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.
Bringing herself back to the present, Chrissy glanced up at Reno in the mirror. She had to admit that he was confusing for a good-looking guy. He didn’t act as if he was superior. And he had certainly been helpful to her. “I’m usually not as crazy as I was that night.”
“I thought you were an angel,” Reno said simply.
Chrissy glanced up again and saw Reno looking back at her. Since she was in the back seat to be close to Justin, she and Reno had carried on long conversations through the mirror for two days now. Chrissy kind of liked the flirtatious way it made her feel.
“It was dark out.”
Reno grinned. “And you sparkled with all that glitter on your dress. It was an honest mistake. I didn’t think to check for wings.”
“Not many angels pull up in a sixteen-wheeler truck.”
“They do when your own truck is dead and it’s cold enough outside to freeze your toes off.” Reno paused. “I never thought of it, but I owe you for the ride that night.”
“Of course you don’t owe me,” Chrissy said a little more sharply than she’d intended. Justin moved in his sleep and lifted his fist up to his mouth.
“You keep saying you owe me for this trip we’re taking right now. If you owe me for this ride, then I owe you for that ride.”
“It’s not the same,” Chrissy said softly.
“You might have saved my life. It was cold enough that night for a man to freeze to death. So I owe you for more than just the ride. I owe you for—preventive medical services.”
“You would have found a way to keep warm.”
Chrissy blushed. She suddenly remembered the way Reno had kept them warm that night. He’d wrapped blankets around them both individually and then wrapped himself and his blankets spoon fashion around her on the small bed in the back of the cab of her cousin’s truck. Chrissy couldn’t ever remember feeling so warm and safe.
“Well, I’m willing to call it even between us if you are,” Reno said. “I won’t pay you for that trip and you won’t pay me for this one.”
“I can’t pay you anyway until I get my check or find a job,” Chrissy pointed out as she reached over to rub Justin’s back. He was starting to wake up, and she liked him to know she was there. “So until then we can call it even.”
Reno grunted as he turned the car’s wheel to the right. “We’ll call it even—period. I don’t want you giving your wages to me.”
As Reno made the wide turn, Chrissy saw the small town of Dry Creek come into view in the distance. “We’re almost there.”
The sky was partially cloudy, but there was no wind. She could tell because someone had white sheets hanging on a clothesline and they did not move. The snow flurries that had covered Dry Creek most of the time she was here last were gone. In their place were broad stretches of mud. Someone had put wooden planks around so people could walk without stepping in the puddles. She noticed two extra-wide planks in front of Mrs. Hargrove’s house. No doubt someone had put them there so the older woman would be able to walk more easily.
The planks were an act of kindness that touched Chrissy. Dry Creek wasn’t a dressed-up town like Las Vegas, but the people here cared about