Married By High Noon. Leigh Greenwood

like to leave for Ma’s house?” Gabe asked, determined to get his mind off Dana’s body. She cast him a quick glance before turning her gaze back to the road. She didn’t look too happy about that idea, but he hadn’t expected she would.

      “I’d been thinking of picking up something and spending the evening letting Danny get used to your house.”

      He turned to look in the back seat. Danny had gone to sleep in his car seat, his head tilted to one side. There was something about the child asleep that reached out and grabbed Gabe like nothing ever had. He couldn’t decide whether it was that he was such an angelic-looking child, his complete trust that they would take care of him, or the sweet innocence of his expression. He just knew he was more determined than ever to be the one who would rear his sister’s child.

      “If you want to continue to be part of Danny’s life, you’re going to have to get to know the people in his life.”

      “Nobody in Iron Springs likes me.”

      “Maybe a few of them haven’t forgotten the things your mother said when she left—she badmouthed just about everybody and everything in Iron Springs—but the rest like you just fine.”

      “No, they don’t. You might not have seen it, but I felt it. I asked my grandmother about it.”

      “What did she say?”

      “She said to pretend it didn’t exist.”

      “Sounds like good advice to me.”

      “It’s not good enough for me now.”

      “Then you’ll have to figure out a way to change their minds.”

      “Would marrying you do that?”

      Until he married Ellen, he’d always taken belonging for granted. She looked down on everybody, and they sensed it right way.

      “I don’t know,” he replied. “I supposed you’d have to like Iron Springs, want to live here, want the people to be your friends.”

      “They’d have to want me, too. I was always that kid from New York.”

      “They probably felt you were just visiting, that you had no more intention than your mother did of having anything to do with Iron Springs after you grew up.”

      “Why should they think that?”

      “You were always telling us about your big plans to become a famous businesswoman and make millions of dollars.”

      Back then he’d never heard of a million dollars. That figure had been a constant reminder of the great distance between their two worlds.

      “Little girls always dream big.”

      “A little too big for people around here.”

      “It shouldn’t be.” She sounded short, a little defensive. “You could have half a dozen millionaires in town if a few people decided to sell off a mountain or two. Even if they couldn’t be used for ski slopes, they could be turned into retirement communities.”

      “We don’t want things to change,” Gabe said.

      Bringing that many people and that kind of business into the area would destroy most of what he loved about Iron Springs. He knew Dana wouldn’t see it that way—she’d probably think it would be the salvation of the place—but she didn’t see the real value, the most precious resource of Iron Springs.

      The people.

      “It won’t matter,” Dana said. “If I agree to marry you, I won’t be here long enough for anybody to notice.”

      Gabe thought Dana was mistaken about many things. But in no instance was she further from the truth than in believing she could be anywhere without being noticed.

      Dana approached Mrs. Purvis’s house with trepidation. She had been the only mother to make Dana welcome when she first visited her grandmother. Even after Mattie decided to defy her father and go to college, Mrs. Purvis had never said an angry or accusing word. Still Dana felt like she was stepping into the enemy camp.

      Maybe it came from her own sense of guilt over not having told Mattie’s family about her illness until after her death. Coming on the heels of her father’s death, Mattie felt her own impending death would be too much for her mother and Gabe. Dana thought the shock of hearing Mattie had died without their having a chance to say goodbye would be worse, but Mattie had been adamant.