Heart Of A Cowboy: Creed's Honor / Unforgiven

His hackles didn’t exactly rise, but they twitched a little. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know perfectly well what it means,” she answered, but she rested a hand on his forearm and squeezed. “Even without these two eyes in my head, I would still have known how much you want somebody to share your life. Whenever you so much as look at Steven, or Melissa, or any of those kids—even the dog, for heaven’s sake—it’s right there in that handsome mug of yours. A sort of lonely hunger.”

“‘Lonely hunger’?” Conner asked, with a lightness he didn’t feel. “You read too many of those romance novels.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you or Brody or, for that matter, Davis, to read a few romances,” Kim said, undaunted. “That way, you might know how a woman likes to be treated.”

Conner let out a huff. “My point,” he said, “is this—don’t get carried away—Tricia’s involved with some guy in Seattle. Keeps his picture on her computer monitor as a screen saver.”

Kim smiled. “You’ve been to Tricia’s place?”

Conner felt his neck go warm. “Yes,” he answered. “I took Natty a load of firewood, as I do every fall and right on through the winter, and since the old gal was away, I needed somebody to let me in so I could fill the wood boxes. Tricia lives upstairs, above Natty’s.”

Kim was musing now. Thoughtful, but still amused. “Maybe the guy in that picture is her brother or just a good friend. He might even be gay.”

“Right,” Conner said dryly. “And Santa Claus might come down my chimney on Christmas Eve and stuff a Playboy bunny into my stocking.”

Kim arched an eyebrow, but she was smiling again, full-out. “Bitter,” she said. “Conner Creed, you are a bitter man. And in the prime of your life, too.”

“I’m not bitter,” Conner retorted, knowing that what his stand-in mom said was true. He was bitter, over what he perceived as Brody’s betrayal of his trust, over the way he’d never met the right woman, as so many of the guys he knew had—Steven in particular.

“Don’t try to B.S. me, Conner,” Kim said. “I know you better than you know yourself. You’re taken with Tricia, and there’s not a darn thing wrong with that. Man up, why don’t you, and ask her out?”

“To do what?” Conner scuffed, strangely unsettled by the idea of making a move on Tricia. What if she said no? What if she said yes? “Go to a hoedown? Or maybe that rummage sale slash chili feed? Anyway, she has company, a little girl.”

“Sasha,” Kim clarified knowledgeably. “She’s Tricia’s best friend’s daughter, and she’s ten years old. Also, she’s horse crazy, like most girls her age.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, you thick-headed cowboy,” Kim replied, with exaggerated patience and wry affection, “that if you invite Sasha to go riding on the ranch, Tricia will automatically come with her. That’s how Davis and I fell in love, you know. We were on a trail ride together, with a bunch of friends, and the first night, we got to talking by the campfire, and it was happy trails from then on. We’ve been traveling side by side ever since.”

“In that case,” Conner answered, his tone dry, “I’ll take care to avoid trail rides.”

Kim quirked a smile. “Don’t give up your day job,” she whispered, before turning to walk away. “You’d never make it as a comedian.”

Conner watched her go. And he steered clear of the chow line, since his stomach felt all tensed up, as if it were closed for business. If Steven and Melissa’s visit hadn’t been such a short one, he would have gotten into his truck and gone home.

Maybe saddled a horse and headed up into the green-and-gold-and-crimson foothills, where the aspens whispered, where the streams tumbled over rocks and, except for the occasional call of a bird, those were pretty much the only sounds.

Up there, in the spectacular hills, a man could hear himself think. Get some kind of handle on the stuff that was—or wasn’t—happening in his life.

But he was stuck, for now anyway.

Might as well make the best of it, and join the party.

* * *

TRICIA HELPED WITH the cleanup, telling herself that she ought to leave the barbecue now that she’d put in a cordial appearance, but the bonfire was nice and people were having fun, especially the children, and somebody was tuning up a banjo. The thought of going home, even though Sasha would be with her, was an intensely lonely prospect.

Carolyn Simmons, perhaps the only person in Lonesome Bend who was even more rootless than Tricia, helped, too. A gypsy with no apparent home, Carolyn joined in with the other women and a few men, gathering paper plates and cups and plastic flatware from the ground and the tops of the picnic tables, stuffing the detritus into garbage bags.

“Are you volunteering at the rummage sale again this year?” Carolyn asked Tricia, her tone and manner at once casual and friendly.

“Natty’s been trying to pin me down for kitchen duty,” Tricia said, smiling in response. “I think she only wants me to guard the family chili recipe, though.” Like just about everyone in Lonesome Bend, Tricia was curious about Carolyn, who was always ready with a cheerful hello or a helping hand, but extremely private, too. She kept a roof over her head by housesitting, mainly for the reclusive movie stars, corporate execs and other famous types who bought or built enormous homes outside town but rarely used them. Besides that, her only known income was from the original clothes she designed and sold online or through consignment boutiques.

Carolyn chuckled at Tricia’s answer. She had shoulder-length hair, streaked blond but somehow very natural-looking, and her eyes were wide and green, surrounded by thick lashes. “I don’t blame Natty one bit,” she said warmly. “That chili is so good it ought to be patented.”

“Amen,” Tricia agreed. The chili recipe was closely guarded indeed; only Natty and her sister, the one she was visiting in Denver, knew how to make it. The single written copy in existence was brought out of some secret hiding place every October, on the Thursday preceding the rummage sale, and carefully protected from prying eyes.

Even Tricia, a true McCall, had merely managed glimpses of that tattered old recipe card over the years, with its bent corners and its spidery handwriting slanting hard to the right, though Natty had intimated that it might be time to think about “passing the torch.” That remark never failed to alarm Tricia, who adored her great-grandmother, and couldn’t imagine a world without her in it.

“How is Natty, anyway?” Carolyn asked, dropping a full garbage bag into one of the trash containers and dusting off her hands against the thighs of her black jeans. “I usually run into her at the grocery store or the library, but I haven’t seen her around lately.”

Tricia explained about the Denver trip, and quickly realized that Carolyn wasn’t listening. Her gaze had snagged on Brody Creed, laughing with friends on the other side of the campground, and she seemed powerless to jerk it away again.

Intrigued herself, Tricia watched Brody for a few moments, too, thinking in a detached way that while he and Conner did resemble each other closely, there were obvious differences, too.

Conner moved with quiet purpose, for example, while Brody was loose-limbed, ready to change directions at any given moment, if it suited him to do so. There were other qualities, too—some of them so intuitive in nature that Tricia would have had a hard time putting names to them. She knew, somehow, that even if the Creed brothers tried to look as alike as possible, she would still know Conner from Brody in an instant. And that was puzzling indeed.

Carolyn snapped out of her own reverie a bit before Tricia did, and when their eyes met, a sort of understanding passed between them—empathy, perhaps. Or maybe just the silent admission that some questions didn’t have answers. Not obvious ones, at least.

And then Carolyn surprised Tricia by saying calmly, “What a fool I was, way back when.”

This time, it was Hunter who popped into Tricia’s mind. She shook off the image and smiled reassuringly. “Weren’t we all?”

Carolyn’s gaze strayed back to Brody, but didn’t linger. When she looked at Tricia again, it was clear that a door had closed inside Carolyn. It reminded Tricia of the way people board up a house when they know there’s a category 4 hurricane on its way. “Some of us,” she said sadly, with one more glance at Brody, “knew exactly what they were doing.”

Carolyn had a history with Brody Creed?

Whoa, Tricia thought, hoping Carolyn hadn’t noticed the way her eyes had widened for a second or two there. She’d lived part of every year in this small, close-knit community, starting with that first summer after second grade, when Joe and Laurel had called it quits and filed for a divorce, and for the better part of a year and a half since her dad’s death.

None of which meant that she was any kind of insider when it came to the locals and their secrets, but, still, she usually had a glimmer of what was going on, if only because of things Natty and her friends said in passing, when they got together to sip tea around the old woman’s kitchen table. In many ways, Lonesome Bend was like a soap opera come to life, and everybody kept up with the story line—except her, evidently.

Carolyn gave an awkward little laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “That came out sounding pretty bitchy.”

Tricia decided not to comment. Then she remembered that she was still holding her own bag of after-barbecue trash and tossed it into the bin.

“I’m going to be staying on the Creed ranch for a while,” Carolyn said, as she and Tricia walked away from the line of garbage cans. “Looking after things for Davis and Kim, I mean. It’s a great house, and they have horses, too. I have permission to ride the gentler ones, and I was wondering—”

Her voice fell away, perhaps because she’d seen something in Tricia’s face.

Tricia had felt a hard jab to her middle when Carolyn announced her next housesitting assignment, given that, living on the ranch, the other woman would be in close proximity to Conner, and, recognizing the emotion for what it was, she was ashamed. Yes, Carolyn was an attractive woman, presumably available. But she, Tricia, certainly had no business being jealous and, anyway, if Carolyn was interested in one of the Creed men, it was Brody, not Conner.

Her relief was undeniable.

“What?” she asked belatedly. “What were you wondering?”

“Well, if you and your niece might like to go trail riding sometime,” Carolyn said, almost shyly.