at her suspiciously. She hadn’t realized until he spoke that her arms had crept up his back until she had him in an embrace that was more than friendly. She shook the memories from her eyes, cleared her throat and loosened her arms. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” Jess ducked his head, apparently reassured once the sensible Francis was back. Then he added teasingly, “After all, your brother did tell me to stick close to you tonight.”
“He’s not still worried about that phone call?” Francis gladly diverted the conversation to her brother’s needless caution. “Just because some guy calls up and says someone might be out to kidnap me—it’s all nonsense anyway. Even if Garth did know something about the rustlers who have been hitting this area—which he doesn’t—well, it doesn’t make sense. Before they start making any threats, these rustlers should find out if Garth knows anything that’s a danger to them. Any manager would tell them that’s the first step. They might be criminals, but that’s no excuse for sloppy planning. You need to identify your problem and then verify how big it is before you can even hope to solve it.”
“Way I hear it, it wasn’t just some guy that called.”
Apparently Jess only heard the first part of what she’d said. Francis had noticed that the ranch hands who worked for her brother tended to let their eyes glaze over when she tried to teach them management techniques.
“The man never gave his name,” Francis corrected stiffly.
“Didn’t need to from the way I heard it,” Jess mumbled. “Begging your pardon for mentioning him. Still—can’t be too careful.”
No wonder she was having so much trouble getting rid of her memories of Flint, Francis thought. He seemed to have more lives than a stray alley cat. She’d bury him one day and he’d be resurrected the next. Did everyone in Dry Creek know about that phone call?
“I don’t believe it was Flint Harris on the other end of that phone call. For pity’s sake—he probably doesn’t even remember Dry Creek.” Lord knows he doesn’t remember me, Francis added silently. “He never had roots in Dry Creek. He only came here that one spring because his grandmother was ill. He hasn’t been back since she died.”
“Hasn’t sold her place yet, though,” Jess argued. “Even pays taxes on it. That’s got to mean something.”
“It means that it isn’t worth selling. Who would buy it? The windows are all broken out and it’s only got five acres with it. The only thing you could raise there is chickens and with the low price of eggs these days—”
Francis stopped herself. She didn’t need to be her own worst enemy. She needed to forget chickens. That had been their adolescent dream—that they would live with his grandmother and make their living by selling eggs. A fool’s dream. Even back then, it wouldn’t have kept them in jeans and tennis shoes. She cleared her throat. “The point is that Flint Harris is nowhere near here.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry to bring the louse up. If I’d have been here back then and met the boy, I’d have given him a good speaking to—treating a nice girl like you that way.”
Francis stopped dancing and looked at Jess. He seemed to expect a response. “Well, thank you, but that wouldn’t have been necessary. I could take care of myself even back then.”
“If you say so.”
Francis looked at him carefully. There it was. A steady gleam of pity in his eyes.
“Those rumors are not true.” Francis bristled. The one thing she didn’t miss in Denver was the gossip that flowed freely in a small community. “While it is true that he and I drove to Las Vegas after the prom and looked for a justice of the peace, it is not true that we were actually married.”
“Mrs. Hargrove says—”
“Mrs. Hargrove wasn’t there. I was. The man was not a justice of the peace. My father called down there and asked. They had no justice of the peace by that name. It doesn’t matter what words we said, those papers we signed were worthless.”
“You signed some papers?” The pity left his eyes. It was replaced by astonishment. “You still have them?”
“I didn’t say I have papers,” Francis said patiently. The last time she’d seen those papers, Flint had had them. She remembered the way he had carefully folded them and put them in his coat pocket. She hadn’t realized at the time that any young bride with any sense asks to keep the papers herself—especially when the wedding takes place in Las Vegas. That should have been her first clue.
“Besides, that is long ago and done with,” Francis said briskly. “As Mrs. Hargrove probably told you, even if it had been a marriage, it would have been the shortest marriage ever on record in Dry Creek—probably the shortest in all of Montana. I don’t even think it lasted forty hours. We had the trip back from Vegas and then he dropped me off at my dad’s to pack. Said he was going to Miles City to buy me some roses—every bride needed roses, he said—those were the last words I ever heard from him. He never came back.”
Francis believed in slicing through her pain quickly and efficiently with a minimum of fuss. She’d held her breath when she recited the facts of those two days with Flint and now she let it out slowly. “I’m sure it was one of the smoothest exit lines in the book and I fell for it. Five weeks later I made arrangements to graduate early from high school and I left for Denver. That’s all there was to it.”
“But no one knew,” Jess reproached her softly. “That’s the only reason the folks here still remember it. No one but your father knew and then you just left so suddenly. These were your neighbors and friends. They cared about you, they just didn’t know what was happening. Even now Mrs. Hargrove keeps trying to think back to something she could have said to make it better in those days for you—blames herself for not taking a more motherly role in your life—what with just you and your dad out there alone when Garth was in the service—keeps having this notion that Flint did come back in around that time and stopped at her place to ask for you.”
“She’s confused,” Francis said flatly. People meant well, but it didn’t help to sugarcoat the truth. “If he’d tried to find me, he’d have tried my father’s place. He knew where it was. He’d been there enough times.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
The dance ended and suddenly Francis felt foolish to be standing there arguing about whether or not a man had stopped to see her neighbor twenty years ago. “I think I’ll sit the next one out if it’s all the same to you. You can tell my brother I’ll be fine. I’ll just be taking a rest.”
Jess looked relieved. “I could use a break myself. My arthritis is acting up some.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? We could have sat the last two dances out—no need to be up and moving around on a cold night like this.”
“It is a blistering one out tonight, isn’t it?”
“All the more reason to forget about the kidnapping threat,” Francis agreed. “No one but a fool would be out setting a trap tonight. It’s too cold. No, I think the kids are right when they said it was that rival gang they have in Seattle calling to make mischief.”
Francis’s brother, Garth, had offered the use of his ranch to a woman who ran a youth center for gang kids in Seattle. At the moment, thirty of
