A Rich Man for Dry Creek and A Hero For Dry Creek: A Rich Man For Dry Creek / A Hero For Dry Creek

“You planning on dying?”

“Well, no, not anytime soon.” Robert realized it was hard to pin down the hollow feeling he had. “But if I did—”

Matthew nodded again. “What’s troubling you is that you need to be part of the kingdom and you’re not.”

Robert stopped. He’d heard there were militia groups in Montana. He wondered if he’d stumbled across one. They’d sure love to recruit a rich man like him who could buy them enough ammunition to start a small war.

“The kingdom?” Robert asked cautiously.

“Sure, the kingdom of God,” Matthew said calmly. “It’s all that will fill up that empty feeling. When you’re ready, we’ll talk about it.”

“I don’t think it has to do with God.”

Matthew grinned as he stood. “I know. You think it all has to do with that cute chef inside who’s in need of a dance. If you don’t ask her, somebody else is going to beat you to it.”

“She won’t dance with me.”

Matthew grinned even wider. “Well, maybe not the first time you ask her. But you’re Robert Buckwalter the Third. Way I hear it, you know about all there is about charming women.”

The minister stepped inside the barn and Robert stood up and brushed himself off before following him.

The minister was right. He did know how to charm women. He just wasn’t sure charm would work with someone like Jenny.

The music was softer now. Even the kids were slowing down.

Robert went over to the refreshment table and got a glass of punch to work up his nerve. Jenny was still flitting about filling up coffee cups for those people who were sitting around the edge of the dance space and talking. He’d studied her pattern. She needed to return to the refreshment table to refill her thermal pot after every tenth cup. She was due back any minute now.

When she came back, he would ask her to dance with him.

Chapter Four

“W ell, I hope you’re happy now,” Jenny said as she set the thermal coffeepot down on the refreshment table and glared at Robert Buckwalter. “Throwing your money around like it’s confetti.”

Robert stiffened. He looked around at the teenagers dancing. He hoped no one had told her what he was buying with the money. None of the dancers were looking at him in apology. “No one else is complaining.”

“Of course they’re not complaining.” Jenny turned to the big coffeepot and twisted the knob on its spigot so it would slowly fill the smaller thermal coffeepot. The mellow smell of brewed coffee drifted up from the pot. She looked up and continued her conversation. “What do you expect? They’re teenagers. They love money.”

“Money has its uses.”

Jenny switched off the knob. The small pot was full. And she was tired to the bone. She’d been a fool. There for a blinding moment she’d thought Robert Buckwalter was a regular kind of a guy who just happened to be rich. What kind of rabbit hole had she fallen down? She should know better. No one just happened to be rich. Money changed everyone. “Not everything in the world revolves around money.”

“I know.”

“You can’t buy friends with money—not even the friendship of teenagers.” After Jenny said the words, she corrected herself. Those teenagers certainly spoke of Robert with enough enthusiasm to count him a friend. And the checks were awfully big. She’d seen one of them.

Robert grinned. The kids had managed to keep his secret. Jenny didn’t know why he’d been throwing checks around. “I didn’t give them the money so they’d be my friends.”

“Well, with the size of those checks—they should be something.”

“I’m hoping they will be something someday.”

Jenny looked at him suspiciously.

“Something for themselves. I’m hoping they’ll go to college—maybe learn a trade—be good citizens,” Robert explained. “Grow up to be their own something. What’s wrong with that?”

Jenny was silent for a moment. “Nothing.”

Her sister was right, Jenny thought in defeat. She, Jenny M. Black, was turning into one of those fussy old women. Picking a fight with a perfectly innocent man just because he’d given away some of his money. And that wasn’t even the real reason. The real reason was the kiss. And that was just as foolish. In his social circles, a kiss was nothing more than a handshake.

“Who you give money to is none of my business,” Jenny said stiffly as she put the lid back on the small coffeepot. “I owe you an apology.”

“I’ll take a dance instead.” Robert held his breath. He’d seen the loophole and dived through it, but it wasn’t a smooth move. He’d done better courting when he was sixteen. He had no polish left. He was reduced to the bare truth. “I’ve been hoping you’d save a dance for me.”

Jenny looked at him like he was crazy. “Save a dance? Me? I’m not dancing.”

“And why not?”

Jenny held up the coffeepot. She hated to point out the obvious. “I’m here to see that others have a good time. That’s what your mother pays me to do and I intend to do it. I, for one, believe in earning my money.”

“I could pa—” Robert started to tease and then stopped. He didn’t know how she’d twist his offer to pay for a dance, but he could see trouble snapping in her eyes already. “My mother doesn’t expect you to wait on people all night.”

Robert looked over to where his mother was talking with Mrs. Hargrove. They were sitting on two folding chairs by the door to the barn. If his mother wasn’t so intent on the conversation, he knew she would have already come over and told Jenny to take it easy.

“You’re not going to ask her, are you?” Jenny looked horrified.

“Not if you don’t want me to. But if you’re so determined to give people coffee. I could pass some around for you. With two of us working, it’d take half the time. How much coffee can everyone drink?”

“I can manage.”

“No one should be drinking coffee at this time of night anyway.” Robert wondered if he’d completely lost his touch. She shouldn’t still be frowning at him. Any other woman would be untying those apron strings and smiling at him by now.

“It’s decaf.”

“Still. There’s all this punch.” Robert gestured to the half-full bowl of pink punch. The color of the punch had faded as the evening wore on, and the ice had melted. The plastic dipper was half floating in the liquid. “Pity to see it go to waste.”

“The punch drinkers are all dancing.” Jenny looked out at the dance floor wistfully. The only people left drinking coffee were the single men, mostly the ranch hands from Garth Elkton’s place. The teenagers had downed many a cup of punch after dinner, but they were all dancing now.

Robert followed her gaze. “The kids are doing their best, aren’t they?”

The swish of taffeta skirts rustled all along the dance floor. A long, slow sixties love song whispered low and throaty from the record player. Most of the teenagers were paired up and dancing with a determined concentration that Robert applauded. He even saw one or two of the boys try a dip with their partners. Now that was courage.

“They remind me of an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie—all those colors swirling around.”

The old prom dresses were lavender, slate gray, buttercup yellow, forest green, primrose pink—and they all seemed to have full skirts that trailed on the plank flooring of the barn. Their skirts reminded Jenny of a bed of pansies.

“We could be swirling, too—” Robert held out one hand for the coffeepot and the other for Jenny’s hand.

The light in the old barn had been softened when the music started. Someone had turned off a few of the side lights and shadows crowded the tall corners of the structure. The air was cool and, by the sounds of it, a winter wind was blowing outside.