by Tina Leonard
“Sit down, Dustin, please. I’ll go get packed.”
Dustin sat, his posture stiff. Lana sat across from him and Bob squeezed in close beside his wife.
“So!” Lana said too brightly. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.” He tried to ease himself back into the pillows of the well-stuffed sofa, wanting to appear confident, but the truth was, the pillows hardly moved and he felt like he was a teenager waiting for his prom date, anyway.
“So!” Lana repeated. “Jill’s going to be living with you.”
It was a statement, but came out as a confused question. Dustin understood. “Actually, no, ma’am. She’ll live at my house, with my mother and an infant we’re keeping for someone, and my son, Joey. It’ll be quite a lot for her to do, being the housekeeper at the ranch. My mother and I sure appreciate her agreeing to try the job out for a while.”
He was careful to emphasize “mother” as many times as possible. Lana looked a little less perturbed. Bob, he wasn’t sure about.
“This is certainly unexpected. When Jill told me she was applying for a housekeeper’s position, I wasn’t thinking of…” She stopped uncomfortably. Dustin waited, ill at ease himself.
“Well, I don’t think I—I mean we—didn’t expect her to be living with a single male.” Red crept into Lana’s cheeks. Bob cleared his throat.
“My wife died nearly a year ago, in a car accident,” Dustin said, careful to keep his voice neutral. “But if I had a daughter, I’d worry about her as much as you’re worrying about Jill if she came home and told me these same plans.”
“I’m sorry about your wife,” Lana said, obviously meaning it. “You understand that we’re concerned, though we don’t want you to think we’re being…”
She paused. Bob cleared his throat. “Parental,” he said helpfully.
“I understand parental perfectly,” Dustin said, relaxing a bit. “I’ve developed a major dose of it since…” He’d started to say since my wife died, but stopped as he realized he didn’t want to say that. It was much too personal. Rubbing his jaw as if he could massage out the sudden tightness, he said, “You know, why don’t you come out to the ranch for Sunday supper? My mother and I would be happy to have you. You might be interested in my cattle, Bob, and, Lana, I think you’ll find you have a lot in common with my mother.”
Lana’s face lit with genuine excitement. “Sunday supper would be wonderful. Don’t you think so, Bob?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen cattle close up,” he replied.
“Well, you wouldn’t want to be too close, anyway.” Dustin grinned easily. “I’ll have my mother call you tomorrow. Please understand, we’re not fancy at the ranch,” he warned.
“Tell your mother I’ll be glad to bring whatever dishes will complement her menu, but I’m especially proud of my strawberry bread and ham rolls.”
Bob cleared his throat again, in what Dustin was beginning to recognize as a conversational prop. “Jill, are you ready?”
“Yes.” She moved to the stack of belongings in the hallway. Dustin picked up most of it, and Bob got the rest. Jill said goodbye, with effusive hugs and kisses, before settling in the cab. Lana and Bob stood at the side, watching Dustin secure everything in the back.
“I’ll tell Mother about your strawberry bread and ham rolls.” Dustin put his hand out for Bob to shake. “We’ll see you for Sunday supper at the ranch.”
Lana smiled, her eyes misting. “Take care of her, Dustin.”
Bob muttered some appropriate comment. Dustin nodded. Then he walked to the cab and got in. Jill smiled as Dustin shut the truck door.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked.
Dustin shook his head, waving as they drove away. “Do you need to go by your apartment to pick up anything else?”
She hesitated only a fraction of a second. “Not right now. There were enough of my things at Mother’s to last me for a week.” She was quiet for a moment before she turned to look at him. It wasn’t that he’d turned to glance her way to know she was looking; it was that he could feel her gaze as surely as if light was beaming warmly on his face.
“Yes?” he asked, knowing his tone was brusque but unable to stop himself.
“Thank you for inviting my parents out. They’ve been so worried about my…engagement breaking off, and now I’m uprooting myself, which they totally didn’t expect. I think they’d hoped I’d go home and stay with them for a while to lick my wounds. Coming out to see the ranch will make them feel much more at ease.”
“Forget it,” Dustin said roughly. “It was a bribe.”
Chapter Four
Jill sat up straight in the seat. “A bribe?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking if they know their daughter is safe and happy, then they won’t want you to leave the ranch.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Jill said softly.
They were silent the rest of the drive back, except for some tersely polite comments about the scenery. Dustin hadn’t been deaf yesterday to Jill’s intention to stay only one week if he didn’t mind his p’s and q’s. Could she blame him for trying to ease things with her folks? Shoot, at the rate he was going, he was going to run out of housekeeper candidates by the new year. Yet Dustin sensed he’d hurt her feelings with his blunt answer, and he really hadn’t meant to. He was just telling it the way he saw it. Obviously, Jill was a tenderhearted little thing. He hoped his mother was right about her being perfect for the job. A tender heart wasn’t likely to survive the harshness of life on a country ranch. The previous housekeepers hadn’t possessed hearts, and they still hadn’t been able to cut it.
Dustin was still mulling that over as he slowly drove up the long driveway to his house. The sheriff’s cruiser was parked outside. Murmuring an apology to Jill, he shut off the truck and got out, crossing the yard and taking the porch steps three at a time.
Inside, a miniature version of himself met him in the hallway. “Joey!” he said. For a moment, he wondered if he should hug the child, but the serious expression on his son’s face forestalled him.
“Hi, Daddy,” his son replied quietly. “Grandma says you’ve…you’ve got a surprise for me.”
His mother must mean Jill. “Yes. She’s out by the truck.”
“My new mother?”
Dustin winced. “No, son. A new housekeeper, to help around the house. And with the baby.”
“Oh. She’s loud. And she…she smells funny.”
Dustin frowned as he looked down at the child. “Jill does? Did Grandma tell you that?”
“No. I helped change her.”
“Oh.” Dustin was so relieved he didn’t know what to think. There was so much on his mind it was like two trains colliding at once. “Why don’t you go outside and meet Jill while I check on Grandma? But be careful walking down the porch steps.”
“Okay.”
Dustin opened the door and called to Jill, who was eyeing the cattle which peered over the wood rails at her just as cautiously. “Jill. I’d like you to meet my son, Joey.”
“Joey!” Instantly, Jill came forward to help the boy down from the porch. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
“Why?”
She hesitated. “Because…because I need a friend if I’m going to live here.”
Joey digested that. “You won’t stay long. You…you not be my best friend.”
“Well, I…”
Jill’s eyes darted to Dustin’s and he shrugged. Best she know now that Joey had suffered for his mother’s passing. This job wasn’t going to be a piece of cake.
“Hey, Joey, I bet you’d like to make snow angels,” Jill suggested.
“I’ll get his coat.” Snatching up the winter things that Joey had apparently just taken off since they were still lying by the door, Dustin handed them out to Jill. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to see what the sheriff wants.”
“Take your time.”
Jill’s voice was a
s cool as the snow outside. Dustin watched while she competently buttoned and zipped his child into the jacket, then put the mittens and knitted snow cap on him.
“You…you want to make snow angels with us, Daddy?”
Dustin thought about rolling around in the snow and waving his arms to make wings with his housekeeper. “No, son.”
“You’d make the biggest one of all,” Joey said, his voice awed.
Dustin made himself smile, all the while thinking that Jill’s snow angel would have the best curves. Nodding to her, he turned and went inside.
The sheriff was in the kitchen. “Marsh,” he said. “I assume you would have met me at the door if something was wrong with Mother.”
“She’s fine. Last I saw her, she was upstairs walking the baby around, showing her your old toys.”
Dustin relaxed a little. Marsh was sitting at the kitchen table, helping himself to a cup of hot coffee from the pot.
“What are you doing here, then? This a social call?”
“I’m not sure,” Marsh replied carefully.
Dustin wasn’t really paying attention. He was watching Jill out of the kitchen window as first she helped his son lie down on the ground, then lay on her back beside him.
“I hope you’ll take this in the spirit that it’s meant, Dustin. But I’ve been thinking about your new housekeeper.”
“What about her?” Marsh had his attention now.
“Well, we don’t know anything about Jill.”
“Little late to say that, isn’t it?”
“I know, I know. It didn’t occur to me until I was back at the office. But look, what if she’s hunting for someone to take her ex-fiancé’s place?”
“Meaning what?” Dustin’s tone was curious.
“She said she’d come out to Lassiter to check out the job. Check you out, too, maybe?”
“I don’t know,” Dustin said doubtfully. “What’s to check? I just met her family, and they’re the typical family everyone wants to grow up in. Jill’s the baby in a family of four kids. You name it, they’re regular Ozzie and Harriet people.”
“Every family has its skeletons, Dustin.”
“I’m flattered, Marsh. I really am. But I think her family’s still reeling over Jill canceling the wedding plans.” He sighed heavily. “I wasn’t planning on company this month, but I heard myself inviting her family out to supper Sunday simply because I could tell they were worried about her living out here with me.”
“They saw immediately what a wolf in sheep’s clothing you are.” Marsh laughed at his friend.
Dustin grinned, too. “That’s exactly what they were thinking. If they’re so worked up about me, they haven’t had a lot of men out to the house trying to sneak kisses from their daughter. I don’t think she’s looking for a replacement husband.” Actually, Jill was pretty standoffish where he was concerned.
Marsh nodded. “All right. It’s my job to get the facts, not spread gloom and doom. I just wanted you to be careful, buddy.”
“When did you get to be such a suspicious person, anyway?”
The sheriff leaned back on the bench, crossing his arms. “It’s my nature to be suspicious. That’s why I’m a lawman. It’s your nature to be stoic. That’s why you’re a rancher.”
“Oh, I see.” Dustin nodded. “So, has your suspicious nature led you to check on Joey’s grandparents and what they’re up to recently?”
Marsh shook his head. “I haven’t been by the Copelands’ house. But I did hear through the grapevine that poor old David’s taken a bad turn.”
Dustin was instantly alert. “David Copeland is ill?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure what they ran him up to the hospital for the other night, except everyone knows he’s been having spells where he doesn’t seem quite with us. This may have been a more pronounced episode of his forgetful state. My opinion, it’s stress.”
“Brought on by Maxine, no doubt,” Dustin ground out between his teeth. “I’ve never gotten the feeling that David was as keen to get Joey away from me as Maxine was.”
“Nope. Me neither. But then, I always suspected it was Maxine who engineered a lot of stuff in that family.”
Dustin forced himself to take a deep breath and relax. “Let’s change the subject before I say something completely out of the Christmas spirit about that old bat.”
They were quiet for a few moments. Marsh got up to stand beside him. After a swift peek at what had Dustin’s attention, Marsh said, “You believe in her, don’t you, Dustin? In Jill, I mean. You really don’t think she’s manhunting.”
Dustin looked out of the window again, seeing the wheat of Jill’s hair shining in the sun. It was a few shades darker than Joey’s, he thought irrationally. Walking away to put the kettle on to boil so she and Joey could have some cocoa when they came in, he said, “Yeah, I believe she’s on the up and up. Mother’s crazy about her, and Jill’s great with the baby, besides. I have a funny feeling Joey is going to like her, too.”
He sighed, sitting down at the kitchen table and running a hand through his hair. “I was more suspicious of Mother’s motives in hiring Jill, to tell you the truth. We’d agreed on a woman more her own age, someone who could be a companion to her as well as a nanny to Joey. The thought did occur to me that maybe she was up to a little Christmas matchmaking. But I sure as heck ain’t going to fall for a woman this soon, and Mother knows that. After I got past my doubts about her intentions, I realized she might be right about Jill. Some young blood around here might be good for Mother, and as you might have noticed, the last housekeepers didn’t spend any time rolling around in the snow with my kid.”
“Nope.” Marsh shook his head, then glanced back out the window.
“And even if I’m wrong about Jill, what’s it costing me to try this out awhile?”
Marsh considered that a moment. “Maybe it’ll cost you nothing. But maybe it’ll cost you your heart. And as I recall, friend, last time you spent your heart, you ended up pretty broke.”
Jill purposefully stayed outside long enough to allow Dustin to conclude his business with the sheriff. As much as the Reeds had tried to welcome her into their family, their private matters weren’t her concern. But Joey was starting to get cold, so Jill headed inside.
“Hey, Jill,” the sheriff called as she and Joey came into the hallway to shake off their cold coats and mittens.
“Come join us for a cup of hot chocolate,” Dustin said. “I’ve got the water warmed up.”
Jill came into the kitchen, helping Joey onto the plank bench beside the sheriff. “Sit very still here, so you don’t fall off, Joey.” She gave Marsh a warm smile. “Hello, Sheriff.”
Marsh nodded. Jill turned away to fix the cups, only to find that Dustin had already done it for her. “Thank you,” she said, meeting his gaze. Suddenly, she felt much warmer than she had a moment ago. Dustin’s eyes crinkled at the corners in a silent response, as if he would have said “You’re welcome” if he were more given to conversation. Jill sat down, scooting to the section closest to Joey.
“Now, be careful when you drink this because it may be a little warm,” she cautioned.
Ignoring the chocolate, he quickly looked back to the sheriff. “Can I see your star?” he asked.
Marsh undid the pin carefully, handing it to Joey for his inspection.
“It’s shiny,” Joey said, sounding exactly like a little boy now. “You…you like to be a sheriff?”
Marsh took the pin back as Joey held it out. A wry expression passed over the sheriff’s face as he glanced first at Jill, then at Dustin. “Sometimes, son. Sometimes I’m very happy to be the sheriff.”
He stood, nodding to Jill and ruffling Joey’s hair, free now of the cap. “I’ll be seeing you, Dustin. Say goodbye to Eunice for me.”
“I will. Let me know if you talk to Holly’s mother. I’m afraid there’s not going to be any peaceful nights around the Reed household until she’s safely returned.”
“Kept you up l
ast night, did she?” Marsh asked as Dustin walked him to the door.
“Not me. Jill. I heard her go down to fix a bottle for the baby at about three o’clock in the morning.”
“Ah. Those three o’clock feedings. They’re the greatest, aren’t they?”
“Hell, no,” Dustin responded.
Marsh laughed. “Hard to bond when you can’t get the sleep out of your eyes.”
The sheriff was walking down the steps when Dustin said, “Hey, Marsh, you ever eaten strawberry bread?”
“Nope. Not since my mother died. She was the only person I knew who fixed it. Why? Somebody give you some?”
“No. Mrs. McCall, Jill’s mother, is bringing some out Sunday. And some ham rolls.”
Marsh rubbed his hands together before getting into the cruiser. “I’ll be sure to stop by and check out the situation. Any woman who can make decent strawberry bread probably knew what she was doing when she raised her child.”
Dustin snorted. “Just like your mother did.”
“Exactly. Set me a place at the table, buddy.” He grinned and drove away.
Jill was still sitting at the table when Dustin walked back inside. She’d heard most of the exchange between the two men as the kitchen windows were close to the porch. Although innocent enough, the sheriff’s comments made her wonder if their conversation had been about her rather than baby Holly.
“Did you have fun playing in the snow?” Dustin asked.
“We sure did!” Joey said enthusiastically.
“I think we did,” Jill said, running her fingers through the wet snarls in her hair. “Did the sheriff give you any interesting information?”
Was it her imagination or did Dustin’s eyes skitter away from her briefly? “Not as much as I’d hoped for.”
“I see.” She couldn’t pursue her instinct that the sheriff’s visit had concerned her in front of Joey. “Well, where do you want me to start?”
“Start?” Dustin seemed confused. “Start what?”
“With my housekeeping duties. Joey and I will be fairly settled today, and I’m sure you want to get on with some of your business. Is there a list of things you’d like me to be in charge of, or shall I talk to Eunice about what’s needed?”