The table was mostly silent as everyone ate. The roasted onions and garlic had flavored the slow-cooked beef, and the juices made the carrots and potatoes tender. Only the clink of the silverware on the plates was heard until Tessie groaned deeply in her sleep.
Rusty stood up instinctively to go to the girl, not noticing everyone else had stopped eating and was watching as Tessie’s mother also left her chair to tend to her daughter.
“I’m sorry,” Rusty muttered, stopping himself from bending down to comfort Tessie. Of course, that right belonged to her mother.
Renee sat down on the edge of the sofa and put out a hand to wake Tessie.
Rusty knew he should probably go back to the table, but he stood towering awkwardly over the two of them. He didn’t know if there was anything he could do to soothe the little girl, but he wanted to be available if there was.
“She okay?” the sheriff asked from his chair at the table.
Rusty shot the lawman a grateful look even though he didn’t answer. He would leave that to Renee.
At that moment, Tessie screamed and opened her eyes in terror.
“Daddy!” the girl called as she looked around the room frantically. “I thought my daddy was here.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Renee murmured as she tried to gather Tessie into her arms.
The girl squirmed away from her mother and scrambled off the sofa. Tessie looked around the room a second time before seeming to notice Rusty. Then she launched herself straight at him.
Rusty was stunned as Tessie stopped in front of him and lifted her arms. Her eyes were wide with fright and filled with tears.
“I want to see my daddy,” Tessie commanded. “Take me to my daddy.”
“I—ah,” Rusty stammered as he bent down and lifted the girl into his arms. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Tessie nodded her head emphatically.
Rusty rubbed Tessie’s back as he held her. “Just take a deep breath. Everything will be all right.”
When the girl calmed a little, Rusty looked up and saw Renee staring at him as though he’d done something unpardonable.
“She’s my daughter,” Renee whispered, stricken. No one but Rusty could hear, but her words cut through his own panic. “Why doesn’t she want to come to me? I’m her mother.”
Rusty stepped closer to Renee and tried to pry Tessie away from him, but she had his neck in a lock that would do a wrestler proud.
“I want to see my daddy,” she repeated to Rusty, her serious little face intent on him. “You know where he is. You can take me to him.”
Rusty looked over to Renee in appeal and then turned back to the girl. “No, Tessie, I don’t know where your father is. And I’m no prince. No castle. Nothing.”
Looking at the girl’s eyes, he couldn’t tell whether she was imagining her father in some fantasy or if she wanted to see the real man, the one who had broken her heart.
“I know where your father is,” Renee said then, her voice sympathetic but firm. “He’s in the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. And he’s going to be there a long time.”
Tessie stopped crying. In fact, for one wrenching moment, Rusty thought the little girl had stopped breathing. He no longer tried to encourage her to leave his arms.
“What’s a prison?” she asked. “Do they have castles there?”
“No, sweetie,” Renee said. “A prison is a place where bad people go.”
Tessie was silent at that, her frown deepening.
“I’m sorry,” Rusty whispered to both the woman standing next to him and the child he held. “I had no idea.”
Renee acknowledged his words with a curt nod. “I don’t talk about it, for obvious reasons.”
He could see she was ashamed.
“It’s not your fault,” Rusty assured her, wishing he had use of both of his arms. He settled for taking a step closer to her. “What he did is on him, not you.”
Rusty sensed something different about the room and glanced up to see that the table was empty. The food was still on the plates, but the men had left to give Renee and him some privacy.
“I still want to see my daddy,” Tessie finally said again, no hysteria in her voice now.
Rusty glanced at Renee. “Do you think—?”
Renee looked up at him, worry in her eyes. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
Rusty was silent for a moment. He was touched that Renee had asked for his opinion and he wanted to be helpful.
“Maybe, if she wants to see him, that means she needs to see him,” Rusty said. “Have you ever taken her to visit him?”
Renee shook her head. “I haven’t felt strong enough to do that. I haven’t even gone myself.”
“Has he asked to see her?”
“No,” Renee said softly. “Not either one of us. I doubt he cares.”
“If you need help, let me know,” Rusty offered. “I could go with the two of you if you decide you’re ready.”
She studied him then, her brown eyes searching his.
“No one wants to visit that place,” she said. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m volunteering,” he assured her. When she still seemed undecided, he added, “Consider it repayment for you saving my life. It’s much better than me having a talk with Tessie.”
A small smile curled the corners of her mouth. “You’re right. Maybe it’s not too much to ask, considering. I’m going to have to take that rug in to the dry cleaner’s to get the bloodstains out.”
“We’ll take it to Miles City on the way to Deer Lodge,” Rusty agreed, feeling lighter inside suddenly. “It’s not too far. We could make it there and back in one day. And I’ll pay for the cleaning.”
He didn’t know how the ranch hands knew it was all clear, but they quietly filed back into the room and sat down at their places. He thought he heard one of them sigh in relief, but he couldn’t tell which one because the din of silverware took over.
“I guess we should finish eating, too,” Renee said then and held out her arms for Tessie.
The girl went to her mother gladly this time. Rusty had no doubt Tessie had already gotten what she wanted from him—a promise he’d make sure she could see her father.
After Rusty sat back in his chair, he wondered if he would have offered to help Tessie if he didn’t know the pain of missing a parent himself. When he was a boy, he would have climbed over hot rocks to see his mother again. He always felt empty because she hadn’t said goodbye. It didn’t really matter whether the parent was worth one’s love or not. Sometimes it was only his or her absence that haunted a person.
All those years since his mother left him, he’d felt as if he’d let her down in some inexplicable way. Had she tired of him not eating his vegetables? Had he waited too long every day to make his bed? Had she ever loved him?
For the first time it occurred to him that maybe the reason he was so unsettled around women was because he was afraid of failing them, too. Oh, he could do the good-time thing. Women wanted to date him. To dance, go out to dinner. Have a few laughs. But when things looked as if they might get serious, he left. He never knew if he had it in him to make someone happy.
He looked over at Renee then. He didn’t want to fail her. If they got closer, he likely would. She had settled Tessie in the chair between them and was dishing up her daughter’s plate. She must have felt his gaze, because she looked up and smiled.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He almost didn’t respond. He believed in keeping his promises, but he regretted making this one. Taking Tessie and Renee to see her ex-husband could hurt them both, and Rusty wouldn’t know how to make it better.
No, after they took the trip, he’d find a way to leave. Now that he thought about it some more, the trip could
be very bad. The man might not agree to see them. He might curse at them if he did. Or worse yet, he might smile at them and say things he didn’t mean, pretending to emotions he didn’t feel. Rusty felt his hand clench into a fist just thinking about that.
Rusty wondered if he should try to talk to Tessie’s father before they visited him. It would be better if the man just wrote a short note to Tessie, telling her where he was and that he would be ready to see her in a few years.
Rusty’s fist stayed clenched. He would have hated to get a note like that from his mother.
He looked over Tessie’s head at Renee again. Anything that pained the daughter would be felt by her mother, too.
Somehow he had started something in their lives. He wished he really were a prince and could make this Christmas happy for them.
Chapter Six
Renee’s alarm clock buzzed the next morning and she reached across her sleeping daughter to turn it off. After their upset two nights ago and the terror her daughter had faced in her nap yesterday, Renee had decided she wasn’t going to let Tessie sleep alone. She wanted to be right there if her daughter had more nightmares. Neither of them had woken in the night, even though Renee had stayed awake for hours watching over her child before falling asleep herself.
“Tessie, sweetie,” Renee said as she put her hand on her daughter’s back. She bent close and kissed the girl on her forehead. “We’ve only got a half hour before it’s time to leave for Sunday school.”
Tessie opened her eyes. “Is the prince coming with us?”
Renee nodded her head reluctantly.
Assured her hero would be present, Tessie scrambled out of bed. “I’m going to wear my new red dress. It sparkles—like a princess dress.”
Renee smiled, but not happily. Tessie was supposed to save the dress for Christmas, but Renee decided not to protest. It was a small thing.
She’d had no idea Tessie’s feelings were rolling around inside her the way they had been yesterday when she’d had her nightmare. Renee hoped the trip to see her father would give the girl some peace. Maybe then she would stop spinning so many fantasy tales. If it didn’t work, Renee didn’t know what else to do.
Tessie went to brush her teeth and Renee headed for the kitchen.
Sunlight was streaming into the blue-and-white room when Renee put two slices of bread into the toaster. Then she pulled a jug of orange juice out of the refrigerator, put a jar of Mrs. Hargrove’s homemade chokecherry jelly on the table and turned on the coffeemaker. Renee took a moment to listen as the grandfather clock in the living room chimed nine times. The thing she was going to miss most when she moved back to the cook’s quarters was that old clock. A person could hear it throughout the house. She never would have expected chiming would make her feel so wistful. Until she got her job here, she’d lived in a car, in hotel rooms and anywhere she and her husband could find shelter. Only people who lived in regular homes knew the pleasure of a grandfather clock. She was saving as much of her wages as she could in hopes she could buy a house someday. If she ever managed that, she was going to buy a grandfather clock, too.
She went back to the bedroom and pulled on a black turtleneck and a gray A-line skirt. She liked the skirt because it had extra fabric that made the cloth sway when she walked. She put on a gold hip belt and gold hoop earrings. The skirt was long enough that it looked good with her black boots, too.
The smell of toast brought her back into the kitchen. Tessie was sitting at the table drinking her juice and using a spoon to smear jam on her piece of toast.
“Be careful you don’t get any jelly on your pretty dress,” Renee said as she went to the counter and brought back a banana and began peeling it.
“Pretty,” Tessie agreed as she put the spoon back in the jelly jar. “Sparkly.”
“You have enough now,” Renee cautioned as she looked at the mound of jelly on her daughter’s toast.
Renee sat down and buttered her piece of toast while Tessie ate part of the banana and drank more juice.
When they had finished eating, there was a knock at the door.
“The prince!” Tessie exclaimed as she bounced up from her chair and ran to let the man inside.
“Ask who it is first,” Renee called out to her.
Tessie calmed down enough to do as she was told and Renee recognized the deep tones of Rusty’s reply.
Tessie was looking at her with a question in her eyes, so Renee nodded.
“You can open the door,” she said.
The sun shone behind Rusty, adding sheen to the black suit he wore. The suit jacket was open to make room for his sling. A crisp white shirt was under the suit, making Renee think he must have some way to detach the sling while he dressed. Either that or he’d had help from his brother, who had spent the night with him in the bunkhouse.
Rusty reached up to tip his Stetson gallantly. The black hat had been brushed and cleaned since Renee saw it last, too. Even the band looked new.
“Good morning,” he said and Renee felt a slight tremble go through her as Rusty squatted down to grin at her daughter.
Tessie beamed.
This wasn’t good, Renee told herself. She’d always been a pushover for a man who dressed up like this, and when he was also kind to her daughter, she melted.
Then she heard Tessie gasp in excitement and saw the girl kneel down just inside the open door. She put out her hand, still covered with smudges of jelly. Renee couldn’t understand what her daughter was doing until a gray wolf head appeared around the corner.
“Dog!” Tessie exclaimed as the animal opened its mouth near her fingers and started to lick.
“Tessie, bring your hand back!” Renee commanded breathlessly.
Her daughter was giggling by then and wiggling her fingers. The dog had finished moving his tongue over her hand and stepped back at Renee’s words.
“It’s all right,” Rusty said. Renee only now noticed he had a hand on the dog’s head. “He’d never hurt Tessie.”
“He’s part wolf!” she answered in disbelief. “You don’t know what he’ll do. Besides, Tessie thinks he’s as safe as a puppy.”
Renee looked at her daughter, searching for any indications of fear. She had thought being that close to a wolfhound would terrify the girl, given her fantasies about her father’s castle. But her daughter didn’t even appear shaken by the experience. For the first time in months, Renee began to hope that Tessie would overcome her fears.
“I raised Dog from a pup,” Rusty said as he looked up from where he was. “Saved his life. I would never let him this near Tessie unless I knew he wouldn’t hurt her.”
When her daughter didn’t move away, Renee took a deep breath. She realized it wasn’t the wolf dog that Tessie trusted; it was the man. The girl had no reason for that blind faith, though, and it troubled Renee. Not that it was Rusty’s fault or his dog’s. She was Tessie’s mother. It was her job to protect her daughter. And that included helping her figure out when it was safe to put her faith in someone else.
“I’m sorry,” Renee said to her daughter’s hero. “I know Dog might never hurt you, but he doesn’t know Tessie. She doesn’t know him. I’d like you to keep him away from her. She’s just a little girl and she’s too trusting.”
Rusty nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
Then he signaled Dog, and the animal turned and loped off the porch, taking up a position by a tree a few yards away. He sat and faced Renee, looking chastised and mournful.
“I’ll fix him some food before we leave,” Renee said then, feeling she might have been too harsh. The dog certainly didn’t look ready to growl or bite anyone. The poodle that Mrs. Elkton’s friend brought over sometimes behaved far worse than this wolf dog.
“Pete already gave him something to eat,” Rusty said as he stepped inside and close
d the door so they couldn’t see Dog.
“I’ll give him an extra treat later, then,” Renee said as she smiled down at her daughter, trying to be reassuring. “And you, young lady, need to go wash your hands before we go. Rinse them twice and use soap. Then brush your teeth again. And put a towel around the top of your dress so you don’t get any water spots on it.”
Tessie skipped off to the bathroom, her joy in the day undiminished.
Rusty and Renee were silent for a moment.
“I am sorry,” Rusty said softly. “I never wanted to scare you.”
Renee nodded. Her heartbeat was just now returning to normal. “I know. And I may have overreacted.”
Rusty reached up and brushed a strand of hair off her cheek.
So much for her heart calming down, Renee thought as she stared up at him.
“You and me—we can’t seem to get our steps to match, can we?” he said. “I’m either going too fast or—” He stopped.
“Don’t even think it,” Renee said. “You’re never going too slow. You crash into the Elktons’ porch with a bullet in you. Might still get arrested for rustling. Manage to win my daughter’s heart. And it hasn’t even been a full two days.”
She smiled to take the sting out of her words and his eyes softened.
“Well, when you put it that way, I guess I have been busy,” Rusty murmured as he caressed Renee’s cheek.
She tried to answer, but her throat was dry and the words wouldn’t come out. Heat stroked down her cheek where his fingers touched her, but icy fear still filled her heart.
She cleared her throat.
“You even manage to show up in a suit,” she whispered. She was as bad as Tessie. Letting her emotions overcome her good sense. It was as if she was jumping out of an airplane without checking to see if her parachute was working.
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