Creed's Honor

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I might have interfered in your—relationship,” he finally confessed.

  Annoyance sang through Conner, electrified him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, his voice dangerously quiet.

  “I told Tricia not to hurt you.”

  Conner slammed his palms down hard on the table. It was a good thing those little dogs were gone, because he was about to go off like a geyser. They’d have been scared right out of their rhinestone collars and their itsy-bitsy hair ribbons. “You did what?”

  Brody looked chagrined, but if a fight broke out, he’d hold his own, Conner knew, as always. “You know how people talk—”

  “Brody, I swear to God—”

  “Joleen’s mother heard it at Bingo Friday night,” Brody said. “All about how Tricia has been seeing this yahoo in Seattle for years, just waiting to unload Joe’s property so she could get the hell out of here—”

  “Joleen’s mother heard it at Bingo Friday night,” Conner repeated, in a tone that didn’t begin to express his disbelief.

  “Okay,” Brody allowed, “so maybe I overreacted a little.”

  “Maybe you should have kept your nose out of my business,” Conner speculated, after unclamping the hinges of his jawbones.

  “I’m sorry,” Brody said. “I wish I’d stayed out of it, but I was afraid—after the way you took the breakup with Joleen, I was afraid you’d never take a chance on a woman again, if things went wrong with Tricia—”

  Conner swore. And that siphoned off some of the fury.

  “I was a kid then, Brody. Yeah, I thought losing Joleen was the end of the world, especially losing her to you. But I also thought professional wrestling and Jeanine Clark’s boobs were for real.”

  A grin tugged at the corner of Brody’s mouth, and he didn’t look quite so grim as before. “Jeanine Clark’s boobs weren’t real?” he asked, widening his eyes a little.

  Conner gave a snort of laughter, but his amusement didn’t last any longer than the rush of anger had. He felt—numb.

  Neither one of them spoke for a while. They just breathed, and drank their coffee, and occasionally glanced over at the snow tumbling past the windows, thicker and thicker. Wood crackled in the antique cookstove, and the lights flickered and Conner wondered if he’d be able to get to Tricia’s place on anything but cross-country skis or a snowmobile.

  The county workers wouldn’t start plowing the roads until they were sure the snow was going to stick, and even when they did, they’d be working on the far side of Lonesome Bend, keeping the main highway clear.

  He pushed back his chair and stood. “If I don’t get back in time,” he told Brody, “feed the horses and make sure the water doesn’t freeze up out in the barn.”

  Brody opened his mouth, shut it again.

  Conner crossed to the row of pegs by the door and put on his hat and coat. “Keys,” he said, since Brody had been the last one to drive his rig.

  “In the ignition,” Brody answered, rising from his chair.

  “Figures,” Conner muttered, on his way out.

  He was halfway to his truck when Brody called to him from the doorway. He turned just in time to catch his flying cell phone in one hand.

  There couldn’t have been more than twenty feet between them, and yet Brody was just a shape, framed in a big square of light.

  “Be careful,” he said, in a low shout. “And call if you need help.”

  Conner nodded, dropped the cell into his coat pocket, smiling briefly because it made him think of Davis and the dogs.

  Once he was inside the truck, though, with the engine going and the windshield covering over with snow between every swipe of the wipers, he was getting worried—and not just about Tricia.

  Were Davis and Kim on the road? He didn’t figure they’d had time to wheel a cart through the supermarket, load up the groceries and get home again, but he supposed it was possible, if they’d decided to hurry. Practically every winter, somebody ran off the road when the snow was heavy or the roads were iced over or both, and there wasn’t always a happy ending.

  Conner fumbled for his phone. Calling either Davis or Kim was always a crapshoot—Davis thought cell phones were more hindrance than help, as he put it, and Kim’s was usually in her other purse. That is, the one she wasn’t carrying.

  Covering about a foot a minute, because of limited visibility, Conner keyed in his uncle’s number. He got voice mail.

  He tried getting in touch with Kim. Ditto.

  He called their house, hoping they’d changed their minds about going to town and driven home. Voice mail again.

  He swore under his breath and told himself the last thing the world needed was another fool out driving around in this weather, but he kept going, stopping now and then to reorient himself to the disappearing road. It was a good thing he’d lived in that country all his life, driven across it thousands of times.

  Nearly an hour passed before Conner got to town, a trip that rarely took more than fifteen minutes, even in a hard and slippery rain. When he spotted the bright lights of the local supermarket off to one side, he cranked the wheel in that direction.

  He cruised up and down the rows of cars and pickup trucks until he came to Kim and Davis’s rig. Davis had the window rolled down, and fumes billowed from the tail pipe, but the tires wouldn’t grab and he wasn’t going forward or backward.

  Conner pulled up alongside, pointed in the opposite direction, and buzzed down his own window. A whiff of burnt rubber met him, along with a face full of snow.

  “I knew we should have brought the truck!” Davis grumbled.

  Conner laughed, shoved open his door and held his hat on as he approached. Bent to look across at Kim, who looked as worried as he’d ever seen her, the two tiny dogs huddled together on her lap, shivering.

  Kim brightened at the sight of him. “We’re saved,” she told the dogs. “Conner’s here.”

  Davis was indignant, probably at the suggestion that any woman or critter in his care would need saving by Conner or anybody else. “Hell, Kim,” he growled, “we’re in the middle of town, not out on the range somewhere.”

  “Can you take us home?” Kim asked Conner, ignoring her husband. “Davis can stay here in the middle of town if he wants to, but Smidgeon and Little Bit and I want to take our kibble and our canned goods and hightail it for the ranch.”

  Conner answered by going around to the other side of the car and helping Kim out. She’d tucked the dogs inside her coat, and they looked out over the folds of her lapels, transfixed by the snow.

  By the time Conner had settled his aunt and her pups in the backseat of his extended-cab truck, Davis had given up on getting the car moving and opened up the trunk to transfer the groceries.

  Neither he nor Conner said much while they hustled the bags into the back of Conner’s rig—they’d have had to yell to hear each other over the howl of the wind, and there was no point in that—but Davis had plenty to say once they were inside again.

  “I told Kim before we even left our place that we ought to take the truck, because I didn’t like the looks of that sky, and there were already a few flurries coming down, but no. She said her car hadn’t been started up in a while, what with our being away from home and all, and we ought to take that to town, blow the cobwebs out of the motor—”

  “Oh, Davis,” Kim said sweetly, from the backseat, “do shut up.”

  The air seemed to throb inside that truck, as if there were going to be an explosion, and Conner braced himself for it.

  Instead of blowing up, though, Davis just laughed. “Sometimes,” he joked, “I wonder if this relationship is going to last.”

  “You’re stuck with me, cowboy,” Kim told him, leaning forward to pat her husband’s shoulder.

  Conner let out his breath. It was no big revelation—married people argued, even when they loved each other—but it struck him as a good thing to remember.

  He took Davis and Kim as far as the main ranch house—the r
oad to their place was all uphill and it was narrow. Too treacherous to travel over in the dark.

  Brody came out to help unload the grub from the back of the truck, and Davis hustled Kim and the pups toward the house. When Conner started back to his truck—the snow was up to his knees now—Brody objected.

  “Tricia’s all right.” He probably shouted the words, but the wind carried them away.

  “I need to know that for myself,” Conner yelled in response.

  “You could call her, you dumb-ass!” Brody hollered, looking as though he might try to physically restrain Conner from getting into that truck and heading back down the road toward Lonesome Bend. “Did you ever think of that?”

  Conner had tried to call Tricia, both on her landline and her cell. No luck with either one. And he wasn’t going to take the time to explain, because the storm was getting worse, not better.

  He shut the door and backed up, the tires grabbing as the ones on Davis’s car had earlier, in the icy parking lot.

  And Brody jumped right onto the running board and pressed his face to the window.

  Conner lowered the window.

  “Are you crazy?!” Brody demanded, the instant he could. “You’re damn lucky you made it to town and back the first time—”

  Conner planted one hand in the center of his brother’s chest and pushed.

  Brody went sprawling backward into a snowbank, came up ready to yank Conner out of that truck and pound on him, but the tires finally got down to solid ground and grabbed, and Conner was on the move.

  It took twice as long to get to town this time, and the lights were out in the supermarket as he passed. Except for Davis and Kim’s car, the lot was empty.

  He made his way over buried roads to Natty’s place, working mostly from memory because he could hardly see.

  The old Victorian house was dark, like all the others he’d passed, and Conner thought about the wood he’d delivered, hoping Tricia had at least built a fire to keep herself and Valentino warm.

  The wind fought him all the way to the outside stairway. The steps had already vanished beneath an even layer of snow, a perfect, gleaming slant of white.

  “Conner!”

  He turned, looked behind him, on the off chance that he’d heard correctly, over the screech of the wind. Sure enough, Tricia was standing on Natty’s porch, a flashlight in her hand.

  “This way!” she shouted, beckoning.

  Conner headed to the porch steps, which had been covered, like the ones leading up to the apartment, and slogged his way up them. In the entryway, Valentino was waiting to greet him, wagging his whole rear end instead of just his tail.

  “What are you doing here?” Tricia asked, setting aside the flashlight to peel Conner’s coat off him.

  He was wildly glad to see her, find her safe. “We had a date,” he quipped, shaking off his hat before hanging it on the doorknob behind him. “Remember?”

  She pushed at his chest with both hands, but she was smiling and her eyes glistened in the near darkness. Inside Natty’s former parlor, a fire blazed on the hearth and there were a few candles burning here and there, on top of boxes and what looked like teetery TV trays.

  He remembered that Carolyn was moving in, looked around for her as he headed for the fireplace. “Where’s your roommate?” he asked.

  “Staying at the Skylark Motel,” Tricia answered, glowing like a goddess in the light of the fire and the candles. “She called about two seconds before the phones went dead—her car couldn’t make it through the snow, and she decided not to risk freezing to death by trying to walk here.”

  “Good decision,” Conner said. He was starting to get the feeling back in his fingers.

  Tricia came to stand beside him. Rested her head against the outside of his upper arm. “I can’t believe you were idiotic enough to drive all the way here in this god-awful weather,” she said.

  “Actually,” Conner replied, slipping an arm around her waist, “I was idiotic enough to do it twice. Davis and Kim got stranded at the supermarket, and I took them back to the ranch.”

  She pulled away just far enough to look up at him. The firelight danced in her eyes and sparkled in her hair. “And then you came back here? Why?”

  He bent his head, tasted her mouth. “Because you’re here,” he said, breathing the words as she melted against him. “Nothing could have kept me away.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BECAUSE YOU’RE HERE. Nothing could have kept me away.

  Those words, like Conner’s kiss, reverberated through her. She rested her cheek against his chest when it was over, sighed softly. His arms were around her, easy and safe.

  It came back to her then, some of what Brody had said to her that day, at the bank. Conner cares for you—when he falls for somebody, he falls hard—he’s rock-solid, the original straight shooter, the kind of guy most women think isn’t even out there anymore.

  Conner propped his chin on top of her head. “I hear you had a little run-in with my brother this morning,” he said, as if he’d been reading her mind.

  She tilted her head back, looked up Conner. “I’m over it,” she said honestly. “Brody loves you. I realized pretty quickly that he was only trying to look out for you.”

  Conner chuckled. The sound echoed through Tricia, just as the kiss had, just now. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I figured that out, after I got past the desire to do him bodily harm.”

  Tricia laughed, still gazing into that strong, handsome face. Conner was integrity and commitment personified; if the man signed on for something, he was in for the duration.

  Tricia’s doubts about a future with Conner Creed had been slipping away all day, the victims of quiet logic, but as she stood there, drinking in the sight and the feel of him, Tricia said goodbye to the last of her hesitancy.

  As frightening as it was, she loved Conner. Furthermore, she would always love him. He was literally part of her, and while she would certainly survive without him, possibly even thrive, she’d still be shortchanging herself, settling for less than she might have had. Less than she might have given.

  “What do we do now?” she asked him.

  But Conner wasn’t taking the long view, as she was. Not yet, anyway.

  “Lay a blanket or two on the floor in front of this fireplace and make love like a caveman and his woman in mating season?”

  Again, she laughed, a throaty sound, tinged with mischief. “I thought we had a dinner date,” she said. “Not one for hot, wet, unbridled sex.”

  He chuckled, held her closer, nibbled at her lips again. The fire burning on that hearth had nothing on the one Conner had ignited inside her. “With any luck,” he murmured, “our dinner date would have evolved into ‘hot, wet, unbridled sex’ anyhow.”

  “But we haven’t had dinner,” Tricia stalled, just to prolong the anticipation a little.

  Conner was already unbuttoning the practical flannel shirt she’d put on after she returned from the closing, in order to help Carolyn with all the moving-in chores. With the storm getting worse by the moment, she’d written off the date with Conner as a lost cause.

  And now here he was. Seducing her. Making her want him—need him. Her heart raced, and her breath grew so short that she was afraid she’d hyperventilate.

  He moved the shirt back off her shoulders, weighed her lace-covered breasts gently in his rough, rancher’s hands before deftly popping the front catch of her bra, setting her free. Her nipples hardened instantly, not from the chill, but in response to Conner’s hungry appreciation of her partially unveiled body.

  The bra went, too, after that, sailing off into the surrounding darkness.

  Tricia turned her head, overwhelmed by this new and deeper vulnerability. She and Conner had made love before, of course, but this was different. As fantastic as the first round of sex had been, she’d been responding physically but struggling the whole time not to respond emotionally. She’d held back some vital part of herself, even at the frenetic height of sati
sfaction. Now, she was offering him everything—not just her body, but everything.

  She was gloriously terrified, like an astronaut about to step out of some craft into deep space, except that, in this instance, she had no special NASA-designed suit to sustain her, no line to tether her to the last vestige of a world she knew and understood.

  “Conner,” she whispered, closing her eyes, letting her head fall back as he toyed with her nipples, chafed them with the sides of his thumbs, preparing them, preparing her for incomprehensible pleasure. “Oh, Conner.”

  He kissed her again, lightly this time around, the tip of his tongue exploring the corners of her mouth, promising a deeper, wilder conquering, moments from now. Or minutes, or maybe even hours.

  “Wh-what about—protection?” she asked.

  Conner was unsnapping her jeans, unzipping them, pushing them down, right along with her panties. He dropped to one knee, worked off her shoes and socks, freed her from the last of her clothing.

  She stood bare before him. Cavewoman by firelight, she thought fancifully, breathlessly, fully aware of Conner in every part of her.

  Aware, too, of the question suspended between them.

  “Conner,” she repeated, with the last of her resistance, the last of her strength.

  “I brought something,” he said, and then he took her into his mouth and suckled, and she was utterly, completely, deliciously lost.

  Long before Conner allowed Tricia to reach that first, desperately needed orgasm, her knees threatened to give out, and he lowered her to the rug, consumed her with his mouth, his hands, his eyes.

  At some point, he must have shed his own clothes, though Tricia had been too delirious to notice until he was kneeling astride her, magnificently naked, his erection huge.

  She watched, dazed, as he put on a condom and lowered himself to her.

  “I love you, Tricia,” he said, and even though both of them were trembling with need by then, his voice was even, his words clear.

  Aroused to a state of primitive need, Tricia answered him with all the honesty in her. “I love you, Conner Creed.”