Janet Tronstad - White Christmas in Dry Creek

“I’ll do something while I’m there to earn my keep. And I’m serious when I say I want to pay you for the care you gave me last night.”

“I didn’t do much,” the woman said with a shrug that reminded him again of his mother. They both looked as if they carried the weight of the world on their backs and were too fragile to survive. His heart always went out to women like that.

“Well, I’d still like to pay you something,” he said. Right was still right, even if he shouldn’t get involved with her.

She looked at him again for a minute.

“Maybe you could do me a small favor,” she finally said, biting the corner of her lips nervously.

“Of course.”

“I want you to talk to my daughter.”

Rusty was surprised. “I don’t really have much in common with little girls.”

Truthfully, he’d rather give the woman a few hundred dollars.

“Just tell her you don’t have a message from her father,” the woman said in a rush. “That you don’t even know her father. Tell her you’re not a prince.”

“I guess I could do that,” he said slowly. “Those things are all true.”

And they were fairly obvious, he would think, even to a child.

The woman nodded. “Good, then. It’s settled. Tessie is at the practice for the nativity pageant. You can come with me to pick her up.”

Rusty nodded.

“Just be careful not to volunteer to play a part.”

“Me?” No one had ever suggested he belonged in a pageant before. The thought was rather alarming. “I don’t think I’m the type.”

“Good.” Renee seemed relieved. “The kids are so impressionable at that age.”

“I’m sure they’re all angels,” he assured her, trying not to let it sting that she thought he was a danger to the children.

She laughed and left his room, much to his relief.

It took the hospital five minutes to find his clothes and another forty-five minutes to discharge him. Rusty wasn’t sure Renee would still be waiting for him, but he found her in the lobby area, leafing through a magazine.

He walked toward her. “Thanks for staying.”

She stood up. “Later you’ll be able to share the pickups that the ranch hands drive around. But until then, I figure all you have is your horse. Unless you want to ride around on that wolf of yours.”

Rusty nodded. “Dog is pretty big, all right. Thanks for looking out for him and Annie. I’ll take them back to the Morgan ranch as soon as I can ride. Unless I’ve found a place to rent by then. And I’ll ask around for a pickup to buy.”

He didn’t want her to think he was poor. He’d never given much thought to money when he was in the service, but he did have a good-sized savings account.

“You should wait to spend any money until you get the hospital bill,” she said. “You might be amazed at how much it costs to get fixed up now that you’re not in the army. I know you’ve had your share of hospital stays.”

There was something off about the look she gave him then, as though she had a secret and it was making her blush. Why would she care about his hospitalizations, anyway? How did she even know about them?

It wasn’t until he followed her outside that he figured it out.

Chapter Three

Renee opened the door to the backseat of the cab and pulled out a long-handled white scraper. Without saying anything to Rusty, she cleared her usual small hole in the ice on the windshield. She had expected him to walk around to the other side of the pickup and sit inside while she finished. After all, it was cold enough outside to see their breath and he’d just been released from the hospital.

But he stood behind her waiting, one free hand tucked in the pocket of his jacket and the other curled up in that sling.

“That’s it,” she informed him cheerfully after scraping the small space twice. She did it once for the ice and then again for the snowflakes that had started to fall.

“That’s not enough.” Rusty held out his hand. “Here. Give it to me.”

“I don’t see—”

He just held out his hand.

“Well, fine, then.” She gave him the scraper and he took her place at the windshield. She hadn’t expected him to do much with it, but he started in on the bottom corner of the windshield, scraping away until the cleared space grew larger.

“You might as well wait inside,” he finally said and opened the cab door for her with his left hand. “This is going to take a few minutes.”

Renee went inside and turned the heat on. She decided something was highly suspicious about this man. He’d done half of the windshield now, walked around the pickup to the other side and was still scraping so hard she thought both his shoulders must hurt. But he didn’t grimace or slow down. Or look irritated. In fact, she thought she heard him whistling, low and quiet. For some reason, that reminded her of the gangster who would never walk past a cat without petting it enough to make it purr. There was something unnatural about so much goodwill in a man like him, who’d seen so much violence.

Renee refused to watch his progress, so she looked out her side window. Last night’s blizzard had left a foot of snow on the ground and the tire tracks in the parking lot were deep. Fortunately, she already knew the county plow had cleared the freeway between Miles City and the Dry Creek exit, so they would be able to get through.

When Rusty finally opened the passenger door and pulled himself inside, his cheeks were red from the freezing air and a few snowflakes sparkled in his black hair. He bent down to set the scraper on the floor mat and then straightened up to rub his hand against his jeans. He might have just been warming it, but she suspected his actions meant he felt satisfied with what he’d done.

“Thank you,” Renee said and looked over at him with her best fake smile. He had brushed the snow off of the hood, too. “But I could see well enough out of the little patch I cleared. You really didn’t need to go to all that work.”

Rusty grunted. “I certainly did if I wanted to be sure I’d live to see another day. A soldier is only as good as his equipment. What if a vehicle suddenly decides to pass on your blind side?”

“Well—” She pursed her lips and put the pickup in gear, backing out of the parking space. “People shouldn’t be going that fast on these kinds of roads anyway.”

Renee didn’t regret the self-righteous tone in her voice. Who was he to lecture her on safety? She wasn’t the one riding around at night on a pregnant horse and getting shot at, for goodness’ sake.

She turned around in the clinic lot and drove to the parking exit. She looked both ways, just to show she was safety minded, and then eased the vehicle onto the main road.

“People don’t always do what you’d expect,” Rusty said and his voice had an element in it that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t quite amusement, but it was something just as warm. “Sometimes people surprise you.”

He looked at her and that was when she knew he wasn’t speaking about the other drivers on the road. For the first time this morning, she felt nervous. He meant her.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked as she steered the pickup onto the freeway.

He shrugged. “Just that a man never knows.”

She didn’t look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her.

“If you’re talking about that invitation to stay at the ranch, it came from my boss. I was only following orders.” The windshield was going to need defrosting in addition to the scraping.

“It’s not the invitation,” Rusty said.

“Well, then?” No other vehicles were around her, so she turned to glance at him.

“You took my shirt off, didn’t you?” he finally said.