A Creed in Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  Zeke, who had been sniffing at his empty kibble bowl, obediently trotted over to Matt, and the two of them vanished down the hallway and into the second bedroom.

  “All right if I take a shower?” Brody asked Steven when they were alone again.

  “Of course it’s all right,” Steven said, maybe a touch more abruptly than he should have. “You need anything?”

  Brody grinned. “You mean, like a toothbrush, Boston? Hell, I haven’t sunk that low.”

  “You’re not going to tell me about the time you’ve been away, are you?” Steven asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Not yet,” Brody said, with sadness in his eyes, briefly resting a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “You asked me for a favor earlier. Now, I’m asking you for one. Let me get around to talking in my own way and my own time. I’m still sorting through things myself.”

  Steven nodded in agreement.

  Brody left the room without another word, and a few seconds later, Steven heard the shower running.

  FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS, Melissa’s life ran smoothly.

  She worked. She gained two pounds after having supper with Ashley and Jack and the one-time flashers on several nights. The tenants, meanwhile, remained on their best behavior, probably because, one, there was a child in the house and two, Jack clearly wasn’t the sort to put up with any nonsense.

  After work, she happily weeded her little patch of garden. She mediated more disagreements, thankfully minor, between the members of the Parade Committee, and ran into Steven fairly often—in the post office, in the grocery store, once at the Sunflower Café, when she stopped for a bottle of water during her run, and another time at the dry cleaner’s next door to his new office. He introduced her to his visiting cousin, Brody.

  These encounters, mundane as they were, both unnerved and excited Melissa, but she’d said it herself: Things had been moving pretty fast between her and Steven. She was grateful for a breather—and equally grateful that she saw him almost every day.

  On top of all this, the weather was flat-out perfect. Warm, but not hot. Sunny, but not glaring.

  Happily, there were no confrontations with Velda and no calls from Eustace Blake, lodging his interminable complaints about space visitors.

  Nathan Carter had apparently left town again, because Melissa hadn’t seen him around, which was a weight off Deputy Ferguson’s mind, and hers, too.

  Her cuts and bruises healed, and the last of the soreness faded away, although she could still feel ecstatic little catches of physical pleasure sometimes, when she allowed herself to remember how it was, making love with Steven Creed.

  Rummaging through Ashley’s closet one evening, she even found a killer dress to wear to the dance on Saturday night—an aqua-blue sundress with thinnest-of-thin vertical silver stripes shimmering through the silky fabric.

  Life was downright idyllic, all things considered. Which was precisely why she should have been prepared, she would think later.

  On Saturday morning, she met with the members of the Parade Committee, as agreed, for the walk-through—a sort of rehearsal, but without the costumes and the floats.

  Bea Brady and Adelaide Hillingsley were still on the outs over the toilet-paper question, but the ice was broken when Tessa Quinn and a few assistants showed up at the meeting place in the park with coffee and a big bag of fresh doughnuts, her contribution to the community effort.

  Melissa, suitably clad in blue jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, her hair pulled up into a Saturday ponytail, her face bare of makeup, shepherded everybody into line—Tom had temporarily closed Main Street by placing a sawhorse at each end—and appropriate gaps were left for the high-school band and drill team, the sheriff’s posse, and the annual offering from over in Indian Rock.

  Stone Creek and Indian Rock tended to be a little competitive, as far as their town floats were concerned, but that only served to up the quality of the event.

  Oscar Vernon, who owned a used-car dealership and salvage yard outside the city limits always put the Stone Creek float on the road, and he was invariably secretive as far as colors and subject matter were concerned. He was keeping his mouth shut this year, too—wouldn’t give so much as a hint of what he planned—but since he’d done the place proud every year since 1978, nobody really pushed him for answers.

  Everyone was poised to begin when Steven and Matt sprinted across the grassy expanse of the park to join in.

  Melissa’s heart did a thing her granddad Big John would probably have called a twenty-three-skidoo, whatever that was, and she wished she’d bothered with lip gloss and mascara and maybe even a little perfume.

  “We’re here to help,” Matt informed all and sundry, in a piping voice. “What are volunteers supposed to do, anyhow?”

  Steven chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair, but he’d locked gazes with Melissa as soon as he came to a stop, and he wasn’t letting go.

  “Well,” Melissa fumbled, reminding herself that Steven had graciously offered to help out on the Parade Committee, managed to shift her eyes to Matt’s upturned face, “you could walk where the sheriff’s posse will be riding on the big day. That’ll give us a better sense of—spacing. Between the floats, I mean.”

  Steven smiled, well aware, obviously, that she was disconcerted and enjoying the fact. Someone pointed out where the posse went, and Matt ran to the area, earnest and eager.

  Before joining him, Steven moved closer to Melissa and gave her a heated once-over, very private.

  Her nipples pressed hard against the fabric of her bra, and things warmed and softened inside her.

  She blushed.

  Steven grinned down at her. “You haven’t forgotten about our date, have you?” he asked.

  Melissa bit her lower lip and rummaged up a smile, for the sake of curious onlookers—of which there were many—rather than Steven. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said. Then she looked past his shoulder, pretending to search for someone. “Where’s that drop-dead gorgeous cousin of yours?” she asked, just to take some of the smugness out of the man’s grin.

  It didn’t work. Steven Creed looked every bit as cocky as before; maybe even more so. “Brody left yesterday,” he said. “He had to be up in Oregon for a rodeo by tonight.”

  “Oh,” Melissa said.

  Steven turned, mainly because Matt was calling for him to do his part holding the gap for the sheriff’s posse, but he looked back at her over one shoulder and his smile was so intimate that she felt as naked as any member of the infamous croquet team over at Ashley’s B&B.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “NOW, DON’T GO WEARING a three-piece suit on your hot date, Boston,” Brody warned, via cell phone, at around four-thirty Saturday afternoon. He’d called, as ordered when he left, to let Steven know he’d gotten to Oregon with no mishaps along the way. “You’re going to a dance with a pretty lady, not arguing a case before the Supreme Court.”

  Steven laughed, standing there in his bedroom in Brad O’Ballivan’s tour bus and grimly assessing the limited wardrobe he’d brought along from Denver. Most of his clothes, like the furniture and the lion’s share of his and Matt’s personal belongings, were in storage until the farmhouse was ready to live in. “Point taken,” he said. “What do guys wear to a country dance these days, anyway?”

  “Well, that’s a dumb-ass question if I’ve ever heard you ask one—which I have, of course,” Brody responded, his tone jocular. The way he talked, nobody would guess that he’d turned his back on the whole family almost a decade before and cut off all communications except for a once-a-year greeting card. “Wear jeans. Pretty new, if you have them, along with a halfway decent Western shirt and good boots, polished to a shine. You can dispense with the hat—you look like a dude when you wear a hat. Oh, and iron the jeans and the shirt, too.”

  Steven pretended to be aggrieved. He and Matt had both missed Brody since he hit the road. “Are you through?”

  Brody chuckled. “OK,” he conceded, “you looked all right i
n a real hat, back when you were rodeoing and punching cattle, but don’t try to get away with anything fancy, because it won’t work.”

  “Got it,” Steven said. Then he asked if Brody had signed up for his events yet, and when he thought he might be rolling back through Stone Creek.

  During Brody’s visit, they hadn’t discussed the past much. Only a few words about Davis and Kim had passed between them, and they hadn’t talked about Conner at all. Steven felt a prickle of guilt, wondered if he shouldn’t tell Brody that his brother was planning on coming to Stone Creek’s rodeo, and then clue Conner in, too. But since he knew neither one of them would show up if they so much as suspected the other would be there, too, he kept that knowledge to himself.

  It was a little like being the only person in the world who knew that, at a certain hour, on a particular day, a colossal meteor would strike the planet.

  Steven had considered warning his dad and Kim, in case they decided to change their travel plans and swing by in their RV for that visit Kim had mentioned. They’d be more than ready to spend some time with Matt, whom they missed sorely, and they had to be curious about the new place. He was still undecided on that score, because he knew Kim, the eternal optimist, might not be able to resist telling Conner. She would naturally think the twins’ long overdue reconciliation was a sure thing.

  Steven knew it was anything but. In fact, it might be a replay of that long ago summer night, when Conner and Brody had lit into each other with fists flying and blood in their eyes. Some risks were worth taking, though—there was always the chance that Kim was right.

  “Tell the Colorado Kid I’ll be seeing him again soon,” Brody finished. He’d already established a bond with Matt, but would he hold up his end of the bargain?

  No telling.

  Steven swallowed hard. “I’ll do that,” he said, and rang off.

  Matt was spending the night over at Brad and Meg’s again, with Mac, because of the dance, and Zeke had gone with him.

  That left Steven feeling a lot more alone than he cared to.

  He dropped his cell into his shirt pocket, ran a hand through his hair and sighed. Not surprisingly, he had Melissa on his mind. He wondered if he ought to go for more sex, or keep on giving her the space he sensed she needed. In the end, he decided he’d have to play it by ear.

  He got out his best pair of jeans, the only ones that were still clean as a matter of fact, and chose a shirt with snaps instead of buttons and a Western cut to the yoke. He poked around the bus until he found an iron and a fold-down ironing board, and he managed not to scorch the duds while he pressed the wrinkles out and the creases in. Then he showered and dressed and polished his good boots with spit and a wad of paper towels, since he hadn’t bought a tin of the waxy stuff he normally used to shine up his shit-kickers.

  Even with all that done, it was only 5:30 p.m., and he wasn’t supposed to pick Melissa up at her place until 7:15. Too restless to stay home, without even a dog for company, he grabbed his keys, fired up the new truck and headed for town. Once there, he’d find some way to kill time, and he wanted to track down a nice bouquet for his date.

  He shook his head and chuckled as he began the short drive down to the road. When had he ever been this excited about spending an evening with a woman? Hell, not since high school—if then.

  And since he wasn’t all that crazy about dancing in the first place, there were some serious implications here.

  She’s a prosecutor, he reminded himself. Just like Cindy. And, just like Cindy, Melissa had worked hard to carve out a career for herself. She’d loved Dan Guthrie, loved his kids, too, but she hadn’t been willing to give any ground at all to save the relationship.

  Briefly depressed, Steven shook off those thoughts and moved on to new ones. Work on the house and the new barn would begin on Monday—he had the contractor’s word on it, and the guy had a solid reputation for honesty and hard work. Matt was settling in just fine at school, and Stone Creek was already proving to be a good place to call home.

  In an unpredictable world like this one, that was enough.

  Reaching the edge of town, Steven glanced down at the gas gauge and decided to fill up. That would use up the better part of fifteen minutes, he calculated.

  He pulled in at the combination convenience store–gas station, where there were exactly two pumps, one of which dispensed diesel. He shut off the truck, got out and read the handwritten sign taped to the paper-towel dispenser.

  “Machine broke. Pay inside.”

  Steven started for the door, passing a rusted-out Bonneville with cardboard in place of the glass that should have covered the rear window. Besides his truck, it was the only rig around.

  Business must be slow this time of day, he decided.

  A plump woman stood behind the counter, in front of the register, and her nametag said “Martine.”

  Steven glanced to one side, spotted the probable owner of the Bonneville over by the cooler, evidently shopping for beer. The guy was young—maybe under the legal drinking age—and nobody he recognized, but that didn’t mean much. After all, Steven was new in Stone Creek; there were still a lot of people he didn’t know, small as the place was.

  He said hello to Martine, who smiled at him as she returned the greeting, and ran his debit card through the machine to make advance payment for whatever a full tank of gas wound up costing.

  “Well,” Martine responded, “welcome to Stone Creek. It’s nice to see somebody moving into this town instead of out. Seems like there was a mass exodus after the mill closed down.”

  “Thanks for the welcome,” he said. He knew she’d read his name off the credit card, but he offered it up just the same, since that was the polite thing to do.

  “You got a wife, Mr. Creed?” she asked.

  Steven wasn’t exactly pressed for time, so he lingered longer than he might have done otherwise. “No, ma’am,” he said. “It’s just me and my son, Matt.”

  Martine tilted her head to one side and studied him, a mischievous light dancing in her clear-as-creek-water eyes. It crossed Steven’s mind that she might know all about his rendezvous with Melissa, that being typical of a small town like Stone Creek.

  “We can always use another eligible bachelor,” she said finally. “Not that you’ll be on the market long, a good-lookin’ cowboy like you.”

  The remark made Steven feel uncharacteristically shy. “Thanks,” he said, for the second time, feeling his earlobes burn a little. Now, he fled.

  “I’ve got a daughter!” Martine called after him. “Her name is Jessica Lynn and she’s going to be a full-fledged dental assistant in another six weeks!”

  Steven pretended not to hear the pitch, but he couldn’t help chuckling as he took the nozzle off the fuel pump and stuck it into the tank’s opening.

  He’d been so busy trying to figure out Melissa O’Ballivan, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be the subject of some matchmaking. How many other mamas, besides Jessica Lynn’s, were eyeing him through the matrimonial crosshairs, right at that very moment?

  Since the tank was nearly empty, it took a while to fill it. Steven washed the windshield, checked the tire pressure and wiped a few bugs off the grillwork.

  When the gas pump shut down, he went back inside to sign the credit slip and get his receipt.

  Martine had acquired some more customers by then, and she was too busy at the register, ringing up jugs of milk, lottery tickets and cigarettes to try to sell him on Jessica Lynn again.

  Thinking ahead to that evening’s dance at the Grange Hall, which would probably be attended by just about everybody in Stone Creek and maybe Indian Rock, too, he couldn’t help wondering just what he might be letting himself in for.

  He grinned to himself as he drove away.

  Maybe he’d attract enough attention to make Melissa a little jealous.

  Wouldn’t that be something?

  MELISSA STOOD IN FRONT of the mirror on her closet door, scowling at herself. No
w that zero hour was approaching, she didn’t like the aqua dress half as much as she had before.

  She sucked in her stomach. “There they are,” she said, pointing at her reflected backside. “The two pounds I gained eating your food.”

  Ashley, sitting on the bed and holding Katie on her lap, smiled and shook her head. “Please. You could gain ten more pounds and still fit into every pair of jeans you own.”

  “As if I’m going to let that happen,” Melissa said, with a little sniff.

  Ashley laughed softly. Her eyes shone with contentment and good humor. Once upon a time, she’d been pretty tense herself, but since Jack’s arrival in her life, and then Katie’s, she’d mellowed considerably.

  Which was sometimes annoying.

  “Are you planning on spending the night with him?” Ashley asked.

  Melissa turned and made a big deal of cupping her hands loosely over Katie’s little pink ears. “What a thing to say in front of a child,” she said.

  Ashley rolled her twinkly blue eyes. “Katie is two,” she reminded her sister. “And anyway, you’re just trying to stall.”

  Melissa uncovered Katie’s ears, sighed. “I don’t know,” she said.

  More twinkling. Happiness looked wonderful on Ashley, just as it did on Olivia and Meg. “You don’t know if you’re stalling?” she teased.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to—” Melissa glanced down at Katie, who was holding Ashley’s long, golden braid in both hands and gazing at it in wonder, and lowered her voice, “sleep with him.”

  “What’s the holdup?” Ashley asked.

  Melissa plunked her hands on her hips and mimicked, “‘What’s the holdup?’ Easy for you to ask, Ashley O’Ballivan McKenzie, when you have the whole rest of your life laid out like a path between two rose gardens!”

  “Stalling,” Ashley repeated, singing the word.

  Katie giggled and sang her own version.

  Melissa stumbled over her answer. “It’s just—well—we hadn’t known each other very long when—”