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.
MELISSA 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!”
The roar intensified.
Melissa missed the whole eight seconds of Brody’s ride, because she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the man in the aisle.
Not a vestige of his grin remained, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides.
“Uh-oh,” Davis said, low. Then, by some tacit agreement, he and Steven both got to their feet.
“Who is that?” Melissa asked Matt, who had stationed himself in her lap.
“That’s Conner,” Matt said. “Him and Brody are twins, just like you and your sister. Only they’re the kind that look alike.”
Conner, his face hard with anger, looked at Davis and Steven and turned to head back down the aisle.
Melissa looked to Kim, and saw that the other woman was worried.
Davis and Steven followed Conner, and soon, all three of them were out of sight.
“What’s going on?” Melissa asked Steven’s stepmother.
“World War III, probably,” Kim answered, but there was a flicker of something in her eyes, despite her serious expression. On some level, she was pleased by this development.
“Are we just going to sit here?” Melissa asked, fretful.
“Yes,” Kim replied firmly. “For Matt’s sake, if no one else’s.”
“Where did Dad and Grandpa go?” Matt asked.
“They’re getting hot dogs,” Kim said, without missing a beat.
Melissa looked at her in surprise.
But Kim just smiled and turned her attention back to the rodeo, where Brody’s score was just being posted on the big board above the announcer’s booth.
The numbers were impressive; he’d be hard to beat.
But a whole bunch of other cowboys were ready, willing and able to give it a try.
CONNER WAS ABOUT to climb back into his dusty black truck and speed away when Steven and Davis caught up to him.
Davis reached out and spun his nephew around, thrust him hard against the side of the rig. “Didn’t you get the memo, Conner?” he asked, through his teeth. “A Creed doesn’t run. From anything.”
“Tell that to my twin brother!” Conner spat furiously, his eyes shooting azure-blue flames.
“Why don’t you tell him?” Steven asked, folding his arms. His boot heels were planted hard in the gravel of the fairgrounds, and he’d widened his stance slightly, too, just in case Conner threw a punch.
Stranger things had happened.
“I’m not telling him anything,” Conner said, the words raspy and raw, like they’d scraped their way past his throat. He glared at Steven. “But I’ve got something to say to you, that’s for damn sure. You set this up. You knew, cousin. And I don’t know if I can forgive you for that.”
“Grow up,” Davis told Conner. A few stragglers, late for the rodeo, glanced in their direction, but nobody looked like they were fool enough to interfere in what was obviously a matter between close kin. “Whatever happened between you and Brody, it’s time to get past it and move on. Dammit, we’re family.”
Conner ran the back of his hand across his mouth. He was still pissed off, but out of good sense, respect for his elders, or both, he didn’t speak his mind to Davis.
Then again, he didn’t have to. It was written all over him. He was mad from the top of his hat to the soles of his battered boots, and he wouldn’t be over it anytime soon. If ever.
He turned to open his truck door, and this time Davis didn’t make a move to stop him. Neither did Steven.
It took them all by surprise when, before Conner could start up that truck of his and drive away in the proverbial cloud of dust, Brody appeared, thrusting his way between Steven and Davis and lunging at Conner.
The whole scene reminded Steven of two bucks in rutting season, circling, preparing to lock antlers.
It was unclear whether Brody pulled open the truck door, or Conner pushed from the other side, but the next thing anybody knew, the brothers were rolling around on the ground, throwing punches, grunting and obviously bent on killing each other.
Steven sighed and started toward them, but Davis caught hold of his arm. The old man might have been in his fifties, but he was still strong.
“Let them settle it,” Davis said.
Conner and Brody were so equally matched that Steven figured the fight would run into the middle of next week. Instead, they both wound up exhausted and rolled onto their backs in the dirt, breathing hard and cursing like a pair of old salts with seawater in their veins.
Davis grinned.
One of Tom
Parker’s deputies rushed over, red-faced. “We don’t allow fighting inside the city limits,” he blustered. An older man, significantly overweight, the deputy probably should have retired years before.
Brody hoisted himself upright and, beside him, Conner did the same.
“This isn’t settled,” Brody gasped out.
“You’re damn right it isn’t,” Conner retorted, just as short of breath.
Brody got to his feet. “I’ve gotta go,” he said.
“You scared I’ll kick your ass?” Conner asked, rising, too.
“No,” Brody bit out, “but I paid good money to compete in this rodeo, and I’ve got another event to ride in.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Conner told him.
“You’d be one chickenshit son-of-a-bitch bastard if you weren’t,” Brody retorted. He bent to retrieve his hat from the ground and whacked it against one thigh, making the dust fly.
Conner made a move toward Brody, but Davis put out his hand again, making contact with the younger man’s chest this time.
“Go make your ride,” Davis told Brody, though he was smiling warmly at the deputy the whole time. “Everything’s fine now, officer. We won’t trouble you again.”
Brody strode off toward the arena.
Conner swore and picked up his own fallen hat, punched the inside of the crown back into shape with so much force that Steven half expected his cousin’s fist to break through. He rolled his broad shoulders and then glared at Steven before plunking his hat back on his head.
“You don’t know what you’ve started,” Conner bit out. There was sadness in his eyes now, along with the lingering anger. “If you did, Steven, you’d have left Brody and me alone.”
Steven ached inside. As kids, the three of them had been close. Their summers were almost magical back then, straight out of Huckleberry Finn.
When had that changed? What had gone so wrong between Brody and Conner that they couldn’t even look at each other without tying in with fists flying?
“I guess I was hoping you’d gotten over whatever it was that came between you,” Steven said quietly. “Or whoever,” Davis put in.
Steven turned to look at his father, suddenly wondering if Davis had known what the trouble was all along.
“She’s long gone,” Davis went on, still watching Conner. “Isn’t it time you and Brody put that whole business behind you and moved on?”
A woman, Steven thought. He should have guessed that much but, back when the split happened, and Brody and Conner went their separate ways, he’d been too wrapped up in his own problems to really put his mind to it.
He’d been reeling then, from his granddad’s death, following so quickly after his mother had passed away unexpectedly. He’d been embroiled in a battle with his maternal uncles over his inheritance. Busy making a name for himself in the Denver firm where Zack worked.
In those days, he’d believed that Brody and Conner would simply work out their differences. After all, identical twins or not, they’d always had plenty of differences.
Instead, a decade had gone by, with both of them holding their grudges, unwilling to give so much as an inch.
The waste made Steven grind his back teeth. All those Thanksgivings and Christmases, when Brody’s chair at the big dining room table was empty. All those weddings and births and deaths. All those years when they could have been, should have been, a family.
When tragedy struck Jillie down, and then Zack, Davis and Kim and Conner had been there for Steven. But he’d missed Brody sorely during those days, just the same.
Now, he felt a strong and sudden—or maybe not so sudden—urge to throttle Conner, right then and there, then find Brody and do the same thing to him. To keep himself from doing just that, Steven turned on one boot heel and headed back to where Matt and Melissa were.
His cousins could do whatever they damn well pleased—they always had—but Steven was through wasting time. He was through waiting and hoping, and being scared of getting things wrong. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to get it. Soon.
MELISSA TOOK STEVEN’S HAND when he sat down beside her in the bleachers, his face still flushed with temper. “Where’s Conner?” she asked, whispering because even though Matt had moved up a few rows to sit with his buddy, Mac, she didn’t want to take the smallest chance of his overhearing.
“I don’t know,” Steven said coldly, “and I don’t care.”
“I don’t believe that,” Melissa said.
His shoulders, tense before, loosened a little as she reached up to rub Steven’s back with her palm. He gave her a sideways glance and grinned, albeit wanly.
“I love you,” he said softly.
She smiled. “Well, that’s convenient, cowboy, because I love you right back.”
“I wish we could leave—right now.”
Her eyes sparkled. “And miss the rodeo? Sacrilege! Besides, my sisters and Meg would know exactly what we were up to.”
“I’m thinking they know already,” Steven pointed out.
“Let me stay in denial as long as I can,” Melissa said.
Steven laughed, and she laid her head against his shoulder for a moment, and he forgot, at least for the time being, what it meant to be unhappy, or lonesome, or scared.
All he felt then was a quiet joy, the kind that weathers every kind of sorrow, the kind that lasts.
Forever.
“Will you marry me?” he asked quietly, his hand tightening around hers.
She smiled sweetly. “Eventually,” she answered.
And Steven kissed her, right there in the stands at the Stone Creek Rodeo, in front of God and everybody.
Let ’em look, he thought.
EPILOGUE
One year later…
MELISSA AWOKE TO STEVEN’S KISS, and his hand moving gently over her pregnancy-distended belly. The birth was still two months away, and she could feel their twin sons moving within her, wondered if they were already at odds, like Conner and Brody.
After the rodeo, Steven’s hardheaded cousins had gone their separate ways—again.
Conner returned to the ranch up at Lonesome Bend, as did Davis and Kim.
Nobody knew for sure where Brody had gone. He’d been conspicuously absent from the wedding, held in Ashley and Jack’s spacious front room at the B&B, barely three months after Steven and Melissa had first met. Even though it had been a wonderful, happy day, Melissa knew Steven missed having Brody there.
Now, Steven’s hand was moving lower on her belly.
Melissa caught hold of it and stopped his progress, which would inevitably lead to serious delay. Also, alas, serious pleasure. They didn’t make love in the usual manner these days, since she was well along with the twins, but Steven had his ways. Oh, yes, he definitely had his ways.
“There’s a wedding today, remember?” she said. “And it starts at noon.”
Tom Parker and Tessa Quinn were finally tying the knot, in the First Congregational Church, and the whole town was thrilled. Like her sisters and Meg, Melissa was involved in the preparations.
They still had crepe-paper streamers to hang in the reception hall, and folding chairs to set up, and programs to fold for the special service preceding the wedding itself. There was simply no time to waste.
Steven caressed her.
Melissa moaned. “Steven Creed,” she murmured.
“What, Melissa Creed?” he asked.
“You know damn well I can’t resist you when you do that—”
He chuckled, the sound throaty and innately masculine, and kissed her neck. And he intensified his efforts.
“Think of it this way,” he murmured, against her flesh, already kissing his way down her body. “You’ll be glowing with—happiness—”
Melissa groaned. “Steven—”
He kissed her belly, one hand playing gently with her breast, the other parting her, preparing her for pleasure.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.
Melissa’s back arch
ed slightly as he worked her with easy circles of his fingertips. “I’ll—be—late—” she protested, forestalling the inevitable. When it came to sex, her husband always got his way, and she always wound up glad he had. Still.
“Melissa?”
“What?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
Melissa swallowed and finally gave in. “No,” she gasped. “Damn you, no.”
Steven chuckled at that, and went on about his business, and five long minutes later, Melissa was in the throes of a glorious orgasm, the first of several.
ELVIS WAS SPORTING a little kerchief, made to resemble a tuxedo front, and his coat gleamed with a recent grooming. Byron Cahill, the dog’s fast friend, crouched beside him, stroking his ears, offering encouragement. Matt was nearby, too—during the ride to town, he’d beamed up at Melissa and said, “Now Tessa and Tom will be a family, like us!”
And her heart had melted into a warm pool of love for the earnest little boy, the one she already loved as completely as if she’d borne him herself.
Now, Melissa smiled. Only in Stone Creek, Arizona, would a dog serve as best man at a formal wedding.
“I hope you made sure he’s—comfortable,” Melissa said to Byron, who was now a fixture at the animal shelter and also training as a veterinary assistant, under Olivia’s guidance. She saw him practically every day, now that she was working for her sister’s foundation.
Byron flashed a grin at Melissa as he stood. “We were just outside, weren’t we, Elvis?” he said.
Andrea came to his side, and he slipped an arm around her, squeezed. Since Melissa had finished out her term as county prosecutor and declined to run for a second one, the office was held by a seasoned attorney from over in Indian Rock, and Andrea worked for him now.
Tom appeared, wearing a real tux, fiddling with his string tie. He was clearly nervous, and glanced down at Elvis, who seemed eager to take their places in front of the altar and wait for the wedding march to begin.
“Relax,” Melissa counseled, fixing her friend’s tie for him and then kissing his cheek. “The fuss will be over soon, and you’ll get to spend the rest of your life loving Tessa.”
A Creed in Stone Creek Page 31
