A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas. Janet Tronstad

pushed his cap down on his head. He didn’t need to look around to know that every man in the hardware store was staring at the floor. They were all used to talking about calves being born and cows artificially inseminated. They weren’t a delicate group. But none of them was comfortable talking about any of those activities with Mrs. Hargrove. He decided to spare everyone further speculation about his love life. “I’ll call when I get down to Los Angeles. My pickup should make it in three days.”

      “Your pickup?” Mrs. Hargrove frowned. “You can’t take your pickup. You need a back seat with seat belts for the baby’s car seat. You’ll have to borrow my car.”

      Mrs. Hargrove drove a 1971 Dodge compact the color of old mustard. It smelled of foot powder and wouldn’t go faster than fifty miles an hour. The junk dealer in Miles City had given up offering Mrs. Hargrove cash for the car and grumbled he’d have to charge her a tow fee when she finally came to her senses and gave up on the old thing. Still, the car never refused to start, not even in thirty-below weather, and that was more than some of the newer cars did.

      “I could rent a car,” Reno said as his mind began to calculate the cost. Three days down and three days back. It was the price of the feed supplements he was giving those runt calves. Some years that would be fine. But this year money was tight.

      “Don’t be foolish. My car’s sound as a tank. It’ll get you there and back.”

      Reno frowned. If he had any lingering hopes that Chrissy would surprise him and want to move back to Dry Creek, Mrs. Hargrove’s car would remind him how unlikely those hopes were. A stylish woman like Chrissy wouldn’t go to her own funeral in Mrs. Hargrove’s car. She certainly wouldn’t pack up her belongings and ride across three states in it. “I’ll take it. Thanks.”

      “Tell Chrissy she’s in my prayers,” Mrs. Hargrove said.

      Reno nodded as he walked to the door. “I’ll do that—if I get a chance.”

      He doubted he would be given a chance. Chrissy had not seemed drawn to the church when she was here last. He was pretty sure prayers would fall into the same category as mustard-colored cars when it came to women like Chrissy.

      “I know she’s never gone to church much,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “But now that she’s a mother she might want to—be sure and tell her there’s a good Sunday school program for the little one.”

      Reno had a sudden vision of Chrissy sitting beside him in a Dry Creek church pew and it made his mouth dry up with the shock of it. He shook his head to clear his mind. He didn’t need something like that vision rattling around in his head.

      The church in Dry Creek was a place of peace for him. After his mother visited the town last fall and Reno had started the process of forgiving her, he had been drawn to the church he’d last attended as a child.

      Reno had never really stopped believing in God during those years when he didn’t go to church. He’d just stayed home to keep his father from drinking. For some reason, his father had insisted Nicki attend church, but he’d given Reno a choice. When he’d realized his father was drinking when he was alone at the ranch, Reno had found reasons to stay home on Sunday.

      Until now he hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to sit in church with a wife beside him. Reno had a sudden empathy for the loneliness his father must have faced on those Sundays long ago after his wife left.

      Reno cleared his throat. He was as bad as Mrs. Hargrove. He needed to keep reality in mind. “She might decide not to come.”

      “Use your charm.”

      Reno grunted as he opened the door and stepped back out into the cold air. Fortunately he didn’t need to worry about charm when it came to Chrissy. He wasn’t likely to be given the chance to talk to her long enough to be charming. All he hoped was that he had enough time to give the invitation from Mrs. Hargrove so that he could honestly tell everyone he’d asked the question. That’s all Mrs. Hargrove and God could expect.

      Chapter Three

      Chrissy looked out the big windows of Pete’s Diner to the busy street outside. Something was making her edgy today, and not even the steady pace of orders from Pete’s regulars could keep her mind focused. It must be because she’d seen that funny cap this morning. The man wearing the cap had told her he was from North Dakota. She smiled, because it was the same kind of cap that Reno wore in Dry Creek, Montana.

      Whatever possessed her to remember that cap she didn’t know. She also didn’t know why the cap was so appealing. She’d always thought a Stetson on the head of a cowboy was the only kind of hat that would make a woman’s heart race; but that farmer’s cap that Reno had worn made her question all she knew about men’s headwear.

      If someone had told her she’d fall for a man in a cap, she would have said they were crazy. Especially a forest-green cap that advertised a yellow tractor, of all things!

      But the cap sat on Reno’s head, and that made all the difference. Reno had the chiseled bone structure of a Greek statue and the smooth grace of a man who was used to working outdoors. He wasn’t just tanned, he was bronzed. He didn’t need a cap to make him look good. He made the cap look good.

      Chrissy caught her reflection in the small mirror the other waitresses kept by the kitchen door. She wished she could say the same for herself. These days she didn’t make anything look good. She wondered if Reno would even recognize her if he saw her again.

      Reno had known her when she still glimmered with her carefully applied Vegas look. Back then, she’d worried about whether her nail polish matched the dress she was wearing that night. She had regular manicures and pedicures and facials. She worried about the bristles in the brush she used to apply just the right shade of blush to just the right area on her cheekbones.

      She always looked as much like a fashion model as an ordinary woman could.

      At Pete’s Diner, she’d stopped wearing blush. The heat from the kitchen gave her cheeks more than enough color. As for nail polish, she’d given up worrying about what color would even go with the fluorescent-orange uniforms Pete insisted his waitresses wear, and so she left her nails unpolished. Instead of a facial, she was lucky to get a good session of soap and water before Justin woke up.

      Now she used lip balm instead of lipstick and kept her hair pulled back. In short, she was a fashion disaster and couldn’t muster up enough energy to even care much about the fact.

      She’d actually debated dyeing her hair to match her natural color and letting it grow back brown just because it would be so much easier to take care of that way.

      Funny how having a baby can change what is important, Chrissy thought as she picked up a salad order for table number eleven. She’d applied for the job at Pete’s because it was close to her mother’s house and she could use her breaks to walk home to nurse Justin. She hadn’t even cringed at the neon-orange uniforms. She’d have worn a chicken suit if it meant she’d be close to her baby.

      Besides, she’d never liked the flash of Vegas all that much. Her whole time in Las Vegas had been spent trying to be the woman Jared wanted her to be. Not that Chrissy blamed Jared. She knew a man liked to have a glamorous woman on his arm, and she had been determined to please Jared. She’d never been a natural beauty, so she knew she had to work at looking good. She’d spent hours at cosmetic counters talking about the latest eye shadows and lip liners.

      Now she didn’t have time to do what it took to be fashionable. It was enough if her slip didn’t show. The important people in her life—her baby and her mother—cared more about her smile than her makeup, anyway.

      Chrissy’s mother had been more supportive throughout Chrissy’s pregnancy than Chrissy had dared to hope. Chrissy knew from the moment she knew she was pregnant that telling her mother about the baby would be harder than telling Jared.

      Chrissy had been a problem to her mother since the day Chrissy was conceived. She was in the first grade when she first heard the word illegitimate.