A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek (5 page)

Then the light wavered and Jenny blinked.

The kiss stopped.

She glanced up and saw his face. Robert Buckwalter looked as stunned as she felt.

“It's the cameras,” Jenny finally whispered. She wasn't dying, after all.

“I heard bells.”

“No, it was just the clicking.” Jenny pulled away from him slightly so she could check her feet.

Her feet would work, Jenny assured herself as she pulled away farther. She suddenly needed more room. “I've got to see to the butter.”

“Are you going for it again?” one of the teenage boys yelled out. “I've still got five shots left on my camera. Might as well fill it up.”

“Yeah, me, too,” another boy added.

“I heard bells,” Robert Buckwalter repeated slowly.

“You heard clicking,” Jenny said forcefully. She took a deep breath. “To you it sounded like bells. To me it sounded like the fires of…” She took another quick breath. “Just how gullible do you think I am? I'm not doing anything about that list, so you can just forget this—this—” Jenny waved her hand, but could not finish the sentence. This what? This earthquake? This landslide? Everything seemed more something than simply this kiss.

“Besides, I have the butter to serve,” Jenny said with dignity as she pulled herself away. She congratulated herself. Her feet worked perfectly well.

 

The lobsters were all eaten and the butter dishes empty before Robert felt free to escape from the party and sit on the steps leading out of the barn door.

He was a mess. Some love song was filling the barn with swaying rhythm and dozens of couples were dancing together. He should be dancing. He should be in there dancing with the woman who had turned him inside out, but he wasn't. Jenny was bustling around making sure everyone had coffee. Everyone, that is, except him. He was sure she wouldn't offer him any even if he stood in front of her like a beggar with an empty cup.

One thing was clear—Jenny had little use for Robert Buckwalter. What wasn't clear was if she could love Bob instead.

“Mind if I join you?”

Robert looked up to see Matthew Curtis, the minister, coming out of the barn.

“Help yourself.” Robert moved over on the steps. The steps were wooden and had been swept clean of snow even though they were still cold enough to make a man notice when he was changing spots. “There's room for both of us on these steps.”

“I could get us chairs from inside,” Matthew offered as he turned to go back in the barn. “That's what I should do—get us some nice folding chairs.”

“I haven't seen anyone else use folding chairs.”

“Well, we don't, but you're—”

“I'm what?”

Robert wondered how much trouble he could get in if he took a swing at a minister. “Go ahead, tell me. I'm what?”

The night air was damp. Snow wasn't falling, but the air was heavy with the promise of a blizzard later. Clouds covered most of the stars and half of the moon.

Matthew turned and stepped down next to Robert. “I'd guess right now you're a man who's just feeling bad. Want to talk about it?”

Robert realized he did. “You might not understand how it is with me.”

“No, probably not,” Matthew agreed as he settled onto the steps. “Can't say I've ever had the problems of a rich man.”

“What makes you think it's got to do with money?”

Matthew shrugged. “Just a guess. You're rich. That's got to be a burden—although I'd guess it's a little less of a burden after tonight.”

Robert looked at him.

“All those rolls of film you bought from the kids must have set you back a pretty penny. I heard them saying you were paying one thousand dollars for each picture they got of you kissing Jenny. I heard them cameras each take twenty-four shots. One of the kids is still kicking himself for taking three shots of the decorations before you started your kissing. Can't blame him. I almost got a camera myself and started taking pictures. That's going to be a half-million-dollar kiss when you've paid off all the kids.”

“Does Jenny know about this?” Robert wasn't so sure he wanted her to find out about this when she was carrying around a pot of hot coffee. She might be inclined to throw some of it his way without benefit of a cup.

“No. The kids are keeping quiet like you asked. They're tiptoeing around her. But they're so excited, they're going to burst if they don't tell someone. I'd guess a few of the adults know. And they're all wondering why—”

“It seemed like a good idea.” Robert paused. The air was cold enough to make puff clouds of his breath. “It started with Bambi. I thought she should go to college someday.”

Matthew nodded. “You're a generous man. That should make you feel good.”

“It should.”

“But it doesn't?”

“It's not enough. The way I see it, I'm missing something.”

Matthew nodded. “Go on.”

“I have too many friends. No, that's not right. They're not really friends. They're only people who like me because I'm rich. Because I have all the toys. Each one of those kids in there has a better friend and is a better friend to someone than I am. That's a hard realization to come to. If I died, it's not me people would miss, it's my toys.”

“You planning on dying?”

“Well, no, not anytime soon.” Robert realized it was hard to pin down the hollow feeling he had. “But if I did—”

Matthew nodded again. “What's troubling you is that you need to be part of the kingdom and you're not.”

Robert stopped. He'd heard there were militia groups in Montana. He wondered if he'd stumbled across one. They'd sure love to recruit a rich man like him who could buy them enough ammunition to start a small war.

“The kingdom?” Robert asked cautiously.

“Sure, the kingdom of God,” Matthew said calmly. “It's all that will fill up that empty feeling. When you're ready, we'll talk about it.”

“I don't think it has to do with God.”

Matthew grinned as he stood. “I know. You think it all has to do with that cute chef inside who's in need of a dance. If you don't ask her, somebody else is going to beat you to it.”

“She won't dance with me.”

Matthew grinned even wider. “Well, maybe not the first time you ask her. But you're Robert Buckwalter the Third. Way I hear it, you know about all there is about charming women.”

The minister stepped inside the barn and Robert stood up and brushed himself off before following him.

The minister was right. He did know how to charm women. He just wasn't sure charm would work with someone like Jenny.

The music was softer now. Even the kids were slowing down.

Robert went over to the refreshment table and got a glass of punch to work up his nerve. Jenny was still flitting about filling up coffee cups for those people who were sitting around the edge of the dance space and talking. He'd studied her pattern. She needed to return to the refreshment table to refill her thermal pot after every tenth cup. She was due back any minute now.

When she came back, he would ask her to dance with him.

“W
ell, I hope you're happy now,” Jenny said as she set the thermal coffeepot down on the refreshment table and glared at Robert Buckwalter. “Throwing your money around like it's confetti.”

Robert stiffened. He looked around at the teenagers dancing. He hoped no one had told her what he was buying with the money. None of the dancers were looking at him in apology. “No one else is complaining.”

“Of course they're not complaining.” Jenny turned to the big coffeepot and twisted the knob on its spigot so it would slowly fill the smaller thermal coffeepot. The mellow smell of brewed coffee drifted up from the pot. She looked up and continued her conversation. “What do you expect? They're teenagers. They love money.”

“Money has its uses.”

Jenny switched off the knob. The small pot was full. And she was tired to the bone. She'd been a fool. There for a blinding moment she'd thought Robert Buckwalter was a regular kind of a guy who just happened to be rich. What kind of rabbit hole had she fallen down? She should know better. No one just happened to be rich. Money changed everyone. “Not everything in the world revolves around money.”

“I know.”

“You can't buy friends with money—not even the friendship of teenagers.” After Jenny said the words, she corrected herself. Those teenagers certainly spoke of Robert with enough enthusiasm to count him a friend. And the checks were awfully big. She'd seen one of them.

Robert grinned. The kids had managed to keep his secret. Jenny didn't know why he'd been throwing checks around. “I didn't give them the money so they'd be my friends.”

“Well, with the size of those checks—they should be something.”

“I'm hoping they will be something someday.”

Jenny looked at him suspiciously.

“Something for themselves. I'm hoping they'll go to college—maybe learn a trade—be good citizens,” Robert explained. “Grow up to be their own something. What's wrong with that?”

Jenny was silent for a moment. “Nothing.”

Her sister was right, Jenny thought in defeat. She, Jenny M. Black, was turning into one of those fussy old women. Picking a fight with a perfectly innocent man just because he'd given away some of his money. And that wasn't even the real reason. The real reason was the kiss. And that was just as foolish. In his social circles, a kiss was nothing more than a handshake.

“Who you give money to is none of my business,” Jenny said stiffly as she put the lid back on the small coffeepot. “I owe you an apology.”

“I'll take a dance instead.” Robert held his breath. He'd seen the loophole and dived through it, but it wasn't a smooth move. He'd done better courting when he was sixteen. He had no polish left. He was reduced to the bare truth. “I've been hoping you'd save a dance for me.”

Jenny looked at him like he was crazy. “Save a dance? Me? I'm not dancing.”

“And why not?”

Jenny held up the coffeepot. She hated to point out the obvious. “I'm here to see that others have a good time. That's what your mother pays me to do and I intend to do it. I, for one, believe in earning my money.”

“I could pa—” Robert started to tease and then stopped. He didn't know how she'd twist his offer to pay for a dance, but he could see trouble snapping in her eyes already. “My mother doesn't expect you to wait on people all night.”

Robert looked over to where his mother was talking with Mrs. Hargrove. They were sitting on two folding chairs by the door to the barn. If his mother wasn't so intent on the conversation, he knew she would have already come over and told Jenny to take it easy.

“You're not going to ask her, are you?” Jenny looked horrified.

“Not if you don't want me to. But if you're so determined to give people coffee. I could pass some around for you. With two of us working, it'd take half the time. How much coffee can everyone drink?”

“I can manage.”

“No one should be drinking coffee at this time of night anyway.” Robert wondered if he'd completely lost his touch. She shouldn't still be frowning at him. Any other woman would be untying those apron strings and smiling at him by now.

“It's decaf.”

“Still. There's all this punch.” Robert gestured to the half-full bowl of pink punch. The color of the punch had faded as the evening wore on, and the ice had melted. The plastic dipper was half floating in the liquid. “Pity to see it go to waste.”

“The punch drinkers are all dancing.” Jenny looked out at the dance floor wistfully. The only people left drinking coffee were the single men, mostly the ranch hands from Garth Elkton's place. The teenagers had downed many a cup of punch after dinner, but they were all dancing now.

Robert followed her gaze. “The kids are doing their best, aren't they?”

The swish of taffeta skirts rustled all along the dance floor. A long, slow sixties love song whispered low and throaty from the record player. Most of the teenagers were paired up and dancing with a determined concentration that Robert applauded. He even saw one or two of the boys try a dip with their partners. Now that was courage.

“They remind me of an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie—all those colors swirling around.”

The old prom dresses were lavender, slate gray, buttercup yellow, forest green, primrose pink—and they all seemed to have full skirts that trailed on the plank flooring of the barn. Their skirts reminded Jenny of a bed of pansies.

“We could be swirling, too—” Robert held out one hand for the coffeepot and the other for Jenny's hand.

The light in the old barn had been softened when the music started. Someone had turned off a few of the side lights and shadows crowded the tall corners of the structure. The air was cool and, by the sounds of it, a winter wind was blowing outside.

When Jenny had looked outside earlier, she'd thought that the snow falling in the black night looked like a snow globe turned upside down—with the barn at the center and an old-fashioned waltz playing while the snow fell around the globe.

“I can't dance in this.” Jenny brought her mind back to reality. She gestured to her chef's apron. Her broad white apron was serviceable for working with food, but it had nothing of taffeta or silk about it. Even Ginger didn't dance in coarse cotton. “And there's my hair—”

“Your hair is beautiful. You just need to get rid of this.” Robert reached over and lifted Jenny's hairnet off her head.

Jenny's hands flew up. “But that's my hairnet—the health code.”

“No one needs a hairnet for dancing.”

No, Jenny thought, but they did need air in their lungs. She felt dizzy. She could almost hear her sister's squeal of delight if she knew Robert Buckwalter had plucked the net off her hair and asked her to dance.

But Jenny had always been more practical than her sister.

Jenny knew that Prince Charming didn't even notice Cinderella until after the Fairy Godmother had given her a whole new look. Men, especially handsome men like the one in front of her, just didn't dance with women with working shoes and flat hair. Not even the coachmen would have danced with Cinderella if she'd arrived at the ball with a net over her hair and an apron around her waist.

“I should change.”

Jenny's hand had already found its way into his and now she was twisting away from him to go do something as foolish as change her clothes.

“You're fine.” Fine didn't begin to cover it, Robert thought to himself. Jenny's eyes, usually a dark brown, had lightened to a caramel. She had a dazed look about her that made him want to dance with her in a quiet corner instead of in the middle of a throng of teenagers.

It wasn't that she was beautiful, he decided after a moment. He'd seen dozens of women whose features were more perfect. But he'd never seen anyone who looked like Jenny. He could almost trace her thoughts in her eyes. She wasn't trying to hide who she was or what she thought. He wondered if she even knew how rare that was. Or how compelling.

“But my hair…” Jenny frantically tried to fluff her hair up a little. It was all about bone structure. With flat hair, the small features on her face made her look like a Christmas elf. With just a little bit of fluff, she managed to look merely petite instead of childish.

Robert captured her hand and calmed her.

“Your hair is—” He'd been going to say “fine.” But then he felt the cloud of her hair fall against the back of his hand. “—incredible.”

“It's brown.” Jenny shook her hair away from his hand. No wonder he was in the running for the number one bachelor. He was a charmer, all right. “Plain brown and flyaway on top of that.”

Robert shook his head. “I'd say more chestnut than anything, golden highlights. The kind of hair the masters used to paint in all those old European pictures. Mona Lisa colors.”

“Next you'll be saying my apron is the latest fashion from Paris.”

Robert could see the amusement begin in her eyes and he could feel her relaxing.

“Just see if it doesn't catch on.” Robert guided her closer so they could waltz. He felt her momentary resistance before she moved toward him.

“I used to love to dance.” Maybe the shadows will hide my apron, Jenny thought to herself as Robert started them on their way.

“Ever dip?”

Jenny shook her head. “And don't you dare. I'd feel foolish with everyone looking.”

“Everybody's too busy to care.”

Jenny looked around at the other couples. It was true. Almost. “The ranch hands are watching.”

Robert looked at the cluster of men standing by one of the side heaters. Half of them held coffee cups in their hands. A few of them did seem to be looking at him and Jenny, although he'd wager they weren't interested in her apron. The dismay he saw in the eyes of a couple of them told him they'd been waiting for the coffee passing to stop so they'd have their own chance at a dance with Jenny.

“They'll just have to get their own dates,” Robert stated firmly as he gathered Jenny a little closer and inhaled. She smelled of some very pleasing scent. He'd guess cinnamon.

Jenny almost stumbled. “Date?”

Robert looked down at her face and smiled. “You. Me. Dancing. That's a date, isn't it?”

“But we can't be on a date.” Jenny stopped dancing.

“Why not?”

“You're my boss.”

“I've never paid you a dime. You work for my mother.”

“It's the same difference,” Jenny sputtered. “Besides—” she hated to sound like her sister, but there it was “—I'm Jenny, the chef, and you're Robert Buckwalter the Third.”

“You can call me Bob.”

“What?” Jenny hadn't realized how close Robert had pulled her until she'd stopped dancing.

“Bob. Call me Bob.”

Jenny looked up at him skeptically. He smelled faintly of some expensive aftershave. The tie around his neck was pure silk and probably Italian. His suit had to be hand tailored. “You don't look like a Bob.”

Robert gently started Jenny dancing again. He liked the way she felt in his arms. Her head reached his chin. Not too tall. Not too short. Just right. “What does a Bob look like anyway?”

Jenny was silent a moment. “Plaid shirt. Sneakers.”

Robert started to chuckle. “I can't do much about the shirt right now, but I left my sneakers in the bus when we drove over. I could go get them if it'd make you happy. We could both go.”

“It's dark out there.”

“The stars are out.”

“Mrs. Hargrove said we're supposed to stay close to the barn.” Jenny tried to hold on to her propriety.

Jenny remembered how soft the black sky was outside. Shadows layered over shadows amid the cars and trucks parked in the middle of Dry Creek. The bite of the air would be cold and sharp enough to make the inside of the bus a cozy place to talk. A much too cozy place when all was said and done.

“She's just worried about that kidnapping rumor.” Robert watched the temptation play across Jenny's face. He could watch her for hours. “But only a fool would kidnap anyone in a cold spell like the one tonight. There's three feet of snow out there in some places.”

“I suppose.”

Robert noticed the frown didn't go away. “If you're worried about me, don't be. I'm a gentleman. You can trust me.”

Jenny snapped back to reality. “You're not a gentleman. You're the bachelor of the year.”

Robert came back to reality with her. “I am? Have you talked to your sister? Have they decided?”

“No.”

“The whole thing is cruel and unusual punishment.”

Jenny nodded. She supposed the waiting and suspense did seem like that to him. He must really want the slot. “My sister says the winner will be able to write his own ticket with the advertising companies.”