Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek Read online

  Praise for Janet Tronstad and her novels

  “Sugar Plums for Dry Creek is another delightful holiday offering from Janet Tronstad.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “In At Home in Dry Creek, Janet Tronstad presents a warm, touching story.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Snowbound in Dry Creek by Janet Tronstad is a great read…. It’s an emotionally vibrant and totally satisfying read.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “This enchanting story, set at Christmastime, has delightful humor, suspense and a warm and wonderful fortysomething romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Silent Night at Dry Creek

  JANET TRONSTAD

  Sugar Plums for Dry Creek

  &

  At Home in Dry Creek

  CONTENTS

  SUGAR PLUMS FOR DRY CREEK

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Letter to Reader

  AT HOME IN DRY CREEK

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Letter to Reader

  Books by Janet Tronstad

  Love Inspired

  *An Angel for Dry Creek

  *A Gentleman for Dry Creek

  *A Bride for Dry Creek

  *A Rich Man for Dry Creek

  *A Hero for Dry Creek

  *A Baby for Dry Creek

  *A Dry Creek Christmas

  *Sugar Plums for Dry Creek

  *At Home in Dry Creek

  **The Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches

  *A Match Made in Dry Creek

  *Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek

  **A Dropped Stitches Christmas

  *Dry Creek Sweethearts

  **A Heart for the Dropped Stitches

  *A Dry Creek Courtship

  *Snowbound in Dry Creek

  **A Dropped Stitches Wedding

  *Small-Town Brides

  “A Dry Creek Wedding”

  *Silent Night in Dry Creek

  *Wife Wanted in Dry Creek

  Doctor Right

  Steeple Hill

  Love Inspired Historical

  *Calico Christmas at Dry Creek

  *Mistletoe Courtship

  “Christmas Bells for Dry Creek”

  JANET TRONSTAD

  grew up on a small farm in central Montana. One of her favorite things to do was to visit her grandfather’s bookshelves, where he had a large collection of Zane Grey novels. She’s always loved a good story. Today, Janet lives in Pasadena, California, where she is a full-time writer.

  SUGAR PLUMS FOR DRY CREEK

  I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

  —Philippians 4:13

  This book is dedicated to my grandfather, Harold Norris, who shared his love of a good book with me.

  Chapter One

  Lizette Baker wished her mother had worried less about showing her the perfect way to pirouette and more about teaching her a few practical things, like how to coax more warm air out of her old car’s heating system and how to put snow chains on tires so smooth they slipped on every icy patch she found as she drove east on Interstate 94 in southern Montana.

  A colder, frostier place Lizette had never seen. Even with a wool scarf wrapped around her neck and mittens on her hands, she couldn’t stay warm. It was only mid-November and it was al ready less than ten degrees Fahrenheit out side. No wonder hers was the only car in sight as she drove along this road hoping to reach Dry Creek, Montana, be fore her heater gave out completely.

  The attendant in the gas station she’d stopped at back in Forsyth had offered to call a mechanic to re pair her heater. Another man, with a dirty blond beard and a snake tattooed on his arm, had made a different suggestion.

  “Why put out good money for a mechanic?” he’d asked in an artificially friendly voice. Lizette hadn’t liked the way he was looking at her. “I’ll keep you warm if you give me a ride down the road a bit. I’m looking for my kids.” He’d reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn snap shot, which he’d then shoved at her. “Kids need to see their old man. You haven’t seen them, have you?”

  Lizette would have rather given the snake on the man’s arm a ride than the man him self, but she hadn’t wanted any trouble, so she’d politely looked at the picture of his two children.

  “No, but they’re beautiful children.” And the children probably would have been beautiful, she thought, if they hadn’t looked so skinny and scared. “Sorry about the ride, but I have a car full of boxes. Moving, you know.”

  Lizette hoped the man hadn’t looked at her car too closely. If she’d shifted the boxes around a little, she could have cleared enough room in the front seat for a passenger.

  The tattooed man hadn’t said any thing more, but he’d put the picture back in his pocket.

  After a moment’s silence, the attendant had finally asked, “So do you want the mechanic to come over to fix that heater? He doesn’t keep regular hours, but he can get down here in fifteen minutes flat.”

  Lizette had shaken her head. “Thanks though.”

  She barely had enough money left to get her ballet school going; she couldn’t afford to fix any thing that wasn’t actually falling off the car. The heater was spitting out just enough warm air to keep her from freezing to death, so it would have to do for now.

  She’d looked out her rear view mirror as she’d pulled away from the gas station and had seen the man with the snake on his arm watching her leave.

  It wasn’t the first time since she’d left Seattle that Lizette had wondered if she was making a mistake.

  Her whole life had changed in the last few months though, and she needed a new beginning. Besides, where else could she get free rent to start her own business? Lizette had learned to be frugal from her mother, Jacqueline. Indeed, it had been Jacqueline who’d found the ad for free space.

  Lizette had not known until recently that her mother had saved for years with the hope that they could open their own ballet school some day. When Lizette’s father had died, years ago, Jacqueline had given up the fledgling ballet school she and her husband had started and had taken a steady job in a bakery. At the time, Lizette had not realized the sacrifice her mother was making to keep them se cure, probably because Jacqueline never complained about giving up the school. When she’d first tied on her bakery apron, she’d even man aged to joke. She said she wished her husband could see her. He’d say she was really a Baker at last.

  Her mother had made the job sound as though it was exactly what she wanted, and Lizette had believed her bac
k then. Maybe that was because Lizette her self was happy. The bakery was a playground to her. She loved the warm smells and all of the chatter of customers. The bakers even got into the habit of asking Lizette to try out their new recipes. They said she had a taste for what the customers would like.

  Giving up that ballet school was only one of the many sacrifices Jacqueline Baker had made for Lizette over the years. Lizette hadn’t even known about some of them until her mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. That’s when she’d started giving instructions to Lizette.

  “You’ll find fifteen thousand dollars in this safety de posit box,” Jacqueline told her as she handed Lizette a key. “I wanted it to be more, but it’ll get that school of ours started if we’re careful. Then there’ll be no need for you to work at the bakery—you’ll be free to dance. The money should cover everything for a year. We don’t need any thing expensive—just something with good floors and lots of room for practice.”

  Lizette was amazed and touched. So that was why her mother’d never spent much money on her self, not even after she be came the manager of the bakery and started earning a better salary. Lizette could see how important it was to her mother to start what she was calling the Baker School of Ballet.

  As the pain increased and Jacqueline went into the hospital, she talked more and more about the school. She worried that Lizette had not been able to find an affordable space to rent even though she’d gone out to look at several places. Jacqueline even asked the hospital chaplain to come and pray about it.

  Lizette was surprised her mother was interested in praying. Jacqueline had shown little use for God over the years, saying she could not understand a God who took a man away in his prime. Unspoken was the complaint that He had also robbed her of her be loved ballet school at the same time.

  But now, at the end, who did her mother want to talk to? The chaplain.

  If they hadn’t been in a hospital when her mother asked to speak to a minister, Lizette wouldn’t even have known how to find one. She her self had never been to church in her life. Sunday was the one day she could spend with her mother, and Jacqueline made it clear she didn’t want to go to church, so Lizette never even suggested it.

  Yet on her death bed Lizette’s mother spent hours talking to the chaplain about her hopes for a ballet school. Lizette quietly apologized to the man one afternoon when the two of them had left the room so the nurse could give Jacqueline an injection. Lizette knew the chaplain was a busy man, and she doubted he was interested in ballet schools—especially ones that didn’t even exist except in a dying woman’s dreams.

  The chaplain waved Lizette’s apology aside, “Your mother’s talking about her life when she talks about that school. That’s what I’m here for. It’s important.”

  In the last days, the soft sound of the chaplain’s praying was all that quieted Jacqueline. Well, Lizette acknowledged, to ward the end it was also those expensive injections that kept her mother comfortable. Lizette never did tell Jacqueline that those injections weren’t covered by their insurance plan.

  It didn’t take much money to open a ballet school, Lizette told her self when her mother kept asking about sites. By then, the extra hospital bills had used up the en tire fifteen thousand dollars, and Lizette’s small savings ac count as well. Lizette said a prayer of her own when she promised to open the school in the fall.

  “You’re right. Fall is the best time of the year to start a ballet school,” Jacqueline said as she lay in her hospital bed. “We can start our students right out on our simplified version of the Nutcracker ballet, and they’ll be hooked. Every young girl wants to be Clara. Plus we al ready have all of those costumes we made for you and the other girls when you were in dance school.”

  Part of the deal in the sale of her parents’ ballet school had been that the new owner, Madame Aprele, would give Lizette free les sons. Lizette had studied ballet for years, and even though she didn’t have her mother’s natural grace, she still did very well.

  “And you’ll be there to watch.” Lizette dreamed a little dream of her own. “You’ve al ways loved the Nutcracker.”

  Her mother smiled. “I can al most see it now. I remember the first time I danced Clara as a five-year-old. And later, the Sugar Plum Fairy. What I wouldn’t give to dance it all again!”

  Lizette vowed she’d find a way to open a school even with out money. Then maybe her mother would get stronger and they could run that school together. With all of the praying the chaplain was doing, Lizette figured they were due a miracle.

  Later that week Jacqueline claimed she’d found a miracle—right in the middle of the classified section of The Seattle Times. The ad offering free rent for new businesses had been buried in the used furniture section of the paper. Lizette called the phone number from the hospital room so her mother could listen to her end of the conversation.

  Free rent would solve all of their problems for the school, and Lizette wanted Jacqueline to share the excitement of the phone call. Lizette hadn’t realized until she was half way through the conversation that the free rent was in a small town in Montana.

  Jacqueline kept nod ding at her during the conversation, so Lizette found her self agreeing to take the town of Dry Creek up on their offer. She couldn’t disappoint her mother by telling her that the free rent wasn’t in Seattle.

  Of course, Lizette had no intention of actually going to Dry Creek, Montana. She knew nothing about the place. Something about the phone call calmed Jacqueline, how ever, and she seemed truly satisfied. The chaplain said she made her peace with God the next afternoon. After that, nothing Lizette did could stop her mother from slip ping away.

  After Jacqueline was gone, Lizette remembered the small town in Montana. Seattle seemed the emptiest city in the world with out her mother. Lizette couldn’t stay at the bakery, even though she’d worked there for the past six years. Lizette enjoyed the job, but she knew her mother would have scolded her for hiding away there.

  Besides baking, the only other skill Lizette had was her expertise in ballet and there were no jobs for young ballet teachers in Seattle. Oh, Madame Aprele offered her a job, but Lizette knew the small school didn’t need an other teacher, and she wasn’t desperate enough to take charity.

  No, she had to go some where else, and she didn’t much care where.

  So, here she was—moving to Dry Creek, Montana, and all because of a phone conversation with an old man and an offer of free rent. Lizette wasn’t sure the school would work. A small town in eastern Montana wasn’t the place she would have chosen to open the Baker School of Ballet.

  Not that it was absolutely the worst place to start, Lizette assured her self. So few people appreciated ballet these days, and it gladdened her heart to remember the enthusiasm in the old man’s voice when she had called in response to the ad. The man she’d talked to on the phone was gruff, and she couldn’t al ways hear him because of the static, but he seemed excited that she was taking the town up on their offer of six months’ free rent. He kept talking about how large the area was that they could set aside for her.

  The old man had mentioned tables and chairs and counters, so he might not be too familiar with ballet, but Lizette wouldn’t let that discourage her. It was the enthusiasm in his heart that counted. She’d be happy to educate this little town on the finer points of ballet.

  Lizette was going to go ahead with a modified Nutcracker ballet. Her mother had been right that it was a great way to start. Lizette decided she would even make Sugar Plum pas tries for a little reception after the performance. Stuffed with dried plums and vanilla custard, they were a Christmas favorite with many of the customers at the bakery.

  The people of Dry Creek would like them as well.

  Yes, Lizette thought to her self. A little music, a little ballet and a cream-filled pas try—the people of Dry Creek would be glad she’d opened her school in their town.

  Chapter Two

  Judd Bowman was standing at the back of the hard
ware store in Dry Creek counting nails. He figured he needed about fifty nails, but every time he got to thirty or so, one of the kids would interrupt him because they had to go to the bath room or they wanted a drink of water or they thought they heard a kit ten me owing. Judd sighed. Trying to take care of a six-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl was no picnic. Fortunately, the hard ware store had a heater going, and it took the edge off the cold.

  “Just sit down until I finish,” Judd said when he felt Amanda’s arm brush against his leg. He’d got ten to thirty-seven, and he repeated the number to him self. He knew the kids needed reassurance, so he tried to speak two sentences when one would have done him fine. “I won’t be long and then we can go over to the café and have some cocoa. You like cocoa, don’t you?”

  Judd felt Amanda nod against his knee. He looked over to see that Bobby was still drawing a picture on the piece of paper that the man who ran the hard ware store had given him earlier.

  Amanda seemed to squeeze even closer to his knee, and Judd looked down. She was pale and clutching his pant leg in ear nest now as she stared around his leg at the men in the middle of the hardware store.

  Judd looked over at them, wondering what had stirred up the old men who sat around the potbellied stove. Usually, when he came into the store, the men were dozing quietly in their chairs around the fire or playing a slow game of chess.

  Today, with the cold seeping into the store, the fire was al most out. There was wood in the basket nearby, so there was no excuse for any one not to put an other log in the stove.