A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas. Janet Tronstad

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      Chrissy could tell the difference in the air as soon as they drove into Montana. Justin was sleeping, and the inside of the car was peaceful. They came into the state on Interstate 15 and turned off on Interstate 90 at Butte to head east.

      The farming area smelled fertile with rain and wild grass. Clouds gathered ahead of them when they passed the downtown area of Miles City and began the last miles leading to Dry Creek.

      Chrissy felt her whole body relax as she watched the space around her. Now, why had she never noticed how little space there was in Los Angeles? Everywhere you looked in L.A. something stopped you from seeing very far. But here in Montana nothing stopped a person’s gaze except for the Rocky Mountains to the northwest and the gentle slopes of the mountains to the east that she knew were called the Big Sheep Mountains.

      “Are there any sheep?” Chrissy asked. “In the mountains.”

      “Not for years since the cattle took over,” Reno replied as he made the turn off the interstate to go into Dry Creek.

      Chrissy took a deep breath. She was really going back. She hoped Reno hadn’t exaggerated the welcome she would receive. She kept pushing her nervousness to the back of her mind, since it was too late to turn back anyway. “Are there a lot of cattle in Dry Creek?”

      “More cattle than people.” He paused. “I hope that doesn’t bother you.”

      “Bother me? Why would it bother me?”

      “Some women might find Dry Creek lacking in excitement after life in the big city.”

      “Oh, look—” Chrissy pointed to the curve in the road. The gravel road widened a little at that point. Instead of snowbanks there was wild grass on the edge of the road, but Chrissy recognized the place anyway. “That’s where we met.”

      She blushed. That hadn’t come out right. “I mean the night when your truck broke down—”

      “—and you gave me a ride.” Reno finished the sentence for her as he slowed to a stop. “I remember. That was some night.”

      Chrissy remembered that night, too. If she hadn’t been so angry, she never would have decided to drive her cousin’s truck to Dry Creek, even though Garrett had left the keys with her and given her a couple of lessons on how to shift the gears on the sixteen-wheel truck. But the minute she’d discovered Jared with another woman—in the most “with someone” sense possible—she hadn’t been able to stay in Las Vegas.

      Her instincts had told her to go to Dry Creek to find her cousin, and that was all she’d wanted to do. “When I was in trouble, I always looked for Garrett.”

      “He’s a good man.”

      Chrissy wondered if Reno even knew that it wasn’t Garrett who had eased her pain on that trip. Reno had given her all the sympathy she needed, until by the time she left Dry Creek last fall, she’d realized she didn’t need so much sympathy after all.

      That night they met, she had managed to drive the truck fine on the interstate, but once Chrissy had turned off on the gravel road into Dry Creek, the truck started to cough. She’d never seen a night as dark as that cloudless, moonless one.

      She’d been half spooked by the lights of a stalled truck ahead, but also half relieved. Maybe the other driver could tell her what to do about that coughing in the motor.

      Chrissy had pulled the truck as far to the shoulder of the road as she could before she’d opened the door and climbed down from the cab. She’d left Vegas in such a hurry that she hadn’t changed her dress or grabbed a coat. She was still wearing the short glittery white dress that Jared had picked out as her wedding dress.

      The night air had been cold enough that her arms were covered with goose bumps. Her hair, bleached a champagne blond to please Jared and curled to sweep away from her face, had lost any sense of fashion around Salt Lake City and become so wind-blown that it looked as if she’d taken a fan to it instead of a curling iron.

      At first Chrissy had thought the other truck was deserted and her heart sank. Then she’d seen the long denim-clad legs lying on the ground under the truck’s engine. When the rest of Reno slowly crawled out from under the truck, she’d stopped in her tracks.

      She had expected to meet a short, stocky farmer with thinning hair who would be shy and happy to help her. Instead, she’d seen a guy who should be plastered on every month of some hunk-of-the-year calendar, and her heart had sunk even further. Good-looking men, in her experience, really didn’t even try to be as helpful as plain-looking ones.

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