White Christmas in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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      Chapter Three

      Renee opened the door to the backseat of the cab and pulled out a long-handled white scraper. Without saying anything to Rusty, she cleared her usual small hole in the ice on the windshield. She had expected him to walk around to the other side of the pickup and sit inside while she finished. After all, it was cold enough outside to see their breath and he’d just been released from the hospital.

      But he stood behind her waiting, one free hand tucked in the pocket of his jacket and the other curled up in that sling.

      “That’s it,” she informed him cheerfully after scraping the small space twice. She did it once for the ice and then again for the snowflakes that had started to fall.

      “That’s not enough.” Rusty held out his hand. “Here. Give it to me.”

      “I don’t see—”

      He just held out his hand.

      “Well, fine, then.” She gave him the scraper and he took her place at the windshield. She hadn’t expected him to do much with it, but he started in on the bottom corner of the windshield, scraping away until the cleared space grew larger.

      “You might as well wait inside,” he finally said and opened the cab door for her with his left hand. “This is going to take a few minutes.”

      Renee went inside and turned the heat on. She decided something was highly suspicious about this man. He’d done half of the windshield now, walked around the pickup to the other side and was still scraping so hard she thought both his shoulders must hurt. But he didn’t grimace or slow down. Or look irritated. In fact, she thought she heard him whistling, low and quiet. For some reason, that reminded her of the gangster who would never walk past a cat without petting it enough to make it purr. There was something unnatural about so much goodwill in a man like him, who’d seen so much violence.

      Renee refused to watch his progress, so she looked out her side window. Last night’s blizzard had left a foot of snow on the ground and the tire tracks in the parking lot were deep. Fortunately, she already knew the county plow had cleared the freeway between Miles City and the Dry Creek exit, so they would be able to get through.

      When Rusty finally opened the passenger door and pulled himself inside, his cheeks were red from the freezing air and a few snowflakes sparkled in his black hair. He bent down to set the scraper on the floor mat and then straightened up to rub his hand against his jeans. He might have just been warming it, but she suspected his actions meant he felt satisfied with what he’d done.

      “Thank you,” Renee said and looked over at him with her best fake smile. He had brushed the snow off of the hood, too. “But I could see well enough out of the little patch I cleared. You really didn’t need to go to all that work.”

      Rusty grunted. “I certainly did if I wanted to be sure I’d live to see another day. A soldier is only as good as his equipment. What if a vehicle suddenly decides to pass on your blind side?”

      “Well—” She pursed her lips and put the pickup in gear, backing out of the parking space. “People shouldn’t be going that fast on these kinds of roads anyway.”

      Renee didn’t regret the self-righteous tone in her voice. Who was he to lecture her on safety? She wasn’t the one riding around at night on a pregnant horse and getting shot at, for goodness’ sake.

      She turned around in the clinic lot and drove to the parking exit. She looked both ways, just to show she was safety minded, and then eased the vehicle onto the main road.

      “People don’t always do what you’d expect,” Rusty said and his voice had an element in it that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t quite amusement, СКАЧАТЬ