by Jenna Mindel
“What does that mean?”
“I dated my mentor.” She scrunched up her nose, as if embarrassed to go on.
“And?”
“A big mistake. But since I’m a country bumpkin who didn’t know any better, I thought he actually cared for me.”
Dale knew where this was going and his gut burned. He realized who’d taken the picture of Faith dressed in black velvet. That guy was scum. “I’m sorry.”
Again, she shrugged. “Don’t be. I suppose I needed a lesson in growing up. He used his position and the women he mentored. I refused to be used, so I left. Seattle is light-years away from Jasper Gulch and not everyone there is worth trusting.”
“So you came home.”
Faith patted Viv’s shoulder, and the horse swished her tail in response. “Like a whipped pup. But after a while, I realized what I had right here. The symphony I play for in Bozeman is about sharing the sheer joy of music. It’s not about egos or prestige. We’re a tight-knit group who look out for each other and fill in for each other. I won’t find that in a big-city ensemble.”
Dale tamped down the urge to strangle the guy who’d hurt her. “You’re talented. Don’t you ever wonder how far you could go?”
She tipped her head. “To what purpose? There are a zillion violinists all clamoring for a seat in the larger orchestras. Anyone can go there and do that. Only I can bring what I have to Bozeman. I’m needed there. Striving to improve isn’t all about me but about the difference I can make. I hope to mentor students when I’m more seasoned. Maybe one day I’ll get there.”
“You will.” Who was he to give her advice?
He’d worked his whole life to be the best, but it didn’t quite satisfy him. She sounded as if she had it all figured out.
“God willing, I will. There’s a Psalm that says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. So it’s really all about Him anyway.”
“You seem to know the Bible.” The girl tossed out scripture the way he referenced interest rates.
She shrugged and her cheeks turned pink. “We used to memorize verses in Sunday school, and well, some of them stuck and sure come in handy. But I read the Good Book daily. What about you? Have you ever read it before?”
“In boarding school, I took a class on religion. So I’ve read some of the Bible, but it was awkward with all those thees and thous.”
“There’s a more modern translation in the drawer of your nightstand. With the power out, if you’re looking to get your hands on some paperwork, pop it open. You might be surprised by what you read.” She winked at him.
Dale was pretty sure he’d never been winked at by a woman who quoted scripture. “Yeah, maybe.”
That admission brought another wide smile to Faith’s pretty mouth. She cared for more than the bottom line and top dollar and certainly didn’t need magazine articles written about her talents to know her own worth. Faith Shaw had nothing to prove to anyone. Surrounded by love and acceptance, the woman had strength of character.
Not to mention the redheaded dynamo was physically strong. And lovely sitting in the saddle with that hair flaming in the sunshine.
Her cheeks blushed. “What?”
He’d been staring. “You’re different than any woman I’ve ever met.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Very good.” He smiled. “But maybe bad, too.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
Why indeed. He looked around. “Aren’t we supposed to be looking at the fence line?”
They’d wandered away from it a bit.
“I’ve been looking.”
He hadn’t. Dale couldn’t seem to keep his eyes or his thoughts off her.
H.R. took that moment to shake—his whole body.
“Is he okay?” Dale stayed in the saddle fine but wasn’t sure if the horse would lie down on him.
“He’s fine. He doesn’t get ridden as much as he should.”
Dale patted H.R.’s back, near his blond mane. “He’s a nice horse.”
“You two look good together.” Faith giggled.
“Thanks.” Dale breathed in the crisp air and looked around. Despite the frigid temperature, the sun actually warmed his back, so he wasn’t the least bit cold.
The surrounding land was vast and covered in white. Straw-colored tall grass poked up through the snow in places, especially against the long, long line of wire fence they were supposed to be checking.
Dale scanned the flat pastureland surrounded by distant mountains with purple tops. All of it capped with a big blue sky. He might as well be a speck of dust compared to that huge expanse of big sky. Big Sky. Maybe that’s how the area had gotten its name.
“How much land does your family own?”
“Couple of thousand acres or so. I’m not real sure. Dad bought up some recently.”
Untapped potential, all this land. “So folks are selling?”
“Are you kidding? Land is gold out here, and not many sell if they don’t have to. But times are tough, and jobs are scarce in Jasper Gulch, so yeah, some folks are selling. Are you looking at buying?”
Dale laughed, but he didn’t miss the glint in her eyes. “I’m a New York boy.”
“I forgot that for a moment.” Her smile faltered.
So had he. “What exactly are we looking for on the fence?”
Faith shook her head. “Breaches, or downed fence line and posts, or high drifts of snow. Anyplace where the cattle might get out. And we’d better cover more ground. See those clouds?”
“Yeah?”
“More snow’s on the way.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t noticed the change in weather. He’d been too busy watching her.
“Yep, you are a New York boy.” Faith sounded disappointed.
What did she expect? Playing cowboy might be fun for a bit, but he had a job to do and a life to return to in New York.
*
After a long day in the saddle and a hearty meal of chili and corn bread, Dale was ready for bed. But Nadine wouldn’t hear of it. She gathered her kids and him around the fireplace for cookies and hot chocolate. He didn’t bother to ask how much generator energy it took to bake those cookies when they melted in his mouth.
When he was growing up, homemade chocolate chip cookies were scarce in the Massey household. His mom had been too worried about her weight and had banned all things sweet from their condo. Even at boarding school, cookies were rationed like silver. And Nadine’s tasted better than the ones he bought in New York, at the deli around the corner. He reached for another.
Faith’s sister, Julie, and her husband sat on the floor by the fire playing checkers. The couple seemed as if they were in a world of their own, communicating with long looks and soft touches. He supposed that’s what it was like to be in love. Knowing each other so well that words weren’t necessary.
Faith’s brothers each sank into leather chairs while he sat with Nadine and the mayor on the other couch. Oil lanterns had been lit in the living room as they’d been in the dining room.
“More romantic than battery-powered lights,” Nadine had said.
Faith had rolled her eyes.
He glanced where she sat at a small table in the corner close to the fire with her nose buried in a puzzle by the light of a battery-powered camping lantern. Who did puzzles?
“This reminds me of Christmas, with all of us together like this with nowhere to go.” Nadine sighed.
“Looks like it, too,” Adam said. “Outside, anyway.”
Dale glanced out the windows at the blizzardlike conditions. Snow fell sideways and the wind howled. How much more would fall atop the foot and a half that was already out there? He had a bad feeling that power restoration anytime soon might be wishful thinking.
“‘Silent night, holy night…’” Nadine sang softly.
Adam joined in with a rich-sounding baritone. “‘All is calm. All is bright.’”
Soon the whole family joined in s
ong.
Dale listened, oddly moved by the unity this family displayed. They worked together, lived close to each other and enjoyed time spent together. They loved each other.
“Faith, get your fiddle.” He’d never heard the mayor speak so softly.
She grinned and ran for the stairs.
Nadine turned to him. “My father’s fiddle. He first taught Faith how to play when she was little.”
Dale nodded. Faith had told him about that the other day. Seemed like aeons ago.
Faith played the instrument as she descended the stairs with a spring to her step. It was a lively tune that sounded very different from the classics he’d heard her play before. When she hit the main floor, she sort of skipped to the music, looking young and vibrant.
“‘Go tell it on the mountain. Over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born…’”
The Shaws sang, Nadine clapped and Dale heard a couple of foot stomps, but he watched Faith move as she played, unable to look away. The fiddle she cradled was a lighter wood color than the rich tones of her violin. Worn in places, it looked older, too. An antique that would no doubt bring big bucks at auction back East.
Not that Faith would ever sell her grandfather’s fiddle. Her family’s history meant too much to her. That was the kind of woman she was, finding more value than the worth in dollars and cents.
What was it like to have that kind of connection to relatives and the past? To a town? Dale had never really known his grandfather, Silas Massey’s grandson. He had an aunt who lived upstate that he rarely saw. Family gatherings like this one with the Shaws didn’t happen for the Masseys.
Dale soaked in the singing. He listened because he didn’t know the words. He didn’t understand the closed eyes or the heartfelt nodding. Sure, he tapped his foot, but something else was going on here. Something deeper and almost reverent.
God was in the music.
When the song finally ended, no one spoke right away. A hush had settled over this family. Why?
“I think we need to pray.” The mayor looked moved. Like a man battling bad memories, Jackson Shaw had deep lines etched between his eyebrows. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Since the weather kept us home on a Sunday morn, I think we need to thank the good Lord for His provision, His protection, and above all else, His salvation. We don’t always get it right, but He loves us anyway. Amen.”
Amens echoed around the room.
Dale nodded. He wasn’t a religious man, but he believed in honesty, and this had that and then some written all over it. He glanced at Faith, who looked at him and smiled.
She played another tune and no one sang this time. Closing her eyes, Faith delivered a haunting melody that sounded old but not anything like the classical scores he’d heard her play. He responded to this music, feeling moved by a tug of something he couldn’t name.
Too soon, Faith finished the tune, opened her eyes, grinned and launched into a jaunty version of “Jingle Bells.” More foot stomping and singing. This time Dale joined in. He knew the words.
Faith noticed and gave him a wide smile.
It blistered through him with a different kind of heat than he was used to. More radiant than simply a physical response, he felt that warmth down deep in his heart. Dale the Coldheart might be melting. The others in the room seemed to fade into the background. He barely heard their voices as he focused on her.
Faith Shaw was like an answer to a prayer he’d never said aloud. But that couldn’t be. Dale had never been a praying man. He saw no reason to start now.
Chapter Nine
“Right here, it goes right here.” Faith took the puzzle piece from Dale’s fingers and snapped it in place. “See?”
“I see.” His voice sounded soft.
They were the only two who hadn’t left early for their beds, and silence had settled over the living room, save for the soft crackle of the fire. Snow continued to fall outside and the house had grown chilly.
Faith wrapped the long cardigan knit by Julie a little tighter around her and ignored the soul-searching look Dale gave her, had been giving her all night. She scanned the table for red puzzle pieces. She wanted to complete the cactus flower before moving into the sky. The puzzle depicted an Arizona landscape at sunset.
“So you like puzzles?” Dale tried to jam another wrong piece into place.
Faith took that one away from him, too. “I love them.”
He sat back with a defeated sigh. “This is a waste of time.”
“It’s relaxing.”
He shook his head. “It’s frustrating.”
Faith laughed. “Not when you get the hang of it. We usually have a puzzle going through the holidays. It’s a nice way to connect with each other instead of sitting like a bunch of lumps watching TV. Although the boys like being lumps.”
Dale chuckled. “Your family does a lot together.”
Faith detected a hint of envy in his voice. “We do. Especially at Christmas. We cut down a tree together, decorate it, sing some carols like tonight, you know, the whole shebang.”
“The whole shebang.” He sounded as if he didn’t know at all what she meant.
“I’m sure some of that might change now that Cord and Katie have Marci to look out for and Julie’s married. They’ll have families of their own with new traditions to start.”
“And you like tradition.”
“Sure do.” She turned a puzzle piece around and it fit. “Are there any Massey-family traditions?”
Dale didn’t answer right away.
She watched as he carelessly grabbed a puzzle piece and found its home by accident. “Hey, look. You got one.”
He gave her a grim smile. “One.”
She laughed as she rose and tossed another couple of logs on the low fire. The wood caught quickly, throwing off delicious heat with a symphony of snaps and pops.
Faith returned to their table but didn’t sit down. She stared at the puzzle pieces neatly grouped by color and then checked the boxed picture of the finished product. She needed perspective before moving into pieces of sky.
Dale found another piece of blue sky that he fit into place. “Top that, puzzle-girl.”
“I’m pretty sure I already have.” Faith started filling in the opposite-side bottom corner of sand and scrub, having long since completed the exterior frame of the picture. She’d let Dale have the sky, even though he didn’t have the patience for it.
“You like to compete, don’t you?”
Dale shrugged. “It’s my nature, I guess. But then, I couldn’t do what I do without a competitive edge.”
She nodded.
After a few moments of silently working on their respective parts of the puzzle, Faith asked what had bothered her ever since Dale had said it. “Why do you go away for the holidays?”
Dale grabbed a couple of more blue pieces. “My father’s been married several times, but I’m the product of his first marriage. When I was growing up, Christmases blurred into the same routine as I was chauffeured between two homes, my mom’s and my dad’s. Some years my father wasn’t even there. Me and my half brothers were showered with expensive gifts, but there’d never been much thought behind them. It was just stuff.
“Julian’s wife of the moment tried to entertain us as best she could, but what did she care about boys who didn’t belong to her? By the time I’d hit college, I stopped going home for Christmas. That’s my tradition.”
Faith’s heart twisted. How sad. “I’m so sorry.”
He chuckled. “Don’t be. Warm sand and sun does wonders for a person.”
She didn’t buy his bravado. “For spring break, maybe, but not Christmas.”
He shrugged.
Faith dug deeper. “And that’s why you don’t believe in marriage, either, isn’t it?”
He looked at her. “My father left my mother on Christmas Day when I was six. Out of the blue, he told her he’d met someone else. My mom used me as leve
rage, telling my father I was his duty to stay.”
Faith sucked in her breath. Who’d want to be anyone’s duty? “What happened?”
“He looked at me and still walked out the door.”
Her heart broke when she saw the pain in Dale’s eyes. A grown man, but inside those green eyes of his, she saw a little boy’s rejection. Ebenezer Scrooge came to mind and how that character had been left behind at school for every Christmas holiday. Would Dale also turn into a bitter man with a wound so deep that it had never healed? Without learning to love and be loved in return?
And how could Dale work so closely with the man who’d inflicted such a wound? Unless being the best was Dale’s way of proving he was more than a man’s duty. As the heir of Massey International, did Dale hope to show his father that he was worth loving?
She tamped down the desire to pull him into her arms right then. Dale Massey was worth far more than he believed. But any attempt to show him would come off as shallow sympathy or worse.
So Faith didn’t say anything but handed him a blue puzzle piece.
He pushed it into a piece of top border. Not a fit. He turned it around and still a no go. “Marriages don’t last, and I refuse to do that to a kid.”
Faith nodded. No sense in pointing out that some marriages did last. Especially those grounded in faith and reliance on God.
“What about you?”
Faith leaned back and thought about it. “Other than the obvious reason, I like coming and going as I please. I’m not ready to settle down.”
But she might be, with the right man.
Dale tipped his head as he studied her. “What obvious reason?”
“The right man hasn’t come along and asked.”
“Their loss.” Again with that smooth, lady-killer smile of his that hid so much.
“Thanks, but maybe more so my gain.”
“True.”
Dale might be that right man, but then she might be chasing after pipe dreams and butterflies. They didn’t share the same beliefs or values. He’d return to New York as soon as he could and bury himself in his fancy phone and sales reports. The man might be a workaholic but he didn’t like his hands dirty. Dale Massey was the furthest thing from her idea of the right man.
