“Kim and I will be hitting the trail right after Steven and Melissa and the kids leave tomorrow,” Davis said, watching Brody. “I’d offer to let you stay at our place and look after things while we’re gone, but Kim’s already made other arrangements.”
Brody raised both hands, palms out, like the not-too-worried victim of a stick-up. “No problem,” he said, after a pointed look at Conner. “I’ve got a yen to sleep in my own bed, in my own room, anyway. ’Course I’ll have to sleep with one eye open, since I’ll be about as welcome as an unrepentant whore in church.”
Davis leveled a glance at Conner, put an arm around Brody’s shoulders and steered him away, toward the barbecue area, where the grill was smoking and food was being handed out. “Don’t say anything to Kim,” the older man began, his voice carrying back to Conner, “but there’s this pair of boots she donated to the rummage sale—”
In spite of everything, Conner chuckled. If Davis Creed was anything, he was persistent—some would say stubborn—just like the rest of their kin.
After giving himself a few moments to cool off, Conner made his way to Kim’s side. She immediately turned to face him.
“Thanks for not making a scene,” she said, not unkindly but with the quiet directness they’d all come to expect from her. “This get-together means a lot to Steven. It’s his way of showing off his wife and kids to the hometown folks, and I’d hate to see that get ruined.”
“I hear you, Kim,” Conner replied. Brody and Davis were in line for grub by then, each of them holding a throwaway plate and jawing with folks around them. “But if anybody ruins this shindig, it won’t be me.”
Real pain flickered in Kim’s eyes. Conner’s biological mother had died soon after giving birth to him and Brody, leaving Blue alone and grief-stricken, with no clue as to how to look after two squalling, premature newborns, and this woman had stepped up, loved them like her own. She’d been firm, even strict sometimes, Kim had, but there had never been a single moment when Conner had doubted her devotion, and he was pretty sure Brody would have said the same.
They’d been lucky to have Kim in their lives, and even luckier to have Davis, because their uncle had run the ranch for them after Blue’s death, and guarded their interests with absolute integrity. On top of that, he’d been a father to them.
“If only you and Brody could get along,” Kim said sadly.
“That requires trust,” Conner replied, his voice quiet. “And Brody and I don’t have that anymore.” Without conscious effort, he sought Tricia again, with his eyes, found her, and he was heartened by the mere sight of her.
Why was that?
Kim, typically, had followed Conner’s gaze, registered that he was watching Tricia, even though he would have preferred to keep that particular tidbit of information to himself. “Tricia McCall?” Kim asked, her voice very soft, pitched to go no further than Conner’s ears. “My faith in your judgment is restored, Conner Creed. Frankly, it’s a mystery to me why a woman like that is still single.”
“Maybe she likes being single,” Conner suggested.
“The way you like being single, Conner?” Kim immediately retorted.
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.
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“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.
“I’ve never been on a horse in my life,” Tricia replied. It wasn’t that she didn’t like horses, just that they were so big, and so unpredictable.
Diana was an accomplished equestrian, and because of that, Sasha was comfortable around the huge creatures.
“Well, then,” Carolyn said, spreading her hands for emphasis and grinning a wide, Julia Roberts grin, “it’s time you learned, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know—”
Just then, Sasha rushed over. Sometimes Tricia thought the child had superpowers—particularly as far as her hearing was concerned. Just moments before, she’d been on the other side of the campground, playing chasing games with other kids and several dogs. Let the word horse be spoken, though, and she was Johnny-on-the-spot.
“I want to go riding,” Sasha crowed. “Please, please, please—”
“Do you read lips or something?” Tricia asked.
“Matt’s uncle Conner is going to ask us to go riding, with a bunch of other people. Matt heard him talking about it, and he told me, and you’ve got to say yes, because I honestly don’t know how I’ll go on if you don’t!”
Tricia chuckled and gave one of Sasha’s pigtails a gentle tug. “When is this big ride supposed to take place?” she asked, hoping nobody would guess that she was stalling.
“Next Sunday, after the chili feed and the rummage sale are over,” Sasha expounded, breathless with excitement. “It’ll be the last of the good weather, before the snow comes.”
“We’ll see,” Tricia said.
Carolyn was still standing there, smiling.
“Please!” Sasha implored, clasping her hands together as if in prayer and looking up at Tricia with luminous hope in her eyes.
“I have to ask your mom and dad first,” Tricia told her, laying a calming hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “I’ll send them a text, and when they land in Paris, they’ll read it and we’ll probably have our answer right away.”
“They’ll say yes,” Sasha said confidently, beaming now. “I ride with Mom all the time.” The smile faded. “We mostly just ride in arenas and stuff, because Seattle’s such a big city. In France, we probably won’t get to do it at all. But this is real riding, on a real ranch, just like in that movie, City Slickers.”
Tricia and Carolyn exchanged looks, both of them smiling now.
Somehow, they’d gone from being acquaintances to being friends.
“
Not too much like it, I hope,” Tricia said. “And that’s what we are, isn’t it? A pair of city slickers?”
“Speak for yourself,” Sasha joked, folding her arms decisively in front of her little chest and jutting out her chin. “I might live in a city, but I know how to ride a horse.”
“Yes, you do,” Tricia conceded. “Now, what do you say we head for home? Valentino probably needs to go out for a walk, and Winston likes to have his supper early.”
“Can we give Winston sardines?” Sasha asked. “It’s Sunday, and he always gets sardines on Sunday. That’s what you said.”
“It is indeed what I said,” Tricia answered, nodding to Carolyn as the other woman waved goodbye and walked off. “And I am a woman of my word.”
“Good,” Sasha said, in a tone of generous approval.
Tricia took the little girl’s hand. “Let’s go thank Matt’s dad and mom for inviting us to the barbecue,” she said. “Then we’ll go home and walk Valentino and give Winston his sardines.”
Sasha yawned widely and against her will, politely putting a hand over her mouth. It was still fairly early in the day, but she’d been running around in the fresh air for a couple of hours now, laughing and playing with a horde of energetic country kids, and she probably wasn’t over the jet-lag of the trip from Seattle.
By the time Sasha had had a warm bath and watched part of a Disney movie on DVD, she’d be asleep on her feet.
“Can I send the text to Mom and Dad?” she asked, when goodbyes and thank-yous had been said, and the two of them were back in Tricia’s Pathfinder, headed toward home. “I know how to do it.”
Tricia smiled, remembering the message she’d received from Sasha before, from the aquarium in Seattle. “Sure,” she said. She pulled over to one side of the road, just long enough to extract the cell from her purse and hand it to Sasha. “Remember, your mom and dad’s plane didn’t leave Sea-Tac until this morning, so they’re still in transit.”
Sasha sighed in contented resignation. “And that means they won’t get the message until they land. I know that already.”
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