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.
When Jenny had looked outside earlier, she’d thought that the snow falling in the black night looked like a snow globe turned upside down—with the barn at the center and an old-fashioned waltz playing while the snow fell around the globe.
“I can’t dance in this.” Jenny brought her mind back to reality. She gestured to her chef’s apron. Her broad white apron was serviceable for working with food, but it had nothing of taffeta or silk about it. Even Ginger didn’t dance in coarse cotton. “And there’s my hair—”
“Your hair is beautiful. You just need to get rid of this.” Robert reached over and lifted Jenny’s hairnet off her head.
Jenny’s hands flew up. “But that’s my hairnet—the health code.”
“No one needs a hairnet for dancing.”
No, Jenny thought, but they did need air in their lungs. She felt dizzy. She could almost hear her sister’s squeal of delight if she knew Robert Buckwalter had plucked the net off her hair and asked her to dance.
But Jenny had always been more practical than her sister.
Jenny knew that Prince Charming didn’t even notice Cinderella until after the Fairy Godmother had given her a whole new look. Men, especially handsome men like the one in front of her, just didn’t dance with women with working shoes and flat hair. Not even the coachmen would have danced with Cinderella if she’d arrived at the ball with a net over her hair and an apron around her waist.
“I should change.”
Jenny’s hand had already found its way into his and now she was twisting away from him to go do something as foolish as change her clothes.
“You’re fine.” Fine didn’t begin
