At Home in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ took a minute for Sheriff Wall to realize what all that silence meant, and he looked around. He didn’t have to look far to see a dozen other single men also watching Barbara as she walked across the room to the refreshment table. He scowled at those other men.

      “I was just getting ready to ask her out,” Pete complained softly.

      “That’s what I figured,” the sheriff said as he gave the ranch hand a friendly pat on the back and turned to walk away.

      “Hey, don’t you want to see the temporary permit?” Pete called after him.

      “Naw, that’s fine.” The sheriff thought maybe he should get himself a cup of punch from the refreshment table. Just to let the other men know he was keeping an eye on things.

      Chapter Three

      “Congratulations!” Mrs. Hargrove said as Barbara stopped in front of the refreshment table. Mrs. Hargrove had a long cake knife in one hand and a streak of lemon filling on the white apron she wore over her green gingham dress. The older woman had her gray hair pulled back into a black velvet bun catcher and she wore a pearl necklace.

      “Thanks.” Barbara thought the older woman looked a little tired despite her finery. She knew Mrs. Hargrove had seen her catch the bouquet, but she didn’t want the older woman to have any unrealistic expectations. “Lizette is the one who needs the congratulations though—she’s the bride—she was just having some fun throwing her bouquet. She knows I’m not interested in getting married again.”

      “Oh, you can’t give up hope, dear,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she sliced another piece of cake and put it on the last clear plastic plate from what had apparently been a stack in front of her. “You’re only twenty-nine years old—that’s much too young to give up hope.”

      “Age has nothing to do with it,” Barbara said as she caught sight of her children and noted they still seemed to be having a good time playing with the other children. “Marriage just isn’t for me.”

      Not that she was against marriage in general, Barbara thought. She was here celebrating a wedding, after all. And she believed that some people had good marriages. She’d seen couples right here in Dry Creek who seemed very happy. But somehow Barbara doubted that kind of marriage was going to happen for her.

      “Not all men turn out to be thieves,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she cut another piece of cake and lifted it in the air. Mrs. Hargrove was cutting into the spare overflow sheet cake that Lizette had made because she wanted everyone to have all the cake they wanted. Most people had already eaten a piece of the tiered cake. Mrs. Hargrove looked around to see if there was a plate for the cake she now held on the silver server.

      “They don’t all turn out to be faithful either.” Barbara knew this was at the core of why she didn’t believe she would ever have a happy marriage. A happy marriage required a lot of trust, and Barbara had none left. She didn’t think she’d ever trust another man with something as important as her heart. But that was okay. A woman could live a fine life without a husband.

      Barbara could see there were no plates left for the cake Mrs. Hargrove held. She looked down and saw an open box peeking out from under the white tablecloth. “Here, let me get some more plates for you.”

      Barbara bent down.

      “Oh, no, I’ll be fine,” Mrs. Hargrove glanced around until she saw the sheriff. “Carl, come here and get these plates so Barbara doesn’t have to.”

      “They’re not heavy,” Barbara said as her fingers closed around a stack of plastic plates. She knelt down. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s fingers closed around the same stack of plates. He didn’t look as though he intended to let go.

      “Really, I can get them. It’s not like they’re gold-rimmed china or anything,” Barbara protested. Her voice sounded muffled because her head was half-covered by the white tablecloth as she knelt, but she’d thought she made her point.

      Apparently she was wrong.

      The sheriff knelt down, too and put his head under the tablecloth to look at the plates. He still kept his grip on the stack of plates. “Everything doesn’t need to be fancy. Sometimes the plain old ordinary things are best.”

      “I know. That’s what I’m saying,” Barbara continued. She wasn’t going to give up that easily. “The plates are plastic. Not fine china. They’re not worth anything.”

      No one would steal them, she added to herself silently. You don’t need to worry about me taking them.

      She wondered if people would talk later about her and the sheriff snapping at each other under the cake table at Judd and Lizette’s wedding reception. She hoped not. The one person she had thought would be her friend when she moved to Dry Creek was the sheriff, but it hadn’t worked out that way.

      She never did know all that she had said to him when he sat beside her hospital bed in Colorado. She knew she was out of it for some of the time. But the rest of the time, she thought they were becoming friends. She’d loved listening to him talk. He’d told her story after story about Dry Creek, some of them from the days when the cattle first came to the area and some as recent as last spring when he’d picked chokecherries for Mrs. Hargrove so she could make jelly to enter in some contest at the state fair.

      Barbara had thought at the time that not many men would pick berries so an old woman could win a prize with her jelly. That’s when she’d kissed him. It had been impulsive. Sort of a tribute to what a nice man he was. Then he’d kissed her back—really kissed her.

      The sheriff was the one who had driven Barbara back to Dry Creek when the hospital said she could go home. She had no home and no car left, since Neal, not content with putting her in the hospital, had taken a sledgehammer to her parked car. Her children had been staying with Judd so she’d been grateful for the ride.

      Barbara had no choice but to accept the sheriff’s offer of a ride. And she’d decided at the time that it was just as well. She needed to gently explain to him that, as much as she had enjoyed his kiss, she was never going to marry again and she didn’t want to lead him on to expect a certain kind of relationship when all she could offer him was friendship.

      Barbara had her words all picked out and she had decided, with a man’s pride being what it was, that it was best to let the sheriff bring up the subject of the kiss.

      She had worried for nothing. The sheriff never mentioned the kiss. Once they were back in Dry Creek, he’d become all official and formal around her. He acted like she was a stranger—an unkissed stranger at that.

      At first, she’d thought maybe he had a girlfriend and he’d been worried that she might misinterpret the kiss, but she’d soon learned there was no girlfriend. No, he must have just been concerned she would read too much into that kiss for the simple reason that it didn’t mean anything to him.

      Well, he hadn’t needed to worry. She knew the kiss didn’t mean anything. She didn’t want it to mean anything. Still, she thought he could have at least brought the subject up. No kiss was all that meaningless. She had gotten the message back then and she got it now.

      “You’re a guest here,” the sheriff finally said as he gave another tug at the stack of plates.

      Barbara let him have the plates as she moved her head back so she could stand up. “No more than everyone else is a guest.”

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