A Creed in Stone Creek (22 page)

Melissa sighed.

Tessa’s cheeks turned pink. “I—I mean—”

And nobody in that café, except for Steven and his architect that is, made any pretense of minding their own business.

“See?” Tom said to Melissa.

“Are you talking about—a date?” Tessa faltered.

“Probably wants you to go to the Grange Dance with him on Saturday night,” said that same helpful redneck who had spoken up before.

“Oh,” Tessa said.

Tom ears turned bright pink.

Tessa spoke again. “Tom Parker,” she said, “look at me.”

Surprised, Tom did as he was told.

Tessa leaned down, so that her nose was almost touching his, and said, “Now, say whatever it is you want to say. I want to hear it from you.”

A sunburst of a smile broke over Tom’s face, a mix of hope and cautious joy. “Will you go out with me? To the dance on Saturday night?”

Tessa straightened. Her face revealed nothing whatsoever.

Tom didn’t move.

Melissa didn’t breathe. If she’d thought for one
moment that Tessa would turn Tom down, she wouldn’t have opened her big mouth in the first place.

“Yes,” Tessa said, at long last. “I think I
will
go to the dance with you.”

The whole place erupted in cheers and whistles then, and Tom went even redder than before.

Melissa let out her breath and sneaked a sidelong look at Steven. By then, even he was caught up in watching the saga unfold, just like everybody else in the café.

“That’s good, then,” Tom said. Now that he’d made his pitch, he seemed to be at a loss for titillating conversation. “That’s real good.”

Tessa smiled, her own color a little high, and turned to go behind the counter for the coffee order.

“Thanks for kicking me,” Tom said to Melissa. “I think you broke my shin.”

“She’s going to the dance with you!” Melissa whispered, thrilled that her good friend hadn’t been shot down, especially with the whole town looking on. It would have been her fault, at least in part, if that had happened.

“And you’re going to the dance with Creed,” Tom replied very quietly, grinning. “Not that I thought for one second that he’d turn you down.”

Melissa looked toward Steven, just to make sure he was still out of range and, seeing that her Saturday night date was busy shaking hands and exchanging parting words with Alex, turned back to Tom. Raised both her eyebrows. “What made you so sure?” she asked, under her breath.

Tom bent toward her. His eyes sparkled. “Because you’re already involved with him,” he said slowly, and with a note of cocky triumph. “
That’s
why.”

“Says who?”

“Says you. Do you think I can’t read simple body language, after all these years as a cop? Hell, Melissa, you might as well have hired a skywriter—the pulses in your throat and wrists are pounding so hard, they’re visible.” He paused, spread his hands in that way he had. “Case closed.”

“Oh, shut up,” Melissa said, just as Steven started toward their table.

She loved the way he walked, the way he moved, easy in his skin.

She loved the way he did a few
other
things, too, but that was beside the point.

He was trouble—the way they’d butted heads in Tom’s office that morning should have been proof enough for anybody, including her.

So what was she doing?

“I’ll be looking forward to Saturday,” Steven said, when he reached them.

“Me, too,” Melissa said, without intending to say anything of the kind. She definitely needed some space, a chance to figure things out, at least a little bit, but she also wanted to get up from that booth and follow him home.

Steven checked his watch. “Time to pick Matt up at school,” he said.

Melissa’s heart slowed and warmed at the thought of the little boy. “Tell him hi for me,” she said.

“I will,” Steven told her. Then he nodded to Tom and walked out into the midafternoon sunshine.

Melissa must have stared at the empty space where Steven had just been standing for a beat too long, be
cause when she met Tom’s eyes again, he was grinning like a fool.

She made a face at him.

Tessa brought the coffee. Along with two slices of fresh peach pie and forks rolled up in napkins. She blushed when she set Tom’s down in front of him.

“Thanks,” he said, turning shy all over again.

Tessa turned and hurried away.

Melissa unwrapped her fork. She’d had a carton of designer yogurt for lunch and it wasn’t enough. Suddenly, she was starving.

G
IVE HER SOME ROOM
, warned a voice in Steven’s mind, as he walked around to the side parking lot and unlocked his truck with the key fob.

He wanted to turn on his boot heel and go right back inside the café, grab Melissa by the hand and take her home with him. Smooth over the awkward stuff. Hear her laugh. Watch the late afternoon sunlight glinting off her hair. And, yes, he wanted to make love to her again.

Steven sucked in a breath and got into the truck, started it up.
Slow down, cowboy,
he thought.

She was a complex woman, that was for sure. In bed, she’d been a tigress. Ditto that morning, when she’d showed up at the jail. And yet asking him to a country dance had made her turn pink from her collarbone to her hair.

Easing out of the lot and onto the street, Steven shook his head, marveling at the things that were going on inside him just then. Not that he could identify any of them—the fact was, he’d never felt quite this way before.
Never wanted to know everything there was to know about a woman, and more besides.

He reached Creekside Academy within a couple of minutes, and Elaine Carpenter brought Matt out, holding his hand as they came down the front walk.

Matt, a big piece of drawing paper in his free hand, glanced in Steven’s direction then turned his attention back to Elaine.

Steven shut off the truck and went to meet them at the curb.

“I made a picture!” Matt crowed, as Steven leaned down to scoop the boy up.

Elaine smiled. “As first days go,” she said to Steven, “this one rated an A-plus.”

“Thanks,” Steven said to her.

“Don’t you wanna see the picture?” Matt all but shouted.

With a chuckle, Elaine turned and headed back into the school.

“Sure,” Steven told Matt, “but let’s get into the truck first.”

He carried the boy to the rig and buckled him into his safety seat. Matt waved the piece of paper in Steven’s face the whole time.

“All right, already,” Steven said, laughing. He took the paper and looked at it.

Three stick figures—man, woman, little boy. A stick dog and a stick horse stood with them, in front of some kind of building leaning hard to the right.

Something fluttered in Steven’s heart. It wasn’t sorrow, exactly, but it wasn’t happiness, either. If he’d had to put an adjective to the emotion, he would have said
bittersweet.

“That’s you,” Matt said, stabbing an index finger into the chest of the stick man, but soon moving on to the woman. “And that’s Melissa.” He, of course, was the child, and the dog was Zeke. The horse was evidently there as a reminder.

“That’s—great,” Steven said, after a moment or two. He kept thinking he’d get used to things the boy said, but so far that hadn’t happened. A glimpse inside Matt’s mind always choked him up and, sometimes, like now, it made him afraid. He searched for the right words, a way to warn the little guy not to get his hopes up as far as Melissa was concerned without shooting down all that bright-eyed faith.

Nothing came to him.

“Next time I see Melissa, I’m going to give her this picture as a present,” Matt said, as Steven set him on his feet.

Steven’s throat ached, and he couldn’t quite look at the boy. “Matt—”

“I know, I know,” the five-year-old broke in sunnily, “you and Melissa aren’t married yet, and I shouldn’t get carried away and make all kinds of plans—”

Steven could picture himself married to Melissa—though he hadn’t really tried before now—but there was no telling what
her
take on the matter might be.

Sure, they’d had a great time in bed together, but he hadn’t forgotten the hurt he’d seen in Melissa’s eyes, during the interlude between bouts of lovemaking, when they’d sat at his table eating take-out meat loaf. The last guy she cared about had done a serious number on her, and she wasn’t over it.

On top of that, she had a career, a house, a
life,
quite independent from his own. What would someone like
Melissa O’Ballivan really have to gain by tying herself down at this point?

Sex? She didn’t need marriage for that, any more than he did.

“Dad?” Matt jolted him out of the thought tangle by tugging at the fabric of his shirt.

Steven blinked, looked down at his son. “What?”

Matt was pointing in the general direction of the ranch house. “Whose truck is that?”

Seeing that old beater was like taking a punch in the gut. The black Dodge, dented and scraped and still sporting Wile E. Coyote mud flaps, even after all these years, belonged to none other than Brody Creed.

“Stay here,” Steven told Matt, putting out a hand briefly to emphasize the point before striding off toward his cousin’s truck.

The kid might as well have been born a Creed as get adopted into the family, because he never listened. Steven got all the way to Brody’s truck, which sat in the high grass with its windows rolled down, before he realized that Matt was right behind him.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay put?” Steven asked the boy.

Matt folded his arms and looked up at him, that stubborn glint in his eyes. “You might need some help,” he pointed out manfully.

Steven sighed and shoved a hand through his hair in frustration. Then he stepped up onto the running board on the driver’s side and looked in.

Brody lay across the seats, his hat over his eyes and his knees drawn up.

Steven jerked the door open, causing it to give way under Brody’s booted feet, and he scrambled upright,
ready to fight, as always. He shoved the hat back, so he could see, and an instant grin spread across his face.

“Dammit, Boston,” he said, “you scared the hell out of me.”

Steven was glad to see Brody—no question about it—but there was some anger there, too. The man disappeared for years at a time, with nothing but a ratty Christmas card, always arriving in mid-January, to indicate that he was still alive.

“You look just like Uncle Conner,” Matt marveled, his piping voice a much-needed reminder that there was a child present and that meant no more swearing and no landing a fist in the middle of Brody’s face. “But you’re
not,
are you?”

Brody got out of the truck, resituated his hat, which, like everything else he owned, had seen better days. “Nope,” he said, putting out a hand to Matt. “I’m his brother. Name’s Brody. And who might you be?”

“Matt Creed,” Matt responded, gazing wide-eyed up at Brody.

They shook hands solemnly.

“The rodeo,” Steven said, “is still three weeks away.”

Brody swung his ice-blue gaze to Steven. It was unnerving how much he looked like Conner, though it shouldn’t have been. They were identical twins, after all. “Don’t you worry, Boston,” he said, in a slow drawl, tucking in his shirt. “I’m not here to stay—just passin’ through.”

“How come he calls you ‘Boston,’ Dad?” Matt wanted to know.

“I’ll explain later,” Steven said, ruffling the boy’s hair and handing him the key ring. “You’d better go let Zeke
out of the bus. He’s probably crossing his hind legs by now.”

Matt glanced once more at Brody, eyes full of curious interest, then dashed off toward the bus.

Once he and Steven were alone, Brody folded his arms. “Quite a spread you have here,” he said.

It might have been a jibe, considering the state of the house and barn, but Steven didn’t know for sure, so he let the comment pass with a quiet, “Thanks.”

“Look,” Brody said, rubbing his chin, which was bristly with dark gold stubble, “if you want me to hit the trail, just say so.”

Steven laid a hand on the front fender of the truck, and he smiled as youthful memories rose in his head, brightly colored and glowing around the edges. “You’re welcome here, Brody,” he replied, “and you damn well know it.”

Brody grinned again. “When did you get married?” he asked, with a gesture toward Matt, now bounding out of the bus behind the sheepdog-bullet that was Zeke.

“I didn’t,” Steven replied.

Brody arched one eyebrow, and his eyes danced. “I see.”

“No,” Steven told him, slapping him on the back to head him in the direction of the bus, “you
don’t
see. And where the hell have you been all this time?”

M
ELISSA, JITTERY WITH SILLY,
schoolgirl thoughts of what she would wear to the dance on Saturday night, decided as she left the office to steel herself and stop by the B&B to look in on the guests. Ashley would be back from Chicago soon, and Melissa wanted to be able to say she’d tended to business.

She smiled as she maneuvered the roadster out of the parking lot behind city hall. The breeze was fresh and the afternoon sunshine was glorious, and Melissa was glad she’d left the top down on the roadster that morning, even though the wind was playing havoc with her hair.

When she reached Ashley’s place, there was a familiar SUV parked in front of the garage door, and Melissa’s spirits rose even further at the sight of it. Ashley and Jack and little Katie were back from Chicago, at last.

Melissa parked hastily at the curb, maybe a shade too close to the fire hydrant, and barely remembered to grab her purse before dashing across the sidewalk, through the front gate and up the porch steps.

Ashley opened the screen door, grinning from ear to ear, two-year-old Katie balancing on one hip.

They were so different, Melissa and Ashley, that strangers were always surprised to learn that they were
twins. Melissa’s hair was dark brown, and she preferred to dress for success, while Ashley, a delicate blonde, generally wore pastels, gauzy skirts and ruffled things.

Their eyes, though, marked them as sisters, because they were precisely the same shape and the same shade of blue.

They hugged, Ashley’s embrace one-armed because she was still holding Katie, and Melissa’s eyes burned with happy tears.

“You were gone
way
too long,” Melissa accused, when they were inside the entryway.

Katie, blond like her mother but with her dad’s dark eyes, strained toward Melissa, who gladly took her and planted a noisy kiss on one pudgy—and slightly sticky—little cheek.

“And that goes for you, too, Missy,” Melissa told her niece.

“We missed you, too,” Ashley said. She was barefoot, wearing white shorts and a matching top that showed off her light tan, and her hair was tumbling down from its Gibson-girl do in a way that was almost a signature. “Follow me to the kitchen,” she said, and turned.

Melissa followed, carrying Katie and looking around for Mr. Winthrop and the rest of them as they passed through the long, cool hallway between the big living room and the equally spacious dining room.

Ashley’s kitchen was the heart of the house, a welcoming place, cheerful and bright, always shining-clean and usually smelling of something delicious—as it did now.

Melissa sniffed. “Brownies?”

“Double Chocolate
Death
Brownies,” Ashley replied, twinkling as she turned, took her daughter from Melissa,
and gently plunked the child down in her playpen. “And you’re going to have at least two, because you’ve lost weight since we’ve been gone.”

Ashley tended to mother Melissa. Also Brad and Olivia, when they allowed it. She was a born homemaker and a good businesswoman in the bargain.

“You, on the other hand,” Melissa responded, tilting her head to one side as she looked her sister over, “are getting a tummy.”

Ashley patted her abdomen. “Of course I am,” she said happily. “I’m pregnant, remember?”

“Yes,” Melissa answered, letting her nose lead her to the counter, where the batch of brownies was cooling, “but I don’t have that excuse.”

“You’re too skinny,” Ashley said, filling the electric teakettle at the sink.

“I am not,” Melissa replied, good-natured bickering being pretty much their pattern. “And don’t think I’m going to gain weight to keep you company for the next six months, either.”

“We’re twins,” Ashley reasoned, hiding one of her sunshine-bright smiles. “The least you could do is pack on some sympathy pounds.”

“In your dreams,” Melissa said, but it was all she could do not to make quick work of that plate of brownies.

Ashley laughed, and inclined her head toward the table. “Sit down,” she said. “And tell me what’s been going on in Stone Creek over the last couple of weeks.”

“Where do I start?” Melissa said, only partly in jest. She scanned their immediate surroundings. “Are your guests around?”

“They’re in the backyard,” Ashley answered, with a twinkle. “Practicing the tango.”

Melissa shook her head. “I don’t hear any music.”

“They make their
own
music,” Ashley said.

“You can say that again,” Melissa retorted, recalling the nude croquet match. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to put the shock of it behind her.

Ashley sighed. It was a happy, contented sound that made Melissa feel both love and envy, all in the same moment. “I like them,” she said. “I wish they were staying longer. So does Jack.”

“Where is Jack, anyway?” Melissa asked, looking around. Ashley’s husband was one of those men who seem to fill a house with their presence, almost making the walls bulge.

Like Steven Creed.

“He went out to Brad and Meg’s to fetch Mrs. Wiggins,” Ashley said. “You know—our cat? The one you didn’t want to keep at your house because she makes you sneeze?”

Instead of sitting down, Melissa went to the back door and looked out through the screen. Mabel, clad in plaid Bermuda shorts and a red T-shirt instead of the Flamenco dress she’d worn last time, held a rose in her teeth as she and Herbert tangoed their way across the patio.

“Amazing,” she muttered. “I need to find out if those people take vitamins and if so, what kind.”

Ashley laughed, moving to stand beside her. “They
are
pretty incredible,” she agreed mildly. Then she nudged lightly with her elbow. “I hear
your
wild side has been coming out lately.”

Melissa narrowed her eyes at her sister, who walked
away to attend to the now-whistling teakettle. “Who told you that?” she demanded, though quietly.

Katie had curled up on the soft bottom of the playpen, and she was sleeping like an angel, with one thumb in her mouth.

Ashley poured hot water into the china teapot that had belonged to their grandmother on the O’Ballivan side, after scooping in some loose tea leaves. “I never betray my sources,” she said primly.

Melissa chuckled. “Tom Parker,” she said, making a not-so-wild guess. “He’s been emailing updates all along.”

“Texting,” Ashley corrected.

“I swear he’s a worse gossip than his aunt Ona,” Melissa fretted. “What did he tell you?”

“That he thinks you’re sleeping with somebody named Steven Creed,” Ashley said, without missing a beat.

With anyone else, Melissa might have fibbed, and with a lot of protestation, too. But lying to her sister was just plain useless; they knew each other too well. “He has his nerve,” she said, hedging. That didn’t usually work, either, but sometimes she could pull it off.

Maybe Ashley was jet-lagged.

No such luck. “Is it true?” she asked.

Melissa double-checked to make sure Katie was sleeping and the white-haired guests were still tangoing to the music only they could hear before she answered, “Not in the
ongoing
sense, however Tom might have made it sound.”

Again, Ashley giggled. She would have looked like a Victorian lady, standing there in front of the cupboard, waiting for the tea to steep, if it hadn’t been for the shorts
and top. “The ‘ongoing sense’? What the heck does
that
mean, sister mine?”

Melissa sank back into her chair at the table again. She felt weirdly agitated and, at the same time, crazy-happy. “It means it happened
once,
” she said, in a whisper. “Last night. We’ve known each other for all of five days. He’s a lawyer and his name is Steven Creed. Do you have any other questions?”

“Only about a million,” Ashley said.

Outside, voices rose on the warm summer air, and a plaintive meow rang out. Jack was back, with Mrs. Wiggins.

“Guess they’ll have to wait for a while,” Melissa said.

“Guess so,” Ashley agreed, pouring tea.

Jack opened the screen door and came inside, the family cat a fluff of white inside its plastic carrier, and Ashley put one index finger to her lips and pointed toward the sleeping toddler with the other.

The man’s face fairly glowed with love for his wife and daughter, it seemed to Melissa. He nodded, kissed Ashley smartly on the mouth and carefully released Mrs. Wiggins from the carrier.

With all that, he still managed a brotherly wink for Melissa. He mouthed the word
hi.

Ashley, an animal lover, stooped to pet the cat.

Mrs. Wiggins, no doubt indignant over her people’s long absence, twitched her tail, gave one petulant meow and vanished through the dining room door.

Melissa sneezed.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ashley said. “You’re
not
allergic.”

Melissa sneezed again.

Jack, a dark-haired, outdoorsy type, agile and fit, cocked a thumb over one shoulder, evidently indicating the backyard. “Mamie Crockett just waylaid me in the driveway,” he told Ashley in a be-quiet-the-baby’s-sleeping voice. “She said our guests have been raising three kinds of hell ever since they got here.”

“Mamie,” Ashley said, “is a sweet old thing, but she’s also a curmudgeon.”

“It’s true,” Melissa said.

Jack grinned admiringly and shook his head. “I sure hope
I’m
still getting into that much trouble when I hit my nineties,” he said. “If somebody calls the cops because the tango music is too loud, I’ll count that as a real accomplishment.”

“Not to mention just
making
it to that age,” Ashley added, slapping Jack’s hand when he reached for the brownies and grabbed three of them in one swoop.

“I wonder if they skydive,” Jack teased. “And ride mechanical bulls.”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Melissa replied.

Just then, Katie awakened, hauled herself upright by gripping the rails of her playpen, and let out a wail. “Potty!” she yelled.

“Your turn,” Ashley told Jack, helping herself to a brownie before carrying the plate to the table and setting it down in the middle.

Jack swept the toddler up and kissed her on the cheek. “Too late,” he said, after patting Katie’s diaper-cushioned bottom.

With that, he and Katie disappeared through the dining room doorway, headed upstairs.

It was hard to believe that Jack McKenzie, able diaper-changer, had so recently headed up a top-notch
security company, personally rescuing men, women and children from South American jungles and other politically volatile environments. Although he still owned the firm, and occasionally met with clients and with his key employees, always somewhere far from his wife and child, he seemed content to live in Stone Creek. Riding the range with Brad and Tanner, Olivia’s husband, seemed to be all the adventure he needed these days.

“Now we can talk about the new man in your life,” Ashley said to Melissa. “He’s
not
‘the man in my life,’” Melissa insisted. “I barely know Steven.”

Ashley, sitting across the table from her now and nibbling at one of the brownies, raised an eyebrow. “You know him well enough to
sleep
with him,” she said.

“Be quiet,” Melissa whispered, as the screen door creaked open and the first of the guests entered into the kitchen.

“I smell brownies!” Herbert whooped.

T
HEY’D WALKED THE PROPERTY
, checked out the ram-shackle old house and the ruins of the barn, now partially removed by the work crew that had been there earlier, but Brody still hadn’t answered Steven’s question. Still hadn’t said where he’d been since he and Conner got into a fistfight in a parking lot in Lonesome Bend one night, two weeks after graduating from college, and parted ways.

Brody hadn’t even gone home to pack up any of his belongings, as far as anybody knew. His old dog, always riding shotgun, was with him, and the two of them just
lit out without so much as a “Go to hell” to the rest of the family.

Now, watching as Matt and the dog played tag in the softening afternoon light, Brody hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his threadbare jeans and smiled to himself. “You gonna tell me how you happened to come by a kid, Boston?” he asked, his voice low-pitched and gruff with some private emotion.

Steven explained about Zack’s and Jillie’s deaths, and how he’d adopted Matt when they were both gone.

“That’s doing things the hard way,” Brody commented, and Steven couldn’t be sure whether he was referring to Zack and Jillie, for dying, or Steven himself, for stepping up to raise a child.

But sympathy flickered in Brody’s eyes as he watched the boy and the dog playing their games. He was one tough cowboy, and that was as true a thing as any statement ever had been, but deep down, he was a sucker for kids and critters. Always had been.

He slanted a glance at Steven, slapped him hard on the back. “I figured you’d be married by now,” he said.

Steven laughed. “Why?”

Brody gestured toward Matt. “Because you’re the marrying kind,” he said. “Unlike me.”

“‘The marrying kind’?” Steven repeated. “Excuse me?”

“Face it,” Brody said, and another grin splashed across his face. “You were born to be a husband and a father.”

“Unlike you?” Steven prodded lightly.

“Unlike me,” Brody affirmed. “No good woman
would have me, and while I might sleep with a bad one, I’d never put a wedding ring on her finger.”

Steven couldn’t stand the wondering any longer. “Brody,” he said, his tone firm now, his gaze direct. “Where have you been?”

“It’s like that old Johnny Cash song,” Brody said. “I’ve been everywhere, man.”

“Not good enough,” Steven challenged. “Do you have any idea how much Dad and Kim worry about you?”

Something changed in Brody’s face; he looked older than his thirty years, and sadder than a man that young ought to be. “I thought about going home a million times,” he said gruffly. “But my pride always got in the way, and I couldn’t seem to find a way around it.”

Steven thought of Zack and Jillie as he watched their child, and of how unlikely it seemed, even now, that they could be gone. “You gonna wait until somebody dies, Brody? Trust me, if that happens, you’ll be a long time regretting it.”