“There’s no need for a receipt,” Judd said.
The woman looked up from the desk. Even from across the room he could see she was relieved. “But you should have one anyway. Just as soon as I get all my desk things organized, I’ll see that you get one. I could mail it to you, if you leave me your address.”
“I’m at the Jenkins place south of town. Just write Jenkins on the envelope and leave it on the counter in the hardware store.”
It had taken Judd two weeks to figure out the mail system in town. The first part was simple. The mail carrier left all of the Dry Creek mail at the hardware store, and the ranchers picked it up when they came into town. The second part still had Judd confused. For some reason, if he wanted to get his mail sooner rather than later, he still had to have it addressed to the Jenkins place even though no one by the name of Jenkins had lived on the ranch for two years now.
When Judd finally bought the Jenkins place, he told himself he’d get the name changed. He’d asked the mail carrier about it, and the man had just looked at him blankly and said that’s what everyone called the place.
Judd vowed that once he had the children taken care of and the deed to the place signed, he’d take a one-page ad out in that Billings paper everyone around here read. He’d make sure people knew it wasn’t the Jenkins place anymore.
But, in the meantime, he didn’t want to have the woman’s envelope returned to her, so he’d go along with saying he lived at the Jenkins place.
The woman nodded. “I know about the hardware store. I’ve been meaning to post an announcement about the school so everyone will know that we’re currently taking students.”
“About the students—” one of the old men said and then cleared his throat. “You see, the students—well, we’re not sure how many students you’ll have.”
“Of course,” Lizette assured him. She knew she needed a few more students to do the ballet, but surely three or four more would come. “No one knows how many people will answer the flyer I put up. But I need to start the classes anyway if we’re going to perform the Nutcracker ballet before Christmas.”
Lizette figured the students who came later could do the parts that involved less practice.
“Christmas is only five weeks away,” Judd said and frowned. He knew when Christmas was coming because he figured his cousin would surely come for the children before Christmas.
Judd had gone ahead and ordered toys for the kids when he’d put in a catalog order last week, but he thought he’d be sending the presents along with them when their mother picked them up. Thanksgiving was next week, and it was likely the only holiday he’d have to worry about. He figured he could cope with a turkey if he could get Linda to give him some more basic instructions. She’d already told him about some cooking bag that practically guaranteed success with a turkey.
“I don’t suppose you have a real nutcracker in that ballet?” one of the older men asked hopefully. “I wouldn’t say no to some chopped walnuts—especially if they were on some maple doughnuts.”
“You know there’s no doughnuts, so there’s no point in going on about them,” Charley said firmly as he frowned at the man who had spoken. “There’s more to life than your stomach.”
“But you like doughnuts, too,” the older man protested. “You were hoping for some, too—just like me.”
“Maybe at first,” Charley admitted. “But I can’t be eating doughnuts if I’m going to learn this here ballet.”
Lizette smiled as she looked at the two men. “Well, I do generally make some sort of cookies or something for the students to eat after we practice. I guess I could make doughnuts one of these days.”
“You mean you can bake doughnuts?” Charley asked. “I didn’t know anyone around here could bake doughnuts.”
Lizette nodded. “I’ll need to get a large Dutch oven, but I have a fry basket I can use.”
“Hallelujah!” Charley beamed.
“And, of course, I’d need to have some spare time,” Lizette added.
“And she’s not likely to have any time to bake now that she’s starting classes,” Judd said, frowning. It would be harder to guard the kids if every stray man in the county was lined up at the ballet school eating doughnuts.
Judd told himself that it was only his concern for the safety of the kids that made him worry about who was likely to be visiting the ballet school. He’d been in Dry Creek long enough to know about all the cowboys on the outlying ranches.
A woman like Lizette Baker was bound to attract enough attention just being herself without adding doughnuts to the equation.
Not that, he reminded himself, it should matter to him how many men gawked at the ballet teacher. He certainly wasn’t going to cause any awkwardness by being overly friendly himself. He was just hoping to get to know her a little better.
She was, after all, the kids’ teacher, and he was, for the time being, their parent. He really was obligated to be somewhat friendly to her, wasn’t he? It was his duty. He was as close to a PTA as Dry Creek had, since he was the almost-parent of the only two kids in her class right now. If Bobby and Amanda were still with him in a few months, he’d have to enroll them in the regular school in Miles City instead of homeschooling them. But, until then, it was practically his civic duty to be friendly to their ballet teacher. And he didn’t need a doughnut to make him realize it.
Chapter Five
Lizette worried there was something wrong with her. She thought she had been working through the grief of her mother’s death, but maybe she was wrong. After all, she hadn’t had that much experience with mourning, and the chaplain at the hospital had talked about going through different stages of grief.
Lizette wondered if one of those stages of grief was twitching.
Here she was wrapping up the day’s dance lesson, and her mind wasn’t concentrated on the three people who were her students or the five more students she needed if she was going to pull off even a modified version of the Nutcracker ballet. Instead, she was all jumpy inside, and her gaze kept going to the window, where she could see Judd sitting on the steps of her school and looking out to the street with a scowl on his face.
If she didn’t get a firm hold on herself, she’d be actually twitching when she looked at that man.
Lizette had had three days of lessons now, and for the better part of all of those days Judd had had his back turned toward her and the students. The first day she didn’t notice his silence and his scowls. The second day she noticed, but she didn’t feel the need to do anything about it. Today, she felt obsessed by the man.
She kept fighting the urge to go out and talk to him—and that was after she’d already been outside five times today to ask him questions. She didn’t have much to talk about either, except for the weather, and how many times could she ask if it looked like it was going to snow? He’d think she was dim-witted. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky anymore.
She kept expecting each time she went out and asked the man a question that she would then be able to move on with her lessons with a focused mind.
She was still waiting for that to happen.
The really odd thing was that nothing had changed in those three days.
She didn’t need to see his face to know he wore the same scowl he’d worn every day so far. Every time today she’d found an excuse to slip outside and ask him a question, she’d known he’d have the same fierce look on his face even before she opened the door.
Lizette wondered if Judd thought his look would keep strange cars off the street in front of the school. Actually, he might be right