Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek Read Online Free PDF Page B

ballet while you’re there,” Lizette said. “Just to see if the exercise would be all right for you. Now that I have two students, I can begin classes, and you’d be more than welcome.”
    Lizette decided the older man definitely had a cold coming on. He had just gone pale. He even looked a little dizzy.
    â€œYou’ll want to wait until you’re feeling better be fore you start though,” Lizette said to him. That seemed to make him feel better. At least his color returned.
    â€œI’ll think about it,” he mum bled.
    Lizette nodded. She knew she couldn’t man age for long on the in come she’d get from two students, but just look how much people wanted to talk about her school. With all of that talk, she’d get more students be fore long.
    Lizette smiled up at the younger man. He might scowl a lot, but she was grateful to him for her first two students. “Your wife must be happy you take such good care of the children.”
    The young man looked down at her. “I don’t have a wife.”
    Lizette faltered. “Oh, I just thought that because their father showed me their picture that—”
    â€œYou know the kids’ father, Neal Strong?”
    If Lizette thought the men had been quiet be fore, they were even more silent now.
    â€œNo, I don’t know him. Some man just showed me their picture in Forsyth when he asked me to give him a ride out this way. He said they were his kids and he was trying to find them. He probably didn’t know the ad dress or something.”
    Judd felt Amanda move closer to his leg, and suddenly he had as great a need to be close to her as she had to be close to him, so he reached down and lifted her up even though he had his heavy farm coat on and it probably had grease on it from when he’d last worked on the tractor.
    â€œDon’t worry,” Judd whispered into Amanda’s hair when she snuggled into his shoulder.
    Judd re minded him self that the papers Barbara had shown him when she left the children with him included a court order for bid ding the children’s father from being within one hundred yards of them.
    Judd knew the court clerk well enough now that he could ask for a copy of the court order if he needed one. Of course, that would mean the clerk would guess that the children were with him. No, there had to be an other way. Besides, he didn’t actually need a copy of the order for the court to en force it.
    â€œYou’re sure it was him?” Judd turned to ask the woman. He didn’t know how the children’s fatherwould even know where they were un less Barbara had told him.
    â€œHe had a picture and he said he was their father,” Lizette said. “He had a snake on his arm.”
    Amanda went still in Judd’s arm. The kids had told him about the snake.
    Judd nodded. He should have figured something like this would happen. He wondered if his cousin had got ten back with her husband, after all. Generally, Judd was a supporter of married folks staying together. But some of the things Bobby had let slip while he was at Judd’s place would make any one ad vise Barbara to for get her husband.
    The one thing Judd knew was that he didn’t want that man to come within shouting distance of the children.
    â€œYou have a lock on this place, I sup pose,” Judd said as he looked in side the building the woman was going to use for her school. If he brought the kids to the les sons and then came back to pick them up, they should be safe.
    â€œI could put a lock on,” one of the older men spoke up. “It’s no trouble. They have some heavy-duty ones over at the hard ware store.”
    â€œAnd it wouldn’t hurt Charley here to come over and sit while the kids have their les sons,” an other older man offered. “He al ways complains that the chairs at the hard ware store are too hard any way. Now that he’sgot his fancy phone, he can