Creed's Honor

by Linda Lael Miller

  She opened the message and was surprised to see her slender, blonde mother smiling back at her from a photograph taken in front of some jungle hut.

  Beside Laurel McCall stood a handsome man with a receding hairline and wire-rimmed glasses. He was beaming, too, one arm around Laurel’s waist.

  Tricia gulped, flicked a glance at the subject line above the picture.

  “Meet Harvey, your new stepfather,” Laurel had written, the phrase supplemented by half a dozen exclamation points.

  “My new—?” Tricia whispered. She was feeling something—all kinds of things, actually—but she couldn’t have said what those things were.

  A knock sounded from downstairs; someone was at Natty’s front door. Conner, bringing Valentino home? No, Tricia decided. He would have come up the outside staircase and, besides, he knew Natty was off in Denver.

  Strangely jittery, Tricia closed the message without reading her mother’s long missive, pushed back her chair and went to the living room window to look out at the street. Conner’s truck was parked at the curb.

  The knocking, though still polite, grew more insistent.

  Tricia hurried downstairs, worked the stiff locks and pulled open the door.

  Her gaze dropped to Valentino, sitting there on his haunches, panting and looking up at her, all innocence and unconditional canine love.

  “You,” she told the creature fondly, “are a bad dog.”

  She forced herself to look up and meet Conner’s eyes. He’d said they weren’t going to pretend, and she knew he’d meant it.

  The man standing before her looked like Conner—exactly like him, in fact—but this wasn’t Conner. It was Brody.

  What was going on here? Tricia wondered, glancing past Brody’s shoulder at Conner’s truck. Was this some kind of immature twin trick? The old switcheroo?

  “Hey,” Brody said, and it was clear from the laughter lurking in his Conner-blue eyes that he’d picked up on her thoughts. “Brought your dog back.”

  “Thanks, Brody,” Tricia said, stepping back. On the one hand, she was glad she didn’t have to face Conner quite yet, because she wasn’t ready, after the way she’d carried on in his bed and then run out of his house in a stupid panic. On the other, she felt his absence like a physical ache. “Come in. I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

  Brody’s grin was crooked, identical to Conner’s, and yet—different. “I guess you can tell my brother and me apart,” he said, following Valentino over the threshold. Taking off his hat and holding it respectfully in one hand, cowboy style. “Most people can’t, when we’re trying to look alike.”

  Tricia, headed for the inside stairs, looked back over one shoulder. “Did you set out to fool me, Brody Creed?” she asked bluntly, but with a touch of amusement.

  “If I did,” he allowed good-naturedly, “it didn’t work, did it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ready for the closing tomorrow?” he asked, when they’d reached the upper floor and her apartment. The place was too quiet without Sasha. Without Natty. But Valentino was back. That was something.

  It took Tricia a moment to remember that Brody was buying her property, hence the mention of a closing.

  Thanks to him, she was suddenly presented with a plethora of choices. Go or stay. Take a chance on a flesh-and-blood man or run for the hills. Decisions, decisions.

  “All ready,” she answered, at last. But she was frowning slightly as she moved toward the coffeemaker. At a nod of invitation from her, Brody pulled back a chair and sat down at the table, resting his hat on the floor.

  Valentino, meanwhile, plodded over to his bed, sniffed his blue chicken a few times and laid himself down with a loud, contented sigh.

  “Crazy dog,” Tricia said, shaking her head.

  Brody shifted in his chair, taking off his denim jacket, setting it aside, with the hat. And grinning. “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d be convinced that that critter is trying to play matchmaker.”

  Tricia turned her back to Brody, because her cheeks were suddenly warm and probably pink. Her heartbeat quickened a little, and she wondered exactly how much he knew about her relationship with Conner.

  But Tricia shook her head an instant later, in answer to her own unspoken question. Conner wouldn’t kiss and tell.

  Brody chuckled to himself and didn’t press her for a verbal reply.

  “You’d be good for Conner,” he said, after a long and thoughtful silence, just as Tricia was turning away from the coffeemaker. He looked, and sounded, totally serious, and there was something gentle in his eyes. “He’s been alone too much, for way too long,” Brody finished.

  Tricia averted her eyes, ran her suddenly moist palms down her blue-jeaned thighs. She was blushing again, and this time, there was no hiding it. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  “I walked in on that conversation you and Conner had this morning, over the telephone,” Brody explained kindly. “And I overheard a pertinent detail.”

  He stood up, leaned to draw back a chair for Tricia.

  She sat, still not looking at him, or saying anything.

  He sat, too.

  The coffeemaker chortled and hissed, and Valentino started to snore.

  “Like I said,” Brody told her finally, with a smile in his voice, “I think you’d be about the best thing that ever happened to my brother.”

  She met his eyes. Bit down on her lower lip, searching her brain for a sensible answer, discarding every prospect she managed to come up with.

  Finally, she settled on, “I’d rather not talk about Conner.”

  “Okay,” Brody said, with an agreeable nod. “Then let’s talk about River’s Bend, and the old drive-in.” He paused, chuckled. “I have some great memories of that place. By my calculations, half the kids in Lonesome Bend must have been conceived there, back in the day.”

  Tricia was beginning to relax a little—she was comfortable around Brody in a way she wasn’t with Conner—probably because she and Brody had never been intimate. She smiled, let out her breath.

  “Are any of them yours?” she asked, with a twinkle.

  He laughed. “Not that I’ve heard,” he replied. But then a new expression flickered in his eyes, and Tricia read it as uncertainty. She’d certainly touched a nerve, and now she wished she’d held her tongue.

  She got up and poured them both a cup of the still-brewing coffee. Took a careful, steadying sip before turning the conversation back to her late father’s properties.

  “I guess you’ll be getting rid of the screen and the speakers and stuff, out at the Bluebird,” she said.

  There was an easing in Brody. He’d made some kind of internal shift, away from whatever had been bothering him. His grin was companionable, his manner brotherly. “Yes,” he answered. “Does that bother you?”

  Tricia pondered the question—not for the first time, of course—and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Things change. What about the campground and the ‘lodge,’ as my dad used to call it?”

  Brody shifted in his chair, looked down into his coffee cup as though he saw some benevolent scene playing out on the liquid surface. A moment later, though, he met her gaze. “Come spring,” he said, “I plan on clearing that land and building a house and a barn. Putting up some pasture fences and the like.”

  She recalled that Carla, her real-estate agent, had mentioned Brody’s intention to make the newly acquired land part of the Creed ranch, but hearing it directly from him made it real, took the idea outside the nebulous realm of local gossip and speculation.

  “Will it seem strange,” she began, “living somewhere besides the main ranch house, I mean?” The Creeds were a legend in Lonesome Bend and for miles around, probably. Natty’s house, historical monument that it was, was new by comparison to the one Brody and Conner had grown up in.

  Both the house and the ranch had been passed down from father to son for generations.

  Too late, Tricia saw that her ques
tion had pained Brody, at least a little.

  He cleared his throat, but his voice was still gruff when he said, “As you’re probably aware, Conner and I don’t get along very well. We inherited the ranch in equal shares, and that includes the house, but since he stayed put all this time, while I was off roaming the countryside, I figure it’s only fair to let him have the place.”

  Tricia nodded, understanding. “It’s too bad,” she said, meaning it. “That you don’t get along, I mean.”

  “I agree,” Brody said, with quiet regret. “But what’s done is done. Once Conner makes up his mind to write somebody off, the person might as well be dead. When he’s finished, that’s it.”

  The statement saddened Tricia, and frightened her a little, too. If Diana had been there, she probably would have said that was the reason for Tricia’s history of arm’s-length relationships—the fear of caring too much about someone, and then being tossed aside, forgotten.

  “Because of Joleen,” she said, without meaning to say any such thing.

  “Because of Joleen,” Brody confirmed grimly. “Or, to be more accurate, because of what Conner thinks happened between Joleen and me once upon a time.”

  A combination of remembered pleasure and potential pain washed over Tricia; it was completely ridiculous, but she hated the idea of Conner making love to any other woman—past, present or future.

  “It didn’t happen?” she asked, her voice small. She was treading private ground, she knew, and yet she hadn’t been able to keep the question inside.

  Brody shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “But there’ll be no convincing Conner of that.”

  She recalled the day of the trail ride, when Joleen and Brody had come racing across the range together, bent low over their horses’ necks, laughing. They’d looked like a couple in love, Brody and Joleen had—particularly to Carolyn. How was Carolyn, anyway? She needed to find out.

  “Have you tried?” she asked. “Convincing Conner, I mean?”

  Brody gave a raspy, raw chuckle, the kind of sound it hurts to make—and to hear. “He knows the truth, somewhere in that hard Creed head of his. The thing is, Conner resents me for a whole other reason, one he might not even be aware of.”

  Tricia waited, desperate to know what that reason was, but unwilling to pry any more than she already had. She was way out of bounds as it was.

  “Being an identical twin can be a great thing,” Brody mused, looking off into some other place, beyond Tricia and beyond her kitchen. Maybe even beyond Lonesome Bend itself. “Or it can be a bad one. Sometimes, it’s like you’re one person, the two of you, but split apart. Believe it or not, you forget sometimes that you’ve got an exact double, and then you look up and see yourself standing on the other side of the room. It can be unnerving.”

  Tricia nodded again. The revelation was highly personal, but Brody had been the one to put it out there. She hadn’t pried. “Is it true,” she asked carefully, “that if one of you gets hurt—thrown from a bull at a rodeo, say—the other one feels pain?”

  Brody nodded. “It happens. With Conner and me, the connection tended to manifest itself in other ways, though. As kids, the teachers used to separate us on test days, even put us in different rooms, because they thought we must have worked out a way of signaling each other—the answers we gave were always the same, no matter what they did to keep us apart.” He paused, chuckled at the memory. “Even the wrong ones.”

  Tricia smiled. “I didn’t go to school in Lonesome Bend,” she said, “but I remember the fuss everybody raised when you two switched places.”

  “Those were the days,” Brody said. He’d finished his coffee, and now he pushed his chair back, ready to leave. Retrieved his jacket and his hat and put them on. “Guess I’d better get back to the ranch. Shoulder my share of the load, and all that.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, at the closing,” Tricia said, rising. “Thanks for bringing Valentino home.”

  She opened the kitchen door, and he stepped out onto the landing. The wind was chilly, laced with tiny flakes of snow, and it ruffled his hair, caused him to raise the collar of his jacket and shiver slightly.

  “Thanks for the company,” was Brody’s belated reply.

  He didn’t move to descend the outside stairs, and Tricia didn’t close the door. “You were trying to fool me, showing up in Conner’s truck,” she finally said. “Why?”

  Brody looked away into that private distance of his again, then looked back. Gave the faintest semblance of that infamous Creed grin. “I wasn’t expecting to pass myself off as my brother, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he replied. “I just wanted to know for sure what I already suspected, since you and I ran into each other at the big chili feed that weekend—that you’re one of the few people in this world who sees Conner as one person, and me as another.”

  Of course she remembered the encounter. She’d said, without any hesitation at all, “Hello, Brody.”

  She reached out now, touched his arm. “See you,” she said, just as the landline rang behind her.

  Brody grinned, raised one hand in a wave, and took his leave.

  Tricia closed the door, turned, and leaped for the phone. Maybe it was Conner calling.

  She hoped so.

  She hoped not.

  “Doris and I are going on a cruise,” Natty announced, without preamble. “And I need someone to look after Winston while we’re gone.”

  Tricia smiled, forgetting, for the moment, all the complications in her life. A new stepfather was just the beginning, though, of course, she had no intention of laying that on Natty.

  “I’d be happy to do that,” she told her great-grandmother. “I’ve missed Winston almost as much as I’ve missed you.”

  “I miss you, too, dear,” Natty said. “In truth, I wasn’t sure you’d still be in Lonesome Bend. I know Seattle beckons.”

  “Seattle,” Tricia said, “is right where I left it. It will keep. Where are you and Aunt Doris going on this cruise of yours?”

  “Everywhere,” Natty responded happily. She sounded like a teenager instead of a woman in her nineties; living with her sister was clearly good for her. “We sail to Amsterdam next week, out of New York, and then from one Baltic port to another, all the way to St. Petersburg.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Tricia said, pleased.

  “You could come with us,” Natty mused. “But, then, I don’t know who would take care of Winston if you did. Doris leaves her dogs at a local kennel, but I think my poor cat has had enough to get used to lately, without being sent to some strange place.”

  Tricia smiled. “Not a problem. How long will you be away?”

  “Three weeks,” Natty said, after a little pause. “Is that too long?”

  “No,” Tricia said, thinking of all the times Natty might have gone traveling if she hadn’t chosen to stay in Lonesome Bend and help look after her great-granddaughter every summer instead. “Of course it isn’t too long. Take all the time you want.” She looked over at Valentino, who had lifted his head to take it all in. Did he know, somehow, that his feline sidekick was coming back for a visit? “Shall I come to Denver to fetch Winston?”

  “No, dear,” Natty replied, revving up again, in that old familiar way. Full of excitement and anticipation. “Doris’s friend’s oldest son, Buddy, drives a delivery truck to Lonesome Bend and the surrounding area five days a week. He’ll bring Winston directly to your doorstep.”

  “Okay,” Tricia answered. “Good.”

  “There is one other thing,” Natty said.

  Tricia felt her shoulders tense up slightly. It was something in her great-grandmother’s tone—a certain hesitancy. “What?”

  “Carolyn Simmons is moving in downstairs,” Natty said. “She’s my new renter. Housing is at such a premium in Lonesome Bend, and with Kim and Davis Creed coming home early, she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t think you’d mind, since the two of you seem to like each other.”

  “I don’t
mind,” Tricia confirmed. What she found hard to accept, though, was the sudden and certain realization that Natty really wasn’t planning to come back home. Ever.

  “I kept thinking of how abandoned that house would be, especially if you left. It’s never been empty since it was built, you know. Not for any length of time, anyway. Even when Mama and Papa went to Europe on their honeymoon trip, my grandmother and great-grandmother were there to keep the home fires burning.” Natty stopped to draw a breath, then rushed on. “What to do, what to do. That’s what I wondered. You can just imagine. And then, all of the sudden, inspiration! I could offer that nice Carolyn Simmons a sort of home base. Everybody needs that. In any event, I knew she was housesitting for Davis and Kim, so I called her there, and she said she’d just love to stay in a beautiful house like mine and look after the plumbing and such, but she insisted on paying rent.”

  Tricia smiled. If she did decide to move back to Seattle—or elsewhere—at any time, she wouldn’t have to worry about Natty’s house. Even when she was minding someone else’s place, Carolyn would keep an eye on the lovely old Victorian.

  “I’m glad you found someone,” Tricia said.

  “Not that you need to be in any kind of hurry to leave, dear,” Natty was quick to say. “After all, one day the place will be all yours.”

  “Not too soon, I hope,” Tricia replied. She hadn’t told her great-grandmother about the breakup with Hunter—she hadn’t had the chance. And she certainly wasn’t going to mention the latest development with Conner. If it was a development.

  Sex meant more to a woman than it did to a man, after all. She had to be careful not to read anything into that one incident.

  I think you’d be good for my brother, she’d heard Brody say.

  “How was your trip to Seattle?” Natty asked. She’d mentioned a few times that her husband had dubbed her Chatty Natty, and it was easy to see why.

  “It was fine,” Tricia answered, smiling again. “Diana and Paul are busy getting ready to leave for Paris, and of course I enjoyed getting to spend more time with Sasha. I did some shopping, too. Bought some actual clothes.”