Heart Of A Cowboy: Creed's Honor / Unforgiven

Brody took his sweet time answering, scraping eggs onto a waiting platter and piling about a dozen strips of limp bacon into a crooked heap on top.

“I might have done just that,” Brody finally replied, crossing to set the platter down on the table with a thump before going back to the cupboard for plates and flatware, “except that they’ve already got a housesitter, and she happens not to be one of my biggest fans.”

Conner stifled an unexpected chuckle, made his face steely when Brody headed back toward the table and took one of the chairs opposite. They ate in silence for a while.

Kim had mentioned hiring somebody to stay in their house while she and Davis were on the road, Conner recalled. Most likely, it was Carolyn Simmons; she was always housesitting for one person or another.

“Carolyn,” Conner said, out loud.

Across the table, Brody looked up from his food and grinned. “What about her?”

Conner felt his neck heat up a little, realizing that there had been a considerable gap between Brody’s remark and his response. “I was just wondering how you managed to make her hate you already,” he said, somewhat defensively, stabbing at the last bite of his fried eggs with his fork.

“I didn’t say Carolyn hated me,” Brody explained, the grin lingering in his eyes, though there was no vestige of it on his mouth. “I said she isn’t one of my biggest fans.”

He paused, finished off a slice of bacon, and finally went on. “We have a—history, Carolyn and I.”

To Conner’s knowledge, Brody hadn’t been anywhere near Lonesome Bend in better than a decade, and Carolyn hadn’t moved to town until a few years ago. Which begged the question, “What kind of history?”

Brody sighed deeply, crossed his fork and knife in the middle of his plate and propped his elbows on the table’s edge, his expression thoughtful. Maybe even a little grim. His gaze was fixed on something in the next county.

“The usual kind,” he said, at some length.

“How do you know her?”

Why, Conner wondered, did he want to know? He liked Carolyn, but things had never gone beyond that, attraction-wise.

Brody met his eyes with a directness that took Conner by surprise. “It’s a small world,” he said. After a beat, he added, “You interested in her? Carolyn, I mean?”

Conner made a snortlike sound, pushed his own plate away. “No,” he said.

“Then why all the questions?”

“What questions?”

“‘What kind of history?’” Brody repeated, with exaggerated patience. “‘How do you know her?’ Those questions.”

“Maybe I was just trying to make conversation,” Conner hedged. “Did you ever think of that?”

“Like hell you were,” Brody scoffed, with a false chuckle. “You can’t wait to see the back of me and we both know it. But here’s the problem, little brother—I’m not going anywhere.”

Something tightened in Conner’s throat. He might have said he was sorry to hear that Brody was staying, but he couldn’t get the words out.

Brody shoved back his chair and stood, picking up his empty plate to put it in the sink, the way Kim had trained all three of “her boys” to do after a meal, from the time they could reach that high. “I could tell you a few things, Conner,” he said hoarsely, “if I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that you’d listen.”

With that, Brody turned and walked away.

He set his plate in the sink and banked the fire in the cookstove and slammed out the back door—after shrugging into Conner’s flannel-lined denim jacket.

* * *

FOLKS WERE LINED up all the way to the corner that next Saturday morning when Tricia and Sasha drove past the community center and circled around back to park in one of a half-dozen spots reserved for volunteers. They’d already stopped by River’s Bend, where every camping spot and RV hookup was in profitable use by the annual influx of visitors, just to make sure everything was in order.

Although they’d spent much of the previous day helping to set up for the big sale, and were therefore in the much-envied position of having seen the plethora of merchandise ahead of time, Sasha was impressed by the size of the crowd.

“There must be a lot of hoarders in this town,” she said. “Why do they want to buy the stuff other people gave away?”

Tricia chuckled, then squeezed the Pathfinder into the last parking space and checked her watch. “It must be the thrill of the hunt,” she answered. “Or it could be the chili. Natty’s been offered a small fortune for the recipe.”

Sasha considered the reply, still fastened into her booster seat, then observed, “It was funny, how you made all those other ladies turn their backs while you put in the secret ingredients.”

After consulting Natty by telephone the day before, Tricia had run the family chili recipe to ground and memorized the unique combination of spices some ancestor had dreamed up. She had indeed insisted that all present look away while she extracted various metal boxes and sprinkle jars from a plain paper bag and added them to the massive kettles of beans already simmering on the burners of the community center’s commercial-size stove.

Her great-grandmother’s cronies, tight-lipped at all the “folderol” involved in keeping the formula a secret, had agreed only because the event just wouldn’t be the same without Natty’s chili. Indeed, Minerva Snyder had allowed, there might even be a riot if they failed to deliver.

Chuckling at the memory, Tricia got out of the rig and went to help Sasha release the snaps and buckles holding her in the booster seat.

Sasha’s eyes twinkled with excitement. She’d sneaked a peek at the mysterious items while Tricia was doctoring the chili the day before and, given the child’s IQ, Tricia had no doubt that she could have recited the recipe from memory. “Remember,” Tricia said, putting a finger to her lips, “Natty doesn’t want anybody to know what’s in that chili.”

After jumping to the ground, Sasha nodded importantly. “Well, there are beans and some hamburger. Everybody knows that part.”

“Yes,” Tricia agreed, going around behind the Pathfinder to raise the hatch. “Everybody knows that part.” They’d left Valentino at home, contentedly sharing his dog bed with Winston while they both snoozed, but Tricia, feeling inspired, had scrounged up a few more donations the night before, including the pink furry slippers Diana had given her, tossing them into a cardboard box with some other stuff. She’d put the slippers at the bottom, hoping Sasha wouldn’t spot them and report the incident to her mother the next time they talked or texted.

Just as Tricia turned around, having hoisted the somewhat unwieldy box into both arms, juggling it awkwardly while she shut the hatch again, Conner Creed walked up to her. Her breath caught, and the box wobbled in her arms.

Conner took it from her just before she would have spilled its contents into the dusty gravel of the parking lot.

How did he manage to startle her the way he did? Tricia wondered, bedazzled, as always, by his ready grin. It was an unfair advantage, that grin.

“Hello,” she said stupidly.

“Howdy,” he replied, holding the cumbersome box easily in his two muscular arms. He looked down at Sasha and winked. “Hey,” he greeted the enthralled little girl. “Are we still on for the trail ride tomorrow afternoon?”

Sasha nodded eagerly and then blurted out a happy “Yes!” for good measure.

“Good,” Conner said, heading toward the back door of the community center, which was propped open with a big chunk of wood that had probably served as somebody’s chopping block, sometime way back. People in Lonesome Bend liked to put things to use, no matter how ordinary.

Tricia locked the Pathfinder with the button on her key fob and followed Conner and Sasha, who was practically skipping alongside the man, toward the rear entrance.

“More stuff?” one of the women in the kitchen chimed. Several volunteers had stayed through the night, keeping an eye on the simmering pots of chili. “That Kim. She always donates twice as much rummage as anybody else in town!”

Conner, his back still turned to Tricia, chuckled at that. “True,” he said. “But Tricia brought these things.”

Tricia peeked around him, waggled her fingers in greeting. Some of Natty’s friends, like a flock of old hens, still had ruffled feathers from yesterday’s intrigue involving the spices for the chili.

One or two straightened their apron strings, and another harrumphed, but these were small-town women, basically sociable, and they wouldn’t hold a grudge—not against Natty McCall’s great-granddaughter, anyway.

Conner seemed to know where to set the box down—there were plenty of last-minute donations, it appeared, even though the door was about to open to the anxious public.