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

Her sister was silent for a minute before continuing. “Wait a minute. Are you sure this is Robert Buckwalter the Third? Maybe there’s been some kind of a mixup. A kidnapping or something. This just doesn’t sound right—vegetables and aprons. He doesn’t even know how to make coffee. It says that, right in his bio.”

Jenny smiled. “So far, he hasn’t made coffee, and his mother seems to believe it’s him.”

“Well, what does she say about him being gone all that time? Is she worried he’s married?”

“She hasn’t said a thing. And I don’t know why you think he’s married. Just because he kept to himself for a while, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s been to the altar. Maybe he’s just tired,” Jenny said as she spied the can of paprika and reached for it. “Five months isn’t so long to rest if he keeps a social schedule like the one you’ve talked about—it sounds grueling.”

“I never thought of that.” Her sister was horrified. “Maybe he’s worse than tired—maybe he’s sick.”

“Oh, I doubt he’s sick,” Jenny said as her hand wrapped around the can of paprika. She’d have to taste it to see if it was still good. “But I wouldn’t know for sure. I just work for him—well, really for his mother. I’m the chef—I’m in charge of parties like this one tonight. That’s it. It’s not like I know the man personally.”

“You must know something about him.”

“I know what he eats.” Jenny looked through the pantry door into the kitchen at the man in question. “Heavy into vegetables and meats—beef, lamb, duck—he likes them all.” That certainly didn’t sound like a man who was sick.

She suddenly remembered that she did know more about Robert Buckwalter than what he ate. But her sister wasn’t interested in the fact that some man had an odd aversion to her hairnet, which was a perfectly fine hairnet and required for food handling—even if it did make her look like a monk.

“There’s got to be more. Think. This is important.”

Jenny wiped the dust off the can of paprika. She’d been more mother than older sister to her three siblings and it seemed like one or the other of them always had something important that needed her help even though they were all over eighteen by now and should be adults.

She stood in the open doorway and studied the tall man that was causing her sister so much worry.

The light in the kitchen came from two bare bulbs hanging directly over the long counter that divided the square room. The kitchen walls were white. The sink and refrigerator were both forty years old and chipped. It was a humble kitchen.

Now that her sister mentioned it, Jenny wondered why the man had volunteered to help. She certainly hadn’t expected it of him. No one else had, either. Even his mother had looked up in pleased surprise when he’d demanded a knife and a bunch of carrots.

Jenny studied his profile, looking for answers.

At first glance, the man was the classic movie star ideal. The kind of actor that always wore the white hat. The aristocratic nose was perfectly balanced. The glossy black hair was combed stylishly in place. The cheekbones closely barbered. He looked like a luxury car ad. Definitely your playboy kind of a guy.

But as she looked closer, Jenny noticed some fraying. He had a bruise on the side of his forehead. It was faint, but it was there. His hair was nicely combed, but there was something off center and a little ragged about the cut. And his tan was uneven, like he might have been wearing a cap—not a designer cap with the bill turned to the back like a baseball player, but an old-fashioned cap like a farmer would wear.

My word, Jenny thought, my sister might be on to something.

Jenny didn’t think the man was sick—his cheeks looked too healthy—but Robert Buckwalter certainly had the neglected air of someone who was letting himself go to seed.

He might just be married at that.

That would certainly explain the plane trip over here. The man had insisted—not offered, but flat-out insisted—on personally flying Jenny and the lobsters from Seattle to Dry Creek in his fancy plane.

Jenny had been surprised he was going to Montana. He had just arrived at his mother’s house in Seattle from some trip that he wouldn’t explain. He looked tired and was limping. The housekeeper had his suite of rooms made up and ordered the customary orchids for his bedside table. Then the housekeeper put in the standing order for extra staff to handle the usual parties.

Robert Buckwalter hadn’t been home for twenty minutes before he canceled the orders. The housekeeper said he walked into his rooms and looked around as though he didn’t know where he was or why he was there.

Then he announced he was going to fly to Dry Creek to talk to his mother. He must have had something urgent to tell her—like maybe that he had a wife. Jenny wondered how the older woman would take the news of a strange daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Buckwalter was financing a winter camp for some teenagers from Seattle and the woman was staying in Dry Creek to be sure that all went well. It was a fine, giving gesture and Jenny respected the older woman for it.

But Jenny knew her sister wasn’t interested in Mrs. Buckwalter. There must be something useful about the man in question that she could share with her sister.

“Even if he’s not sick, I think he might have corns.”

“What?”

“You know—corns on his feet. And bad. I remember his mother commenting on some bill he’d run up for corn pads. Hundreds of dollars.”

Her sister grunted. “The man’s an Adonis. He can have a gazillion corns on his feet and who cares? No one’s looking at his feet. Have you even stopped your cooking long enough to look at the man?”

“Well, of course, I have.”

“And?”

“He’s neat, well dressed, clean—”

“Clean!”

“Well, he is—more than most.”

“I’ve got a news flash for you! He’s a whole lot more than clean. He’s hot. Drop-dead gorgeous. And if you haven’t noticed that I’m really worried about you. Might even talk to Mom about it. She always says you’re too picky—wait until she finds out you’re even picky with him. Robert Buckwalter—”

“I know.”

“—the Third.”

A timer went off in the kitchen.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” Jenny said in relief. “I’ve got egg puffs that need to come out of the oven.”

The café kitchen was noisy. A group of teenage girls, wearing prom dresses from the fifties, stood at a table in the corner laughing and folding pink paper napkins into the shape of swans. A dozen of the boys stood beside Robert Buckwalter, following his moves as they cut chunks of carrot into the closest thing they could get to a flower. The carrot nubs were more tulips than roses, but they had a charm all their own.

Jenny had forgotten the boys were from a Seattle street gang until she saw their ease with knives. Some of those boys could have done credible surgery on something larger and more alive than a hunk of carrot.

Jenny was thankful for people like Sylvia Bannister who ran a center for gang kids in Seattle, and for Garth Elkton who had welcomed the kids to his ranch for a winter camp program. Jenny had seen how peaceful the Big Sheep Mountains looked in the snow. Low mountains skirted by gentle foothills. This little ranching community was a perfect haven for gang kids.

Sylvia and Garth were giving those kids a second chance. Mrs. Buckwalter was funding the winter camp and providing the lobsters tonight, both as a thanks to the community of Dry Creek, especially to the minister who had recently gotten married, and as a reward to the teenagers from Seattle for putting down their knives and learning to dance.

Sylvia and Garth were the kind of people that deserved to be number one on some New York tabloid list, not some hotshot rich man like Robert Buckwalter who spent half his life in Europe attending art shows, Jenny told herself. He didn’t even organize the shows; he just sat there and gave away money.

Jenny felt a twinge of annoyance. An able-bodied man like Robert Buckwalter should be more useful in life. Giving away money hardly qualified as a job—not when he had so much of it. She doubted he even wrote the checks himself.

“I ruined one of the mushrooms,” a girl wailed from the sink. “Totally ruined it. The stem didn’t come out right and—”

“Not a problem. We just cut it up and put it with the stuffing.” Jenny walked to the refrigerator to get out the herbed bread mixture that went in the few mushroom caps they’d found in the café’s refrigerator bin. “Nothing goes to waste in a good kitchen. There’s always some other place for it. If nothing else, there’s soup. ‘Waste not, want not’ my mother always used to say. And remember, aprons everyone.”

The kids groaned.

Robert Buckwalter grunted. He wondered if he was crazy. He shouldn’t be annoyed with the ever-resourceful Jenny. He should be grateful to her. After all, he’d hired her because of her apparent good cheer and her complete indifference to him.