“Justin would never be better off with someone else.” Chrissy grabbed hold of the only thing she could in the swirling thoughts around her. How could she compete with Princeton and Yale? She’d be lucky to afford community college. Still…“I’m his mother and I love him. I’ll never let him go.”
Reno hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until he felt the tension slowly leave his body. He was glad Chrissy sounded so adamant. “Then you’ll need to come back to Dry Creek with me.”
“What?”
Reno frowned. He hadn’t meant to say it so bluntly. He hadn’t shown a glimmer of the charm Mrs. Hargrove thought he’d shown in first grade. “That is, if you want to come.”
Chrissy was still looking startled.
“We have free sundaes in the café on Friday nights,” Reno added. He swore the temperature inside the restaurant had just risen twenty degrees. “They have eleven kinds of toppings.”
“No one has eleven kinds of toppings.”
“They count the sprinkles and the nuts.”
There was silence for a moment, and Reno began to think the impossible was happening.
“I don’t accept charity,” Chrissy said.
“It’s only a sundae.” Reno told himself he shouldn’t be disappointed. He hadn’t really expected her to agree.
“I mean coming back to Dry Creek. I don’t need anyone’s pity. Justin and I will do fine.”
“What’s pity got to do with anything? It’s an invitation.”
Reno remembered Mrs. Hargrove’s advice to be charming, so he did his best. He relaxed his frown and smiled with all his heart.
Chrissy blinked. Reno should warn a woman before he smiled like that. His smile made her lose her place in her thoughts, and she had a feeling she needed to think. “From you? Is the invitation from you? Are you asking me to come?”
“Well, yes.”
Chrissy felt as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole. Reno was sitting there and asking her to—to what? Had he seen her looking at him and admiring his eyes? Was he suggesting she move back to Dry Creek so they could live together? Or was her mother right? Chrissy’s mother had cautioned her that men would think she was more—what was the word her mother used—available because of Justin. Chrissy hadn’t believed her. But here sat Reno, with a heart-stopping smile on his face, asking her to move back to Dry Creek.
“Babies are a lot of work. I don’t have much time for fun.”
“I know what you mean,” Reno said. He looked relieved that she had changed the subject. “I have a dozen or so calves that eat up a storm. I don’t get much done except feeding them this time of year—and I need to get to the plowing if the mud ever dries up.”
“What I meant is, I don’t go out like I did before Justin was born.”
Reno wasn’t looking as distressed as Chrissy thought he should be if he was getting her message.
“I’m not going to have sex again unless I’m married.” Chrissy finally decided she might as well be blunt. “So there’s no reason to ask me to come live with you.”
“Oh,” The surprise on Reno’s face couldn’t have been anything but genuine.
“Oh.” Chrissy echoed. She wondered if she could hide under the table in her orange dress or if it was hopeless. “You weren’t asking me that, were you?”
“I never thought you would—” Reno took a deep breath. “I mean, not that if I had thought you would—I’d—of course, I’d not—”
“Would you two like more water?” a cheerful blond waitress inquired as she stepped closer to the table.
Chrissy said, “Yes.”
At the same time Reno said, “No.”
The waitress glanced at Reno’s face and hesitated. “I’ll come back.”
Chrissy didn’t blame the waitress. She would have run away, too.
“I never would suggest that you come live with me in that way.” Reno said the words slowly. Chrissy only had to look into his eyes to know he was sincere. “Of course, you probably know that I find you attractive, so it’s not that I wouldn’t want to—”
“Really?” Chrissy was feeling better already. So Reno found her attractive.
“I asked you out,” Reno said indignantly. “You were the one who refused.”
“I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant women eat.”
“So you thought I needed help and you decided to ask me to move to Dry Creek?”
Reno nodded.
“Well, I still don’t need your charity.” Chrissy crossed her arms. She’d already thought about moving back to Dry Creek, and she’d gone over in her mind any possible jobs. There were none that she could see.
“Who mentioned charity? I’m offering you help.”
“I don’t take handouts. I need a job to support myself and Justin.”
“Mrs. Hargrove thought you could stay with her.”
Chrissy blinked. “Mrs. Hargrove? Does she know about Justin?”
Reno nodded. “She’s the one who started this idea.”
“Mrs. Hargrove wants me to move there and stay with her?” Chrissy had liked Mrs. Hargrove when she met the older woman at Thanksgiving dinner at the Redfern Ranch. But Mrs. Hargrove was clearly a churchwoman, and Chrissy had always thought churchwomen looked down on unmarried mothers. She knew they had looked down on her mother years ago. “And she knows about Justin? Isn’t she worried that I don’t have a husband?”
“Not that she’s mentioned.”
“Why?” Chrissy crossed her arms. “Why would she want me to come stay with her when you and I both know she has to think I’m one of those sinners?”
Reno smiled. “Mrs. Hargrove teaches first-grade Sunday school. She thinks everyone is a sinner.”
“Well, if she thinks that, then why—”
Reno interrupted her softly. “She also knows about forgiveness and grace. She knows life isn’t always easy.”
Chrissy relaxed her arms. Maybe there were people like Mrs. Hargrove who weren’t set on judging her. “Well, if I had a job—”
“We’ll worry about a job when we get there.”
Chrissy’s cell phone rang. She kept the phone clipped to her waitress uniform, so it was still in place. Chrissy reached down to unhook the phone, and she put it to her ear. “Hello?”
“There’s a fire!” Mrs. Velarde said breathlessly. “I called the fire department, but it’s still burning.”
“Grab Justin and get out of the house!” Chrissy stood up from the table.
“Not my house,” Mrs. Velarde said, and then she took a deep breath.
Chrissy relaxed. “Just stay inside, then, until the fire department gets there.”
“It’s your mother’s house,” Mrs. Velarde continued.
Chrissy turned to Reno.
Reno had already stood and laid three twenties on the table. “Let’s go.”
As Reno drove faster than he should down the street toward her mother’s house Chrissy reminded herself that her mother was working late. Please, let her be working late, Chrissy added, and realized in surprise that it was the first time in her life that she could remember praying. It must be all this talking with Reno. She hoped Mrs. Hargrove’s God was listening to her.
The sharp, hot smell of burning wood grew stronger as Reno drove the car to the fire truck parked in front of Chrissy’s mother’s house.
“Was anyone inside?” Chrissy called out to a fireman before Reno had pulled the car to a stop.
The fireman shook his head. “Didn’t look like it.”
Chrissy slumped against the car seat. “If she had been there, she could have died.”
“They would have gotten her out.”
“I need to go to Dry Creek with you,” Chrissy said softly. “If he will set fire to my mother’s house, he will do anything. My mother’s not safe with me here, and neither is Justin.”
“I’m sure they’d never hurt Justin.”
