Sugar Plums for Dry Creek

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbled.

Lizette nodded. She knew she couldn’t manage for long on the income she’d get from two students, but just look how much people wanted to talk about her school. With all of that talk, she’d get more students before long.

Lizette smiled up at the younger man. He might scowl a lot, but she was grateful to him for her first two students. “Your wife must be happy you take such good care of the children.”

The young man looked down at her. “I don’t have a wife.”

Lizette faltered. “Oh, I just thought that because their father showed me their picture that—”

“You know the kids’ father, Neal Strong?”

If Lizette thought the men had been quiet before, they were even more silent now.

“No, I don’t know him. Some man just showed me their picture in Forsyth when he asked me to give him a ride out this way. He said they were his kids and he was trying to find them. He probably didn’t know the address or something.”

Judd felt Amanda move closer to his leg, and suddenly he had as great a need to be close to her as she had to be close to him, so he reached down and lifted her up even though he had his heavy farm coat on and it probably had grease on it from when he’d last worked on the tractor.

“Don’t worry,” Judd whispered into Amanda’s hair when she snuggled into his shoulder.

Judd reminded himself that the papers Barbara had shown him when she left the children with him included a court order forbidding the children’s father from being within one hundred yards of them.

Judd knew the court clerk well enough now that he could ask for a copy of the court order if he needed one. Of course, that would mean the clerk would guess that the children were with him. No, there had to be another way. Besides, he didn’t actually need a copy of the order for the court to enforce it.

“You’re sure it was him?” Judd turned to ask the woman. He didn’t know how the children’s father would even know where they were unless Barbara had told him.

“He had a picture and he said he was their father,” Lizette said. “He had a snake on his arm.”

Amanda went still in Judd’s arm. The kids had told him about the snake.

Judd nodded. He should have figured something like this would happen. He wondered if his cousin had gotten back with her husband, after all. Generally, Judd was a supporter of married folks staying together. But some of the things Bobby had let slip while he was at Judd’s place would make anyone advise Barbara to forget her husband.

The one thing Judd knew was that he didn’t want that man to come within shouting distance of the children.

“You have a lock on this place, I suppose,” Judd said as he looked inside the building the woman was going to use for her school. If he brought the kids to the lessons and then came back to pick them up, they should be safe.

“I could put a lock on,” one of the older men spoke up. “It’s no trouble. They have some heavy-duty ones over at the hardware store.”

“And it wouldn’t hurt Charley here to come over and sit while the kids have their lessons,” another older man offered. “He always complains that the chairs at the hardware store are too hard anyway. Now that he’s got his fancy phone, he can call the sheriff any time, night or day.”

Judd nodded. It felt good to have neighbors, even if he hadn’t been very neighborly himself. He wasn’t sure what he could do to repay them, but he intended to try. “I’ll be watching, too.”

“Is something wrong?” Lizette looked at the men’s faces.

“Their father isn’t fit to be near these kids—even the court says so,” Judd said quietly. He could see the alarm grow on Lizette’s face. “Not that you have to worry about it. We’ll take care of the guarding. You won’t even know we’re here. We can even sit outside.”

“In the snow?” Charley protested.

“Of course you can’t sit outside in the cold,” Lizette said. “I’ll put some chairs along the side of the practice area. And I’ll be careful about who else I accept as students. I’ll check references on any grown man who wants to join the class.”

Charley snorted. “Ain’t no grown man hereabouts that’ll sign up. Not if he wants to keep his boots—”

One of the other older men interrupted him. “I thought you was gonna sign up yourself, Charley. You can’t just sit and watch everyone else practice. That wouldn’t be right.”

“Why, I can’t do no ballet,” Charley said, and then looked around at the faces of his friends. “I got me that stiff knee, remember—from the time I was loading that heifer and it pinned me against the corral?”

“The exercises might even help you then,” Lizette said. “We do a lot of stretching and bending to warm up.”

If Judd hadn’t still been thinking about the children’s father, he would have laughed at Charley’s trapped expression. As it was, he was just glad Charley would be inside with the children. For himself, Judd thought, he’d set up a chair outside the door, so he could keep his eyes on who was driving into Dry Creek.

Judd didn’t trust the children’s father and was determined to keep the man as far away from Dry Creek as possible. First thing in the morning Judd decided he’d tell Sheriff Wall all about the court order.

Judd had only met the sheriff once, but he trusted the man. Sheriff Wall might not be one of those big-city sheriffs who solved complicated crimes, but he had the persistence and instincts of a guard dog. And the man knew every road coming near Dry Creek, even the ones that were just pasture trails. The kids would be safer with Sheriff Wall on the job.

“I can pay in advance for the lessons,” Judd announced. He didn’t like the sympathetic look the ballet woman was giving the kids now that Charley had accepted his fate. Judd didn’t want the woman to think they couldn’t pay their way, especially not when she’d have to give special attention to the security of her classroom.

“There’s no need to pay now,” the woman protested.

But Judd already had two twenty-dollar bills in his hand and he held them out to her. “Let me know if it costs more.”

“That should cover their first couple of lessons,” Lizette said as she took the money and turned to a desk in a corner of the large room. “Just let me get a receipt for you.”

Judd watched the woman walk over to the desk. He couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t just walk—she actually glided. He supposed that was what all of that ballet did for a body.

Judd tried not to gawk at the woman. The fact that she moved like poetry in motion was no excuse for staring at her.

Judd heard a soft collective sigh and turned to see all the old men watching the woman as if they’d never seen anyone like her before. Charley had obviously forgotten all about his reluctance to be in the class.

“There’s no need for a receipt,” Judd said.

The woman looked up from the desk. Even from across the room he could see she was relieved. “But you should have one anyway. Just as soon as I get all my desk things organized, I’ll see that you get one. I could mail it to you, if you leave me your address.”

“I’m at the Jenkins place south of town. Just write Jenkins on the envelope and leave it on the counter in the hardware store.”

It had taken Judd two weeks to figure out the mail system in town. The first part was simple. The mail carrier left all of the Dry Creek mail at the hardware store, and the ranchers picked it up when they came into town. The second part still had Judd confused. For some reason, if he wanted to get his mail sooner rather than later, he still had to have it addressed to the Jenkins place even though no one by the name of Jenkins had lived on the ranch for two years now.

When Judd finally bought the Jenkins place, he told himself he’d get the name changed. He’d asked the mail carrier about it, and the man had just looked at him blankly and said that’s what everyone called the place.

Judd vowed that once he had the children taken care of and the deed to the place signed, he’d take a one-page ad out in that Billings paper everyone around here read. He’d make sure people knew it wasn’t the Jenkins place anymore.

But, in the meantime, he didn’t want to have the woman’s envelope returned to her, so he’d go along with saying he lived at the Jenkins place.

The woman nodded. “I know about the hardware store. I’ve been meaning to post an announcement about the school so everyone will know that we’re currently taking students.”

“About the students—” one of the old men said and then cleared his throat. “You see, the students—well, we’re not sure how many students you’ll have.”

“Of course,” Lizette assured him. She knew she needed a few more students to do the ballet, but surely three or four more would come. “No one knows how many people will answer the flyer I put up. But I need to start the classes anyway if we’re going to perform the Nutcracker ballet before Christmas.”

Lizette figured the students who came later could do the parts that involved less practice.

“Christmas is only five weeks away,” Judd said and frowned. He knew when Christmas was coming because he figured his cousin would surely come for the children before Christmas.

Judd had gone ahead and ordered toys for the kids when he’d put in a catalog order last week, but he thought he’d be sending the presents along with them when their mother picked them up. Thanksgiving was next week, and it was likely the only holiday he’d have to worry about. He figured he could cope with a turkey if he could get Linda to give him some more basic instructions. She’d already told him about some cooking bag that practically guaranteed success with a turkey.

“I don’t suppose you have a real nutcracker in that ballet?” one of the older men asked hopefully. “I wouldn’t say no to some chopped walnuts—especially if they were on some maple doughnuts.”

“You know there’s no doughnuts, so there’s no point in going on about them,” Charley said firmly as he frowned at the man who had spoken. “There’s more to life than your stomach.”

“But you like doughnuts, too,” the older man protested. “You were hoping for some, too—just like me.”

“Maybe at first,” Charley admitted. “But I can’t be eating doughnuts if I’m going to learn this here ballet.”

Lizette smiled as she looked at the two men. “Well, I do generally make some sort of cookies or something for the students to eat after we practice. I guess I could make doughnuts one of these days.”

“You mean you can bake doughnuts?” Charley asked. “I didn’t know anyone around here could bake doughnuts.”

Lizette nodded. “I’ll need to get a large Dutch oven, but I have a fry basket I can use.”

“Hallelujah!” Charley beamed.

“And, of course, I’d need to have some spare time,” Lizette added.

“And she’s not likely to have any time to bake now that she’s starting classes,” Judd said, frowning. It would be harder to guard the kids if every stray man in the county was lined up at the ballet school eating doughnuts.

Judd told himself that it was only his concern for the safety of the kids that made him worry about who was likely to be visiting the ballet school. He’d been in Dry Creek long enough to know about all the cowboys on the outlying ranches.

A woman like Lizette Baker was bound to attract enough attention just being herself without adding doughnuts to the equation.

Not that, he reminded himself, it should matter to him how many men gawked at the ballet teacher. He certainly wasn’t going to cause any awkwardness by being overly friendly himself. He was just hoping to get to know her a little better.

She was, after all, the kids’ teacher, and he was, for the time being, their parent. He really was obligated to be somewhat friendly to her, wasn’t he? It was his duty. He was as close to a PTA as Dry Creek had, since he was the almost-parent of the only two kids in her class right now. If Bobby and Amanda were still with him in a few months, he’d have to enroll them in the regular school in Miles City instead of homeschooling them. But, until then, it was practically his civic duty to be friendly to their ballet teacher. And he didn’t need a doughnut to make him realize it.

Chapter Five

Lizette worried there was something wrong with her. She thought she had been working through the grief of her mother’s death, but maybe she was wrong. After all, she hadn’t had that much experience with mourning, and the chaplain at the hospital had talked about going through different stages of grief.

Lizette wondered if one of those stages of grief was twitching.

Here she was wrapping up the day’s dance lesson, and her mind wasn’t concentrated on the three people who were her students or the five more students she needed if she was going to pull off even a modified version of the Nutcracker ballet. Instead, she was all jumpy inside, and her gaze kept going to the window, where she could see Judd sitting on the steps of her school and looking out to the street with a scowl on his face.

If she didn’t get a firm hold on herself, she’d be actually twitching when she looked at that man.

Lizette had had three days of lessons now, and for the better part of all of those days Judd had had his back turned toward her and the students. The first day she didn’t notice his silence and his scowls. The second day she noticed, but she didn’t feel the need to do anything about it. Today, she felt obsessed by the man.

She kept fighting the urge to go out and talk to him—and that was after she’d already been outside five times today to ask him questions. She didn’t have much to talk about either, except for the weather, and how many times could she ask if it looked like it was going to snow? He’d think she was dim-witted. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky anymore.

She kept expecting each time she went out and asked the man a question that she would then be able to move on with her lessons with a focused mind.

She was still waiting for that to happen.

The really odd thing was that nothing had changed in those three days.

She didn’t need to see his face to know he wore the same scowl he’d worn every day so far. Every time today she’d found an excuse to slip outside and ask him a question, she’d known he’d have the same fierce look on his face even before she opened the door.

Lizette wondered if Judd thought his look would keep strange cars off the street in front of the school. Actually, he might be right about that one. That scowl of his would stop an army tank from approaching him.

With all of the frowning, Lizette knew there was no sane reason she should feel drawn to go up and talk to him. But she was.

She thought it might be his shoulders. For as hard as his face scowled, his shoulders told a different story. It wasn’t anger he was feeling, but worry. Anxiety hung on his shoulders. It was there in the way he angled his head when he heard a sound and the way he stood to take a look down the road every half hour or so.

Judd was taking his duty seriously, and he was worried.

That’s it, Lizette thought to herself in relief. She found him compelling because he was protecting the children. She’d just lost her mother, and the man was obviously doing everything he could to guard the children in his care. That made him an unconscious picture to her of her mother, she told herself. She’d be as attracted to a chicken if it sat there guarding its eggs. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a man. He was simply a concerned parent.

Lizette felt better having figured that out. Not that she would have been opposed to finding the man attractive as a man, she just didn’t have time for that kind of distraction right now. She only had three students—Amanda, Bobby and Charley. She needed to worry about getting more students instead of thinking about some man’s shoulders.

And, yet, she let herself walk over to the doorway. Bobby and Amanda were sitting on the wooden floor untying their dance shoes. Since Charley wore socks instead of dance shoes, he didn’t have to worry about ties. Instead, he was pulling in his stomach and admiring himself in the mirror she’d hung behind the exercise bar. None of her students needed her immediate attention.

“They’re almost done,” Lizette said as she walked out on the porch and crossed her arms in the chill. At least she wasn’t asking about snow this time, even though the air felt cold enough for it. She always wore black tights and a black wrap-around dress when she practiced. Unfortunately, the dress was sleeveless. “Aren’t you cold out here waiting for the kids?”

Judd looked up at Lizette and forgot to frown. He almost forgot to breathe. She was standing in front of the sun, and although the temperature was low enough outside to make his fingers ache if he didn’t keep them in his pockets, the sun was shining brightly and she looked as though she was rimmed with gold. Her black hair was pulled back into a bun, and the smooth lines of her head made him think of an exotic princess. Her face was smooth and, even without lipstick, she looked like a picture he’d once seen of Cleopatra. The flimsy black thing she had draped over her made her look as if she was in constant motion. No wonder there had been so many wars fought back in Cleopatra’s day.

Judd was outclassed and he had sense enough to know it. All he asked was that he not embarrass himself around her. “It’s not that cold. Forty-six, last I checked.”

“Yes, well.” Lizette smiled.

“And no snow,” Judd added.

He’d already figured out that it wasn’t snow she was worried about. The few clouds that had been in the sky this morning were long gone. No, it was the kids’ father she was fretting about. She didn’t know Judd well enough to know that she didn’t have to worry about him leaving his post.

Not that he minded her coming out to check on him. He knew he hadn’t been around many women in his life, but he didn’t remember women being this naturally beautiful. He almost smiled in return. “So the kids are almost finished? Did they do all right?”

Lizette smiled even wider. “You do make a good mother.”

“What?” Judd choked on the smile that didn’t happen. Had he heard her right? She thought he made a good mother? A mother?

“I mean with all of your concern and all,” Lizette continued.

Judd grunted. He’d known he was out of her class, but he hadn’t realized he was that far out of it. A man didn’t get further away from date material than having a woman think of him as a mother.

“I used to ride rodeo.” Judd thought he owed it to himself to speak up. “Won my share of ribbons, too. Bronc riding and steer wrestling. They’re not easy events. I placed first in 2003 in bronc riding at the state fair in Great Falls.”

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