by Joanna Wayne
Evelyn straightened the stained apron that puckered around her plump waist and broad hips. She was short, probably no more than a couple of inches over five feet, big-boned, with more than ample breasts that drooped nearly to her waist and short brown hair that frizzed about her reddened cheeks. But her genuine smile and dancing eyes radiated warmth.
“I’d ask you to sit down and visit a while,” Chrysie said, “but I need to get this scrubbing finished before I have to pick up the girls.” Chrysie made sure she was always early to pick them up, Mandy first from the preschool class at the Methodist church next door to the school, then Jenny from kindergarten.
“You go right ahead. I’ll just visit with you while you work.”
Not exactly what Chrysie wanted to hear, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Not that Evelyn wasn’t nice or that Chrysie couldn’t use a little adult female company, but making friends always led to questions. And questions led to lies.
“Most of the ranchers don’t bother with preschool for their kids. It’s just too much hassle driving into town every day.”
“Mandy only goes three days a week, and I like for her to have some social interaction with peers.” But this was the first time she’d ever enrolled either of them in anything that kept them out of her sight for any stretch of time. She was still very uneasy with it.
“You must have met the sheriff on one of your trips into town.”
Chrysie’s breath caught, and she turned away so Evelyn wouldn’t see that the comment had caught her off guard. “How do you know that?”
“He called this morning asking about you. I think he might have taken a liking to you. You’re the best-looking woman around here, and that’s for sure.”
“What did he ask?”
“He just wanted to know what I thought of you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were a real nice lady and a great mom.”
“Was that it?”
“Pretty much. But I think he might come a-calling.”
“He’s only interested in my qualifications as a babysitter. I’ve offered to fill in for his regular sitter this afternoon.”
Chrysie put on the gloves again and dropped to her knees. She’d have to work fast to finish this before she had to shower and leave for town. Buying the new battery had eaten up most of the morning and a chunk of her remaining cash.
She could probably make it through the winter on what she’d saved if they didn’t have too many emergencies, but she’d have to find at least part-time work by spring. Spring in Montana would be nice, but she never counted on being anywhere that long.
Evelyn sashayed around the edges of the damp floor. “The sheriff is a bachelor, you know. And those kids of his sure need a mother.”
“What happened to theirs?”
“No one really knows. He left here last year and came back with two sons and a new last name. He didn’t do a lot of explaining.”
“And no one asked?”
“No. That’s the way it is up here. A man’s business is his own.”
Hopefully that worked for women, as well.
“Sheriff asked about your husband. I told him you were a widow. That is what you said, isn’t it? That your husband was dead?”
Chrysie nodded. That was the one thing she hadn’t lied about.
“I should get Buck to paint this place for you. The hands aren’t all that busy in the winter. He could probably spare a couple of them for a day or two.”
“That would be great.” Chrysie looked up from the floor and stared at the dingy walls. “A yellow would really brighten up the house, maybe the color of daffodils.”
“Walls like a spring daffodil?” Evelyn looked around as if seeing the house for the first time. “I was thinking white, but yellow might be nice. Come to think of it, my kitchen could use some brightening, too.”
Evelyn stayed a few more minutes, then walked over to the door to let herself out. “You sure have yourself locked in here.”
“I like to feel safe, especially for the girls.”
“There’s no trouble here on the ranch. Buck wouldn’t have it. Someone come messing around here, he’d shoot them full of lead. Nobody messes with anything on Buck’s property.”
“That’s good to know.” But the locks would stay.
“Give some thought to what I said about the sheriff, Chrysie. He’s a good man. Nice-looking, too. All the young, single women in town are after him all the time—not that there are that many young, single women around.”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
After Evelyn left, Chrysie finished the floor, then dumped the dirty water outside. She stood for a minute, letting the frigid air fill her lungs while she took in the magnificent mountain view.
This place was so perfect. Clean air. A decent house for practically no rent. A small, friendly com munity that had accepted them with a minimum of questions. She just had to make sure it stayed that way.
Which meant she needed Sheriff Josh McCain to forget she existed.
A good catch, maybe. But not for a fugitive from justice.
Chapter Two
The snow had been no more than occasional flurries for most of the day, but it began to fall harder just as Josh turned onto the road to Buck Miller’s house. Before he’d come to Montana, he’d thought of snow only in terms of powder quality for skiing. Now it was a way of life.
The frigid temperatures had been a rough adjustment to a Louisiana man’s system that first winter. Physical labor had been a new experience, as well. But poverty had been the real shocker. He’d never realized how important money was until he didn’t have any.
Buck had given him his first real job. The old rancher and the rest of the hands figured out pretty quickly what a greenhorn Josh was. He got all the dirty work that first year, had gone to bed with aching muscles and new calluses on top of old. But the work had accomplished what years of spending his father’s money and playing with the druggies on the streets of the Big Easy couldn’t—it had made him a man.
No one had asked Josh why he’d moved to Montana. They judged him by the job he did and his willingness to help out where needed. It was the way of life up here and the reason Josh had stayed.
He should give Chrysie Atwater the benefit of that same philosophy, but he was having trouble doing that, especially after talking to Evelyn and Mrs. Larkey about her.
He never underestimated a woman’s ability to do most things a man could do. Some of the biggest spreads in the state were owned and run by women. But Chrysie wasn’t Montana-bred. She was a single mother from the South who’d moved to a small town pretty much in the middle of nowhere where she had no job, no friends and no family. It just didn’t add up, and things that didn’t add up always made Josh suspicious.
But unlike everyone else who’d tried lately, she seemed quite capable of managing his sons. He’d checked on them several times this afternoon, and their complaints had assured him they were being well cared for.
Danny had said Mrs. Atwater was bossy and made him practice his reading. And Davy had whined that she made him wear his snow pants when he went outside to play and gave him fruit for his afternoon snack instead of the candy and soda he’d wanted.
Even more impressive, Chrysie had sounded calm on the telephone when he’d asked her about the boys. That in itself put her in a whole new class as far as his experience with sitters was concerned.
Not that the sexy Mrs. Atwater was perfect. Last night’s tree-falling incident had proved that the woman was wound a tad too tightly for Josh’s liking. But what the hell. Josh was desperate for someone to watch the boys on a daily basis, and she might be the ideal solution.
That is, if she checked out. Before he could ascertain that, he’d need to find out exactly what had brought her to Aohkii, Montana.
THE AFTERNOON HAD been every bit as stressful as Chrysie had expected. The boys were incorrigible, constantly pushing the limits. It was clear they�
�d never been disciplined appropriately. She’d love to point out to Josh McCain all the ways he was failing his sons, but she didn’t dare. The less interaction she had with the sheriff, the better.
She glanced at the clock above the kitchen counter. Six-thirty, and he wasn’t back yet. For the minute, both Davy and Danny were under control, wolfing down sloppy joes as though they hadn’t eaten in weeks. Jenny and Mandy were taking their usual small bites and dawdling between each mouthful.
“Can I have more?” Danny asked.
“You surely can.”
“Me, too,” Davy said, shoving the rest of his food into his mouth. “Daddy’s sloppy joes aren’t this good.”
“Sloppy joes, floppy joes, up your nose,” Danny said as she refilled his plate.
Mandy giggled as if he’d said something remarkably witty. Jenny ignored him. At five, she was not nearly as impressed with the boys’ antics as her three-year-old sister.
“Davy kicked me under the table,” Jenny complained.
“Did not.”
“Did so.”
“I was just swinging my foot and your leg got in the way.”
“Stop swinging your foot at the table,” Chrysie ordered.
“My dad lets me.”
“I’m not your dad,” she said, glancing out the window as she heard an approaching vehicle. She all but shouted her relief when she saw it was the sheriff’s black pickup truck.
A minute later Chrysie opened the back door, and both boys jumped from their chairs as if shot from cannons and raced to smother their father in hugs. She wasn’t sure if that was their usual greeting or if they were just thrilled to be rescued from her.
The sheriff removed his black Stetson and raked his fingers through his thick, dark hair, smoothing the strands the hat had mussed. “Something smells good.”
“Yeah, Mrs. Atwater made sloppy joes. And they’re really good. She doesn’t put those yucky onions in them like you do, Daddy.”
“Guess I’ll have to get her recipe.”
Davy climbed back in his chair. “Can my daddy have some, too?”
“If he’d like. There’s plenty,” Chrysie said. She didn’t consider that much of an invitation, but apparently it was all the sheriff needed. He shrugged out of his parka and hung it on one of the coat hooks near the door.
He was not the kind of man a woman could just ignore, she admitted as she felt his dark, piercing gaze follow her as she grabbed an extra plate from the cupboard.
He took the only available spot—the chair at the end of the table opposite hers. She filled the plate and set it in front of him. “You can have water, milk or coffee,” she said. “I’m afraid that’s all I can offer.”
“Milk sounds good.”
She poured him a glass, then joined them at the table, though her appetite had vanished. Apprehension did that to her, and there was no way she could not be anxious as long as a man with a badge was in her house.
Jenny ran the fork around her plate, using the prongs to make a design in the sauce, before looking at Chrysie with pleading eyes.
“May I be excused?”
Chrysie stared at her daughter’s half-full plate. “You didn’t eat much.”
“I’m full.”
“Me, too,” Mandy said.
“Okay, you can take your plates to the sink. But it’s a long time until breakfast.”
Both girls wiped their faces and hands on their napkins, then cleared their dishes from the table. With them gone, the boys clamored all the louder for Josh’s attention, both talking at once, trying to top each other’s stories. They thrived on his attention, devouring it the way they’d gulped down their food.
That need for approval and affirmation could well be at the root of much of their truculent behavior, especially if they’d been neglected or had experienced a major emotional trauma in their past.
“Sounds as if you guys had a busy afternoon,” Josh said.
“Yeah, but we didn’t have any fun,” Danny complained. “Too many rules.”
“Yeah, too many rules,” Davy agreed, mimicking as always.
Danny cleaned his plate for the second time, then jumped down from his chair and started back to the living room, where the girls were. Davy followed him.
“Whoa!” Josh said. “You heard Mrs. Atwater. Take your plates to the sink. Rules of the house.”
Danny turned and stared at his dad as if he’d asked him to grow wings. “We don’t have to do that at home.”
“We might just start it.”
The boys muttered under their breaths but surprisingly complied without more argument. Once the plates were deposited, Danny shoved Davy and ran from the kitchen. Davy took off after him for payback.
Josh shook his head. “Guess I need to work on their manners.”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Chrysie agreed.
“I really appreciate your helping out with them. I could have canceled the meeting today if it came to that, but the D.A. wouldn’t have been too happy about it. He really wants to nail old Jake Mahoney.”
She nodded but didn’t respond, hoping that would put an end to the conversation.
Josh cleaned his plate, then gulped down the rest of his milk. Apparently the boys got their appetite from him.
“I guess you probably heard about Jake,” Josh said.
“No.”
“He’s pretty much the talk of the town these days. He seemed nice enough until he came unglued and shot and killed a couple of the hands working with him.”
“He must have had some provocation.”
“Claimed the guys were horsing around and not pulling their share of the load. Shocked everyone who knew him until we found out Jake had been committed to a mental hospital down in Mississippi a few years back for attacking his father with a knife. Don’t know what those shrinks were thinking letting him out.”
“You can’t blame the psychiatrists or psychologists for this.”
“Yeah? Who would you blame?”
“There can be any number of factors….” She stopped midsentence—before she said too much.
“Sorry,” Josh said. “I guess murders aren’t the best topic for dinner conversation. Fortunately we don’t have many around here. If we did, that wouldn’t leave me a lot of time for running the Double D.”
“Is that your ranch?”
“Yeah. I changed the name of it after I took custody of Danny and Davy. Before that it was called Timber Trails. Don’t know where that name came from. I bought the land from some actor out in California who’d bought the ranch but never lived on it.”
“I guess ranching isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.”
“Probably no one’s cup of tea. This is more a strong-coffee or cold-beer world. People either love it or hate it. So what brings you out here, Chrysie? You don’t seem like a woman with ranching in your blood.”
So it was Chrysie now. This morning it had been Mrs. Atwater. She liked it better when he used her last name. This way it seemed they were friends, and she definitely didn’t want him to get that idea.
“I don’t plan on ranching.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Raise my daughters.”
“Do their grandparents live in—where was it you said you were from? Texas?”
“No.” Chrysie gathered the rest of the dishes from the table and carried them to the counter, then started to fill the sink with soapy water. Surely he’d take the hint and leave.
He didn’t. Or else he ignored it. He followed her to the sink. “You wash and I’ll dry.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s the least I can do after you watched the boys for me all afternoon.”
She dipped her hands into the bubbles. “I was returning a favor. Now we’re even.”
“I doubt that. The boys are a lot more work than a battery jump.”
Josh grabbed the dish towel from the counter and took a freshly rinsed plate from her hand. The seemingly meaningless
exchange shot her apprehension level straight up.
“I know they’re not the best-behaved kids in the world,” Josh continued. “I try, but I hate to be too hard on them. And I’m not a natural at the discipline thing, like you seem to be. I figured if I didn’t get that tree straight enough to suit you, you’d take me out behind the woodshed for a switching.”
“I don’t spank.”
“Well, there goes that fantasy.”
Her cheeks burned at his teasing, and she got so rattled she almost let the plate she was washing slip from her fingers. She gritted her teeth, furious with herself that she could show any weakness with a man who held so much potential for disaster. She glued her gaze to the sink and the few remaining dishes.
Josh dried the last fork, then scanned the kitchen. “This house is nice.”
“It’s quite comfortable,” she agreed.
“Twice the size of mine. I’m planning to build a bigger place when I get the time, but I’ve been concentrating on getting the ranch fixed up first.” He slapped his right hand on the tile counter. “I like this tile, too. I know Buck’s current foreman has his own place, a small ranch about twenty miles north of here, but I hadn’t heard Buck was renting out his cabin. How did you find out about it?”
“I asked around town, and someone at Humphries Bar and Grill mentioned it was empty and that the Millers might be willing to rent it.”
“How did you ever land in Aohkii to start with?”
“I read about the town in a travel magazine,” she said, sticking to the story she’d concocted on her first day here. “I was looking for an inexpensive place to settle where there were four seasons and a safe environment for my girls, and this seemed like it.”
“A travel magazine, huh? Which one?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Too bad. I’m sure the locals would love to read that article.”
It was clear from his tone and the way he was looking at her that he didn’t buy her story. “Where did the twins live before you took custody?” she asked, determined to move the focus of the conversation away from her.
