The Creed Legacy

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Of course, something like this would cost the earth,” Angela said, looking thoughtful. She sighed. “But a girl can dream.”

  That remark sealed it. Friends. She and Angela were going to be friends.

  And that was bound to complicate things.

  “I know what you mean,” Carolyn said. “I can’t afford this skirt, either.”

  That made Angela laugh. “But you made it,” she said, after a few moments. “You don’t have to buy your own work.”

  Oh, yes, I do, Carolyn thought. “I need to recover the cost of supplies,” she said, feeling very young all of a sudden, and very poor.

  For Carolyn, that was a watershed moment. It was time to stop fiddling around with the skirt, finish it and put it up for sale. Holding on to the thing, wishing she had a place and a reason to wear it, was just a way of putting off the inevitable.

  It was getting too painful.

  “I guess you could make another one to keep for yourself,” Angela said, faltering. She was reaching for her purse, preparing to leave.

  Carolyn shook her head. “I couldn’t duplicate it, even if I tried,” she said, thinking how peculiar it was that Angela had come here to size up a rival, and Carolyn, famously independent, had ended up confiding in her.

  A virtual stranger.

  “I suppose not,” Angela agreed sadly. “It’s definitely one of a kind.” She smiled. “Thank you for the tea, Carolyn, and for showing me this amazing work of art and, especially, for overlooking the fact that I acted like a maniac by coming here in the first place.”

  “I’m glad you stopped in,” Carolyn said warmly, draping the skirt over the back of one of Natty’s kitchen chairs, wishing there was more she could say, or do, to reassure Angela that things would work out for her and Bill.

  Unfortunately, that might not be the case, given the impasse the two of them had reached over the perils of Bill’s job.

  “I think you really are glad I came over,” Angela said, in good-natured surprise. “You’re a hard woman to hate, Carolyn. I can see why Bill is taken with you—not that I like the idea.”

  Carolyn wished she could tell Angela that Bill loved her but loved his job, too, and wouldn’t feel like himself without it. Since this would amount to a betrayal of Bill’s confidence, though, she would do no such thing.

  “I hope you won’t work too terribly hard at hating me,” Carolyn said, with another smile, accompanying Angela as she started toward the front door.

  Angela held her reply until they reached the entryway. “You’ll be patient with Ellie?” she asked quietly. “She’s a wonderful child, bright and funny and every other good thing. It’s just that she had her heart set on Bill and me getting together.”

  Carolyn nodded. “Ellie,” she agreed, “is a delight.”

  Angela opened the door, stepped over the threshold and onto the porch and would have gone down the steps and along the walk to the gate—her car was parked at the curb—except that Carolyn stopped her with a word.

  “Angela?”

  Angela paused, turned to look back at Carolyn. Waited.

  “Talk to Bill,” Carolyn said.

  Angela’s brow knitted with pretty puzzlement, and the nod she gave was hesitant. With that, she walked away.

  Carolyn watched her for a few moments, then closed the door, turned the lock and returned to the kitchen.

  It was time to serve up Winston’s plate of sardines.

  THE CALF THEY’D BROUGHT in off the range the day before was back on its feet, Brody was glad to see, when he and Barney arrived at the ranch a little after noon and headed straight for the barn.

  “He’s lookin’ good,” Brody said to Davis, after inspecting the calf in the stall it shared with Bessie. Conner was probably around somewhere, but he wasn’t in sight at the moment.

  Davis, having backed one of the ranch trucks in at the rear entrance to the barn, was standing in the bed of the pickup, about to start unloading sacks of horse feed. He grinned and gave Brody a thumbs-up. “Bessie and her boy will be ready to go back to the herd in another day or two,” he said.

  Brody approached the truck and reached in for a feed sack. The things weighed fifty pounds, and he didn’t think Davis ought to be doing such heavy work at his advanced age, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say as much. “Where’s Conner?” he asked.

  The unspoken subtext was, And why isn’t he out here helping unload this truck?

  “Tricia’s feeling a mite flimsy,” Davis replied, hoisting another bag and waiting to hand it down to Brody. “Conner’s been checking on her at regular intervals. Truth is, he’s probably driving her crazy, running in and out like that, but he’s a Creed, after all, and that means you can’t tell him a damn thing.”

  Brody took the second bag and stacked it in the storage room while Davis picked a new one up. “Tricia’s all right, though?” he asked, worried.

  “She told Kim she was fine, and we see no reason not to take her at her word,” Davis replied. Then, probably not the least bit fooled by Brody’s attempt to be casual, he added, “Pregnant women get tired, Brody. That doesn’t mean they’re ailing, or about to lose the baby. But Tricia’s got a genuine human being taking shape inside her, and that takes some doing.”

  The past had a way of ambushing Brody when he least expected, and suddenly, his knees wanted to buckle and he felt as though he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

  “Babies die, Davis,” he told his uncle, without looking at him. “And so do their mothers.”

  Davis, in the process of handing down another sack of feed, stopped, gave a low whistle of exclamation through his teeth.

  Barney, busy smelling every corner of the barn he could get to, paused at the sound, and trotted to Brody’s side.

  Brody acknowledged the dog with an ear-rub, but he looked up at Davis, who was standing motionless in the bed of the pickup, watching him.

  “Can we just forget I said that?” Brody asked. He’d tried for levity, but the words came out sounding husky and a little raw, just the same.

  “Nope,” Davis replied, in his taciturn way, after climbing down out of the truck to stand facing Brody. “We can’t.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about this, Davis,” Brody said.

  Davis squeezed his shoulder briefly, then vaulted himself up to sit on the extended tailgate of the truck. “I’ll wait,” he said, with a kindly twinkle and a brief quirk of a grin.

  Brody sighed, and then laughed. At least, he’d meant to laugh—the sound came out sounding like something else. “I wasn’t born yesterday,” he told his uncle grimly, and with another failed attempt at humor. “I know Conner told you and Kim about my wife—my late wife—and the baby boy we had together.”

  “Whatever Conner did or didn’t say, he had the best of intentions,” Davis replied, in the same deep, solid voice he’d used to tell three young boys they’d be all right when they’d scared the hell out of themselves watching rented horror movies for hours on end. After all that on-screen blood and gore, a summer thunderstorm or mice in the rafters had them instantly convinced that they were about to experience wholesale slaughter, right there in their ranch-house bedroom.

  Davis had always been able to put those fears to rest, though, just by reminding them that he was right there, under the same roof. His presence was enough, though his words were a comfort, too. It went without saying that anything or anybody out to hurt any member of his family would have to get past Davis Creed first, and that would take an army or two.

  These days, Brody’s demons didn’t come from any movie. They came from the hidden caverns of his heart, from the darkest parts of his mind, lying in wait until something triggered them to spring.

  True to his word, Davis waited.

  Brody tried to reach past him, unload another feed sack, go on as if nothing had been said, but his uncle stopped him by taking a hold on his upper arm. Davis might have been in his fifties, but he still had a hell of a grip.

  J
ust then, Conner stepped into the barn. Brody didn’t see or hear his brother—he just felt a tug on that unseen cord that connected them to each other.

  Davis had let go of Brody’s arm by then—he’d only been out to make a point by taking hold in the first place—and there was a silent message in his eyes as he looked past one nephew to the other.

  “Is Tricia okay?” Brody asked, without turning around.

  Conner was silent for a charged moment before he responded gruffly, “She claims she’ll be fine if I just let her alone long enough to close her eyes for an hour or two.”

  Brody nodded, but still didn’t move to face his brother.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Conner asked, stepping up to stand next to Brody. He’d brought his dog along, and Valentino and Barney, evidently nonplussed by all that human drama, trotted through the rear entrance to the barn and disappeared into the dazzling sunshine.

  “Now, what the hell kind of lame-assed question is that?” Brody wanted to know, glaring sidelong at his twin and hoping the subject would change course, like some river blasted into a new direction with dyna mite.

  “Brody, here,” Davis drawled, looking at Conner, “is about to jump right out of his own hide. Make no mistake about it, though—he doesn’t want to talk about the wife and the little boy.”

  Conner moved to lay a hand on Brody’s shoulder, and then, wisely, thought better of the gesture. “I told Davis and Kim what you told me,” Conner said, quietly forthright and with no trace of regret or apology. “About Lisa and Justin, and the way you lost them.”

  It was no good pointing out that he’d told Conner the story and trusted him to keep it a secret. On some level, Brody had known Conner would confide in their aunt and uncle, if no one else. Maybe he’d even hoped, somewhere down deep, that his brother would let the cat out of the bag. That way, Davis and Kim would know the bitter truth without Brody having to tell them what happened.

  Feeling cornered, Brody looked from Davis to Conner and back again. “If you already know,” he began tautly, reasonably, “what’s the point of my repeating it all?”

  “Because you need to,” Davis said, solemn and certain. “It’s festering inside you like a wound, son. Holding that secret corralled up inside you kept you away from your home and your people and a lot more for too long. Don’t you think it’s time you turned it loose?”

  Brody shoved a hand through his hair, barely noticing that he’d knocked his hat to the floor in the process. He didn’t move to retrieve it.

  “Lisa said she’d put the baby up for adoption if I didn’t marry her,” Brody said, sounding, in his own ears, like a man ranting from the depths of some consuming fever. He didn’t see Davis, didn’t see Conner—just a blurry rush of scenes from years gone by. “If I’d let her, if I hadn’t bailed out on Carolyn in the middle of the night and rushed off to put a golden band on Lisa’s finger, then Justin would still be alive, a growing kid with parents and maybe brothers and sisters—”

  Brody’s voice ground to a painful stop. It was as though the gears running his speech had rusted and then seized up.

  “I used to think my brother, Blue, would have lived,” Davis said evenly, “if I’d done some small thing differently the morning your dad tried to ride that crazy horse. If only I’d called him out of bed a few minutes later, or stretched breakfast by another cup of coffee or two, or even started some kind of row with him. Anything to keep him off the back of that stallion. But he was bent on making that ride, Brody, and if he hadn’t gotten himself thrown that day, he’d have done it some other day. What I’m trying to get at here is that folks seem to come into this life with a list of things they need to get done while they’re here inscribed on their souls. Old or young, when their work is done, they leave.”

  After that, nobody said anything.

  There was no need for words.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CAROLYN HAD SLEPT fitfully the previous night, and she was awake early, feeling jittery, rather than rested.

  She fed Winston, brewed herself a cup of instant coffee and peeked out at the beginnings of a blue-gold day in May. In the neighbor’s yard, as well as the distance, the ever-lovely cottonwood trees shimmered and shifted, like the ribbons on the gypsy skirt.

  Of all the places she’d lived, she liked Colorado best. Especially when spring evolved into summer so quickly, as it seemed to be doing this year.

  With her head cloudy from lack of sleep and hectic dreams she couldn’t quite remember, Carolyn imagined herself on horseback, riding the crooked trail on the rim of the ridge on the Creed ranch, or along the banks of the river. The air was thin there in the high country, but once a person got used to it, every breath of fresh air was exhilarating.

  Carolyn bit her lower lip, pondering her options.

  Today was a workday, and she had to open the shop by nine-thirty at the latest, but that still left her with a couple of hours of freedom. If she hurried, she could drive out to Kim and Davis’s place, saddle up old Blossom and quite literally head for the hills.

  Or the trail that followed the wandering line of the river.

  A ride would clear the cobwebs from her brain and maybe even ease the anxious little ache in her heart, the one she’d awakened with some tattered remnant of dreams forgotten.

  Or denied.

  Hastily, before she could change her mind, Carolyn showered, dressed in the usual jeans and T-shirt and, because of the inevitable morning chill, a long-sleeved flannel shirt. She donned socks, hauled on her boots and said goodbye to Winston, promising she’d be back soon.

  The drive to the Creed ranch was refreshing in itself—Carolyn kept her car window rolled halfway down and listened to a Keith Urban CD while she drove. By the time Davis and Kim’s rambling house and barn came into view, she was singing along at the top of her lungs.

  Kim came out of the house when Carolyn pulled in, smiling a warm welcome, the little dogs frolicking at her feet.

  “Come in and have coffee,” Kim called. “I have something to ask you.”

  Kim Creed was a dear and treasured friend, but Carolyn didn’t want to sit and drink coffee—she wanted to ride.

  “I was hoping to take Blossom out for a little spin,” she answered, pausing to smile at the comical antics of the dogs. “What did you want to ask me?”

  Kim scooped the Yorkies up into each hand and walked over to where Carolyn was waiting. “Davis and I have a hankering to head down to Stone Creek for a week or two, and spoil our grandchildren,” Kim said. “Run interference for Steven and Melissa a bit, so they can go off somewhere by themselves for a couple of days. We need somebody to stay here and look after the house while we’re away, though. Can you do it?”

  “I’d be glad to,” Carolyn said, pleased. As much as she loved her apartment on the second floor of Natty McCall’s house, she enjoyed a change of scene once in a while, too. And while other people’s houses usually left her feeling rootless and more adrift than ever, this was the Creed Ranch; for whatever reason, she’d always felt at home here. “Would it be okay if I brought Winston along?”

  “That would be fine,” Kim answered, nuzzling the top of one tiny dog’s head and then the other. Early as it was, Smidgeon and Little Bit’s carefully trimmed coats were already brushed to a high shine, their topknots tied with little yellow ribbons. “Brody will stop by twice a day to tend the horses—just call him or Conner if there’s any sort of emergency. You’re more than welcome to ride Blossom anytime, but Davis doesn’t want you going near that Thoroughbred. Firefly’s too dangerous.” The Thoroughbred was dangerous?

  He couldn’t hold a candle to Brody when it came to making trouble.

  “Kim Creed,” Carolyn reasoned, in fond irritation, “if Brody is set to take care of your horses, why can’t he simply sleep here at night, too, and keep an eye on the property?” She paused, enjoying her friend’s sheepish expression. “Is it just my imagination, or are you trying to throw the two of us together?”

>   Again.

  Kim’s cheeks were pink, but her eyes smiled even before her mouth did. “Would I do a thing like that?” she challenged.

  “In a heartbeat,” Carolyn said, with smiling convic tion.

  Kim was not only thinking fast, she was thinking visibly. The gears behind that still-lovely face were turning for sure. Finally, she drew a deep breath and huffed it out.

  “Brody can’t stay here because he’s got to take care of his own place, the new construction, I mean. There’s always a chance of theft or vandalism, you know, particularly after the sun goes down.”

  Carolyn laughed and rolled her eyes, wondering if Kim knew about the Saturday night date she and Brody had scheduled.

  She decided not to mention it, in case the gossip hadn’t reached Kim’s ears yet. There was no sense in pouring fuel on the fires of speculation, especially when the evening with Brody would probably turn out to be a nonevent.

  Or the mother of all rows.

  When it came to herself and Brody, there seemed to be no middle ground.

  “You’ll do it, then?” Kim persisted. “Stay here at the house while Davis and I are in Stone Creek? I know you have the shop to run, but other than that—”

  Silently, Carolyn completed her friend’s sentence. Other than that, you have no life.

  “I’ll be here, Kim,” she said gently. Kim and Davis had always been kind to her, and their trust was something she prized. She couldn’t have refused the request without a much better reason than her compulsive need to avoid Brody whenever possible. “When are you leaving for Stone Creek?”

  “Sunday morning,” Kim answered, with a glance in the direction of the barn and a crooked little smile. “Go ahead and saddle Blossom. I know your time is limited, and I won’t insist on the coffee klatch.”

  On impulse, Carolyn hugged Kim, being careful not to squash the little dogs.