1Late August
Five miles outside Painted Pony Creek, Montana
Red and blue lights splashed against the rear window of the old car, blurred by sheets of rain.
“Mommy,” chirped five-year-old Isabel from her booster chair in the back seat, “are we arrested?”
Tessa Stafford sighed, smiling moistly, and lifted her forehead from the steering wheel. She turned her head to look back at her daughter. “No, sweetheart,” she replied. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
Isabel, a precocious blonde child with bright blue eyes, peered through the steam-fogged windows. “Then why is there a police person out there?”
Tessa widened her smile—it was an effort—and hoped her eyes didn’t look as puffy and red as they felt. Not only was the car out of gas, but one of the front tires was flat. “I’m sure they’ve stopped to help,” she answered. “Everything’s okay, buttercup.”
Was it, though? While she and Isabel certainly weren’t on the run from the law, it was possible that her ex’s stepmother had managed to trump up some kind of bogus charge against Tessa. A narcissistic demon of a woman, she wanted custody of Isabel—her only grandchild—and was willing to go to considerable lengths to win.
Although no less than three judges had ruled against her in family court, Marjory Laughlin was undaunted. She was wealthy, with plenty of friends in high places, and she considered Tessa unfit to raise a Laughlin.
A rap sounded at the driver’s-side window, jolting Tessa out of the worry that was always bubbling away inside her, usually just beneath the surface of her normally calm and quiet personality.
She could just make out a tall woman in a hooded poncho peering in and making a roll-down-the-window gesture.
Tessa obeyed, but a face full of rain almost made her roll it up again.
“Car trouble?” the police officer shouted over the downpour. She was beautiful, with dark skin and full lips.
“Yes!” Tessa yelled in response. “I’m pretty sure one of my front tires is flat, and we’re out of gas!” Nothing like having to holler out something you were singularly ashamed of.
The woman nodded, and even though Tessa couldn’t exactly read the look in her brown eyes, she gave off a friendly vibe. “You and your little girl okay otherwise? I don’t need to send for an ambulance or anything like that?”
Tessa shook her head, then nodded and sighed inwardly, annoyed with herself for the contradiction. “We’re fine,” she called out.
“No, we’re not!” Isabel protested from her perch in back. “It’s scary out here, and it’s cold, and I need chicken noodle soup!”
The officer leaned closer to the partly open window, laughing, and said, “Well, now, suppose we get you someplace safe and dry and rustle up that soup?”
Now it was Isabel who nodded, vigorously and with resolve.
“My name is Melba Summers,” the woman said, raising her voice to be heard as she addressed Isabel. “I’m the chief of police in Painted Pony Creek.” She paused, fumbled inside her rain slicker and revealed a gleaming brass badge. “You can trust me.” Another pause, then, “Now, I’m going to pull my SUV up as close behind you as I can. Once I’ve done that, I want you and your mama to jump right out of this car and run like the dickens for my rig. I’ll be waiting on the passenger side to help you inside where it’s warm, and we’ll head on into town and get you fed. How does that sound?”
Isabel pondered a moment, then beamed. “I can run pretty fast,” she boasted. “I won a prize last year in preschool.”
“In that case,” Chief Summers replied with a flash of a smile, “I’d better be quick about this.” She shifted her gaze back to Tessa. “I guess I should have asked if this plan suits you,” she said.
Tessa, low on money as always, was wondering about the price of the promised soup, among other things.
“The locks don’t work,” she said, fretting aloud. All her and Isabel’s belongings, humble
as they were, were stuffed inside this rust bucket of a car. Nothing worth stealing, she supposed, but necessities just the same.
“I’ll send somebody to fetch your things, don’t you worry about that, and we’ll figure out what to do about your car later.”
“All right,” Tessa finally agreed with a mixture of reluctance and relief.
She, like her daughter, yearned for someplace warm and dry and brightly lit.
Isabel had already unbuckled herself from her booster seat and was pulling on her pink jacket, raising the hood, tugging the drawstrings tight and tying them under her chin.
Tessa smiled. For such a little kid, Isabel was efficient.
Since it was August, Tessa’s only coat was packed away in one of the garbage bags jammed into the trunk. She would have to run the rain gauntlet in a sundress and sandals, carrying Isabel in her arms.
Chief Summers hurried back to her SUV, climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the vehicle up to Tessa’s rear bumper. Then she honked the horn.
Resigned, Tessa pulled the keys from the ignition, dropped them into her purse and turned, once again, to face Isabel. “Sit tight until I open your door,” she said. “I mean it, peanut. Don’t make a run for the police car without me, got it?”
A car whizzed by, tires spraying water high into the air. The danger was all too obvious, and Isabel was, after all, only five years old.
Tessa took a deep breath and sprang out of the car, gasping as rain spattered in her face. Then, holding her breath, she checked as best she could, given the low visibility, for the chief’s vehicle.
The woman was waiting. Tessa opened Isabel’s door, gathered the little girl in her arms and ran. The chief flung open the front passenger door of her rig when Tessa and Isabel reached her, and half boosted, half shoved them inside.
Soon, Chief Summers was behind the wheel, ebony face shining with rainwater and triumph. “Buckle up,” she ordered cheerfully.
“Don’t you have a car seat?” Isabel asked. Tessa was very strict when it came to car seats.
“Not today,” answered the chief. “Just this once, we’ll go without.”
With that, the chief checked all her mirrors, and then she blasted her siren once, just in case. Her lights were still flashing, and she backed up a little, pulled out onto the highway and left Tessa’s abandoned car rocking a little from the force of her passing.
“Let’s see about that soup,” she said.
Less than ten minutes later, they were pulling up to a restaurant with a neon sign perched on the roof that read Bailey’s.
The rain hadn’t let up, so the three of them got out of the SUV and made a dash for the entrance.
Inside, lights gleamed, pushing back the darkness of the summer storm along
with some of Tessa’s misgivings.
A tall blonde woman of a certain age, blessed with the finest bone structure Tessa had ever seen, welcomed them warmly. According to the tag on her uniform shirt, her name was Alice.
“Good heavens,” she spouted. “You’re all drenched to the skin!” She turned to one of the waitstaff, a pretty young girl, and said, “Carly, run upstairs and get some towels, will you please?”
Carly hastened away.
Melba Summers took off her slicker and hung it on one of the hooks alongside the entrance, careful to keep it away from the light sweaters and windbreakers already there.
“This is—” The chief paused, frowned. “I guess I didn’t get around to asking your names,” she admitted.
“I’m Tessa Stafford and this is my daughter—”
“Isabel!” the little girl interjected with proud enthusiasm.
Carly returned with towels, and once the three wayfarers had been ruffled to a semblance of dryness, Alice led them to a table by the jukebox.
“Coffee? Tea?” she asked once they were settled.
“Do you have chicken noodle soup?” Isabel wanted to know. “I like the kind that comes in a red-and-white can.”
Mentally, Tessa counted the money in her tattered wallet, tucked away in her equally tattered purse. She wasn’t quite broke—she’d set aside enough cash, after leaving her last job back in South Dakota, for a week or two in a cheap motel room, a dozen packets of ramen noodles and a jug of milk—but she had to be very careful.
She and Isabel had wound up staying in shelters more than once when funds ran low, and they’d stood in their share of soup lines, too. While Tessa had been profoundly grateful for the help, she’d felt ashamed of needing to accept charity. She’d never been able to shake the feeling that other people needed food and a bed more than she did.
In point of fact, she would gladly have gone hungry and slept in the car, no matter the weather, to keep Isabel safe.
“Chicken noodle soup coming right up, young lady,” Alice told Isabel. “How about a glass of milk, too?”
“Yes, please,” Isabel replied.
“Coffee for me,” said Melba Summers.
Alice gave Tessa a questioning glance.
“Coffee sounds wonderful,” she said uncertainly, and with a wavering smile. Her sundress was soaked, and she was keeping her arms crossed in case her bra showed through.
“On the house,” Alice said gently, and headed for the kitchen.
It was as Tessa let her gaze follow the older woman that the man at the counter caught her eye.
He’d turned on the swiveling stool to watch the scene unfold, evidently.
Somewhere in his thirties, Tessa guessed, tall and damp from the storm, he wore old jeans, scuffed boots and a lightweight flannel shirt over a T-shirt that had seen its best days long ago. His hair was a butternut color, thick and ever so slightly too long.
His eyes were blue—almost turquoise—and a light stubble bristled on his jaw.
An unaccountable jolt went through Tessa the moment their gazes met, and she felt a flush rise to her cheeks, burning there.
Definitely visible.
Blood thumped in Tessa’s ears, pushing back sound, muffling it, as though she were under water.
WTH? she thought.
It was Chief Summers who broke the strange silence. “Jesse McKettrick,” she said with a broad grin. “Just the man I wanted to see. You driving that big old show-off truck of yours today? The one with a winch?”
Jesse left the stool to amble toward them, moving with a slight and probably unconscious swagger. His grin struck Tessa with an impact, like a gust of warm, hard wind.
“Yes, Chief,” he said. “The truck’s right outside.”
His eyes rested on Tessa as he spoke, and she saw amused curiosity dancing in them.
Lord have mercy, he was about the handsomest man she had ever seen, dressed in work clothes, and he had an air of easy confidence about him.
Tessa resisted an urge to glance at his left-hand ring finger. A man like this would be married, or at least have a girlfriend.
And even if by some miracle he was single, she concluded grimly, he wouldn’t be interested in a virtual nomad like her.
“Good,” the chief was saying when Tessa came back to herself. “Because we’ve got a car that needs to be towed to town.”
Jesse gave another one of those slow, lethal grins. “Well, Chief,” he drawled, still looking at Tessa, “if you’re not going to make the introductions, I will.” He put out a hand. “My name, as you heard, is Jesse McKettrick. I didn’t catch yours.”
A woman could tumble right into those blue-green eyes, head over heels and helpless to break the fall.
“Tessa Stafford,” she replied gruffly, and wished she’d cleared her throat before speaking.
Which would have been even more embarrassing.
“And I’m Isabel,” her daughter announced with her usual aplomb.
The man bowed a little. “Honored to meet you, Isabel,” he replied solemnly.
Isabel beamed. “I’m five,” she said, “and I can already read. Mom taught me ages ago.”
Jesse looked suitably impressed. “You’ll probably skip first grade entirely when you start school,” he said, speculating. “Maybe second and third, too.”
Isabel turned serious, slowly shaking her head from side to side. “Mom won’t let me skip kindergarten, even. She says there’s no hurry, and I need to be with kids my own age. So that’s where I’m going next—kindergarten.” The child stopped, frowned thoughtfully. “If we stop driving in some town where there’s a school. We drive a lot.”
Tessa closed her eyes for a moment. Sighed.
Isabel had a tendency to overshare, obviously.
Before anyone could offer a reply to the most recent news flash, Carly arrived with a tray holding a steaming bowl of soup, a packet of crackers, a glass
of milk and two coffees.
Jesse stepped aside to give the girl room to pass, but he didn’t walk away.
Tessa wished he would.
Hoped he wouldn’t.
Being near him stirred a subtle, daring kind of joy in her, and that was unsettling.
She wasn’t staying here in—what was the name again? Something Creek?—because she hadn’t put enough space between herself and Isabel and Marjory Ducking Laughlin.
She would work awhile—assuming she could find a job—get the car fixed and hit the road again.
When she found a place that was safe for her and her child, she would know it. Then they would settle down, hopefully for good, and make a life for themselves. At long last.
Isabel’s eyes widened with pleasure as she admired the bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of her. With great delicacy, she picked up her spoon, dipped it into the broth and blew on it.
She always saved the noodles for last.
Watching her, Tessa felt a pang of desperate love for her baby, her girl. She was growing up so fast.
She blinked back tears, looked up and realized both the chief and Jesse were watching her. Again, her cheeks burned.
“Where do you want me to haul this car to, Melba?” he asked. Despite his smooth manner, he seemed a little off his game, just in that moment.
Instead of answering, Melba turned to Tessa with a question of her own. “Do you have someplace to stay? Maybe with family or friends?”
Tessa shook her head. “No friends or family.” Her stomach growled audibly, and she hoped no one else had heard, including Isabel, who would surely comment. “I guess if there’s an inexpensive motel nearby—”
She hadn’t noticed Alice clearing a neighboring table. “There’s an empty apartment right upstairs,” she said. “Carly used to live there, but she moved back in with her parents last week. She’s headed off to college in a few days.” There was a pause. “Do you have any experience waiting tables, Tessa?”
Melba grinned, saying nothing, and took a sip of coffee.
Tessa, stunned by this apparent good luck—a rarity, in her experience—stared at Alice, afraid she’d heard wrong.
Things like this didn’t happen to her.
“I’ve worked in a few restaurants and diners,” she managed to say.
“Good,” Alice said, as though the whole thing had been decided. In the next moment, she was giving the girl, Carly, instructions—make sure there were clean sheets and towels upstairs, then stock the fridge with a few staples from the restaurant’s kitchen.
“Jesse, you go and get Tessa’s car,” Melba put in.
Alice spoke up again. “You can leave it in back for now. Carly and I will help carry in Tessa’s belongings, along with Isabel’s, of course, and get them settled.”
“What about references?” Tessa asked. “And we need to discuss the rent—” “We’ll cover all that later,” Alice said dismissively. ...
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