Heart Of A Cowboy: Creed's Honor / Unforgiven

“Who was that?” Sasha inquired, taking Valentino’s leash from Tricia when they reached the bottom.

Tricia laughed. “I have no idea.”

“When, though?” Sasha asked.

Tricia blinked. The child did not do segues. “Huh?”

“When are you moving back to Seattle?” Sasha sounded mildly impatient now, as they crossed the lawn to step onto the sidewalk.

“When I sell the campground and the drive-in theater,” Tricia answered, putting herself between the little girl and the dog and the rain-washed street. “And, of course, I’ll have to make sure my great-grandmother will be looked after.”

“Oh,” Sasha said, her expression serious as she weighed Tricia’s reply. “Then are you going to marry Hunter?”

Tricia sighed. For all their “carrying on,” as Natty referred to it, she and Hunter had never actually talked about marriage. “Do you want me to?” she asked, stalling.

To her surprise, Sasha made a face. “No. I just want you to live close to us again, so we can do things together, the way we used to.”

Tricia didn’t pursue her goddaughter’s obvious distaste for Hunter, though she felt a slight sting of resentment toward Diana for passing her unfair antipathy toward him on to the child. “You’re going to be living in Paris for a few years, remember? So we won’t be seeing each other as often anyway.”

Sasha looked up at her with big, worried eyes. “I miss you when we’re not together, Aunt Tricia,” she said. “You are coming to visit us in Paris, aren’t you? We could go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and visit the Louvre—”

“I’ll do my best,” Tricia promised quietly, hoping Sasha would cheer up a little. “France is a long way from here, though, and the airline ticket would cost a lot of money.”

“I’ll bet you could get a ticket with Dad’s frequent-flier miles. He’s got a million of them.”

“We’ll see,” Tricia hedged, as they all stopped to wait for Valentino to sniff the base of a streetlight.

Sasha changed the subject again, this time to the horseback ride on the Creed ranch, scheduled for the following Sunday afternoon. She was practically skipping along the sidewalk, she was so excited.

Tricia listened and smiled, gently taking Valentino’s leash from Sasha, but behind that smile, she was wishing for a gracious way to get out of the whole thing.

With Natty away, she really should help run the rummage sale and chili feed, and she’d already be super busy at the campground and RV park, with so many customers reserving spots. The biggest job—cleaning up—would come after everyone had gone home, but Murphy’s Law would be in full operation throughout the weekend, too. Things invariably went wrong with this electrical hookup or that part of the antiquated plumbing. Such situations made for unhappy campers, and Tricia had to be on call to make sure the repairs were done promptly.

Where, she wondered now, had she thought she would get the time to go riding on the Creed ranch? And what if she got hurt?

Valentino made good use of his walk, and Tricia, carrying her trusty plastic bag, picked up after him.

Back at the apartment, Valentino and Winston greeted each other as joyfully as if they’d expected to be apart forever, touching their noses and then retiring to the dog bed again.

Tricia washed up and started supper—a simple meat loaf made from canned soup—and Sasha, having been granted permission, sat down in front of the computer and went online to check her email.

It seemed to Tricia that kids today came into the world already hard-wired for all forms of technology. When she was Sasha’s age, she reflected, personal computers were just coming into common use, and things like digital cameras and MP3 players hadn’t even been invented yet. She’d listened to CDs and watched movies on VHS and wondered how her parents, not to mention her great-grandmother, had gotten by with vinyl records and analog TV.

She was considering all this, and keeping one eye on Sasha and the display on the computer monitor, plus chopping vegetables for a salad to go with the already-baking meat loaf, when the wall phone jangled.

“Hello?”

“It’s you, dear,” Natty’s quavery voice responded, with relief. Whom, Tricia wondered, had her great-grandmother expected to answer?

Natty promptly answered that unspoken question, as it happened. “I meant to call Conner Creed,” she said. “I must have dialed your number out of habit. How are you, dear? How is Winston?”

Tricia barely registered the words that came after I meant to call Conner Creed, but she managed to get the gist of them. “Winston and I are both doing fine. How are you?”

Natty sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve developed a little hitch in my get-along,” she said. Then, almost too quickly, she added, “Not that it’s anything serious, of course. I planned to be back in Lonesome Bend before the weekend, so I could oversee the chili making, but it seems my heartbeat is a tiny bit irregular and the doctors don’t want me traveling just yet.”

Tricia was so alarmed that she forgot to ask why Natty wanted to call Conner. “Your heartbeat is irregular? I don’t like the sound of that—”

“I’ll be fine,” Natty broke in, chirpy as a bird. “Don’t you dare waste a moment worrying about me.”

Tricia closed her eyes, opened them again. Forced a smile that she hoped would be audible in her voice. “I have a visitor,” she said, and proceeded to tell her great-grandmother all about Sasha and the move to Paris. “Oh,” honor compelled her to add, at the tail end of the conversation, “and I’m fostering a dog. I hope you don’t mind. He’s really very well behaved and Winston seems to like him a lot.”

“I didn’t object to Rusty,” Natty said, sounding less shaky-voiced than before and thereby lifting Tricia’s spirits, “and I certainly won’t object to this one. You’re alone too much. A dog is at least some company.”

Sasha, eavesdropping shamelessly, frowned.

When Natty and Tricia finally said goodbye, Sasha planked herself in front of Tricia, hands on her hips. “You’re just fostering Valentino?” Sasha demanded. “He doesn’t get to stay with you?”

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_17659c9d-1ed9-5232-ad97-f3c9e0ae215c)

CONNER, WHO HAD taken his sandwich and his can of beer out onto the porch so he could watch the rain fall while he ate—and, in the process, ignore Brody—fumbled for his ringing cell phone, juggled it and finally rasped a gruff “Hello?” into the speaker.

His favorite elderly lady announced herself in a perky tone. “Natty McCall here,” she said brightly. “I am speaking to Conner, aren’t I?”

He chuckled. “You are,” he said. Seated in the wooden swing some ancestor had added, Conner shifted to set the beer and his sandwich plate aside on a small wicker table. “Are you back in town, Natty, or do we have to get by without you for a little while longer?”

“You always were a charmer,” Natty said, all aflutter. “Alas, I’ve been detained in Denver for a little longer, and I have a favor to ask.”

Conner smiled at her terminology—the word detained made it sound as if she’d been arrested. “Have you been carousing around the Mile High City again, Natty?” he teased. “Riding mechanical bulls in honky-tonks and the like?”

She tittered at that, well aware that he was joking, but probably a little bit flattered to be thought capable of walking on the wild side, too. “I do declare,” she said, and he could actually hear a blush in her voice.

That was when the screen door creaked on its hinges, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brody step out onto the porch. “You know you’re my best girl,” he told her. “What’s the favor?”

Natty was warming to her subject; there was a sense of revving up in the way she spoke—it reminded him of the toy cars and trucks he and Brody had as kids, the kind a kid winds up by rolling them fast and hard on the floor before letting them speed away. “Nothing big,” she said. “I’d like you to check on my house now and then, that’s all. Just to make sure everything’s all right with—well—with the plumbing and things of that sort.”

Conner raised his brows slightly, avoiding Brody’s gaze, though he could see out of the corner of his eye that his brother was leaning idly against the porch rail, rain dripping from the eaves in a gray curtain behind him, his arms loosely folded. He wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t listening in.

“The plumbing?” Conner echoed, searching his memory for any occasion when Natty had expressed concern about the pipes in her house, to him, anyway.

It crossed his mind that the old woman might be up to some matchmaking between him and Tricia, but he quickly dismissed the thought as unworthy of Natty.

“Pipes can freeze, you know,” Natty fretted, her voice still picking up speed. “And I would hate to come home and find that there had been a flood in my kitchen or something like that. Those floors are original to the house, and it would be a pity if they were ruined, being irreplaceable and all—”

“Natty,” Conner interrupted gently.

She paused, drew an audible breath and let it out again. “What?”

“I’ll be happy to check on the plumbing at your place,” he said.