A Creed in Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  Melissa felt cold all over. “Poor Velda,” she said. “That woman cannot catch a break.”

  “She’s an inpatient at the clinic over in Indian Rock. I thought I should let you know ahead of time because Byron hasn’t been told yet. He’s bound to be shaken up, not to mention furious, and I figure he’ll want to go after Nathan Carter himself. If he does that, obviously, he’ll be back in jail for sure.”

  Melissa nodded slowly. “Do you have a plan?”

  “If it weren’t for Matt, I’d have Byron stay at my place until he settles down or Carter is in custody, whichever comes first. There are too many unknown factors in the equation, of course, and I’m not about to risk Matt’s being hurt. Tom and I talked it over, and he’s willing to take the boy in, since it’s just him and Elvis. God knows whether Byron will agree or not.”

  Melissa pondered the idea. Given Byron’s history with the sheriff, it didn’t seem likely, but stranger things had happened.

  “Thanks,” she said stiffly, and this time when she moved to enter Tom’s office, Steven didn’t get in her way.

  BYRON WAS OUT OF THE CELL and back in his civilian clothes, plunked sullenly in a chair next to Tom’s desk. Andrea stood behind that chair, her hands resting on Byron’s taut shoulders.

  Following Melissa into the large, open room, Steven shifted his focus from her shapely posterior to the tasks at hand.

  His gaze snagged with Tom’s.

  “You must be out of your mind,” Byron blurted, glaring at the sheriff.

  Elvis slunk over, placed his muzzle on the young man’s blue-jeaned thigh and made a soft sound full of sorrowful affection.

  Byron automatically stroked the dog’s head, but he went right on trying to bore a hole through Tom Parker with his eyes.

  Tom, perched casually on a corner of his big desk, looked unflappable. Initially, Steven had pegged the man for a rube, but he’d since revised his opinion. “I reckon three-quarters of the people I know would agree, since I just invited you to bunk on my screened-in sunporch for a while.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Byron snapped. Andrea’s fingers tightened noticeably, and he shrugged her off.

  Tom glanced in Steven’s direction, and Steven nodded in response. Cleared his throat.

  “Byron,” he said, “your mother has been hurt—”

  Byron leaped to his feet and whirled around so fast that his chair toppled over and both Elvis and Andrea had to jump out of the way. “What happened to my mom?” Byron demanded. “How bad is—?”

  Steven held up both hands, palms out. “She’ll be fine, Byron. They’re keeping her at the clinic a day or two, mostly for observation, but she’s going to be all right.”

  Byron reddened, and clenched both fists at his sides. “He did it, didn’t he? That son-of-a-bitch Nathan Carter hurt my mother!”

  Melissa went to stand beside a trembling, wide-eyed Andrea, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulders, giving her an encouraging squeeze. Essentially, holding her up.

  Tom spoke next, quietly and with authority. “That’s what she told Deputy Ferguson when he took her to the clinic last night,” he said, watching Byron. Like Steven, he was poised to land on the kid if his temper got any further out of hand. “Velda has some cracked ribs, two black eyes and a split lip. And if there’s one thing your mother doesn’t need right now, it’s for you to get yourself into trouble all over again.”

  Byron calmed himself a little, but not quite enough for Steven and Tom to let down their guard. He swore under his breath and thrust a hand through his rumpled hair, and his eyes filled with angry tears.

  “You must have known it was Nathan who robbed the Stop & Shop,” Steven said reasonably, watching Byron. “Why didn’t you tell me, or Tom?”

  Byron seemed to deflate, like a balloon two days after the party. He groped his way back into his chair. Glanced up at Andrea with an expression of such profound concern that Steven himself was moved by it. “I would have, when the time was right,” he finally replied, “but I was in here and Carter was out there where he could do anything he wanted, and I was afraid for the people I care about.”

  “Are you ready to tell me where you were headed last night, when you wrecked your mother’s car and Sheriff Parker hauled you in?” Maybe Tom had gotten an answer to that question in the interim, but Steven was still in the dark.

  Byron’s shoulders sagged, and he spent a few moments petting Elvis before he made his reply. “I just panicked, that’s all,” he confessed. “I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to get away and hide out someplace, so I wouldn’t have to go back to prison.”

  Tom’s response surprised everybody. “I can see why you’d freak out,” he said. He paused, gave a sigh, but his gaze was steady on the younger man’s face. “There’s an APB out on Carter,” he went on, “and we’ll get him. But it’s my job—mine and the department’s—to bring him in, not yours. You try to take matters into your own hands and you will go to jail, for violating your parole at the very least.”

  Byron swallowed, nodded again.

  Andrea moved away from Melissa and approached Byron’s chair. Laid a hand on his shoulder, like before. “You ought to stay with Sheriff Parker,” she said, very softly. “It’s good of him to offer, Byron. He’s trying to help you.”

  A smile crooked the corner of Tom’s mouth. “Elvis is all for taking in a roommate,” he said.

  Byron didn’t move for a long time. Then he put his hand on top of Andrea’s, gently squeezed her fingers.

  “Okay,” he said.

  And one matter, at least, was settled.

  Now, Steven thought ruefully, to settle everything else that’s gone wrong lately.

  As though reading his mind, Melissa looked at him and narrowed her eyes, in a like-hell sort of way. She told Andrea to take the day off, asked Tom to keep her posted on the statewide hunt for Nathan Carter, and breezed past Steven like he wasn’t even there.

  The door snapped shut behind her.

  Steven immediately followed. He knew he was probably making bad matters worse, but he damn well couldn’t help himself.

  He caught up to her at the door of her office.

  “Melissa,” he ground out. “Wait—”

  “Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to deal with you right now.”

  He steered her inside the room where Andrea normally worked, and closed the door. “Well, that’s just tough, counselor, because you are going to deal with me.”

  She glared up at him, folded her arms. Her words flew like well-aimed bullets, staccato and dead on target. “It was all a mistake. You and me, I mean. I should have known better. Case closed.”

  “Melissa,” Steven heard himself say, “that’s crazy.”

  She was on a roll. “You do criminal defense. I’m a prosecutor. We don’t think the same way.”

  “Of course we don’t think the same way,” Steven countered easily. “Why would two intelligent, independent adults even want that?”

  “Do the math,” Melissa persisted. “We might as well be from different planets.”

  “Mars and Venus?” Steven teased.

  “Very funny,” she replied. But she didn’t look or sound all that amused.

  Steven tried again. “What I meant was—”

  “I don’t care what you meant, Steven.”

  “I can see that,” he answered calmly. “So, what happened, Melissa? Was your mother scared by a member of the Dream Team when she was pregnant with you?”

  “Ha-ha,” Melissa said.

  “Can’t we just agree to disagree?”

  “Yes,” she said, after swallowing visibly. “We can agree to disagree. How about forever?”

  Steven whistled, long and low. “Hello? Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little here?”

  “All we have to do is pretend nothing happened—”

  “No,” Steven interrupted flatly. “We aren’t going to do that.”

  “Why not?”

>   Damn, she was stubborn. Too bad he found that quality so attractive in a woman. Or, at least, in this woman.

  “Because it did happen.”

  “Now you’re just nitpicking,” she protested.

  Steven rolled his eyes. “We went to bed together,” he said slowly and with emphasis.

  “Keep your voice down!” Melissa retorted, glancing toward the door.

  He flung out his hands. “I give up.”

  “Good,” Melissa said. “It’s about time.”

  He leaned in, so their noses were almost touching. “For now,” he clarified. Then he left her standing there, and strode out into the corridor, headed back to Tom’s office.

  He had business to attend to—and he’d better put Melissa O’Ballivan out of his head.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “THIS IS AN INTERVENTION,” Olivia announced solemnly, a week and a half after Melissa’s last conversation with Steven Creed.

  Melissa looked around Olivia and Tanner’s living room, sweeping Meg and Ashley up in an indignant glance.

  “You tricked me,” she said, in an accusing tone. Olivia had suggested that all four of them meet at her place that Thursday evening, after Melissa got off work, to discuss the parade, which was scheduled for the following night. Ostensibly, her devoted sisters and sister-in-law were supposed to assist her with last-minute logistics.

  What a sucker she was.

  “We had to do something,” Ashley said earnestly, near tears. “You’ve gone around the bend.”

  “You’re definitely not yourself,” Meg added, plainly concerned. She took in Melissa’s outfit. “Since when do you go to work in sweats and sneakers?”

  “Without makeup,” Olivia pointed out.

  “And look at your hair,” Ashley all but wailed.

  “Plus you haven’t been running,” Olivia contributed. This whole confrontational thing had probably been her idea—she’d always been the bossy big-sister type.

  “Maybe I’m a little depressed,” Melissa admitted, feeling defensive. “It’ll pass as soon as they catch Nathan Carter and this damn parade is over.”

  “Even after you and Dan parted ways, you didn’t let yourself go like this,” Ashley pressed, waving off Melissa’s words as she spoke. “We’re worried about you.”

  “You’re falling apart,” Olivia said.

  “I think this mood you’re in has something to do with Steven Creed,” Meg insisted. “You’ve been different ever since he hit town.”

  Olivia and Ashley nodded in unison.

  “No, it does not have to do with—him,” Melissa lied. The truth was, she couldn’t seem to get the man out of her mind, even for her own good.

  “Level with us,” Olivia urged, her eyes softening. “We want to help you.”

  “I need help with the parade,” Melissa said. “Not my personal life.”

  Olivia, Ashley and Meg all looked at each other, exchanging unspoken messages.

  Melissa stood up.

  “Sit down,” Olivia said firmly.

  Melissa sat. “This is silly,” she said.

  “Are you in love with this Steven Creed person?” Ashley wanted to know.

  “No,” Melissa said, hoping she sounded convincing. By then, she was so confused, she didn’t know what she felt. Was wanting somebody—not just physically, but emotionally and mentally and even spiritually, for pity’s sake—the same as loving him? “It was just a case of temporary lust.” She waved one hand dismissively, much as Ashley had done earlier. They were, after all, twins. “Anyway, it’s over.”

  “What happened?” Meg asked.

  “That,” Melissa said, “is none of your business—any of you—but I’ll answer anyway. Yes, there was an attraction. But Steven and I are both lawyers. Worse yet, we have very different viewpoints, since he’s Defense, and I’m Prosecution. While that may not seem like a big deal to most people, it constitutes irrevocable differences in our private philosophies. When it comes to our philosophies of life, we’re polar opposites.”

  Ashley shook her head, marveling. “What a lot of gobbledegook,” she said.

  “I’d call it BS,” Olivia interjected.

  “Now you know why I didn’t want to talk about this,” Melissa said loftily. She stood up again, and this time she meant it. She was leaving. “I knew none of you would understand. And why should you? All three of you have children, and happy marriages—”

  “Melissa—” Ashley said.

  Melissa picked up her purse, ferreted inside it for her car keys and headed for the Quinns’ front door. There, she paused and turned to assess—very coolly—the three other women who had summoned her on false pretenses. “The parade starts at six tomorrow night,” she said. “We’re gathering at four, in the parking lot behind the high school. If any of you actually want to help, be there.”

  Nobody said anything.

  Naturally.

  Slinging the strap of her purse over one shoulder, Melissa left with a flourish.

  IT HAD BEEN OVER A WEEK since he’d seen Melissa, except at a distance, and Steven did his damnedest to carry on as if nothing had changed.

  Every morning, he fed Matt and the dog breakfast, made do with stale, reheated coffee himself. At night, he slept heavily, mired in mixed-up dreams he couldn’t remember two seconds after he opened his eyes, and he sure as hell didn’t feel rested—more like a wino, hung over after a three-day binge.

  Quite a trick, since he hadn’t had anything to drink since before Brody left.

  Leaving the tour bus that Friday morning, locking it behind him, Steven was mildly pleased to see that the renovation crew had already arrived to put in another day’s work. The barn, a nifty-looking prebuilt structure, already had walls and a roof and, by Monday, the stalls would be in, as well. He stopped to confer briefly with the foreman, who told him they were putting up drywall in the bedrooms that day, and they’d start installing the kitchen and bathroom fixtures tomorrow.

  “If you don’t watch it,” Steven said, only half kidding, “you’re going to give the contracting business a good name.”

  The foreman smiled at the comment, puny as it was, and informed Steven that the company was family-owned, had been in business for four generations and there had been at least one member of the clan on one crew or another from the first.

  The watchword, Steven thought, was continuity. It was a way of life with most of the Creeds—the McKettricks and the O’Ballivans, too. And it was what Steven wanted for Matt, for himself, and for any descendants inclined to live out their lives on a ranch.

  He hadn’t reckoned on Melissa when he’d decided to put down roots in Stone Creek, but life was full of things nobody had reckoned on, wasn’t it? A man had to do the best he could with whatever hand he was dealt, press on, take the good with the bad.

  Some family histories just happened. Others were deliberately created.

  Steven intended to build a dandy one, and to do that, he’d need a wife. Eventually.

  Things would turn out just fine, he assured himself, while he was buckling Matt into his safety seat in the truck, as long as he stayed away from lady lawyers— Cindy aside, he’d never been able to get along with them, outside the office or the courtroom, even when they played on his team.

  Insanity, the saying went, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get different results.

  Melissa was beautiful and funny and smart, everything he admired in a woman, but when push came to shove, she had the prosecutorial mind-set: The accused was guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around. And Steven, to the roots of his being, was all about the other way around.

  Matt brought him out of his reflections with a jolt, his tone worried. “You look really sad.”

  “Maybe I am a little,” Steven said, once he’d helped Zeke onto the seat, next to his pint-size master.

  “Because you’re not going out on dates with Melissa anymore?”

  “Partly,” Steven replied. He never l
ied to the boy, but he wasn’t inclined to burden a five-year-old with adult problems, either. He just wished Matt hadn’t developed a shining set of high hopes as far as the Stone Creek County prosecutor was concerned.

  In Matt’s mind, Steven was sure, Melissa was on the fast track to becoming his new mommy. His drawing of the stick-people family was still taped to the refrigerator door, and he wouldn’t hear of taking it down, except to pore over it and add a detail here and there, with a pencil or a stub of crayon.

  “I guess it’s grown-up stuff?” Matt asked, with a certain resignation.

  Steven grinned, though he felt hollow inside. “Grownup stuff,” he confirmed. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Okay,” Matt agreed, but he didn’t seem convinced.

  Steven shut the door, walked around the truck and hauled himself up behind the wheel. He was only thirty-five, but he felt about eighty that morning.

  The dreams he couldn’t remember still weighed on him.

  He shoved a hand through his hair and started the engine.

  Matt was quiet during the drive into town; Steven could almost hear the gears grinding in that little head.

  When they pulled up at Creekside Academy, Matt didn’t seem happy to be there, as he usually did.

  Kids, Steven reassured himself, as Matt dawdled along the sidewalk, delaying entering the building for as long as he could, are resilient.

  Must be nice, he thought, trying to remember what it felt like, being good at bouncing back.

  He watched until Matt was safely inside the building, then turned and got into the truck again. Zeke, still in back, craned his neck and laved the side of Steven’s face once with his sandpaper tongue.

  Steven chuckled, checked all the mirrors and backed out of the parking space.

  The Stop & Shop was back to business as usual, had been since the morning after the robbery.