“What do you think?” he asked, just to break the silence. “Of the house, that is?”
She smiled a real smile, practically lighting the place up. “It’s wonderful, Brody. Did you design it yourself?”
People made plans for houses all the time, but Carolyn made it sound as though he’d personally drawn up the blueprints for Stonehenge, and that made him feel half again his normal height.
He nodded, suddenly modest.
That would have cracked Conner up for sure—his twin brother acting modest. Conner and a lot of other people besides.
“I did,” he confirmed belatedly, feeling the backs of his ears heat up. “Got me through a lot of long nights, figuring out the overall floor plan and then the details.”
She was silent for a few minutes, absorbing that statement.
“I should be getting home,” Carolyn said next, standing in a shaft of silvery moonlight spilling in through the skylights.
For as long as Brody could remember, he’d wanted to be able to lie in his bed at night and look right up through the ceiling and the roof at the stars. In a couple of months, he’d get his wish.
But what about a woman to share it all with?
Looking at stars could be lonely business without a partner. Made a man think how small he was, how small the whole planet—the whole galaxy—was, specks of dust in all that vastness.
“Okay,” he said, finding his voice again. It came out in a husky rasp, and he hoped he hadn’t caught a cold, crossing and then recrossing the river. That would be a hell of a note. “Let’s go.”
He whistled for the dogs and they came promptly, so he sort of herded them toward the front of the house. Stepping around Carolyn, Brody grabbed hold of a fancy brass knob and opened the door for her.
Valentino and Barney, neither one a gentleman, bounded out ahead of her to sniff around in the grass, nearly knocking her off her feet and, at the same time, making her laugh.
Brody loaded them up first, in case they had a mind to take off in all their excitement, and then waited until Carolyn was settled in the passenger seat before he sprinted around the back of the truck and jumped in behind the wheel, not because he was in any hurry to come to a parting of the ways with Carolyn, however temporary, but because he suddenly felt energized, electrified, wired for action, like the dogs.
Carolyn didn’t say anything as they drove back to the main road, the one that would take them the rest of the way into town, but this time, she didn’t seem annoyed with him. She was relaxed, and maybe a little pensive.
Brody drove her home to Natty’s place, noticed right away that Tricia’s Pathfinder wasn’t parked in the driveway and, knowing that meant his brother and his wife were nowhere around, briefly considered trying to seduce Carolyn after all.
It would have been a fine thing to peel away those clothes she was wearing, lay her down somewhere soft and warm and lose himself in her, but common sense intervened.
They’d made an agreement, and a deal was a deal.
No sex.
Yet.
Brody parked the truck at the curb, told the dogs to behave themselves and walked Carolyn all the way up the outside stairs to her door.
He waited, his hands wedged into the pockets of his jeans—Conner’s jeans, anyway—until she’d unlocked the door, stepped over the threshold and switched on the kitchen lights.
While he was still trying to work out whether or not he ought to follow her in, give kissing her a try, that cantankerous cat purred and wound itself around her ankles. Anybody would have thought it had a halfway decent personality, that critter, but Brody knew better—it was demon spawn.
Carolyn smiled fondly down at the animal, said a quick, soft “Good night, Brody,” and shut the door in his face with a gentle click.
Well, that settled the kiss question.
Brody gave an inward shrug, turned and descended the stairs.
He had chores to do at the ranch, and the dogs would be getting antsy soon, shut up in the truck like they were.
Despite these concerns, he took a little detour on the way home, drove past the ticket booth and the snack bar at the erstwhile Bluebird Drive-in Theater and parked, looking up at the peeling hulk of a movie screen.
He’d been meaning to have the thing bulldozed ever since the last of the snow finally melted off back in midMarch, along with the two buildings on the property, but what with the new house and barn going up and his responsibilities on the ranch, he hadn’t gotten around to making the arrangements. And, like most residents of Lonesome Bend and the even smaller towns surrounding it, he had fond memories of the place.
He still intended to clear these neglected acres, put in fences, and have it seeded for grass so he could run cattle and horses here, but in the meantime, well, it seemed to him that the Bluebird Drive-in deserved a last hurrah.
Carolyn wanted dinner and a movie?
Coming right up.
AFTER THE VISIT TO Brody’s house, the apartment seemed not only small to Carolyn—once, she would have said “cozy”—but also out-and-out cramped.
“Ingrate,” she scolded her reflection in the door of the microwave as she stood at the counter, scraping Winston’s half-tin of sardines into one of the several chipped china bowls reserved for his use.
“Reow,” Winston said, sounding moderately concerned.
“I didn’t mean you,” Carolyn told him, setting his dinner on the floor and watching with affection as he gobbled up the stinky fish he loved so much. She washed her hands at the sink, her movements quick with pentup exasperation. “I’m the ingrate around here. I have everything I need, everything anybody could ask for, right here in this apartment.” She paused, remembering. “But, Winston, you should see that house. It’s huge. But it’s not one of those mansion wannabes, either, it’s—it’s homey. I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to live there.” She threw her hands out from her sides, let them fall back. “How crazy is that?”
Winston, busy with his fine dining experience and, after all, a cat, naturally didn’t reply.
Carolyn, used to carrying on one-sided conversations, didn’t let that slow her down. “You’re right,” she said. “It is totally crazy.” She dried off her hands, went to the refrigerator, yanked open the door and took out a carton of cottage cheese, the kind with little chunks of pineapple mixed in. After squinting at the expiration date, she decided it would be relatively safe to eat the stuff and lobbed some onto a salad plate with a serving spoon. “The man cons me into going for a horseback ride with him, and I end up soaked to the skin and squeezed into clothes that belong to a woman who is at least two inches shorter than I am, and a size smaller, and I’m ready to get it on with Brody Creed. I swear, if he hadn’t made that speech about responsibility and setting ground rules, I probably would have jumped his bones—”
The landline rang, interrupting her discourse.
Probably for the best, she figured, reaching for the receiver.
“Hello?” she almost snapped. She needed to eat her questionable cottage cheese, put on her own clothes and get her head together, not necessarily in that order—not stand around talking on the phone.
She recognized Bill’s chuckle immediately. “Am I calling at a bad time?” he asked.
“Who is that?” Carolyn heard a little girl’s voice chime in, at the other end of the line. “Is that Angela? It had better be Angela.”
Carolyn smiled. She remembered what it was to be nine years old. What she didn’t remember was having a father who, like Bill, was devoted to her.
She’d never met her father. Didn’t even know his name, or if he was alive or dead, or if she looked anything like him.
“This is a private call, Ellie,” Bill told his daughter kindly, but firmly. “Beat it. Go do your homework or bug your grandmother or something.”
“Maybe I’m the one who should be asking if it’s a bad time,” Carolyn said, still amused. She loved kids, even when they were difficult. Especially the
n. She’d been a handful herself; just ask any one of her fourteen foster families.
“Have dinner with me?” Bill said. “Here, at our place? We’ll barbecue on the patio, and Ellie’s grandparents will join us, so we shouldn’t give rise to a local scandal.”
Carolyn felt warm inside. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same kind of warm she felt when she was around Brody, or even thought about him.
Brody.
She’d lied to him, saying she had plans for the following night, simply because she’d needed a chance to catch her breath, regain her perspective, before she stepped into the lion’s den a second time by being alone with a man who could melt her with a look, a touch, a word.
“You haven’t been in Lonesome Bend long,” she joked, “if you think my coming to your place, even for an outdoor meal with your in-laws present, wouldn’t be fuel for gossip.”
Bill sighed. “Is that a no?”
She watched as Winston licked his bowl clean and then strolled regally away, tail high. “I’d love to come over for a barbecue,” she said. If she was going out with Brody, even for an innocuous evening of food and film, it was only reasonable to see other men, too. That way, she’d be in less danger of losing her head and doing something rash.
Keep your options open.
Always know where the exits are.
The foster-kid credo of life.
“Would tonight be too soon?” Bill teased.
“Yes,” Carolyn said, with a rueful glance at her cottage cheese. “It would be. Tomorrow night?”
“Perfect,” Bill said.
“What shall I bring?”
“Your beautiful smile and all the charm you can muster. The in-laws will be friendly, but Ellie—”
“I can handle Ellie,” Carolyn said, with kindness and humor. Because I was Ellie, once upon a time, except that I didn’t have adoring grandparents and a first-class father.
“Okay,” Bill responded, sounding relieved. “Tomorrow night, six o’clock if that’s not too early. Casual dress, of course.” He gave her the address, and Lonesome Bend being Lonesome Bend, she knew right where it was. Two-story brick house with green wooden shutters, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, a block and a half southeast of the public library.
“I’ll be there,” Carolyn promised, wondering at her bravery.
She could count the dates she’d had, post-Brody, on one hand. And most of them had been at been mediocre at best, disastrous at worst.
The ones in between were highly forgettable.
“Good,” Bill said. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again.”
After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say, so they exchanged goodbyes and ended the call.
Carolyn exchanged Tricia’s clothes for an oversize pair of cotton pajamas, ate the cottage cheese and prayed she wouldn’t get food poisoning.
She wasn’t much of a cook, it was true. She simply couldn’t see the point in fixing elaborate meals when she’d be the only one around to eat them.
The subject of food brought Brody’s incredible soonto-be kitchen to mind; she’d noticed the gigantic professional stove, with its many burners and a space for grilling indoors, noticed the subzero refrigerator, the special built-in cooler for wine, the two oversize dishwashers and the extra sink and ceramic stove top set into the granite covering the island in the middle of the room.
It was the size of Kansas, that island.
All of which meant that Brody either liked to cook and entertain crowds, or expected any woman he took up with to do the same…or both of those things.
Smiling to herself—except for helping out with the chili feed/rummage sale last fall, she’d never whipped up any dish more ambitious than macaroni and cheese, the kind that comes in a box—Carolyn went downstairs to make sure everything was in order in the shop. Whatever else Tricia had done that afternoon, once she was alone with Conner, she’d remembered to lock up, shut off the computer and wrap the Weaver for delivery to Brody’s place.
Carolyn paused, the shop in semidarkness now, at the base of the inside stairs, already missing the Weaver. Like the gypsy skirt, though, it was a luxury she not only couldn’t afford, but also had no real use for.
At Brody’s, the magnificent batik would be seen and appreciated, as it should. Perhaps it would even be passed down, a cherished heirloom, through generations of Creeds, the house surrounding it becoming more and more of a testament to family continuity with every passing year. Just like its much older counterpart on the ranch.
Carolyn climbed the stairs slowly, with her head slightly lowered, her heart filled with a sort of bereft enjoyment of the thought.
From her place of honor above Brody’s living room fireplace, the Weaver would see newborns brought through the wide front entrance, see those same babies grow up, fall in love, marry and bring home children of their own. She would be a silent witness to whole lifetimes, that woman of wax and paint, there for the joys and the sorrows and the millions of ordinary moments in between those extremes.
Carolyn had coveted many an artwork in her time, but this was the first time she’d ever envied the piece itself.
Oh, to be the Weaver.
Reaching the top of the stairs, she put the back of one hand to her forehead, checking for fever. There was none, so why was she delirious?
That made her smile again.
She was suffering, she concluded, with glum humor, from a bad case of Brody-itis.
All the more reason to hedge her romantic bets.
ONCE GOT BACK to the ranch, Brody took the dogs inside and fed them, then headed out to the barn to tend to the horses. He planned on leaving Moonshine right there with the others until morning, when he’d figure a way to get him home to River’s Bend.
When he stepped outside, the stars were spilling across the dark sky, and the three-quarter moon looked magnified, hovering just above the rims of the mountains, like it had dipped too low somehow and gotten itself snagged on a tree or the craggy face of a cliff.
Brody sighed and lifted his hat briefly, just long enough to shove a hand through his hair, and stopped right there in the yard to admire the handiwork of a God he wasn’t sure he believed in.
God or no God, he figured, and daunting as the expanse of it could be, being there, awake and a part of the whole thing, even for what amounted to the blink of the cosmic eye, was a miraculous gift.
Lisa sure hadn’t gotten to stick around long, though, he thought sadly, and little Justin, his boy, hadn’t lived long enough to have see two candles blazing on his birthday cake.
Just like that, Brody’s throat twisted itself into a painful knot, one he could barely swallow past.
It was true that he wanted a family of his own, wanted to marry a sweet-tempered woman and fill that house at River’s Bend with their kids and pack its barn with their ponies, but when he was tired, or felt particularly lonely, like tonight, the idea scared the hell out of him.
Nothing had ever—ever—hurt the way losing Lisa and Justin did. What if history repeated itself? What if he had to bury another wife, another child?
He was Creed-tough, thanks to all those sturdy forbearers of his and a graduate degree from the school of hard knocks, but he’d gone stark-raving crazy after that double funeral in the chapel of a mortuary in a little Montana town. He’d taken to drinking way more than too much, been on the lookout for a reason to fight, 24/7, cut himself off from the people he’d needed most— Conner and Steven and Davis and Kim.
Brody tried to shake it off, this sorry mood, made himself get moving again. Inside the house, he made sure Valentino had all he needed, told Barney it was time they headed for home and led the way out under all those stars again.
Since it was just the two of them, he let Barney ride shotgun instead of consigning him to the backseat, and drove straight to River’s Bend.
There, he remembered that he hadn’t eaten, and poked around in his minifridge for a minute or so, hoping something tasty might have created its
elf out of the ether.
Nothing had.
He got out the milk carton, took a sniff to make sure it hadn’t soured and was just shaking cold cereal into a bowl when he saw headlights—beams of dusty gold— sweep across the front window.
Barney, having just settled himself on his bed over by the unlighted stove, gave an anxious little whine and perked up his ears.
A car door slammed.
Footsteps crunched along the dirt path leading up to the lodge.
A knock sounded.
“Oh, hell,” Brody told Barney, setting his cereal bowl aside on the counter with a bad-tempered thump. “She’s back.”
Just then, the door opened and Joleen poked her head inside, beaming in the unfounded expectation of a warm welcome. This month she was a blonde, and her contacts turned her eyes an unlikely shade of purple.
Brody had trouble recalling what her real coloring was—Joleen was a chameleon, constantly searching for that perfect look.
“It’s me!” she sang, quite unnecessarily, strolling right in and setting a suitcase down on the floor.
“Damn it, Joleen,” Brody grumbled, “I told you not to come here—”
“It would just be for one night,” Joleen chimed, as though that made everything different. “And what kind of welcome is that, anyway, after all we’ve been to each other?”
“We’ve been bed partners, and that’s about it.” Stubborn, Brody folded his arms across his chest. Hardened his jawline. “You’re not staying, Joleen.”
Joleen tried the hurt expression that had always stood her in such good stead, not just with him, but probably with scores of men. “You know I can’t stay with my folks,” she said, her mouth pouty and her eyes luminous with on-demand tears. “Mrs. Collins promised I could rent that room over her garage, but it won’t be ready until tomorrow and I— It’s been a long drive and I’m worn out, Brody.”
He took out his wallet, extracted several bills and shoved them at her. “Then I guess you’d better check in over at the Sunset Motel,” he said. “But that’s miles from here,” Joleen practically wailed.
The Creed Legacy Page 16