A Creed in Stone Creek (33 page)

Melissa felt a little guilty, knowing she was the reason Brody and Matt were sleeping in the RV instead of the house. Given what had happened, Matt might
need
to be close to his father tonight, if only for the reassurance that Steven was safe.

That
he
was safe.

Brody and Davis went outside, engaged in some quiet conversation of their own. Steven and Matt had gone back to Matt’s room to get a clean pair of pajamas to replace the ones the little guy had chosen first.

“Steven seemed to think you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed some of your clothing,” Melissa said to Kim, when it was just the two of them, even more embarrassed than before.

Kim patted her hand and smiled. “Don’t you worry,” she said. Her gaze moved to the drawing, still in Melissa’s hands.

Matt’s voice echoed in Melissa’s head.
There’s you…there’s you…

“Are you sure you’re all right, Melissa?” Kim asked.

Melissa tried hard to smile. Shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she confessed. “It was so awful, especially when the gun went off a second time and I thought Steven had been—I thought he was dead or badly hurt—”

Kim rested a hand on Melissa’s shoulder; her touch was light, but firm enough to be comforting, too. Out of the blue, Melissa thought of her mother, who had never really been there for any of her four children, and
couldn’t be there for her now, and a stab of regret and resentment hit her so hard that she nearly bent double.

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Kim suggested.

“No,” Melissa said. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

Just then, Steven returned with Matt, who was now outfitted in a pair of cotton PJs covered with tiny covered wagons, cacti and tepees.

“I’m the Colorado Kid!” he exulted, raising both hands as if the pajamas represented proof of his preferred identity.

“You’re a nut,” Steven said, with affection, ruffling the boy’s hair with one hand.

Kim stood, after giving Melissa one more concerned look, and made a big production of yawning and stretching.

“We’d better turn in soon, Colorado,” she told her grandson. “It’s getting late.”

“Good night,” Steven said to his stepmother and his son.

Melissa sat at the table, and Steven stood where he was for long moments after everyone else, including the dog, had left the house.

Melissa, who had spread the stick-family drawing out on the table in front of her, looked down at it. Her eyes were burning, and her throat felt thick.

Steven finally crossed to her, took her hand, raised her to her feet. Then he cupped her face in his hands and tilted her head back so he could look straight into her eyes.

“All I want to do is hold you,” he said. “But if you’d rather spend the night in Matt’s room, that’s fine, too.”

“I want to hold
you,
” Melissa replied.

He smiled. “Then we’re on the same page,” he told her.

His room, like Matt’s, was on the main floor.

The bed was huge, and oddly modern-looking, given the rustic nature of the ranch house, and brass lamps shed pale gold light onto thick pillows. The linens were Egyptian cotton, unless Melissa missed her guess, with a very high thread count.

Was she channeling Ashley?

No, Melissa nodded. She was nervous, that was all. And it was silly to be nervous
now,
when she was perfectly safe.

As calmly as if they slept in the same bed every night, Steven left Melissa to her hesitation and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom. By the time he returned, she’d appropriated a T-shirt from a chest of drawers and pulled it on. She’d left Kim’s clothes folded and resting on the seat of a chair.

Her eyes widened when she saw Steven—he was totally naked.
Gloriously
naked.

Melissa reddened as all sorts of things quickened inside her.

“I sleep like this,” he explained.

“Oh,” she said.

He got into bed on his side and, after a few more moments of silent debate, Melissa joined him. They lay far apart, staring up at the ceiling.

Then Steven stretched to flip the switch on his lamp, and both lights went out, leaving the room dark, except for a skim of moonlight that made the bedding glow white.

“Still okay?” Steven asked, after a long, long time.

“Still okay,” Melissa confirmed. “You?”

“Better than okay,” he said. And he drew her into his arms, held her close against the hard warmth of his body. “What would you say if I told you I think there’s a very strong possibility that I love you?”

A terrible joy spread through Melissa before she had a chance to raise her usual defenses. Long moments had passed when she was finally able to answer. “I’d say,” she replied, snuggling close to him and soaring inside, “that you’re probably just shaken up by everything that happened tonight.”

“Suppose it’s more?” Steven suggested, propping his chin on the top of her head. “What then?”

Melissa started to cry. “I’d say it was a good thing,” she told him.

A chuckle moved up through his chest, and his arms tightened around her. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt so safe.

“Which means?” Steven prompted.

Melissa sighed, sniffled. “Which means,” she answered, “that I’m 99 percent sure I feel the same way about you.”

“But you wish you didn’t.”

“Don’t you?”

Steven considered before countering, “Not much use in that now, is there?”

“It is what it is,” Melissa responded.

“Think you could maybe work up a little more enthusiasm?” Steven teased, turning now, so his lips hovered just over hers.

She smiled, slipping her arms around his neck. “Yes,” she said. “But I’ll need some encouragement.”

S
TEVEN DID NOT MAKE LOVE
to Melissa during the night; he’d promised to hold her, and he kept his word. But when dawn broke, and the first pinkish light of a new day tickled her awake, everything in Melissa seemed to catch fire.

It was a slow, smoldering burn, all the hotter for that.

Last night, she’d been in shock and vulnerable.

Some men would have taken advantage of her—but not Steven Creed.

She slipped out of bed, scurried into the bathroom and returned with an empty bladder and, thanks to a bottle of mouthwash she’d found in the medicine cabinet over the sink, fresh breath.

She stood looking down at Steven, willing him to open his eyes.

“I know you’re awake,” she finally said.

A grin crooked the corner of his mouth and, just as he raised his eyelids, Melissa peeled off the T-shirt and tossed it aside.

Steven muttered an exclamation.

“Did you mean it?” Melissa asked, enjoying her brief moment of power. Once Steven got her under him, she knew full well, the balance would shift; he would be in command.

Mostly.

“Did I mean what?” Steven hedged. He scooted upright, sat with his bare back against the headboard, the pillow fluffed behind him.

“When you said you thought there was a good possibility you might be in love with me,” Melissa said. “Did you mean that?”

He grinned, and his whole face changed, seemed to light up, like the world beyond the bedroom windows. “Actually,” he said, reaching out with lightning speed, clasping her hand, and pulling her down onto his lap, “I understated the matter considerably.”

She blinked, still breathless from being yanked, however gently, off her feet. “You mean—?”

“I’m sure of it now,” Steven said, his gaze holding hers, direct and unflinching. “I love you, Melissa. I have from the first—it just took me a while to admit it to myself, that’s all.”

“Are you just saying that because you want sex?” Melissa challenged. She was sitting on his lap and therefore had proof positive that he wanted sex.

He leaned forward, kissed her. The faker, he’d just been pretending to be asleep. He smelled tantalizingly of toothpaste and soap, and his hair was faintly damp. He’d been up well before Melissa.

“I can’t deny that I do want sex,” he said with a smiling acknowledgment of his arousal. However, the fact remains, counselor, that I do. Love you, I mean.”

Melissa wanted it to be true, was so afraid it wasn’t. “How can you be so sure?”

He grinned again, stroked her hair with one strong, calloused hand. “I’m sure,” he said, as the same hand moved down, skimming the bare flesh of her shoulder,
setting it to tingling, and then curved around her breast. With the side of his thumb, Steven chafed her nipple. It tightened deliciously, ready for his mouth, and Melissa groaned.

Steven turned her, so that she was straddling him, and tasted her with just the tip of his tongue.

Fresh heat surged through her.

He suckled at her breast, gently at first, and then with a growing hunger.

Melissa whispered something senseless, let her head fall back, offering herself to him.

The night before, he’d shown restraint. This morning, he was all over her, attending to her breasts at leisure, rolling her onto her back, burying his head between her legs after kissing the length of her inner thighs.

He nibbled. Teased.

Melissa cried out and plunged her fingers into his hair, unsure whether she wanted to push him away or pull him closer still. The pleasure was excruciating, almost beyond her ability to bear.

“What about—?” Her question came out as a strangled croak.

“Let—go—” Steven assured her, between flicks of his tongue. “We’re—alone—

Melissa moaned, pleading incoherently. She needed the tension to end, and to
never
end.

Steven took his time, taking her to the verge, then withdrawing. Finally, though, he gave her what she wanted.

Or she took it.

The orgasm seemed to unspool, like gossamer thread, wild and glittering loops of incomprehensible satisfaction.

Melissa held nothing back, and by the time she’d stopped responding, her body flexing and easing and flexing again, in the throes of helpless release, Steven, too, had lost control.

He must have had a condom ready, because he’d put it on and entered her, deeply, in almost the same motion.

Melissa, having just descended from the heights, didn’t expect to be aroused again, especially so quickly, but with that first thrust, she was flung back into the same ecstatic desperation as before.

Only more so.

They climaxed simultaneously, Melissa’s body arching under Steven’s. Steven driving deep inside her and thrusting his head back as he uttered a low, guttural shout of relief.

The recovery took a long time, but hearing Zeke barking outside set them both scrambling. Melissa got the first shower, as she had the night before, and it was a good thing, because when she got to the kitchen, Matt and Davis and Kim and Brody were all there. And so was Tom Parker.

Melissa blushed, tugging at the waistband of her loose, borrowed jeans.

Seated at the table, a cup of fresh coffee steaming in front of him, Tom favored Melissa with a saucy grin that said, “So,” long and drawn out, as clearly as if he’d spoken the word aloud.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he drawled, his eyes dancing with amusement.

“Just imagine,” Melissa said, but she kept her tone moderate, because Matt was there, and Steven’s folks,
and his cousin Brody. And all of them were watching her.

“Did you sleep over?” Matt asked Melissa, with frank innocence, his voice carrying all over that big kitchen.

The adults hid their amusement with coughs or by turning away. Except for Tom, of course. He was enjoying Melissa’s discomfort
way
too much.

“Yes,” Melissa told the child, because she knew Steven’s policy toward his son didn’t include lying. “I did.”

Matt, still wearing his Southwestern pajamas, ran over and threw his arms around her. “Will you stay for breakfast? Please?”

“Blueberry pancakes,” Kim said, patting the reusable shopping bag in her arms. You had to like a woman who brought her own ingredients
and
was willing to cook. “You’re welcome to join us, Sheriff,” she added, for Tom’s benefit.

He agreed readily. Tom might have been quiet, but he wasn’t shy. Except as far as Tessa Quinn was concerned, that is.

“We’ll be having bacon and eggs, too,” Davis Creed said.

“
You
won’t,” Kim replied, leveling a look at her husband. “I want to keep you around for a while, if you don’t mind.”

Something crackled between those two, Melissa would have sworn. They loved each other, without a shadow of a doubt. Loved each other deeply, passionately—and permanently.

It
was
possible, then, for a marriage to last through
good times and bad, not just over a few years, but over the ups and downs of
decades.

Theoretically, Melissa had known that, of course. But emotionally, because of her parents’ experience, and her own, she hadn’t quite dared to believe it.

Melissa helped Kim by setting the table, enjoying the talk, the laughter, the wonderful smells of breakfast cooking.

The meal was noisy and delicious, a family affair, for sure.

Steven seemed on edge, though; his gaze kept straying toward the windows, or the back door, and when a horn honked out on the country road that ran past his property, he actually started slightly.

“What’s the matter with you, Boston?” Brody asked, from behind a stack of pancakes that rivaled the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Melissa watched with interest, out of the corner of her eye, as Steven’s neck reddened, the color climbing into his face. He stabbed at his food with his fork, but he wasn’t actually eating.

“Nothing,” he said, and his glance held a warning for Brody:
don’t push this.

Surely Steven wasn’t worried about Tom’s presence, Melissa reasoned. It was true, of course, that both of them would have to answer a million questions, and testify in court, too, eventually, but the case itself was pretty straightforward.

With his training and experience in criminal law, Steven had to know he wouldn’t be blamed for Nathan Carter’s death—so what was bothering him? She studied him closely.

Tom’s cell phone buzzed before anyone could speak
again, though Brody certainly looked as though he’d meant to do just that. Defiance flashed in his blue eyes, and his mouth was pressed into a hard line.

Brody Creed, Melissa concluded, didn’t like being told what to do. Big surprise there.

“Tom Parker,” the sheriff said, into the mouthpiece of his phone. “Yes? That’s good. That’s
really
good. Sure, I can stop by the office in a little while, but I have to pick Elvis up at home first. He loves the rodeo.”

Melissa smiled, though her stomach was tight with sudden tension.
What,
she wondered,
was “really good”?

“Thanks,” Tom said, ending the exchange by shutting the phone and dropping it back into his shirt pocket.

Everyone was watching him, and
nobody
was even pretending to eat.

“That was a doctor at the hospital in Flagstaff,” the sheriff explained, taking up his fork again. “Martine will be fine. They’re releasing her today.”

Melissa choked up again. Now that she didn’t have to hold thoughts of what had happened to the other woman at bay to keep from panicking, relief rushed in, bringing tears to her eyes.

“Thank God,” she said.

“It’s not that you’re not welcome, Sheriff,” Steven said, when some of the emotional energy zipping around the table had subsided, “but you must have had a reason for driving clear out here on a Saturday morning.”

Tom glanced at Matt, who was busy trying to sneak a piece of bacon to Zeke, and therefore distracted from the conversation between the grown-ups. “I’ll need the clothes you were wearing,” he said, looking directly at Steven now. “As well as Melissa’s. The—er—interviews
can wait until Monday, when the rodeo is over and the dust has settled a little.”

The hard line of Steven’s shoulders seemed to soften slightly. “Okay,” he said. And he glanced toward the window again.

Who was he looking for?

Melissa didn’t get the opportunity to ask until the meal was over and the dishes had been put away and everybody was ready to head into town, including Tom.

And by then, she’d forgotten she’d had a question in the first place.

S
TEVEN WAITED
in Melissa’s living room while she disappeared to exchange Kim’s clothes for an outfit of her own. She returned looking five kinds of wonderful in black jeans that fit her only slightly more loosely than a second skin, and a blouse just like the peach one she’d had on the day before, except that it was turquoise. And not soaked in blood.

To complete the look, she’d pulled on a pair of superfancy boots, also turquoise, and decorated with shining silver conchos and a few rhinestones for good measure.

“Wow,” Steven said. She wouldn’t be mucking out any stalls in those boots, that was for sure.

“The last time I wore these,” Melissa replied, “I was Queen of Stone Creek Rodeo Days.”

Steven cleared his throat. “They’ve held up well,” he said, sliding his gaze upward from the boots, past all the hidden places where he’d touched and kissed her in bed that morning, until he reached her face. “And so have you.”

She laughed. “Nice save,” she said.

Steven shifted. “We can do this, can’t we?” he asked.

Melissa crossed to him, slipped her arms around his waist, stood on tiptoe to kiss the cleft in his chin. “Do what?” she countered softly, her eyes twinkly and warm.

For a moment, he felt as though he might tumble right into those eyes, and fall end over end, forever.

“Make it work,” Steven said. “You. Me. Us.”

“We can make it work,” Melissa confirmed gently, splaying her hands over his shoulder blades now. “All we have to do is keep trying, Steven. If we give things time, and we don’t give up, we’ll be fine.”

He smiled, bent his head to nibble at her lips. “Spoken like someone who comes from sturdy pioneer stock,” he teased.

“Just like you do,” she breathed, against his mouth.

“We could be a little late for the rodeo,” he suggested.

“What rodeo?” Melissa asked.

At that, Steven scooped her up in his arms and carried her to bed.

M
ELISSA COULDN’T STOP SMILING
, which was crazy, since she’d nearly been killed the night before, in the Stop & Shop. Steven’s lovemaking, in his bed and later in hers, had left her feeling as though every step she took was part of a dance.

Was it a risk, letting herself love a man so completely?

Of course it was. But, just as Steven said, she was descended from pioneers, people like Sam and Maddie O’Ballivan, and generations as strong as they were. They
hadn’t been afraid to open their hearts to that special person, and Melissa wasn’t, either.

Nor were Brad and Meg. Or Olivia and Tanner. Or Ashley and Jack.

All of whom, as it happened, were sitting in the same part of the bleachers as Davis and Kim and Matt when Steven and Melissa arrived, holding hands. Matt, in fact, was playing chase with Mac, in the aisle between rows of seats, waiting out the lull between events.

Olivia, Ashley and Meg were immediately on their booted feet, rushing Melissa, each of them hugging her in turn, all of them crying and saying over and over again how glad they were that she was safe.

The men, Melissa noticed, despite the onslaught of sisterly love, just shook their heads.

When the emcee announced the bareback bronc-riding event, they all returned to their seats. Brody was competing in this round.

Or was he? Melissa blinked at the man coming up the aisle, his hat in one hand, a grin spreading across his handsome face. He looked exactly like Brody.

But he wasn’t.

Melissa felt Steven stiffen beside her.

The stands were packed, and a roar went up as the emcee announced the first rider. “We have an out-of-towner with us today, folks,” the familiar voice boomed out, over the loudspeakers. “Let’s hear a real Stone Creek welcome for #32, Brody Creed, out of Lonesome Bend, Colorado!”