The Creed Legacy

by Linda Lael Miller

  “What was that for?” Kim asked, blinking even as she smiled.

  “You’re a good friend, Kim,” Carolyn answered, turning to walk away, but looking back over one shoulder. “And I’m grateful to you and for you.”

  The majestic Thoroughbred, king of all he surveyed, nickered a greeting to Carolyn as she moved past the corral fence, heading for the barn.

  “Good morning, handsome,” she told the gigantic gelding. What an amazing creature he was, standing there with his head high and his ears pitched forward, his whole frame rimmed by morning sunlight.

  A few moments later, Carolyn reached the door of Blossom’s stall.

  The little mare seemed ready for an excursion and submitted happily to all the customary preparations— saddle blanket, saddle, bridle, cinch-tightening and, finally, a quick check of her hooves.

  “You’re getting fat from standing around in this barn or out in the pasture all the time,” Carolyn told the animal, leading her out into the unusually warm morning air. “Let’s get some exercise.”

  Carolyn chose the route that led along the ridge, as opposed to the one next to the river, mainly because she didn’t want to look over the waters and see Brody’s fabulous house, nearer to completion with every passing day.

  Would he end up marrying Joleen?

  Or would it be some other woman who wasn’t even on the scene yet?

  Brody had taken out a trial membership on Friendly Faces—and even though he’d posted his horse’s picture instead of his own, he wouldn’t lack for prospective dates—or mates. He was, after all, a real catch—young, single, good-looking and financially secure, if not downright rich.

  Strangers might not know these things, but plenty of available Lonesome Bend women would, and they wouldn’t hesitate to lobby for a date.

  What if Brody fell for one of them?

  Then he fell for one of them, Carolyn thought, in rueful answer to her own silent question.

  She stuck a foot into the stirrup and swung herself up onto Blossom’s wide back. A glutton for punishment when it came to Brody Creed, Carolyn imagined a wedding, crowded with well-wishers. A beautiful bride, with one hot groom—Brody—promising to love, honor and cherish.

  One thing led to another. She pictured the two of them—Brody and the faceless woman—leaving on their honeymoon.

  In her mind’s eye, she witnessed their return to Lonesome Bend. Brody would carry his new wife over the threshold of that amazing house—she could probably even cook, the bitch—and there would be a baby on the way in no time at all.

  Carolyn, leaving Blossom to choose their path, blushed at the thought.

  The new Mrs. Creed would probably stop by the shop often—after all, she’d be Tricia’s sister-in-law and, therefore, need no excuse to visit—and Carolyn would have to watch as the woman’s belly swelled with Brody’s child….

  “Stop it,” she told herself out loud.

  Blossom, no doubt thinking Carolyn was speaking to her, stopped and looked back in comical equine curiosity.

  “I’m sorry,” Carolyn told the horse gently, patting the mare’s neck. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Blossom, seemingly satisfied, plodded on.

  Carolyn, in the meantime, went right on daydreaming, paying no attention when Blossom left the ridge trail and meandered through a copse of cottonwood trees to the banks of Hidden Lake. Hidden Lake.

  Carolyn’s heart almost stopped when she realized where they were. She’d been careful to avoid the place since her last visit, years ago—with Brody.

  They’d camped on the shore, sharing a single sleeping bag inside an insulated pup tent made for one.

  They’d fished, and fried the catch over a fire in the open air.

  And, oh, how they’d made love.

  Carolyn had never been happier, before or since.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said to the horse, tugging lightly on the reins.

  But Blossom waded into the water instead, lowered her head and began to drink noisily of the crystal-clear water.

  With a sigh, Carolyn backed the mare onto the shore and dismounted to walk around a little, and work the kinks out of her legs. Lately, she’d gone too long between horseback rides, and she felt the omission in the insides of her thighs and in her lower back.

  Blossom waded in again, bent her head to satisfy her thirst.

  Carolyn looked around, stricken anew by the beauty of the place. With the trees filtering the light of the sun and causing it to dance with leaf shadows on the surface of the lake, it seemed sacred, almost cathedral-like.

  It was ridiculously warm, for a morning in May, and she shed the flannel shirt, draping it over a nearby boulder, and enjoyed the feel of soft heat on her shoulders and arms. She shouldn’t be dallying out here, she thought— the shop was supposed to open in an hour, and she’d need another shower and a change of clothes before then.

  But the silence, the trees, the muted birdsong, all of it was solace to her soul.

  Eventually, the sensual pull of the water proved to be more than she could resist. Carolyn, so rarely impulsive, resolutely kicked off her boots, peeled away her socks and waded into the sky-tinted waters of Hidden Lake.

  The water was warm, and soft as liquefied silk.

  Carolyn rolled her jeans up to her knees and waded in deeper. The lake bottom was covered in tiny, smooth stones, and those stones worked the flesh on the bottoms of her feet like the fingers of a gifted masseuse.

  Tilting her head back and closing her eyes, Carolyn gave herself up to sensation—peace, the deliciousness of water, the smooth caress of the little rocks under her soles, the sunshine spiking between the branches of the cottonwoods that arched overhead like great pillars supporting the sky.

  For all the things she would have changed about her past, her present and her future, if that had been possible in the first place, in the here and now, Carolyn counted only the good things.

  She was young, she was healthy and she loved her life.

  She loved working in the shop. She loved sewing, and riding horses, and taking care of Winston. She loved her friends and her modest apartment and the town of Lonesome Bend, Colorado, which felt like a family, even if it wasn’t.

  She was blessed among women.

  Blossom nickered, attracting Carolyn’s attention.

  She turned, watched as the mare moved farther up the sloping bank to graze happily on sweet grass, the reins still looped loosely behind the horn of the saddle.

  The urge to strip to the skin and swim in that lake came over Carolyn suddenly, and it was all but overwhelming.

  Carolyn got out of the water, intending to get back on Blossom and ride away, but instead, she found herself peeling off her clothes, piling them on the dry boulder, with the flannel shirt she’d doffed earlier. She plunged back into the lake, gasping at the initial chill but adapting quickly. She swam out into deeper water and then turned onto her back to float and gaze up at that painfully blue sky.

  It was a time out of time; she’d drifted, somehow, into a magical world, parallel to the one she usually inhabited.

  Then she heard the sound—another horse, somewhere very nearby.

  Heart pounding, Carolyn stopped floating to tread water, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the trees for any sign of an intruder.

  All was silent now—even the birds had stopped sing ing.

  Carolyn was convinced of it: she had definitely heard a horse, and it hadn’t been Blossom. The mare was still grazing.

  “Who’s there?” Carolyn called, somewhat shakily, as terrible headlines flashed through her mind.

  Woman Found Dead Near Remote Lake…

  Local Shop-owner Perishes in Brutal Attack…

  There it went again, that imagination of hers.

  She’d probably heard a deer, or, since livestock ranged all over the Creed ranch anyway, a cow or a horse.

  Then Brody appeared, riding through the cottonwoods and swinging down off the back of his bucks
kin gelding, Moonshine. He smiled, took off his hat and hung it on the saddle horn. Soothed a fretful Blossom with a muttered word and a few pats on the neck.

  Carolyn’s heart seized and moved up into her throat. Things like this only happened in books, or in old movies.

  They did not happen to her, not in real life, anyway. There might have been a fantasy or two, but those were just—well—fantasies.

  “These your clothes?” Brody asked mildly, inclining his head toward the boulder and the pile of discarded garments.

  Carolyn felt a surge of true annoyance and her cheeks burned. “Who else’s clothes would they be?” she demanded. “And what are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

  “Davis sent me out to ride the fence lines,” Brody replied, kicking off one of his boots. “That’s one of his prescriptions for a case of what he calls ‘the moody blues.’ Hard work or a long ride. I happened to spot you and Blossom leaving the trail, so I decided to follow, make sure the both of you were all right.”

  Off went the other boot.

  Carolyn was gripped by memories of the last time she and Brody had been here, together. It had been too cold to swim then; now, she was surprised the lake didn’t start to simmer.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped, still treading water but moving away from shore, away from Brody.

  “It’s a nice day,” he said, neatly evading the question, tossing his hat down on top of his boots. “Unusually warm for May, wouldn’t you say? Perfect for skinny-dipping.”

  “Brody Creed, don’t you dare—”

  He hauled his shirt off over his head, tossed it.

  His chest was sculpted, sprinkled with gold; time had been good to Brody Creed.

  Damn it.

  “It’s a free country,” he told her, his belt buckle making a jingling sound as he unhooked it. “And this lake is on Creed land.”

  “I’ll leave,” Carolyn said, on a rush of breath. “Just turn your back, so I can get out of the water and put on my clothes, and I’ll be gone—”

  Brody unfastened his jeans.

  That was no answer, Carolyn thought frantically.

  Or was it?

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to think. Her breath was shallow, and her heart was thudding against her rib cage.

  She wanted to be anywhere but here.

  She wanted to be nowhere but here.

  There was a splash, and Carolyn felt a subtle, sensual movement in the water, and when curiosity forced her to open her eyes again, Brody was right in front of her.

  Crystal beads glimmered in his eyelashes, and his grin was as obnoxiously winsome as ever. Maybe more so.

  From the neck down—Carolyn did try not to look— he was a moving shadow. Sunshine, filtered by cottonwood leaves, glimmered in his tarnished-gold hair and that grin—well, that grin.

  “Relax,” he drawled, his blue eyes percolating with mischievous delight—and something else that might have been desire. “I’d never force you or any other woman to do anything you didn’t want to do.”

  This, Carolyn knew, was a perfectly true statement.

  It was also no comfort whatsoever.

  “Don’t,” she murmured, not knowing if she was addressing that single desperate word to Brody, or to herself.

  He raised one eyebrow. “Don’t what?”

  He knew damn well don’t what.

  But did she?

  With a great sigh of lusty contentment, Brody tilted his head back, closed his eyes, breathed in the blue-sky air with the same relish Carolyn had earlier.

  Carolyn, though still flustered, used those few stolen moments to admire him—the strong line of his jaw, the long eyelashes, the hair bejeweled with droplets of lake water.

  When he opened his eyes again, and caught her looking at him, she actually gasped, startled.

  That made Brody chuckle, and Carolyn blushed.

  “Remember the last time we were here?” he asked, his tone slow and almost sleepy. “It was a lot colder than it is now, and we kept the bonfire going long into the night. Not that we needed it to keep warm.”

  Now it was Carolyn who closed her eyes, tangled in the vision like a fish in a net. They’d hadn’t needed a fire—their lovemaking had set them both ablaze.

  “I remember,” she murmured softly.

  “Carolyn,” Brody said, “open your eyes and relax. I’m not trying to seduce you, here.”

  “You could have fooled me,” Carolyn protested, getting angry again. “Taking off your clothes and jumping right into this lake when I specifically asked you not to—”

  He laughed—threw back his head and laughed. He certainly didn’t lack for nerve.

  Carolyn seethed.

  When Brody’s amusement abated a little, he said, “You were naked when I got here, remember? How was I to know you weren’t hoping I’d show up and seduce you?”

  If the water hadn’t limited her momentum, Carolyn swore she would have broken all her personal rules about violence and slapped him, hard.

  “How was I to know,” she countered, quietly furious, “that you were following me, like some—some stalker? Do you honestly think I would have taken off my clothes if I’d had the faintest glimmer that you were going to show up?”

  This time, Brody didn’t laugh. His gaze was solemn, with just the faintest sparkle of mischief, as he regarded her. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d take off your clothes for any reason,” he drawled. “Especially to take a swim in a mountain lake that doesn’t generally warm up until the middle of August.”

  When had he gotten closer? Carolyn wondered distractedly, moving back a little, scanning the lakeside for Blossom

  No Blossom.

  The mare must have wandered off at some point.

  Which was just terrific, because now Carolyn wasn’t just naked and embarrassed and alone with Brody in what basically amounted to the Blue Lagoon. She was all of those things and stranded.

  “Blossom!” she called out, going around Brody and heading for shore, but pausing when she realized she was about to reveal herself in the altogether. “Blossom, where are you?”

  Nothing.

  Brody appeared beside her.

  Carolyn crouched a little and crossed her arms in front of her breasts. Her nipples felt hard and tight, and it wasn’t just because there was a slight nip to the water.

  “That’s one thing about Blossom,” Brody said easily, evidently enjoying this new development in an already impossible situation. “She’s always been kind of flighty. As likely as not, she’s halfway home by now.”

  “Don’t say that,” Carolyn sputtered. “Don’t even think it.”

  “You and I can ride double, on Moonshine.” He paused, sighed. “We’d better get going. Kim will freak out when that horse trots into the barnyard with her saddle empty.”

  “I have to get my clothes first,” Carolyn said. All she needed was for Kim to call Davis when Blossom came home without a rider, and the two of them to come searching for her.

  Brody chuckled again, but very slowly he turned his back. “I won’t look until you tell me it’s all right,” he promised.

  Tugging dry clothes over wet skin, especially in a hurry, had frustration singing through Carolyn’s veins by the time she was decent.

  “Okay,” she said begrudgingly.

  Brody turned around and started out of the water, no more concerned with his own nakedness than Adam in the Garden.

  Carolyn whirled to give him her back and folded her arms tight against her chest.

  Brody muttered the occasional cheerful curse as he dressed himself, and when he was ready, he whistled for Moonshine.

  The buckskin came right to him, docile as a dollara-ride pony at the state fair.

  “Need a boost?” Brody asked, his voice like the flick of a feather across the sensitive skin at her nape.

  Carolyn cast one last look around for Blossom, didn’t see a sign of that fickle critter, and climbed into Moonshine’s saddle like the sk
illed horsewoman she was.

  For a second or so, she actually considered riding off and leaving Brody to walk home from Hidden Lake, but of course she couldn’t do it. The Code of the West went way back and ran deep. And one of its tenets was that you never took off on somebody else’s horse and left them afoot.

  Even now, in this modern day and age, there were too many bad things that could happen to a stranded rider.

  Brody chuckled, reading her expression accurately, it would seem, and sprang up behind her, nimble as a Native warrior. “I knew you weren’t a horse thief,” he teased, leaning around her, into her, to take up the reins.

  “H-how?” Carolyn asked. Damn Brody for suggesting that the lake was too cold to swim in at this time of year. Now her teeth were starting to chatter, and she could feel a wicked sneeze building up in her sinus passages.

  He nudged Moonshine into a fast walk. “Well, for one thing,” he replied, “you’re missing the big handlebar mustache.”

  Carolyn did not—would not—laugh.

  But she wanted to, and Brody probably knew that.

  They rode out of the cottonwoods and onto the trail, picking up speed as they went.

  Carolyn tried not to notice that Brody felt as hardchested as a statue behind her, that the heat of his body was leaching past the chill of her damp flesh, warming her, making her heart race a little.

  She should have been relieved that they hadn’t made love, she supposed, and she was, mostly. She was also somewhat disappointed.

  Like before, he seemed to know what she was thinking.

  Which just went to prove how arrogant he was.

  And how right.

  He bent his head, touched his tongue to the back of her neck, made a chortling sound when she reacted with a little groan.

  “Back there at the lake,” he told her, his voice throaty and almost hypnotic, but audible even over the clatter of Moonshine’s hooves on the hard-packed dirt of the trail, “I wanted to lay you down in the grass and have my way with you. Know why I didn’t try?”

  A tremor, as involuntary as the groan, shuddered through Carolyn. “You didn’t try,” she managed to reply, “because you knew I’d scratch your eyes right out of your head if you did.”

  Brody laughed. “I didn’t try,” he said, “because I didn’t have a condom handy.”