by Tina Leonard
“That’s probably the best idea. I’ll go call him now.”
The baby grunted in Eunice’s arms. He saw his mother cast an amused glance at Jill.
“I suggest you hurry and get those diapers, Dustin, since you won’t let Jill do the errand for you. I think this little darling’s giving you an early Christmas present,” Eunice said with a too-innocent grin.
“So, what makes you interested in the position, Jill?” Eunice’s question pulled Jill’s gaze away from surreptitiously watching Dustin talk to the sheriff who had arrived a few minutes earlier.
“Stability,” she answered. “The idea of living in one place for a year is very appealing.”
Jill thought about her answer, knowing that there had been more that had pulled her out to the ranch on Setting Sun Road. Meeting Mrs. Reed’s eyes, Jill said honestly, “The bonus at the end of a year was an incentive also.”
Eunice nodded. Jill watched as the baby opened her mouth in an angelic yawn. “Although I suppose you weren’t counting on both of us joining you for the holidays. Will you have enough room?”
“Space isn’t a problem at all. I rather like the idea of a house full of people during Christmas. It’s been somewhat lonely around here. If we can agree on the position, then your coming here is very fortuitous. We’ll need help with this baby, of course.”
“Hello, Ms. McCall,” the sheriff said, coming over to introduce himself with a big smile. “I’m Sheriff Tommy Marsh. Go by Marsh, ’cause Dustin’s too lazy to yell more than one syllable at me.” He paused, giving her a moment to digest that. “So, you’re the one who found this early Christmas delivery.”
She glanced uncertainly at Dustin. “Well, we both did.”
“I see.” Marsh nodded, writing something down in a notepad. “And you were coming out to answer Dustin’s ad for a housekeeper?”
“That’s right,” she said. Dustin was listening carefully to her answers. She sat up and ran a smoothing hand over her hair.
“And your current employment situation?”
Eunice and Dustin both waited, as did the sheriff. “I don’t have one,” she said quietly, uncomfortable with the admission.
“Are you married?”
“No. Although I was engaged until recently.”
Why she had added that, she wasn’t certain. It seemed important that these people not think she had no place else to go, that she was some kind of society reject just because she was interested in a job out in the sticks.
Dustin looked surprised—and there was another expression in his eyes, one Jill couldn’t define. She didn’t take her gaze from his. The pull between them was mesmerizing and intense, and caused her to further qualify her answer.
“My ex-fiancé and I parted on fairly amicable terms.” It was a blatant untruth, but did she have to pour out the disastrous events that had led her to leave her fiancé? “Since I have no job at present, this position would give me a fresh start in a new place.”
“Ah.” The enlightened sound was from the sheriff. “I’m afraid that this changes the equation,” he said kindly. “If the two of you decided not to get married for whatever reason, it stands to reason you might have felt desperate enough financially to try to give away your newborn baby. Without a father figure in the picture to help with the expenses and you without employment…”
“I don’t think so,” Jill shot back. “I am looking for a job, which is not the same thing as being desperate enough to give up my own flesh and blood.” She stood, spearing Dustin with angry eyes. “I’m sorry someone picked you to take care of their little angel, but it’s not my problem.”
Taking a deep breath, Jill looked around at the people crowded into the Victorian-style parlor. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’ve stayed long enough. I do have some things in my life to tend to.”
Like giving notice on the new apartment she and Carl had rented to move into after their marriage. She and Carl had been able to swing it with both their salaries. Now there was neither.
Jill gave Mrs. Reed an almost sad smile. She could easily envision the two of them becoming friends, and she sensed Eunice would be a great deal easier to care for than Dustin.
“Thank you for your hospitality, and for considering employing me more seriously than these men,” she told her. Jill barely stopped herself from saying “immature men”. Insulting an officer of the law would not be a good thing to do on her way out of town. So, she gathered up her wits and her determination and after kissing the baby on the back of her little downy head, marched to the front door.
Fury kept her warm all the way to her rundown car. It was a good thing she’d come to Lassiter to check out the ranch, because it was definitely not the place for her. She and her would-be employer had gotten off on the wrong foot, to say the least.
Perhaps worst of all, she sensed a disastrous ringing in her hormones when she looked at Dustin Reed that signaled trouble.
That disastrous ringing had sounded when she’d met Carl. Having heard it before, Jill was determined to avoid it at all costs. No more ringing hormones for her. Next time she fell for a man, he was going to be a model of responsibility, an honest-to-goodness family man.
Not a man like Dustin, who didn’t know the difference between size-four jeans and I’m-still-wearing-my-maternity jeans.
Jill sighed, turning the car on to let it warm up. The window fogged up from the warmth of her breath, so Jill used her sleeve to wipe the side window clean. Glancing into the backseat, she looked for a tissue or old paper towel to rub across the front windshield.
When she turned back around, a face was peering through the side window. Jill nearly jumped out of her skin.
Seething, she rolled down the window. “You startled me!”
“I tried not to,” Dustin said. “I didn’t knock on the window so you wouldn’t be.”
“Thanks a lot.” She couldn’t help sounding a little sarcastic. “What do you want now? Fingerprints? A forwarding address, where you can send the little bundle just as soon as you Harvard-types convince yourselves further that that actually is my baby?”
Dustin shook his head. “No. I was going to offer you a cup of hot chocolate and a place to spend the night. There’s a storm moving in, the sheriff said, only about twenty minutes west of here and moving fast. He doesn’t think you can outrun it. In the interest of safety precautions, which I know you’re concerned with, my mother and I would like you to spend the night with us.”
He paused for a moment, weighing his next words carefully. Jill couldn’t take her eyes from the firmness of his jaw, nor the fullness of his lips as he spoke. “And in our interests, my mother says I’d be nuts not to hire you immediately. You’re not the type of housekeeper Mother and I had agreed upon to hire, but,” he lowered his voice in a confidential whisper that fascinated Jill, “she didn’t like either of the previous help, so her vote for you makes you something special.”
“In spite of my lack of resumé and references.”
Dustin shrugged. “Mother makes the point that you are here and want a job, and that makes you a bird in the hand. She says you seem to be doing just fine with the baby now, and that Joey will probably adore you after the two iron-clad housekeepers we had. And though it may seem underhanded, I should admit to you that Marsh radioed in your license plate number. Right now, we at least know you don’t have any outstanding traffic citations.”
“Oh, and that’s an excellent statement on my character, I suppose.” Jill put the car back in park, turning it off, all the while wondering who was crazy now. “Okay. Talk salary, talk benefits. Then tell me why you’ve run off two previous housekeepers.”
Dustin snorted at her demand. He leaned his forearms on the open window, all the while looking in the car at her.
“Apparently, it’s somewhat isolated at the ranch. That’s what the other two women claimed, that the silence drove them mad. That there wasn’t enough to do, no one to talk to.” He jutted his chin in a wry gesture. “I don
’t know if you noticed or not, but my mother is very independent.”
“Yes, I noticed,” Jill murmured.
“I am, too,” he continued. “Maybe we don’t chitchat as much as we should. But you won’t have quite as much time on your hands, since the sheriff has agreed to let us keep the baby through the holidays, until her mother can be located.”
“Oh, good!” Jill exclaimed. At Dustin’s questioning look, she said, “For the baby, I mean. She needs to stay where she’s wanted for a while.”
Dustin nodded. “That’s what the sheriff said. Mother reminded Marsh that she’s had foster children in the past and is already approved. Marsh doesn’t think CPS will have a beef with that, considering it would be difficult to find a better place than here to live during the busy holiday season, not to mention that it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving and the offices are closed. Nobody’s going to want to be rustled up from their holiday when that baby’s more safe and secure here than anywhere.”
He lowered his voice. “And Marsh seems to think that our ranch was chosen for a specific reason, that we weren’t a random choice. If the baby stays here, the mother may try to sneak back to check on her periodically. They’re going to keep a lookout for anyone hanging around.”
“I see.” Jill was concerned for the mother. “I hope the sheriff will be more sensitive with her than he was with me.”
“Don’t mind him,” Dustin said. “Marsh’s heart is in the right place. We’ve just never had anything like this happen in Lassiter before. He’s checked all the hospitals, and a baby hasn’t been born in two weeks. She needs to see a doctor for a proper examination, but we’re guessing she’s no more than a week old.”
“At the most,” Jill agreed. “Her eyes still don’t want to open very much. And she smells new.”
“Hm. I don’t remember,” he said softly.
And suddenly, Jill knew he wasn’t talking about the baby, but possibly about the little boy she’d seen smiling from pewter-framed photographs on the parlor’s mantel. Dustin looked a bit forlorn, and she thought she saw sadness in the depths of his saddle-brown eyes. His mind had definitely traveled somewhere else.
“I’ll spend the night tonight. Further, I’ll give you a one-week trial period to see whether all of us can bear living under the same roof.” She paused, not wanting to seem like he was the reason she was staying. “I think your mother and I will get along fine.” She gave the excuse easily, telling herself it was the truth.
Just not all of it. She’d like to get along with Dustin, at least enough for them to find some equal ground to stand on. She would love living at the ranch, if she and Dustin could ignore the way they’d started out.
Dustin emitted a grunt of what could have been sarcasm—or satisfaction. “I’m glad you and my mother have taken such a shine to each other,” he said blandly. Then he named a salary and some benefits that made Jill’s eyes blink.
“You’re being very generous,” she said.
“You’re being nice to give us a second chance, considering the circumstances. A baby will take up a lot of your time.”
Jill thought about that. Tiny snowflakes began falling, blowing into her eyelashes. For some reason, she smiled at Dustin, and he smiled back.
Maybe, with a Christmas miracle, it would be too cold for her hormones to ring. But she’d need to stay on her guard, unless she wanted to find her hormones ringing in the New Year.
Moments later, she had followed Dustin up the lane in her car, parking where he pointed. Then she walked in the house with him, telling herself she could leave any time if things got any more crazy.
Marsh and Eunice were both quiet, Dustin noticed immediately. “Is everything okay?” he asked. “I’ve brought Ms. McCall back like you suggested.”
“I was changing the baby when I found a note,” Eunice said. “It seems her name is Holly, and she may be in danger.”
Dustin could smell bad news a mile away. “What kind of danger?”
Eunice shook her head, thoughtfully running her finger along an embroidered design of a crown at the edge of the blanket. “Apparently, the father is over-interested in the child. The mother believes the man’s purpose is evil-minded.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Give me that.” Dustin looked over the paper before glancing up at Jill. She was very still on the sofa. “Guess this clears you, Ms. McCall,” he said rather meanly. It wasn’t that he felt that way toward Jill because Marsh, Eunice, and he had already come to the conclusion that there wasn’t any way the baby was hers. But he was starting to feel like somebody had hit him from behind. “I suppose you’ll change your mind about the job now that there’s a possible risk involved.”
Jill shrugged. “Please feel free to call me Jill, Mr. Reed. And since you seem to routinely greet visitors with a loaded gun, I think we’ll all be safe enough.”
Oh, he could tell she’d enjoyed jabbing him back. The moment of ease they’d shared outside had evaporated. “Marsh? Are we in over our heads with this?” Dustin asked gruffly.
The sheriff shook his head. “Jill will actually be extra protection because there’ll be another person to keep an eye on the baby at all times. The story we should stick to is that Jill is a distant relation of yours, Eunice, visiting for the holidays with her new baby. It all wraps up nicely.”
Dustin didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, it was great of Jill to tackle this job. On the other, he didn’t know if he should endanger his mother, or Joey. The Reeds had enough on their plates without adding this worry. But if his mother thought they were doing the right thing, and Marsh agreed, and Jill didn’t mind being in on it, then maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as it seemed.
“You better not duck out on me in the middle of this,” Dustin told Jill. “If you sign on, you have to stay.”
“I’ll try it out for a week only, not because of the baby being a bother but because I understand my employer can be grumpy as all get out. If I stay on permanently, I expect combat pay in my Christmas stocking,” she told him without cracking a smile.
Sadie put on the apron the shop owner, Mrs. Vickery, handed her. Sheer fortune had gotten her this job in a bakery. No one had to tell her that it was terribly hard to get hired at this time of year, particularly for a high school graduate whose grades had been none too good. And, though no one in the town knew of her unplanned pregnancy since she’d gone to another town to stay with her aunt during that time, it didn’t help that she’d blindly believed her boyfriend, Curtis, when he’d told her how much he loved her. That he was going to marry her one day.
Sadie had thought that was wonderful. And she had enjoyed being close to him, like a man and a woman could be. The way he’d told her they should be. Loving each other like a husband with his wife.
She glanced out of the window, seeing the frosty flakes flying against the big front window, sticking there in miniature starbursts. Sadie started kneading bread dough, thinking that it would be a cold bike ride home. That almost didn’t matter because she knew Holly was safe and warm and loved this very instant at the Reed Ranch.
Especially if the pretty woman had stayed with Mr. Reed.
Her mother had been right, Sadie acknowledged. And if she couldn’t have her baby with her, then at least she had a good home. Sadie was determined to be happy about that, and also about her new job. Extra income, no matter how small, might mean something other than greens or grits for Christmas dinner.
Her heart squeezing, Sadie said a prayer that baby Holly would have a wonderful Christmas, with all those people around to love her. The way she now knew it should be.
Different from the kind of love Curtis had actually given Sadie. Painful realization had sprung on her when she’d told Curtis there was going to be a baby. Because he’d told her what they were doing was right between a man and a woman who loved each other, she’d assumed that, now that there would be an infant, he would marry her.
Curtis’s mocking laughter at her innocence still burned at t
he back of Sadie’s eyes.
But that was all in the past. Sadie smiled wistfully as she thought about sweet Holly being held in loving arms at the Reed Ranch. She thought about her having enough food and a warm, crackling fire in the fireplace to someday watch with inquiring eyes. The bell over the shop door rang to announce a visitor, and Sadie regretfully put away the heartwarming picture she was imagining and turned to greet the customer.
She froze instantly, the half-smile on her face as crooked and awkward as a tree ornament hanging unevenly. “What are you doing here?”
Curtis Lynch smiled and sauntered over to a counter. Picking up a fresh-baked loaf of bread, he pulled out a piece. “I wanted to see you.”
Sadie’s insides chilled. She was alone with a man whose cocky demeanor alarmed her, who had never meant any good by her when he’d had the chance Not only that, but he was eating bread Sadie sensed he had no intention of paying for. The last thing she wanted was for kind-hearted Mrs. Vickery to think Sadie couldn’t be trusted not to invite her friends in for free food. Desperately hoping another customer would walk inside any second, Sadie said, “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You’re not still angry that I wouldn’t marry you?” Curtis asked, his grin mean-spirited.
She couldn’t speak. All those starry visions had passed some time ago. Bearing the mantle of pregnancy alone had caused Sadie to grow up and face facts. Now, she couldn’t remember what she’d seen in Curtis in the first place.
Her silence seemed to annoy him. Curtis tucked the loaf of bread into his arm and glanced around. “So, where’s the brat?”
“The brat?” Sadie whispered.
“Yeah. I’m a proud papa, ain’t I? You’re not going to try to keep me from seeing my kid?”
Sadie felt sick. If she was certain of anything, it was that Curtis didn’t have Holly’s best interests at heart. “The baby’s not here.”
“It at your ma’s?”
“No, it’s not.” Sadie forced strength into her voice. “I gave her up for adoption.”
