A Bride for Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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      Francis still didn’t understand what had happened.

      One minute she’d been looking up at the night sky, searching for the tail star of the Big Dipper. The next minute she’d felt someone put an arm around the small of her back. She hadn’t even been able to turn around and see who it was before another arm went behind her knees and she was lifted up.

      Suddenly, instead of the night sky, she was looking square into the face of Flint Harris. For a second she couldn’t breathe. Her mind went blank. Surely it could not be Flint. Not her Flint. She blinked. He was still there.

      Oh, my Lord, she suddenly realized. It’s true. And he’s kidnapping me!

      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 works in the research department of a medical organization. In addition to writing novels, she researches and writes nonfiction magazine articles.

      A Bride for Dry Creek

      Janet Tronstad

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death…. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it….

      —Song of Solomon 8:6-7

      Dedicated with love To my two brothers and their wives Ralph and Karen Tronstad Russell and Heidi Tronstad May God be with all of you Now and forevermore.

      Dear Reader,

      I should have my mother write you this note. She, having raised five usually wonderful children (of which I am blessed to be one), knows far more of the hope that goes into love than I do. Actually, most mothers know that kind of hope—the hope that their love will bear fruit, that their love will ease someone’s pain and that it will even give that person an anchor in life.

      Love laced with hope is a useful kind of love. It sees beyond the romantic parts of love and looks to the future.

      That’s why, when I chose to tell the story of Francis, I knew it had to be a story of hope. We never know when we love someone what our hopes will bring. Francis did not know. Flint did not know. Only God knew.

      May this story of Francis and Flint encourage you to love with hope and to trust God for a happy ending.

      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 One

      A single fly buzzed past Francis Elkton and swooped up to the bare lights that hung from the rafters of the old barn. Francis didn’t notice the fly, but on most nights she would have even though her eyes were now half-closed as she slow danced to an old fifties tune.

      Francis was an immaculate housekeeper. And a first-class manager. She often said, in her job with the City of Denver, that the two went hand in hand. You only needed to look in someone’s top desk drawer, she’d say, to predict what kind of a city manager they would be. Whether it was paper clips or people or drainage pipes, everything needed an order.

      She would never have tolerated an out-of-place fly if she hadn’t been so distracted.

      But tonight, the fly was only one more guest at the wedding reception, and Francis was too busy trying to keep her unwanted memories in their place to give any attention to the proper place of a mere insect. Every time she opened her eyes she realized that things were not turning out the way she had planned.

      She’d taken a three-month leave from her job and come back to Dry Creek, Montana, because she thought she’d be able to stand up to her past—to look her memories of Flint L. Harris square in the eye—and be free of him once and for all. She was mentally cleaning out her files, she told herself. Throwing away outdated papers. Putting her life back in order even if it had taken her twenty years to face the task.

      The only reason she’d decided to do it now was that Sam Goodman, her neighbor in Denver, had said he would not wait forever to marry her. She’d realized suddenly that she could not give her heart to Sam, or any other man, until she got it completely back from Flint.

      It had been a sentimental decision to come back to Dry Creek to purge herself. She reasoned that the memories had started here in this ranching community, in the shadows of the Big Sheep Mountains. And they would surely end here if she just screwed up her mind and willed them to be gone. It was like reaching deep inside herself to pull out the roots of an unwanted weed that had refused to die over the years.

      But, for the first time since she’d come back, she realized her heart wasn’t bending to her will. The past had not grown dimmer because she’d stood up to it. No, the past was right here before her in living color whether she wanted to see it or not.

      The pink crepe paper streamers coming down from the rafters were the same color her high school class had used twenty years ago for their prom. Back then her classmates had gone to Miles City to school and had decorated the gym there with their streamers.

      Tonight, the dance was being held in the large old barn her brother Garth had built for loading cattle. He had not used the barn for his cattle for several years now, and the community of Dry Creek had scrubbed it clean for their annual Christmas pageant some months ago. On a cold winter night like tonight, the inside of the barn shone bright and the windows were covered with frost.

      Dry Creek was fast making the barn into an informal center for all kinds of occasions. Like tonight’s dance to celebrate the wedding of Glory Becker and Matthew Curtis. The dance wasn’t a prom, but the music was the same. The same swaying music. The same soft laughter of other couples in the background.

      Francis could close her eyes and almost imagine it was Flint who held her in his arms. Flint with his shy halting gladness to see her and the tall wiry length of his twenty-year-old body. Even back then, she should have known that dancing with him would come to no good

      “Francis?” A slightly alarmed man’s voice growled in her right ear.

      Francis blinked and then blushed. Jess, one of her brother’s older ranch hands, had invited her to dance, and it was his face that now looked at her suspiciously. She hadn’t realized until he spoke that her arms had crept up his back until she had him in an embrace that was more than friendly. She shook the memories from her eyes, cleared her throat and loosened her arms. “Sorry.”

      “That’s okay.” Jess ducked his head, apparently reassured once the sensible Francis was back. Then he added teasingly, “After all, your brother did tell me to stick close to you tonight.”

      “He’s not still worried about that phone call?” Francis gladly diverted the conversation to her brother’s needless caution. “Just because some guy calls up and says someone might be out to kidnap me—it’s all nonsense anyway. Even if Garth did know something about the rustlers