Montana Mistletoe Page 8

  “I just listened to some phone messages from job applicants a few minutes ago. Neither will work out.”

  Betty smiled up at him, clearly unconcerned. “No worries about anything here in the house. We’ve got Abby and she’s doing fine. Don’t you think?”

  “For as long as she stays. But we both know—”

  Her eyes narrowed, Betty waggled her paring knife in his direction. “Don’t be wishing for change when what you’ve got is perfect, young man.”

  “Perfect for now,” he conceded, wrapping an arm around her shoulder for a hug. “Have I ever told you how much I love you and appreciate all you’ve done for this family?”

  She leaned into his embrace, then straightened and started on another apple. “At least a thousand times. But this is my family, too, and that’s what we all do. No one will ever love and care for us like family does.”

  He suppressed a sigh. He knew her next words by heart.

  “That means you need to be more serious about finding a good mother for those girls. I won’t be around forever,” she said.

  At this point she usually mentioned some lovely granddaughter of one of her friends from the ladies’ social group at church.

  But this time she just raised an eyebrow and fixed him with a stern look before picking up another apple. “By the way, Abby asked if she could run over to her dad’s place for a bit after she takes me to and from physical therapy at eleven. She’ll be back in time to meet the girls’ school bus—if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever discussed her days off. I’d better—”

  “I get days off?” Abby walked into the kitchen with a laundry basket of folded towels on her hip. A corner of her mouth lifted into a teasing grin. “This I want to hear.”

  * * *

  Abby pulled her SUV to a stop in the parking area between her dad’s house and barns and let her childhood memories wash over her.

  With caring for Alan and her substitute teaching, she’d been so busy, she hadn’t been back to Montana in several years. But nothing had changed, as far as she could see.

  The white ranch-style house still looked like it needed a coat of paint. The swaybacked wire fencing around the various cattle pens needed work.

  Still, the cattle she could see looked fat and healthy and Tom, the grizzled old German shepherd watching her from the open door of the horse barn, looked like he’d never missed a meal.

  A stranger driving in might assume the place was on the verge of foreclosure, but they would be wrong. Dad had always been as frugal as he was smart, and last she’d heard, he still ran five hundred head of fine Angus beef cows on the place.

  Abby stood at the open door of her vehicle and scanned the buildings and pens. “Dad?” she called out. “Dad!”

  When he didn’t answer, she checked the machine shed and the barns, then walked around to look at the various pens.

  She strolled back through the horse barn. It was empty now except for the two stalls in front for his ranch horses, the stalls festooned with heavy swaths of dusty cobwebs, the air heavy with the mustiness of abandoned spaces. She was nearly to the front walk door when it screeched open on rusty hinges and sunlight poured in, silhouetting a trim figure with all-too-familiar bouffant, upswept hair.

  “Can I help you?” Darla said sharply, her voice heavy with suspicion and a trace of fear. “What are you looking for—”

  She broke off sharply when Abby reached the patch of sunlight.

  “I’m looking for my dad.”

  Darla flicked a nervous glance over her shoulder as if she might be deciding to flee, and Abby wondered why she was so jumpy. “You should’ve called. He’s...um...not here. But he’ll be back soon. Very soon.”

  Abby doubted that very much. “Why don’t I wait in the house, then. We can talk. Maybe over a cup of coffee?”

  Darla fingered the long fringe hanging from the side of her gloves. “I—I don’t think so. I have company coming. I need to get ready.”

  Dad must be around here someplace. Or maybe he’d gone to town. But he hadn’t been here when Abby stopped by after first arriving in town either. Nagging concerns started sending icy tentacles slithering through Abby’s midsection.

  Dad was seventy-two. Five years younger than Betty, who was sharp as could be. She hoped he would enjoy another twenty years of good health and independence.

  But what if he was failing, and being manipulated in some way? Held in his own home while his finances were being drained?

  “Darla, I need to see my father. Now. His cell phone seems to have been disconnected. This is the second time I’ve stopped, and you’ve offered nothing but excuses both times. I’m worried about him. Where is he?”

  Her gaze skittered away, not looking Abby in the eye. “I—He’s in Billings. I can prove it.”

  “Show me. Because if you can’t, maybe I’ll have the sheriff check on his welfare for me.”

  Gone was the brittle, argumentative attitude Darla had displayed in the grocery store. Now the woman’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I guess you can come to the house.”

  Abby followed her to the back door leading into the kitchen. Here, too, nothing much had changed. The same cheap, dark paneling of a 1960s modular home. Conical brass lamps on the walls that pointed to the popcorn ceiling, which still sported heavy, fake wood beams that were really just Styrofoam.

  It was past remodeling. It needed a bulldozer. Yet, the place seemed to be clean and tidy, with bare counters and no dirty dishes in the sink. There was no sign of her surly teenage daughter.

  Darla waved Abby to a round oak table in the center of the kitchen and moved to a file cabinet at the end of the counter. After thumbing through some manila folders, she withdrew one and pulled out a bill of sale that she slid in front of Abby.

  “Don is delivering a load of heifers to this man. He came here last month, chose which ones he wanted and asked to have them delivered this week.”

  She crossed her arms and took a step back, though she seemed to be regaining some of her spunk. “Satisfied?”

  Not really, Abby thought, but if Dad was capable of hauling a load of cattle to another state, he still had to be pretty sharp. And if that were the case, then whatever he chose to do in his romantic life was his own business...as long as his new bride wasn’t taking advantage of him in some way.

  “I haven’t seen my father in several years, and I miss him,” Abby said quietly. “I’d like to visit with him while I’m still in the area. When will he be home?”

  “If the weather holds, he’ll be home late tomorrow night. Maybe midnight,” Darla added.

  “So he’ll be here the next day?”

  “Maybe. He’s in and out a lot. You can call the house phone. That number got changed a month or so ago.”

  “That’s odd. He had the same number for decades.”

  Darla’s eyes darted to the door, then to the phone. “There were bad calls. A lot. He...um...changed his cell number, too.”

  Bad calls? What did that mean? She’d have to ask Dad about it when she finally saw him.

  Abby opened up her cell phone and tapped the new numbers into her Contacts as Darla recited them. “Thanks, Darla. I need to be on my way, but I hope you and I can visit the next time I’m here and get to know each other better.”

  From the woman’s stony silence, Abby guessed she wouldn’t like that at all.

  Abby drove slowly down the snow-packed ranch lane to the highway, feeling both relieved and concerned. She turned on her blinker, then looked over her shoulder toward the house in the distance.

  It was too far away to make out any details, but she had no doubt that Darla was still watching to make sure she was really leaving.

  And was very glad to see her go.

  Chapter Ten

  Ab
by waited at the end of the ranch road for the twins’ school bus, mulling over her conversation with Darla.

  She knew full well it wasn’t her right to judge others. She’d always tried to be open and fair to everyone she encountered, no matter who or what they were. Judge not, lest you be judged.

  Yet the first time Abby stopped at the ranch on her way into town, with no knowledge of her father’s recent marriage, the woman had been rude. In public, even.

  But today, under that veneer of hostility—there had been something else. Fear. Which made no sense either. If Dad was going to be home on Wednesday she was definitely going back, because something just wasn’t right. She could feel it.

  Its lights blinking, the school bus crunched through the snow at the mouth of the lane and pulled to a stop in front of Abby’s SUV. She stepped outside and opened the back door for the girls.

  The twins hurried down the steps but stopped and looked at each other.

  The bus driver, a hefty white-haired man in coveralls and an unzipped Carhartt jacket, leaned over to peer out the door at Abby. “Who are you, missy? I don’t recognize that car, or you either. And that’s an out-of-state license plate to boot.”

  “I’m the new housekeeper at the Langford ranch.”

  He narrowed his eyes and studied her from head to toe, then looked at the twins. “And how I can I be sure of that? Do you gals know this lady?”

  “Girls?” Abby prompted. They still wavered between cooperating and acting out, and she was never sure how’d they react.

  Bella sullenly fiddled with a strap on her pink backpack. Sophie shot a worried look at her sister and dug the toe of her purple boot in the snow, following her lead as always.

  The driver reached for a cell phone on the console next to him. “I can call the Langfords, you know. I’m responsible for these girls.”

  Abby nodded. “Yes, please do that. Jess is likely in the midst of riding some horse in the arena, and Betty isn’t driving yet. She said she would let the school know that I’ll be doing this from now on, but she must have forgot.”

  The driver’s stern expression relaxed, but he still made a quick call to confirm the situation. “Sorry, miss. I never take chances. Out here on an isolated road, anything could happen.”

  “I’m very glad that you’re careful. Thanks.” Abby shepherded the girls into the booster seats that she had switched to the back seat of her SUV, and slid behind the steering wheel.

  Jess had asked her to come with him to the girls’ school conference tomorrow after school, and she had demurred, not wanting to intrude or, worse, inadvertently hint to the teacher that her presence was of a more personal and permanent nature than it really was.

  Now she realized that visiting with the teacher would be a good idea. If she had any chance to help these troubled girls, she would take it.

  She looked up at them in the rearview mirror. “I know life has been really unsettled for you two, but it’s time you tried to be a bit more cooperative. I’m only trying to make things easier for your Grandma Betty and Uncle Jess.”

  Bella’s lower lip trembled.

  “You’re spoiling everything!”

  “I’m what?”

  “It’s almost Christmas and Momma will come,” Bella blurted. “Only maybe she won’t ’cause you’re here.”

  Oh, dear.

  Had she somehow overhead the conversation about her mother on Saturday night? Jess had checked to make sure both girls were asleep, but still...

  “Why do you think she will come at Christmas?” Abby asked cautiously. “Did someone tell you that?”

  Bella’s mouth tightened into a pout. “She will come. ’Cause that’s when she brung us here. Last Christmas when we were four.”

  Abby chose her words carefully. “No one knows that for sure, honey. But if your mom comes someday, she’ll be very happy that Jess and Betty and I have all been here to take good care of you.”

  Bella pointedly turned her head to look out the window.

  “In the meantime, your Uncle Jess wants everyone to get along. And what you did just now with the bus driver was wrong. Do you understand that? You should have answered him.”

  Silence.

  “Even if you don’t want me here, you still need to obey. The bus driver believed you didn’t know me and if he hadn’t been able to reach Betty or Jess on his phone, what might have happened?”

  In the rearview mirror, she could see the girls exchange furtive glances.

  “He would’ve had to take you all the way back to town, to the school. Betty can’t drive, so your uncle would’ve had to stop working and drive clear into town to pick you up.”

  “S-sorry,” Sophie said, her head bowed.

  A tear slid down Bella’s cheek. Her shoulders slumped down in defeat. “I just want my momma,” she whispered. “Me and Sophie want her for Christmas.”

  Abby’s heart ached for them both...and for Jess, too. There were going to be no perfect answers, no solutions that left everyone unscathed.

  She rested her forehead briefly on the top curve of the steering wheel. Please, Lord, be with these children and the people who love them. Only You will know the perfect solution to this, so please guide everyone to do what is right.

  * * *

  Funny how simply having Abby sitting next to him almost felt like a date.

  It was already dark at five o’clock, the bright headlights of the truck cutting a swath through the pitch-black night and turning the snowbanks on either side of the road into mounds of glittering diamonds.

  Waiting at a stop sign, he couldn’t help looking over at her. Again.

  Lit by the soft glow of the dashboard, her blond hair shimmered and her face seemed to have a lovely radiance.

  She was still such a contradiction.

  A true rancher, born and bred. Tough and capable and down-to-earth, at ease herding cattle for hours under the most extreme conditions, and likely more at-home in her boots than in heels, even after being away for years.

  But she was also fascinating, and since she’d arrived he’d had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. And that, he knew, had to stop before he stepped into deeper waters.

  She shifted in her seat and sent him a bemused glance, then tipped down the visor to check her face in the lighted mirror. “You keep looking at me and frowning. Is something wrong? Do I have toothpaste on my chin or something?”

  I am in sooo much trouble, he thought grimly.

  She flipped the visor back up. “Well?”

  “I was just...checking the side mirrors,” he muttered. “A habit, from hauling the horse trailer.”

  She probably saw right through it, but what could he say—that she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen in his life? Where could that possibly lead?

  Probably the sound of her swiftly packing her bags and her heading for the West Coast at the speed of light. And as much as he was tempted to test the waters, he couldn’t.

  Betty desperately needed Abby’s help right now, and the twins did, too. Without her, he’d be back to working 24/7, barely able to keep everything going.

  Without her, he’d miss the banter.

  The memories that kept slipping into his thoughts.

  The niggling thought that maybe this time, they could get things right between them...

  He cleared his throat. “Speaking of trailers, I need to take some horses to Denver on Thursday. The owner wants me to help him work them on Friday morning so he can continue with their training progress. Or, as he says, at least avoid ruining them during the first week.”

  She laughed softly.

  “So you’ll be back late Friday night?”

  “Should be. It’s about an eight- or nine-hour trip, depending on traffic and the weather.”

  She brightened. “What should I do about the outside chores? Wi
ll you print up a list, or just show me?”

  “The neighbor’s son is coming over to take care of everything. No worries.”

  She gave him a crestfallen look. “I’d honestly enjoy doing it, if you ever do need me to help outside. Really.”

  “Someday, maybe—but not when it’s the middle of winter and miserable outside.” He pulled to a stop in the elementary-school parking lot. “Thanks for coming tonight. You might be able to offer insights about the girls that I can’t.”

  “I’m happy to help in any way I can.”

  The snow hadn’t been well cleared, and there were slippery, ice-crusted ruts crisscrossing the parking lot. Jess instinctively grabbed for Abby’s arm when she started to fall.

  In the past, he might have swung her around for a playful kiss at a moment like this. But the presence of parents coming and going through the school doors made him hesitate and the moment was lost.

  “Whoa. Thanks.” She laughed as she regained her balance. “Maybe I’d be better off waiting in the truck.”

  He looped his arm more snugly through hers and drew her closer. When they reached the school doors, he moved his hand to the back of her jacket to usher her inside. Did he feel her melt against him, or was it just him?

  “We’re right on time,” he said, glancing up at a clock on the wall. “And this is the room. Mrs. Kelley.”

  A portly, middle-aged brunette with a wide smile and laughing eyes greeted Jess at the door with a handshake, then tilted her head and shook Abby’s hand, as well. “Let me guess. You must be Abby. Bella has mentioned you a few times.”

  Abby’s smile faltered. “I’m almost afraid to hear what she might have said.”

  “Just that she wants her mother here instead of you. But that’s perfectly understandable, so don’t you worry. Change can be a bit difficult for little ones, and things will get better.” The teacher waved them toward the circle of chairs she’d set up in front of a wall display of the children’s artwork.

  “In kindergarten, children don’t yet have much of a filter,” Mrs. Kelley continued as she settled onto one of the chairs. “So before we start, I suppose you know that the twins have been talking quite a bit about their mother lately. They tell the other children that she’s coming back soon to get them, and I don’t know how I should respond to that.”