“I’m fine,” Natty said briskly.
He suspected that she was fibbing, but challenging an old lady’s statement hadn’t been part of his upbringing. Elders, be they friends, like Natty, acquaintances or total strangers, were to be treated with respect—particularly if they happened to be female.
“You’re sure?” he ventured just the same, slanting a glare at Brody then. Go away.
Brody, being Brody, didn’t budge an inch. He just broadened his grin by a notch.
“I’m absolutely sure, Conner,” Natty replied. Then she gave a trilling little laugh that sounded almost bell-like. Years fell away, and Conner could easily picture her as a young woman, and a pretty one, not unlike her great-granddaughter. “I’m perfectly fine. Fit as a fiddle.”
“It’s just that the rummage sale is coming up,” Conner pressed, still concerned.
Brody frowned comically at this.
“I’ve stepped down from chairing the committee,” Natty told him. “I am getting on a little, you know.”
She’d been ninety-one on her last birthday, Conner knew, though he’d missed the party because he was down in Stone Creek at the time, helping Steven paint the nursery before the twins were delivered.
“You’re younger than springtime,” Conner said, recalling the line from one of the old songs Natty liked to play on her stereo.
“And you’re full of beans,” Natty shot back, always ready with another cliché. She was getting tired, though; he could hear that in her voice.
The chat ended soon after that and, for all Natty’s insistence that she was “just fine,” Conner was still worried. He sat there frowning for a few moments, then decided he’d head for Natty’s house as soon as the chores were done the next morning. Take along some insulation and some duct tape to wrap around the pipes under the house.
Tricia probably wouldn’t be around, of course. She’d be over at the campground, working, or maybe at the drive-in theater—a spooky place, closed down long before the multiplex movie houses in Denver came along—doing whatever might need doing.
He’d track her down, ask her if she’d spoken to Natty recently.
Brody, still lounging against the porch railing, shifted his weight from one side to the other, distracting Conner from his thoughts. “For a minute there,” Brody said, in a low drawl, “I had high hopes that you were lining up a hot date.”
Conner realized that he was still holding his phone and dropped it back into the pocket of the clean but worn flannel shirt he’d put on, along with a pair of jeans, after his shower. Then he reached for his beer and took a long draw of the stuff before answering, “There are other things in life besides getting laid, you know.” The statement sounded prissy-assed even to him, and Conner immediately wished he could take it back.
“Like what?” Brody joked.
Conner didn’t reply, but simply sat there, holding his beer and wishing Brody would go away. To another state, say. If not another planet.
“Once upon a time,” Brody said easily, determined to push, “you had a sense of humor.”
“I still do,” Conner said, staring past Brody, into the gray drizzle. “When something’s funny, I laugh.”
Brody heaved a sigh. Pushed away from the porch rail, finally, to stand up straight. His arms fell to his sides. “It’s hard to imagine that,” he said, very quietly, and then he went back inside the house. The screen door shut behind him with barely a sound.
And Conner felt guilty. How crazy was that? If Brody had expected to just pick up where they’d left off—before their knock-down-drag-out over Joleen—he’d been kidding himself. Conner swore under his breath and used the heels of his boots to thrust the ancient porch swing into slow, squeaky motion.
Brody wouldn’t stay long, he thought, trying to console himself. His brother was bound to get bored with Lonesome Bend and the ranch, sooner rather than later, and hit the road again, following the rodeo. Or some woman.
The rain picked up, and the wind blew it in under the roof of the porch, and Conner finally had to give up and go inside. He climbed the front staircase, noticing that the crystal chandelier was dusty, and headed for the master bedroom. The suite had belonged to Kim and Davis before they moved into the new house, and it didn’t lack for comfort. There was a big-screen TV on one wall, and the private bath was the size of an NFL locker room, with slate-tile floors, a big shower with multiple sprayers and a tub made for soaking the ache out of sore muscles.
While all that space might have made sense for his aunt and uncle, it felt cavernous to Conner. He probably would have moved back into the room at the other end of the corridor—the one he’d shared with Brody and, in the summertime, Steven, too, when they were all growing up—but he knew Brody had stowed his gear in there.
Conner switched on the TV, then switched it off again, in the next moment. In his opinion, TV sucked, for the most part. He did enjoy watching athletic women in bikinis “surviving” in some hostile environment, but that was about all.
He hauled his shirt off over his head, to save himself the trouble of unbuttoning it, and tossed the garment to one side. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, which was way too big for one person, and got out of his boots and socks. Standing up again, he dispensed with his jeans, too, and stood there, in the altogether, thinking Brody wasn’t so far wrong, implying that he didn’t have a life.
In the end, he tossed back the covers, crawled between them and reached for the thick biography of Thomas Jefferson sitting on the nightstand. He sighed. Another night with nobody but a dead president for company.
Yee-freakin’-haw.
TRICIA OPENED ONE EYE—how could it possibly be morning already?—and slowly tuned in to her surroundings, glimmer by glimmer, sound by sound, scent by scent.
The sun was shining. Rain dripped from the eaves, but no longer pelted the roof. The timer on the coffeepot beeped, and the tantalizing aroma of fresh brew teased her nose.
Valentino approached, laid his muzzle on her pillow, inches from her face, and whined almost inaudibly.
Something, somewhere, was clanging.
Tricia sat up, glanced at her alarm clock, which she’d forgotten to set the night before, and sucked in a breath. She’d overslept. And that wasn’t like her at all.
Clang, clang, clang.
Since she was wearing a sweatsuit, and she figured that was the next best thing to being fully dressed, Tricia didn’t bother with a robe. Nor did she pause to put on the ugly pink slippers. Sasha, still clad in pink pajamas, joined her in the kitchen.
The child’s eyes were big. “What is that?” she asked, nearly in a whisper.
“I’ll find out,” Tricia said, annoyed but not alarmed. She went to the sink and, wadding up a dish towel, wiped a circle into the steam covering the window so she could peer out at the backyard.
The driveway was empty.
“Is something going to blow up?” Sasha fretted, probably imagining an antiquated furnace, or even a steam boiler with a pressure gauge, chugging cartoonishly away in Natty’s basement, building up to a roof-raising blast.
“No, sweetie,” Tricia said, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m sure nothing is going to explode. This is an old house, and sometimes the pipes make odd noises. So do the floorboards.”
“Oh,” Sasha said, clearly unconvinced.
Valentino, meanwhile, was standing very close to Sasha, actually leaning into her side. Clearly, he was no guard dog.
“Wait here, while I go downstairs and have a look around,” Tricia told them both.
Sasha swallowed visibly, looking small and vulnerable, and then nodded.
The clanging resumed, intermittent and muffled.
Tricia descended the inside stairway and followed the sound through Natty’s chilly rooms to the kitchen.
Silence.
Then the clang came again, this time from directly under her feet.
Tricia started slightly, then after gathering her resolve, marc
hed over to Natty’s basement door. She barely registered the rapid rush of footsteps on the wooden stairs beyond—she hadn’t had coffee yet—and she’d turned the knob and pulled before it occurred to her that the idea might not have been a good one.
A squeak scratched its way up her windpipe and past her vocal cords when she found herself staring directly into Conner Creed’s smiling face. Because he was still on the basement stairs, they were at eye level.
And that alone was disconcerting.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly delighted by her expression. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What are you doing here?” The squeak had turned to a squawk, but at least she could speak coherently now. Tricia’s heart seemed to be trying to crash through her rib cage.
Conner held up a roll of gray duct tape in one hand and a wrench—no doubt the source of the clanging sounds—in the other. “Plumbing?” he asked, as though he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been doing and wanted Tricia to affirm it for him.
She folded her arms, foolishly barring his way into the kitchen. “You could have knocked,” she said.
Conner lifted one shoulder, lowered it again. His grin didn’t falter. “Natty called me last night and asked me to wrap the pipes. I crawled around under the house with a flashlight for a while, making sure there weren’t any obvious leaks, and then I checked the situation in the basement.” He paused, ran his eyes lightly over Tricia’s rumpled hair, coming loose from its braid, before letting his gaze rest on her lips for one tingly moment. “The padlock on the cellar door probably rusted through years ago. I didn’t need the key Natty told me about.”
At last, Tricia found the presence of mind to back up so Conner could step into the kitchen. Now he stood a head taller.
“I’ll be happy to replace it,” he added. His eyes narrowed a little as he watched her, as if he’d suddenly noticed something new and disturbing about her.
“Replace what?” she asked.
The grin returned, faintly insolent and, at the same time, affable. Even friendly.
“The padlock?” he prompted, in the same guessing-game tone he’d used moments before.
It was the most ordinary conversation—about padlocks and plumbing, for Pete’s sake. So why did she feel like a shy debutante about to step onto the dance floor at her coming-out ball?
“Oh,” she finally managed. “Right. The padlock.”
Natty’s kitchen was frigidly cold, and yet, because they were standing within a few feet of each other, the hard heat coming off Conner’s body made Tricia feel as though she were standing in front of a blazing bonfire. Or was she the source of it?
Conner set the duct tape and the wrench aside on a countertop, rested his hands on his hips. “Will you be joining us for the trail ride on Sunday?” he asked.
Not for the first time, Tricia had a strange sense of needing to translate the things this man said from some other language before she could grasp their meaning. “I—guess,” she said, recalling in the next instant that she’d promised Sasha the outing, and backing out wasn’t an option.
“But—?” he asked, watching her.
She finally rustled up a smile, but it felt flimsy on her mouth and wouldn’t stick. “It’s just that I’ve never been on a horse before,” she admitted.
His eyes lit at that, blue fire framed by a narrow rim of steely gray, and his mouth crooked up in that way Tricia couldn’t seem to get used to. “No problem,” he told her, his tone faintly gruff.
No problem.
Easy enough for him to say, she thought, just as Valentino and Sasha clomped down the stairs from her apartment. Conner Creed had probably been born in the saddle, growing up on a ranch the way he had. She, on the other hand, had never ridden anything more dangerous than a carousel.
“We’ll put you on one of the mares,” Conner went on, when she didn’t speak. “Sunflower would be a good choice—she’s three years older than dirt and you’d be more likely to get hurt riding a stick horse.”
Tricia was relieved and, at the same time, a little indignant. Before she could come up with a fitting response, however, Sasha and Valentino made their appearance.
Seeing Conner, Sasha beamed. “Hello, Mr. Creed,” she said.
He nodded to the child, smiled back. “It’s okay to call me Conner,” he told her.
Pleased, Sasha barely glanced at Tricia, stroking Valentino’s head as the two of them stood just inside the kitchen doorway. “I’m Sasha,” she announced.
“I remember,” Conner said easily. “My nephew, Matt, introduced us at the barbecue last weekend, didn’t he?”
Sasha nodded eagerly. “He’s pretty nice, for a little kid,” she said.
Conner chuckled and looked briefly in Tricia’s direction—just in time to catch her sneaking a step back. She felt magnetized, like a passing asteroid being pulled into the orbit of some enormous planet.
He smiled, dashing all hope that he hadn’t noticed.
Tricia’s cheeks flamed. She’d worked hard, ever since high school, to overcome her natural shyness, but when it came to this man, all that effort seemed to be for nothing. A look from him, a word, and every cell in her body suddenly leaped to electrified attention.
It was ridiculous.
“Do you think Natty’s all right?” he asked, his expression serious now. His face could change in an instant, it seemed, and that made him hard to read.
Tricia didn’t like it when people were hard to read.
“Why do you ask?” she inquired, a little jolt of alarm trembling in the pit of her stomach.
Conner wasn’t wearing a hat, being indoors, though she could tell that he’d had one on earlier. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair, watched with a smile in his eyes as Sasha excused herself and left the room, Valentino trotting alongside.
“I guess it bothers me a little that she’s staying on in Denver,” Conner sighed, when he and Tricia were alone in the big kitchen again. “It’s not like your great-grandmother to miss out on the big weekend, even if she has stepped down as head chili commando.”
Though quiet, his tone was so genuine that it touched something deep and private inside Tricia, stirred a soft but still-bruising sweetness where he shouldn’t have been able to reach. They were basically strangers, she and Conner—they certainly hadn’t been more than summer acquaintances growing up—and yet it was as if they’d known each other well, once upon a time and somewhere far, far away.
When she thought she could trust herself to speak, Tricia found another smile, and managed to hold on to it a little longer this time. In truth, she was worried, too. Should she mention that Natty was staying in Denver at the suggestion of her doctor?
No, she decided, in the next second. If Natty had wanted Conner to know why she’d postponed her return to Lonesome Bend, she would have told him herself.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said at last, though of course she wasn’t sure at all. Natty had said her heart had been racing.
Conner studied her for a few moments, looking like he wanted to say something but wouldn’t, and then he flashed that dazzling grin at her again. It was like stepping into the glare of a searchlight on a moonless night, and Tricia blinked once.
“You might want to keep it a little warmer in here,” he said, in another of those hairpin conversational turns of his. “Even wrapped, some of the pipes might freeze if you don’t turn on the heat.”
Tricia nodded, feeling stupid because no response came to mind.
Conner grinned, gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. “Sorry if I scared you a little while ago, banging on the plumbing with my wrench. I got here a little earlier than I expected and, though it seems ironic now, I was pretty sure you’d already gone out.”
Again she felt that sugary sting, inexplicably pleasant, but highly discomforting, too. “Natty asked you to come over,” she said, with a verbal shrug, “and I’m sure she appreciates your help.”
His grin was rueful
now, but it tugged at her, nonetheless. “I’d do just about anything for Natty,” he said, moving to retrieve the duct tape and the wrench from the nearby counter and then stopping to look back over one shoulder. “Turn up the heat,” he added.
Tricia almost said, “I beg your pardon?” but she stopped herself in time. Nodded again.
“Sixty-eight degrees ought to do it,” Conner said. He took another long, slow look at her. “See you around,” he told her, heading for the back door.
See you around.
That was all he’d said. And it was a perfectly normal remark, too.
Just the same, Tricia stood as still as if her feet were glued to the floor until several seconds after he’d closed the door behind him.
The first thing she did, once she could move again, was turn the lock. The second was to find and adjust the downstairs thermostat.
Now, she thought, making the climb back up to her own space, if she could just turn down the heat inside herself.
Upstairs, she found Sasha eating cold cereal at the table, while Winston and Valentino enjoyed their separate bowls of dry food.
After pouring a cup of much-needed coffee, Tricia booted up her computer. The screen saver loomed up automatically, filling the monitor and taking Tricia a little aback, even though she’d seen that picture of herself and Hunter, in front of the ski lodge, at least a jillion times.
“Mom says you can do a lot better than Hunter,” Sasha remarked casually, no doubt prompted by the photograph.
A little of Tricia’s coffee splashed over the rim of her cup and burned her fingers, but beyond that, she showed no outward reaction. “Does she, now?” she asked, amused but mildly resentful toward Diana, too. Surely her very best friend in the world hadn’t meant to make such an observation within her daughter’s earshot.
“That’s what she told my dad,” Sasha said, and resumed her cereal crunching.
Tricia kept her back to the little girl, focusing on the computer’s keyboard instead, going online and clicking on the mailbox icon at the top of the screen.
Normally, she would have felt a little thrill to find no less than three messages from Hunter in among the usual sales pitches for miracle vitamins, quick riches and sexual-enhancement products. This morning, in the wake of another encounter with Conner Creed, all Tricia could work up was a dull sense of futility. Seattle seemed very far away, and so did Hunter.
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