A Rich Man for Dry Creek / a Hero for Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  “Bonnie? I’ve never heard you talk about any Bonnie.” Nicki knew she was right to not trust that man. He waited until now to tell her there was a Bonnie.

  “Well, I haven’t met her yet. But if you’ve got a Lester in your future, I can have a Bonnie.”

  “So you do plan to marry someday?” the pastor asked quietly. He didn’t even mark anything in his notebook. “I got the impression you weren’t really considering it.”

  “Well, I’m not.” Garrett crossed his arms. He’d made that decision years ago. He should stick with it.

  “So what does this Bonnie look like?” Nicki decided it was only fair that she know more about Bonnie since Garrett knew all there was to know about Lester.

  “How would I know?”

  “Well, you must have some picture in your head.”

  “She wears black spandex.” Garrett knew it wasn’t much to go on, but a picture was starting to form in his mind. “And her eyes are green—yeah, a real feisty kind of green that flash when she’s upset.”

  “That could be anybody.” Nicki crossed her arms.

  Garrett didn’t even need to look at her to know her eyes were flashing just like his mind was remembering. That would never do. Nicki clearly wasn’t describing him as her ideal mate so he shouldn’t describe her. “And she likes to ride with me in Big Blue—my truck.”

  “Where would you go?” Nicki was beginning to wish Garrett was the kind of guy who could put down roots. Not that she had a future with him anyway on account of the black spandex stuff. Black spandex was what men said when they wanted a woman who was exciting in all of the ways that Nicki wasn’t. Garrett would probably even meet his Bonnie when he went back to Las Vegas. The city had lots of spandex women who’d like to meet a hero and drive off in Big Blue.

  “I just go where my deliveries take me. No place special.” Garrett frowned. He hadn’t realized until now that he didn’t have a special place to go to. One city was pretty much the same as the next one. A man ought to have a place that he longed to reach for more reasons than that he could deliver whatever he was carrying.

  “I see.” The pastor was thoughtfully looking at Garrett. “I’d say you don’t like to be tied down. I hope—ah, Bonnie, is it?—feels the same way. Most women like to have a home.”

  “I have a home. In the back of Big Blue’s cab—there’s a bed and a battery-operated television. I even have a small refrigerator.” Garrett wondered when his life had gotten so depressingly single. “The bed sleeps two if they’re cozy.”

  Nicki didn’t like thinking of Bonnie in Garrett’s bed. She turned her attention back to the pastor. “Do you have any questions about how much conversation a married couple need to have for a good marriage?”

  “Well, there’s no set amount. But don’t worry. You two seem to be talking pretty good.”

  “I mean with Lester.”

  “Oh.” The pastor didn’t even look down at his questions this time. “I’d say if you’re bothered by the amount of conversation, then there’s a problem.”

  “But if I’m not bothered, then it’s okay?” This was the first good news Nicki had heard in this whole time. She was fine with not talking to Lester.

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that—”

  The door opened and a gust of cold air blew into the store followed quickly by Glory. “Sorry it took me so long.”

  The pastor stood. “That’s all right. We were just doing a practice marriage counseling session.”

  “Oh.” Glory raised her eyebrow. “What makes it a practice one?”

  “We’re marrying different people.” Nicki wondered how a woman ever got the kind of polish that Glory had. Her copper-colored hair waved and curled and just generally shone. “So it’s a practice for when we do it for real.”

  “I find it helps people relax for the Big One,” the pastor said as he walked over to his wife and gave her a quick kiss. “It’ll only take us a minute to wrap up.”

  “Take your time.”

  Garrett frowned. Watching the pastor kiss his wife made him realize what he was missing. Those kind of affectionate kisses weren’t part of his moves. When he kissed a woman, it was just a rest stop on the road to someplace else. That used to be enough for him.

  “Actually, your husband has already given us lots to think about.” Nicki shifted in her chair. “We could save the rest for later.”

  “Yeah,” Garrett agreed quickly. He didn’t like the feelings those questions stirred up. He’d been a perfectly happy single male a week ago. “I should go check the limo anyway.”

  Garrett got up from the chair and smiled a goodbye. He would have gone to check the Titanic if it would have gotten him out of the store, but no one needed to know that. They didn’t even ask what he needed to check on the limo. It was a good thing, he told himself as he stepped out of the store, because he didn’t need to check anything.

  “I should go check on the twins, too,” the pastor said to Nicki. “They’re at Mrs. Hargrove’s place. Her niece is taking care of them, and they can be a handful.”

  Nicki waited for the pastor to leave before she turned to Glory. “You don’t happen to sell black spandex stuff in the store, do you?”

  Glory shook her head. “We have black duct tape that stretches, but that’s about all.”

  Nicki doubted Bonnie would wear duct tape.

  “I do have the makeup, though,” Glory said as she held up a paper bag. “You’re welcome to pick out what you’d like to borrow. I hear you’ve got a big date coming up tonight.”

  Nicki nodded. “The Thanksgiving Eve service at church.”

  “Why, that’s a good idea—I’ve been looking forward to the service ever since Matthew told me about it. I hear it’s been a tradition in Dry Creek since the turn of the century.”

  “That’s why people bring their own candles. Back in the early days, the church couldn’t afford to buy any candles, and since the service was at night they needed light. The church didn’t have electricity back then—actually, the church didn’t even have a building. Everyone just met in the back room of Webster’s store for services. I don’t know who came up with the idea of people taking their candle to the front of the church and leaving it on the alter when they said what made them thankful.”

  Glory nodded. “Matthew told me the altar back then was made of a stack of cans set on top of some boxes. I can almost see those first candles in my mind. I’ve been thinking I might paint a scene of them—Elmer and Jacob told me there were all kinds of candles and candleholders. The cowboys sometimes just brought their candles in their tin drinking cup. That was all they had.”

  “And Mrs. Hargrove has a silver candelabra that belonged to her mother—she says her mother bought it specially for the Thanksgiving service so she’d have enough candles to represent every member of her family.”

  “Candlelight can be very romantic,” Glory said as she opened the paper bag and rummaged around. “I even put some perfume in here.”

  “It’s only a little bit of a date. He’ll be gone after Thanksgiving.”

  Nicki wondered if going out on a date with a handsome man who was leaving town was the smartest move a woman could make. She’d be forever comparing her dates with Lester to her one date with Garrett.

  “Then you’ll need a touch of lipstick, too,” Glory said as she examined Nicki. “I think with your coloring we need to go with the rose.”

  “I’m not very good with the lines,” Nicki confessed as she peered into the bag of cosmetics Glory had brought over. There were lipsticks and lip liners. Mascara and eye shadow. “What’s that?”

  “A pot of smudge for your cheeks—it adds some glitter.”

  “Won’t I look kind of funny?”

  “Not if you ask your mother to help you with it all.”

  “Oh.” Nicki had almost managed to forget that her mother was here. “She and I don’t have that kind of a relationship.”

  “Who knows what kind of a relationship you ca
n have? Give it some time.”

  Nicki was going to point out that twenty-two years was a lot of time to give someone when they made no move to contact you, but she didn’t get her mouth opened before she heard footsteps on the porch and the door of the store opened.

  “There you are,” Nicki’s mother said as she entered the store and saw Nicki standing at the counter. “Garrett said you were here. I asked him to go into Miles City to buy groceries and wondered if you would go with him.”

  “We have enough groceries at the ranch.”

  “Do you have a hundred and ten pounds of turkey and forty pounds of potatoes?”

  “No, but we don’t need those kind of groceries,” Nicki said even as her unease grew.

  “We do now,” Nicki’s mother announced with a flourish. “Garrett said you didn’t have plans for Thanksgiving dinner so I took the liberty of inviting guests.”

  “You mean Mrs. Hargrove?” Nicki hoped that was all her mother meant. That would be fine. She would have invited Mrs. Hargrove herself if they were having more than soup anyway.

  “I mean the whole town of Dry Creek.”

  “The whole town? That must be fifty, sixty people.”

  “Seventy including me and Garrett. Eighty if we can reach everyone at the Elkton Ranch. Garth and his new wife, I think it is Sylvia, might have gone to Seattle—Jacob is going to call them and see. Even if they are not there, their ranch hands will probably like to come. I’ve never known a cowboy to turn down a turkey dinner.”

  “We can’t possibly—” Nicki tried to calculate just how many turkeys that would be.

  “Don’t worry—everyone’s helping. The kids at the café agreed to bake the turkeys for us early tomorrow morning. And Jacob will help them bring them out to the ranch.”

  “But we’d need pies and sweet potatoes and rolls—”

  “We’ve got it organized. All you need to do is ride along with Garrett into Miles City to buy the food.”

  “I haven’t even dusted yet.” Nicki wondered if there might not be something to say for living out of a truck like Garrett did. No one ever expected him to entertain.

  “Everything will be fine,” Nicki’s mother said. “We’re not fussy.”

  “You—not fussy? You made Dad use a coaster when he drank water at the kitchen table. And it was Formica. It was made for water spills.”

  “That was a long time ago. And it wasn’t water he was drinking. I thought if I insisted on a coaster he would think twice before he drank in front of you kids.”

  “Oh.”

  “A child’s eyes see everything,” Nicki’s mother continued. “I knew Charles would hate himself if you and Reno didn’t grow up to respect him. Next to the land, you were all he had.”

  “He had you.”

  Nicki’s mother winced. “There’s more to the story than you know.”

  “Then tell me.”

  Nicki could feel her mother measuring her.

  “It’s not just about me. But if I can, I’ll tell you. I have to ask someone’s permission first.”

  “Is that why you’re going to visit Dad’s grave? To ask him if you can tell us it was all his fault?”

  Nicki wondered if she was too old to run away from home. She had already lost her mother. She didn’t want to have the memory of her father tarnished as well by hearing that he had displeased her mother because he drank too much. Even if her father had done that, her mother was probably the cause.

  Another pair of footsteps sounded as someone stamped the snow off their shoes before opening the door to the hardware store.

  “Everybody ready to go into Miles City,” Garrett said as he rubbed his hands together. He’d heard Mrs. Hargrove give the food calculations and he’d joked that he shouldn’t have left his truck in Las Vegas. He’d surprised himself when he’d joked. Usually a holiday meal like Thanksgiving gave him a headache. But sitting down with the bunch of people he’d met in this little town didn’t seem so bad.

  Garrett wondered if something was wrong with him. He’d lived his life by one rule—keep moving in life because then everyone stays a stranger. It was a good rule. That way he didn’t disappoint anyone, not even himself. Odd, how that rule no longer sounded very appealing to him.

  Chapter Nine

  Nicki glittered. She could see it out of the corner of her eyes. She hadn’t put on any of the “pot of smudge” Glory had loaned her so she must have gotten sugar on her cheek when Mrs. Hargrove, who had been making pies all afternoon, hugged her. The fortunate thing was that in the darkened church no one cared if Nicki glittered or glowed or downright sparkled like Garrett did.

  The day had quieted down and the church looked elegant in the candlelight. The work for the day was done, and all was peaceful except the rustling of little feet in the back pews of the old church. The church walls were white but the flickering of the candles turned the walls golden. Long shadows stretched along the walls as people filed into the church.

  Nicki was wearing a plain navy pantsuit with a very ordinary silver pin. She’d looked at the makeup Glory had lent her and quietly set it aside. She could dress up like she was a princess but that wouldn’t make her one. She needed to keep her feet firmly planted and, for her, that meant looking the way she always had. She knew there were no fairy-tale endings, and she needed to remember that Garrett was going to leave soon.

  The fact that she had dressed plainly didn’t mean that Garrett had. He was wearing the tuxedo again and he looked every bit as handsome as he had early this morning.

  Even without the limousine, he took Nicki’s breath away. But it wasn’t just the tuxedo or the limo. She would have found him handsome if he was wearing an old jogging suit and standing beside a bicycle. All of which was why Nicki needed to keep her feet planted in reality. It would be all too easy to let herself become too attached to him. She needed to keep her heart safe.

  Nicki and Garrett were on their date. The people of Dry Creek had given them their own pew in honor of the occasion. At least Nicki assumed that was why everyone said hello to them but no one stayed to sit beside them.

  The evening had transformed Dry Creek.

  All afternoon, everywhere Nicki looked, someone was chopping vegetables or peeling apples or grinding cranberries. She and Garrett had driven to Miles City and returned with enough bags of groceries to fill up the limousine. Nicki’s mother had given them a wad of fifty-dollar bills, insisting the Thanksgiving dinner was on her.

  By the time they got back to Dry Creek, the work teams were aproned and ready to go. Mrs. Hargrove took the ingredients for the pies and her helpers went with her to her house to bake. Jazz and Linda took the turkeys and the bread for the stuffing. Glory and Matthew were in charge of vegetables and took the bags of green beans, muttering something about hoping the twins liked to snap things.

  Even Elmer had been put in charge of the butter when Lillian remembered he liked to carve. He was commissioned to shape the butter into five large turkeys with lines fine enough to show the feathers.

  Nicki had volunteered to bake pies, but her mother said she and Garrett were needed back at the ranch to clean the main room in the bunkhouse and put up enough sawhorse tables to seat eighty people.

  “We used to get over a hundred people in there when we had guests before,” Lillian had said when Nicki had started to protest. “The room can’t have shrunk. We get ten to a table and you can fit eight tables in there easy if you put them sideways where the beds used to go.”

  The bunkhouse had had cowboys sleeping in it for over a hundred years, and the metal legs of the beds left scars that still could be seen in the hardwood floors. Nicki supposed if you matched the bed markings you could get eight tables. There used to be sixteen beds, eight on each half of the bunkhouse.

  Garrett drove Nicki back to the ranch in the limousine while her mother stayed in Dry Creek to help with the food.

  If everyone hadn’t been so intent on their tasks, Nicki would have suspected they had conspired
to leave her and Garrett alone. But they didn’t give the two of them a second glance when she and Garrett pulled out of town so Nicki decided they’d just paired Garrett with her because he looked strong enough to swing a sawhorse around. She would need that kind of help to set up the tables.

  Once Nicki decided she and Garrett were just a work team, she didn’t have any trouble talking to him. She’d started out where she’d usually start with a new ranch hand. She’d told him stories about the early days of the ranch. She even told him about the time the cowboys on the ranch had sent back East for a bride and then played poker all winter trying to decide who would get to woo the young woman first.

  In turn, Garrett told her about some of the places where he’d driven with Big Blue—how the trees of Tennessee were thick and green and the ocean off the Florida coast was pale blue in the morning.

  It wasn’t until they opened the closet and found the old pair of children’s ballet shoes, however, that they started talking about themselves. Nicki had forgotten about the shoes. Her mother hadn’t always been disappointed in her. When Nicki was small, she and her mother had loved to dance together in the kitchen, twirling on the old linoleum until they collapsed in a tangle of giggles. Somehow, after her mother left, Nicki had forgotten there were any good times. When Garrett responded by telling her about his dad dying of liver failure and all of the lonely days he had spent waiting for his father to be a father to him, they both knew they were friends.

  Now that they were on their date, sitting in the church that was lit by candlelight, however, the ease of the friendship wasn’t the same. Nicki couldn’t think of a thing to say. Garrett in overalls was a lot easier to talk to than Garrett in a tuxedo.

  “The flowers are lovely,” Nicki repeated for the tenth time. She still didn’t know when Garrett had slipped away in the grocery store to buy the two red roses. It must have been when she was asking the produce clerk how many yams eighty people might eat if they also had mashed potatoes. “And they’re perfect in this vase.”

  Garrett hadn’t stopped with the roses. He’d bought a tiny glass vase that had room for the roses and for a single white taper candle.