Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  “Why, I can’t do no ballet,” Charley said, and then looked around at the faces of his friends. “I got me that stiff knee, remember—from the time I was loading that heifer and it pinned me against the corral?”

  “The exercises might even help you then,” Lizette said. “We do a lot of stretching and bending to warm up.”

  If Judd hadn’t still been thinking about the children’s father, he would have laughed at Charley’s trapped expression. As it was, he was just glad Charley would be in side with the children. For him self, Judd thought, he’d set up a chair out side the door, so he could keep his eyes on who was driving into Dry Creek.

  Judd didn’t trust the children’s father and was determined to keep the man as far away from Dry Creek as possible. First thing in the morning Judd decided he’d tell Sheriff Wall all about the court order.

  Judd had only met the sheriff once, but he trusted the man. Sheriff Wall might not be one of those big-city sheriffs who solved complicated crimes, but he had the persistence and instincts of a guard dog. And the man knew every road coming near Dry Creek, even the ones that were just pasture trails. The kids would be safer with Sheriff Wall on the job.

  “I can pay in advance for the les sons,” Judd announced. He didn’t like the sympathetic look the ballet woman was giving the kids now that Charley had accepted his fate. Judd didn’t want the woman to think they couldn’t pay their way, especially not when she’d have to give special attention to the security of her class room.

  “There’s no need to pay now,” the woman protested.

  But Judd al ready had two twenty-dollar bills in his hand and he held them out to her. “Let me know if it costs more.”

  “That should cover their first couple of les sons,” Lizette said as she took the money and turned to a desk in a corner of the large room. “Just let me get a receipt for you.”

  Judd watched the woman walk over to the desk. He couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t just walk—she actually glided. He supposed that was what all of that ballet did for a body.

  Judd tried not to gawk at the woman. The fact that she moved like poetry in motion was no excuse for staring at her.

  Judd heard a soft collective sigh and turned to see all the old men watching the woman as if they’d never seen any one like her be fore. Charley had obviously for got ten all about his reluctance to be in the class.

  “There’s no need for a receipt,” Judd said.

  The woman looked up from the desk. Even from across the room he could see she was relieved. “But you should have one any way. Just as soon as I get all my desk things organized, I’ll see that you get one. I could mail it to you, if you leave me your ad dress.”

  “I’m at the Jenkins place south of town. Just write Jenkins on the envelope and leave it on the counter in the hard ware store.”

  It had taken Judd two weeks to figure out the mail system in town. The first part was simple. The mail carrier left all of the Dry Creek mail at the hard ware store, and the ranchers picked it up when they came into town. The second part still had Judd con fused. For some reason, if he wanted to get his mail sooner rather than later, he still had to have it ad dressed to the Jenkins place even though no one by the name of Jenkins had lived on the ranch for two years now.

  When Judd finally bought the Jenkins place, he told him self he’d get the name changed. He’d asked the mail carrier about it, and the man had just looked at him blankly and said that’s what every one called the place.

  Judd vowed that once he had the children taken care of and the deed to the place signed, he’d take a one-page ad out in that Billings paper every one around here read. He’d make sure people knew it wasn’t the Jenkins place any more.

  But, in the mean time, he didn’t want to have the woman’s envelope returned to her, so he’d go along with saying he lived at the Jenkins place.

  The woman nodded. “I know about the hard ware store. I’ve been meaning to post an announcement about the school so every one will know that we’re currently taking students.”

  “About the students—” one of the old men said and then cleared his throat. “You see, the students—well, we’re not sure how many students you’ll have.”

  “Of course,” Lizette assured him. She knew she needed a few more students to do the ballet, but surely three or four more would come. “No one knows how many people will answer the flyer I put up. But I need to start the classes any way if we’re going to perform the Nutcracker ballet be fore Christmas.”

  Lizette figured the students who came later could do the parts that involved less practice.

  “Christmas is only five weeks away,” Judd said and frowned. He knew when Christmas was coming because he figured his cousin would surely come for the children be fore Christmas.

  Judd had gone ahead and ordered toys for the kids when he’d put in a cat a log order last week, but he thought he’d be sending the presents along with them when their mother picked them up. Thanksgiving was next week, and it was likely the only holiday he’d have to worry about. He figured he could cope with a turkey if he could get Linda to give him some more basic instructions. She’d al ready told him about some cooking bag that practically guar an teed success with a turkey.

  “I don’t sup pose you have a real nut cracker in that ballet?” one of the older men asked hopefully. “I wouldn’t say no to some chopped walnuts—especially if they were on some maple dough nuts.”

  “You know there’s no dough nuts, so there’s no point in going on about them,” Charley said firmly as he frowned at the man who had spoken. “There’s more to life than your stomach.”

  “But you like dough nuts, too,” the older man protested. “You were hoping for some, too—just like me.”

  “Maybe at first,” Charley admitted. “But I can’t be eating dough nuts if I’m going to learn this here ballet.”

  Lizette smiled as she looked at the two men. “Well, I do generally make some sort of cookies or something for the students to eat after we practice. I guess I could make dough nuts one of these days.”

  “You mean you can bake dough nuts?” Charley asked. “I didn’t know any one around here could bake dough nuts.”

  Lizette nodded. “I’ll need to get a large Dutch oven, but I have a fry basket I can use.”

  “Hallelujah!” Charley beamed.

  “And, of course, I’d need to have some spare time,” Lizette added.

  “And she’s not likely to have any time to bake now that she’s starting classes,” Judd said, frowning. It would be harder to guard the kids if every stray man in the county was lined up at the ballet school eating dough nuts.

  Judd told him self that it was only his concern for the safety of the kids that made him worry about who was likely to be visiting the ballet school. He’d been in Dry Creek long enough to know about all the cow boys on the outlying ranches.

  A woman like Lizette Baker was bound to at tract enough attention just being her self with out adding dough nuts to the equation.

  Not that, he re minded him self, it should matter to him how many men gawked at the ballet teacher. He certainly wasn’t going to cause any awkwardness by being overly friendly him self. He was just hoping to get to know her a little better.

  She was, after all, the kids’ teacher, and he was, for the time being, their parent. He really was obligated to be some what friendly to her, wasn’t he? It was his duty. He was as close to a PTA as Dry Creek had, since he was the al most-parent of the only two kids in her class right now. If Bobby and Amanda were still with him in a few months, he’d have to en roll them in the regular school in Miles City in stead of home-schooling them. But, until then, it was practically his civic duty to be friendly to their ballet teacher. And he didn’t need a dough nut to make him realize it.

  Chapter Five

  Lizette worried there was something wrong with her. She thought she had been working through the grief of her mother’s death, but maybe she was wrong. After all, she ha
dn’t had that much experience with mourning, and the chaplain at the hospital had talked about going through different stages of grief.

  Lizette wondered if one of those stages of grief was twitching.

  Here she was wrap ping up the day’s dance les son, and her mind wasn’t concentrated on the three people who were her students or the five more students she needed if she was going to pull off even a modified version of the Nutcracker ballet. Instead, she was all jumpy in side, and her gaze kept going to the window, where she could see Judd sitting on the steps of her school and looking out to the street with a scowl on his face.

  If she didn’t get a firm hold on her self, she’d be actually twitching when she looked at that man.

  Lizette had had three days of les sons now, and for the better part of all of those days Judd had had his back turned to ward her and the students. The first day she didn’t notice his silence and his scowls. The second day she noticed, but she didn’t feel the need to do any thing about it. Today, she felt obsessed by the man.

  She kept fighting the urge to go out and talk to him—and that was after she’d al ready been out side five times today to ask him questions. She didn’t have much to talk about either, except for the weather, and how many times could she ask if it looked like it was going to snow? He’d think she was dim-witted. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky any more.

  She kept expecting each time she went out and asked the man a question that she would then be able to move on with her les sons with a focused mind.

  She was still waiting for that to happen.

  The really odd thing was that nothing had changed in those three days.

  She didn’t need to see his face to know he wore the same scowl he’d worn every day so far. Every time today she’d found an excuse to slip out side and ask him a question, she’d known he’d have the same fierce look on his face even be fore she opened the door.

  Lizette wondered if Judd thought his look would keep strange cars off the street in front of the school. Actually, he might be right about that one. That scowl of his would stop an army tank from approaching him.

  With all of the frowning, Lizette knew there was no sane reason she should feel drawn to go up and talk to him. But she was.

  She thought it might be his shoulders. For as hard as his face scowled, his shoulders told a different story. It wasn’t anger he was feeling, but worry. Anxiety hung on his shoulders. It was there in the way he angled his head when he heard a sound and the way he stood to take a look down the road every half hour or so.

  Judd was taking his duty seriously, and he was worried.

  That’s it, Lizette thought to her self in relief. She found him compelling because he was protecting the children. She’d just lost her mother, and the man was obviously doing everything he could to guard the children in his care. That made him an unconscious picture to her of her mother, she told her self. She’d be as attracted to a chicken if it sat there guarding its eggs. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a man. He was simply a concerned parent.

  Lizette felt better having figured that out. Not that she would have been op posed to finding the man attractive as a man, she just didn’t have time for that kind of distraction right now. She only had three students—Amanda, Bobby and Charley. She needed to worry about get ting more students in stead of thinking about some man’s shoulders.

  And, yet, she let her self walk over to the doorway. Bobby and Amanda were sitting on the wooden floor untying their dance shoes. Since Charley wore socks in stead of dance shoes, he didn’t have to worry about ties. Instead, he was pulling in his stomach and admiring him self in the mirror she’d hung be hind the exercise bar. None of her students needed her immediate attention.

  “They’re al most done,” Lizette said as she walked out on the porch and crossed her arms in the chill. At least she wasn’t asking about snow this time, even though the air felt cold enough for it. She al ways wore black tights and a black wrap-around dress when she practiced. Unfortunately, the dress was sleeve less. “Aren’t you cold out here waiting for the kids?”

  Judd looked up at Lizette and for got to frown. He al most for got to breathe. She was standing in front of the sun, and al though the temperature was low enough out side to make his fingers ache if he didn’t keep them in his pockets, the sun was shining brightly and she looked as though she was rimmed with gold. Her black hair was pulled back into a bun, and the smooth lines of her head made him think of an exotic princess. Her face was smooth and, even with out lip stick, she looked like a picture he’d once seen of Cleopatra. The flimsy black thing she had draped over her made her look as if she was in constant motion. No wonder there had been so many wars fought back in Cleopatra’s day.

  Judd was out classed and he had sense enough to know it. All he asked was that he not embarrass himself around her. “It’s not that cold. Forty-six, last I checked.”

  “Yes, well.” Lizette smiled.

  “And no snow,” Judd added.

  He’d al ready figured out that it wasn’t snow she was worried about. The few clouds that had been in the sky this morning were long gone. No, it was the kids’ father she was fret ting about. She didn’t know Judd well enough to know that she didn’t have to worry about him leaving his post.

  Not that he minded her coming out to check on him. He knew he hadn’t been around many women in his life, but he didn’t remember women being this naturally beautiful. He al most smiled in return. “So the kids are al most finished? Did they do all right?”

  Lizette smiled even wider. “You do make a good mother.”

  “What?” Judd choked on the smile that didn’t happen. Had he heard her right? She thought he made a good mother? A mother?

  “I mean with all of your concern and all,” Lizette continued.

  Judd grunted. He’d known he was out of her class, but he hadn’t realized he was that far out of it. A man didn’t get further away from date material than having a woman think of him as a mother.

  “I used to ride rodeo.” Judd thought he owed it to him self to speak up. “Won my share of ribbons, too. Bronc riding and steer wrestling. They’re not easy events. I placed first in 2003 in bronc riding at the state fair in Great Falls.”

  “Is that where you got your scar?”

  Judd had for got ten he had a scar on the right side of his fore head. The scar hadn’t made any difference to his life, and he no longer even really saw it when he shaved. “No, I got that in a fight.”

  Judd didn’t add that it had been a snow ball fight when he was eight years old. He’d been dodging a snow ball and hadn’t seen the low-hanging branch of the tree. He wasn’t going to admit he had got the scar playing, how ever—not when he was talking to a woman who thought of him as a mother.

  “I’ll bet you’re strong,” Lizette said, and al most shook her self. That was the most obvious come-hither line a woman had ever uttered, and she felt foolish saying it. Unfortunately, it either wasn’t obvious enough for Judd, or he was just not interested. It didn’t even make his scowl go away. “I mean, of course you’re strong. You’d have to be with the way you swing Amanda around.”

  Lizette had watched the way Amanda ran to Judd after classes. The little girl would run straight at him, and he’d bend down to scoop her up. While Amanda giggled, he’d gently toss her up in the air.

  “You don’t need to worry about Amanda and Bobby’s father. I can take him in a fight if need be,” Judd said. He figured that was what all the talk about how strong he was came from.

  Neither one of them heard the two kids come out on the porch.

  “He has a gun—my dad does,” Bobby said.

  “You don’t need to worry about your father either,” Judd said gently as he put his hand on the boy’s head.

  It had taken Judd a full month to calm the nightmares that woke Bobby up. The boy still wanted to sleep in a cot at the bottom of Judd’s bed. Judd had figured he might as well let him, since Amanda was al ready sleeping on
a cot on the right side of his bed. If he wasn’t worried about them rolling out of his bed, Judd would have let the two children share it, and he would have rolled his sleeping bag out on the floor. But the cots were closer to the floor, and the kids seemed to like them.

  “But if he has a gun,” Lizette said, “shouldn’t we let the sheriff know?”

  “The sheriff al ready knows.”

  Judd had given a complete re port. He had even given the sheriff a photo of the kids’ father that had been in one of the suit cases Barbara left with them.

  That photo had given Judd many an un easy moment. The photo was a picture of the two children, Barbara and her husband. He knew it had been taken a couple of years ago because a date was hand writ ten at the bottom of the picture. It had been one of those pictures from a photo booth like the kind you find in an amusement park. Judd had a feeling the family didn’t have many photos. The fact that Barbara had left it for the kids might mean she knew she wasn’t coming back.

  But, right now, the photo was the least of his worries. Judd didn’t like the pale look of both of the kids’ faces. Of course, that might be because they were out side with out their mittens on.

  “Where’d you put your mittens?” Judd asked them as he stood up and herded the two children back into the warm room. He’d ordered the mittens from the back of the seed cat a log, and he’d since wished he’d got ten three pairs for each of them in stead of only two.

  “I’m afraid that might be my fault,” Lizette said as she followed them in side and closed the door be hind her self. “I told them they could have a dough nut after class today.”

  “We didn’t want to get our mittens dirty,” Bobby explained. “The dough nuts have sugar on them.”

  “You don’t need to give them dough nuts,” Judd said, even though he could smell the dough nuts and didn’t blame the kids for leaving their mittens off. The ballet practice room smelled of home. The only smell they usually had in his kitchen was the aroma of his morning coffee. Everything else was canned or microwaved or put between slices of bread in a sandwich. Judd didn’t know much about cooking, and he’d never met any one who actually baked. Even Linda at the café didn’t do that kind of baking.