Chapter Two

      Gwen didn’t know why she hid her stash of shortbread cookies on the top shelf of her last cabinet behind the old dishes she never used. She didn’t live with anyone, so no one would find her precious treat. And she knew where the darned cookies were. It wasn’t as if she prevented herself from discovering them. She wasn’t fooling anybody or accomplishing anything, only delaying the inevitable.

      Thinking that her purpose must be to give herself time to change her mind about eating a hundred buttery calories for every cookie, she dragged a chair to the cupboards and climbed onto the seat. Then she took a minute to catch her breath because she was huffing and puffing from the slight exertion. Twenty pounds didn’t seem like a lot, but when gained in seven months and distributed entirely to her middle, those twenty pounds had really thrown a monkey wrench into physical activity—not to mention her shape and mobility.

      Since she wasn’t concealing the cookies from intruders and since she obviously wasn’t deterring herself, she declared herself officially too clumsy to continue this little game at the same moment that someone knocked on her front door.

      She groaned. Now she remembered why she hid these things. It was to keep them out of sight of visitors who would take one look at her bulging tummy and one look at the cookies and recognize she had absolutely no will-power.

      “I’m coming,” she called, when her guest knocked again. She lumbered off the chair and walked to her front door, realizing that in the city she might have worried about being so casual with unexpected visitors. But here in Storkville, Nebraska, she never gave callers a second thought. She hadn’t met anyone who wasn’t pleasant, and most people went out of their way to be kind and considerate…except for Ben Crowe, she thought with an involuntary sigh. When she had met the Sioux rancher she’d immediately thought he was the most handsome man in Cedar County, with his nearly black eyes and short, shiny black hair. But as they negotiated the deal for his cottage, it didn’t take her long to realize he was also the most bossy, irritating chauvinist she’d come across in a long, long time. Every time she had contact with him his gruffness managed to confirm that opinion, but his behavior the day before had etched it in stone.

      When she opened the door and saw Nathan, her bad mood disappeared. “Hey, Nathan!” she said, stooping down so they were eye level.

      “Hi, Mrs. Parker,” he said, his gaze dropping shyly.

      “None of that Mrs. Parker stuff,” Gwen said, then ruffled his smooth dark hair. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday to call me Gwen?”

      He nodded.

      “Okay, then,” she said, and attempted to rise, but couldn’t. “Drat!”

      “What’s the matter?” Nathan asked, alarmed. “Nothing,” Gwen said. “I just need something to hold on to.”

      “Here,” Nathan said, catching her arm. “I’ll help.”

      Gwen knew Nathan’s enthusiastic heart was in the right place, but she also knew his slight body could not support her weight. Still, not wanting to insult him, she allowed him to hold her left arm while she actually levered herself up by angling her right hand on the door frame.

      “That’s better,” she said, then blew her breath out on a long sigh. “So how come you’re here?”

      He shrugged. “I don’t got nowhere else to go. I got no parents. And you said yesterday I could visit anytime I wanted.”

      “That’s right,” Gwen said, directing Nathan to follow her into the kitchen, though she had the distinct impression she was being conned. She’d spent an entire afternoon with this kid yesterday and his grammar was perfectly fine. Now suddenly he was talking like a five-year-old.

      “I live with foster parents on the reservation,” he continued, as he sat on one of the captain’s chairs by her round kitchen table. His dark hair was bright and shiny, but his dark eyes were dull with concern, as if he was afraid she didn’t believe him. “They’re nice, but they’re old, and they don’t like to play.”

      He’d told her as much the day before, but today there was an odd quality to his voice, almost a quiver. If he was duping her, it was only because he wanted company.

      Come to think of it, so did she. She was lonely. He was lonely. There was no harm in letting him hang around for a while. In fact, she decided to share her cookies with him and made her way over to the cupboard.

      “Do your foster parents know where you are?” she asked as she climbed on the chair again.

      He nodded. “I called from Ben’s.”

      Ben’s. Great. Did everything in this town revolve around Ben Crowe? “What did they say?”

      “They said that I could come over as long as I didn’t annoy you. And Ben said he’d pick me up later to take me back to the reservation.”

      That stopped her. She could see the surly rancher letting his little friend use the phone. She could even see him letting this boy follow on his heels because that might feed his ego. But to volunteer to go out of his way to take him back to the reservation? That made him seem almost—well, nice. “He did?”

      “Yeah,” Nathan said.

      Hearing the obvious affection in Nathan’s voice, Gwen turned around and looked down at him. “You really like that guy, don’t you?”

      “He’s my friend.”

      The simple statement told Gwen many things, not the least of which was that Nathan didn’t consider himself to have too many friends. Again, her opinion of Ben Crowe rose several notches.

      Not wanting to go any further with this conversation, she put her attention on opening her cupboard door, but when she reached for the cookies, she felt off balance and stopped mid-stretch.

      “What are you doing?” Nathan asked, sounding as if he felt she was crazy.

      She cleared her throat. “Getting cookies.”

      “All right!” he said, apparently pleased at the prospect of a snack. In two shakes, he was beside her chair. “Let me do this.”

      “Nathan, you’re shorter than I am. If I can’t reach them, you can’t reach them,” she protested, but before the words were completely out of her mouth, Nathan had hoisted himself onto the countertop. He swiveled around, shifted to his feet and had her cookies in his hand before she could make another sound.

      “Here,” he said, giving the cookies to her and jumping to the floor.

      It wasn’t the neatest way to go about it, and it certainly wasn’t the most sanitary thing in the world to have someone stand on your countertop, but it worked.

      “Thanks,” she said, carefully getting off the chair. And it wasn’t entirely safe for her to be climbing chairs anymore, either. Or carrying heavy packages, she conceded in her thoughts, though she still didn’t like Ben’s attitude when he stopped to help her the day before, because she wasn’t an invalid. But she also had to admit that it had been good having Nathan here yesterday when she needed somebody to bend and stretch.

      As she thought the last, an idea formed. She wasn’t an invalid who couldn’t do things for herself, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have another person around the house to help her. At the same time, Nathan needed company, and he also was a nice little boy who could use a break from life.

      “Nathan, how would you like to earn twenty dollars a week?”

      His eyes widened comically and he gasped. “What?”

      Proud of herself for coming up with such a good plan,