Dry Creek Sweethearts. Janet Tronstad

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      “I thought you’d started doing your own cooking,” Linda said as she walked over to his table. “Coffee?”

      “Please.” Duane smiled. “I’d be a fool to eat my cooking when you’ve got the café here.”

      Linda smiled back.

      Duane told himself that smiling was a good beginning for the two of them. That’s where they’d started back in junior high school.

      “I’m sorry I’ve been gone.”

      Linda looked at him cautiously.

      “You needed your friends, and I wasn’t here.”

      “It’s okay,” Linda said softly as she pulled out her order pad. “What’ll it be?”

      Duane resisted the impulse to throw his heart at her feet. “Scrambled eggs and toast.”

      JANET TRONSTAD

      grew up on a small farm in central Montana. One of her favorite things to do was to visit her grandfather’s bookshelves, where he had a large collection of Zane Grey novels. She’s always loved a good story. Today Janet lives in Pasadena, California, where she is a full-time writer.

      Dry Creek Sweethearts

      Janet Tronstad

      And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

      —Romans 8:28

      This book is dedicated with love to my brother-in-law, Duane Enger. He has graciously allowed me to use his name for the hero in this book with the understanding that I would also include his dog, Boots. Boots plays himself in the book, but the only thing my Duane has in common with his namesake in this book is his love for his high school sweetheart, my sister, Margaret. Well, that and his affection for an old Silverton guitar that he sometimes brings out to play in the evenings.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Epilogue

      Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      “I don’t care if he did grow up in Dry Creek, he’s still not one of us. Not anymore.” Linda Morgan struggled to keep her voice neutral as she flipped the sign in her café window to Closed and began to stack chairs on tables so she could mop the floor.

      A neutral calm was the best she could expect of herself when it came to Duane Enger.

      She should have refused to let her younger sister, Lucy, hang his old guitar on the wall of the café when the idea first came up months ago. Then she and her sister wouldn’t even be having this conversation now.

      Lucy was too young to know there was no point in building a shrine to someone who had left everything behind so he could go off and chase his dream of becoming a rock star. Every time Linda looked at the guitar she remembered that the old six-string Silvertone hadn’t been good enough for Duane to take with him. The frets were worn down and it needed new strings. So he had left the Silvertone behind, just as he’d eventually left everything and everyone behind, even her.

      The small Montana town of Dry Creek had not been big enough for Duane and his dreams.

      Of course, Linda couldn’t tell her sister all of this—especially not in the tone of voice she was using in her head as she thought it. Lucy had a tender heart and Linda didn’t want her to worry that anyone around here held anything against the man Lucy had just started to idolize. A teenage girl needed heroes, and Duane was better than most who were out there.

      Besides, Linda told herself, the whole thing with Duane shouldn’t bother her anymore. Lots of people were disappointed by their high school sweethearts. She wasn’t the only one. It wasn’t even worth talking about. It had been eight long years since Duane left Dry Creek. That was plenty of time for a broken heart to heal.

      Right now, Linda had more important things to worry about anyway, like keeping the floor clean after all the rain they’d had this week. The road into Dry Creek was asphalt, but the parking area in front of her café was pure dirt. That meant mud and lots of it. She’d already mopped the floor twice today and she had to do it again tonight before she and Lucy headed home. A woman who needed to mop a floor that often didn’t have time to be thinking about some man who had left her behind to pursue his fantasy of stardom.

      Linda lifted the last chair up. It was half her fault anyway. She never should have trusted a man who couldn’t even stick with the name he was given the day he was born. Duane had traded his name for a stage name before he left Dry Creek. That should have been her first clue about how much commitment the man had in his bones. He eventually started going by Duane again, but lots of people still knew him as the Jazz Man.

      Linda set the chair down hard on the table and winced when she heard the soft slam. Okay, so Duane might still bother her a little more than she would like. Which was probably natural; she was only human. She might have grown closer to God since Duane left, but she still had a way to go. Her heart had healed, but her head still hadn’t totally forgiven him or herself for believing in him.

      Linda thought Lucy had given up the argument until she saw her sister looking at her with reproach in her eyes.

      “But we have to display these things. He’s famous.” Lucy held up the letter she’d framed to hang beside the guitar and gazed at it as if it were written in pure gold. “The Jazz Man is the only famous person to ever come out of Dry Creek—right here—and he remembers us.”

      The Jazz Man is what Duane had started calling himself just before he left. All through high school, he’d played and sung his own arrangements, along with songs from the old jazz masters like Duke Ellington. Linda had sung with him, especially on the classics. Back then, Duane had been happy enough with himself and his jazz revival plans.

      Then, he set his eyes on Hollywood and nothing was good enough, not his name, not his guitar, not his friends. Not even his hometown.

      Still, Linda told herself, none of that was Lucy’s fault. Besides, if Linda let her sister hang the letter on the wall as she’d been requesting, it might actually help them both forget about the piece of paper since it would no longer be in her sister’s pocket where she could pull it out and read it every ten seconds.

      “Go ahead and put your letter up there if you want.” Linda tried to sound gracious. “But, just so you know, he’s not that famous. There are lots of places where people haven’t even heard of him.”

      Like Timbuktu. And maybe that nursing home in Miles City. The more Linda thought about it the more she knew she was overreacting. Lucy might have been carrying that letter around with her since it came in the mail a week ago. And she might have gone all dewy-eyed every time she read it. But it was the memories that it brought back to Linda that were the problem, not the letter itself.

      Linda suspected she’d worn a very similar look on her face when she was four years younger than Lucy and had seen Duane for the first time. At the age