“Does this have something to do with that Creed fellow?” Adelaide asked bluntly. There was a twinkle in her eyes. “First supper, then lunch. My, my. It would seem you’re over Dan Guthrie at last, and none too soon, either.”
“I’ve been ‘over’ Dan Guthrie for a long time,” Melissa said evenly.
And it was true. She still missed his kids, though. Missed the life she’d expected to have.
How crazy was that?
Adelaide gave a girlish giggle, set her coffee cup down on Melissa’s desk with a thump, and rose from her chair. “And it’s none of my business,” she chimed sunnily. “I could get you the instructions for my niece’s toilet-paper wedding dress, if you want.”
“Thanks,” Melissa said. “But I won’t be needing one of those real soon.” She stood up, too, and walked Adelaide all the way to the corridor.
As soon as Adelaide had trundled off down the hall and outside, into the parking lot, Melissa turned and strode toward Tom’s office.
He was sitting at his desk, with his feet up, studying the contents of a manila file folder.
“I resign!” Melissa announced summarily.
“From what?” Tom asked, dropping his feet to the floor and standing.
“From the damn Parade Committee!”
Elvis, sprawled on his side over by the water cooler, gave a concerned little whine.
Tom chuckled. “I never figured you for a quitter,” he said, folding his arms.
Melissa knew he was playing her, but her cheeks went hot with indignation anyway. “Well, maybe you’d better just ‘figure’ again, bucko,” she snapped.
“‘Bucko’?” Tom repeated, grinning now.
“I must have been crazy to let you talk me into this,” Melissa ranted on, pacing now. Hugging herself to keep from flinging her arms out wide in frustrated emphasis. “Why can’t Bea Brady run the committee? Or Adelaide Hillingsley? They both give a damn, after all, which is more than anybody can say for me!”
“Whoa,” Tom said. “Calm down, counselor. If Adelaide headed up the project, Bea would raise hell, and vice versa. And for the first time in fifty-odd years, there wouldn’t be a parade to kick off Rodeo Days.”
“Then you do it!” Melissa steamed. With one hand, she made a slashing motion in front of her throat. “I am not going to spend the next few weeks arbitrating disputes over toilet paper!”
To his credit, Tom was trying hard not to laugh. He made a clucking sound with his tongue and shook his head.
“Melissa, Melissa,” he said. “Stone Creek needs you.”
CHAPTER TEN
“‘STONE CREEK NEEDS YOU,’” Melissa muttered to herself, still riled from the conversation with Tom Parker that afternoon, concerning the Parade Committee. It was five-thirty, and she’d already showered, replaced her unaccustomed skirt and sweater with an even more unaccustomed black-and-white polka-dot sundress, and spritzed on cologne. “What a load of manipulative crap. And I fell for it!”
In the end, much as she’d love to resign as chairperson, Tom had been right. She wasn’t a quitter and that was that.
Melissa studied her image in the mirror on the inside of her closet door and went right on talking to herself. “You’re not fooling anybody, Melissa O’Ballivan,” she told the reflected woman glowering back at her. “The real reason you’re all bent out of shape is that you’re about to do something you damn well know you shouldn’t!”
That something, of course, was spending an evening alone, in a private and relatively small space—with Steven Creed.
The man was a sin sundae, and she was so tempted to dig in.
If she had any sense at all, she chided herself silently, she’d stay away from him until she stopped feeling quite so—well—vulnerable.
All right, it was true that she needed to get out of the house—and out of her own head. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have options—Ashley, her favorite confidante, was still out of town, but Olivia would have listened without judging, and Meg, too. Her sister and sister-in-law were smart, savvy women, and if they gave any advice at all, it would be good advice.
On the other hand, they were both in committed, loving relationships with men they knew all about, not relative strangers like Steven Creed was to her. By now, they must surely have forgotten what it was like to be in her situation.
Bottom line, she wanted full-frontal contact with the delectable Mr. Creed, and that was that.
And so what if she did? Was that so wrong?
No, she reasoned, arguing the case in the courtroom of her mind, it wasn’t wrong. Stupid, maybe, and probably shortsighted, but not wrong.
Having gotten exactly nowhere with this inner debate, Melissa slipped on a lightweight cardigan, not because she was cold, but because she had some bruises on her arms from biting the dust that morning, and she didn’t want them on display. She found her purse, locked up the house and climbed into her car.
Melissa drove straight to Steven’s demolition site of a place and parked behind the house, between two huge, overgrown lilac bushes. Stone Creek Ranch—and thus, Brad and Meg—were just down the road, and she didn’t want either one of them to catch a glimpse of the car. A roadster sighting would lead to too many questions, ones she wasn’t inclined to answer just yet.
While she was still thinking these thoughts, Steven emerged from the bus, cowboy-perfect in dark jeans and a spiffy white shirt, his hair a little too long and his boots showing just the right amount of wear.
He grinned in greeting.
The dog, Zeke, trotted over to her for a pat on the head.
“I thought you might back out at the last minute,” Steven said, standing a few yards away, giving her space, his arms folded.
Melissa, who had been stewing over a variety of injustices ever since she’d left work, launched right in. “Just tell me this,” she said, planting her sandaled feet and pressing her knuckles into her hips. “Why is it perfectly all right for a man to want sex and make no bones about it, say so right out, but a single woman has to come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses?” Not the most appropriate way to greet the man, she realized in retrospect, but the words had simply burst out of her.
Steven tilted his head to one side, and his grin was wicked, but he still kept his distance.
The scent of lilacs surrounded Melissa in a cloud, making her feel slightly drunk.
“I wouldn’t say there were no bones about it,” Steven drawled.
Embarrassment bloomed rose-pink in Melissa’s cheeks. What was the matter with her? When had this—this alternate personality, perfumed and wearing a sundress—with a ruffled hem, no less—taken over her fine legal brain and caused her to forsake her tailored wardrobe?
In that moment, she couldn’t think of a single sensible thing to say.
Painfully aware that she’d made a fool of herself—again—she actually considered jumping back into her car and zooming out of there. The problem was that just as quitting wasn’t part of her constitutional makeup, neither was running away.
So she just stood there, feeling ridiculous.
Where were all her convictions about sex and the modern woman now?
Steven’s grin softened, and he approached her slowly, the way he might have approached a frightened animal or a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.
When he was standing directly in front of her, he took her elbows into a gentle grip and looked down into her upturned and very flushed face.
“Hey,” he said huskily. “You’re calling the shots, Melissa. You can say ‘now’ or you can say ‘never.’ The whens and the ifs are entirely up to you. Meanwhile, why don’t we just spend some time together and see how things go?”
Such a wave of relief passed over Melissa then that she was very glad Steven was holding on to her. If he hadn’t been, she thought her knees might have given way.
“Thanks,” she said, belatedly, breathing the word more than saying it.
He gave a low chuckle. Inclined his head
toward the old dowager of a farmhouse; the paint was peeling away, and the flowerbeds were choked with weeds, but the blowsy old roses, splotches of crimson drooping under their own weight, gave it a singular appeal.
“Want a tour of the house?” he asked.
It was such an ordinary question. Such an innocent one. Melissa, who had grown up in an old house and loved them for that reason and a few others, nodded.
Steven released her elbows, but immediately took her by the hand, and they walked toward the structure. The last dazzle before twilight turned the thick-glassed windows to pale purple.
They stopped just short of the back door, and Melissa looked up, shielding her eyes with her free hand.
“Don’t you wish it could talk?” she asked wistfully.
Steven smiled. “I don’t imagine all the folks who’ve lived here over the last several generations would consider that an entirely good thing,” he said.
This man, Melissa thought.
One minute, he had her heart racing and her stomach doing flip-flops.
The next, he was soothing her, just by being who and what he was.
“I suppose not,” she agreed. He stepped up onto the small, uncovered porch, and Melissa followed, trusting his lead. Suddenly, it was easy to talk to him. “This house has been here almost as long as ours, you know. The one old Sam O’Ballivan built, I mean.”
“Sam O’Ballivan. The Arizona Ranger turned cattle baron.”
Melissa nodded, mildly surprised.
“Brad told me a little about him,” Steven said. “That’s quite a story.”
“The man from Stone Creek,” Melissa replied, with another nod. “That was our Sam.”
By then they’d entered the kitchen, and Melissa gravitated straight to the dusty, wood-burning cookstove in the far corner. “Wow,” she said. “I’m surprised some antiques dealer didn’t score this a long time ago. My sister Ashley would kill to have it at the B&B. She’d probably even use it.”
Again, Steven smiled. “I take it Ashley’s the domestic type,” he said.
Melissa rolled her eyes. “You can say that again. That was her cooking we had last night at supper, remember. My culinary repertoire is limited to deli salads and stuff from the freezer aisle at the supermarket.”
“Mine isn’t much better, I’m afraid,” he told her. Sunlight streamed in through a dusty window and cast an aura around him. “We’re having meat loaf tonight, you and I, but it’s takeout from the Sunflower Café. Matt will probably be blown away by supper over at Brad and Meg’s place—a decent meal, for once.”
Melissa left the stove, overwhelmed by a strange, swift tenderness unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
She swallowed. So much for his being easy to talk to. “I think you take very good care of Matt,” she said quietly.
“I try,” Steven said, and she saw a flicker of sadness move in his eyes, quickly gone. “There’s no denying that his mom and dad would have done a lot better job of raising him, though.”
They were standing several feet apart, as they had before, out there in that bower of lilacs, but something electrical arced between them, undiminished by distance.
“What happened to them?” she asked. “Matt’s parents, I mean.”
For a moment, Melissa didn’t think Steven was going to answer. When he did speak, he had to clear his throat first. “Jillie, Matt’s mother, died of breast cancer close to two years ago,” he said. “The grief got hold of Zack and it changed him. He was killed in a motorcycle wreck when Matt was four. I was named in both their wills as Matt’s guardian.”
“You must have been good friends, you and Jillie and Zack, if they trusted you to raise their child.”
Pain moved in that handsome face, the features rugged and aristocratic, both at once. “We were good friends,” he confirmed, after a long time.
She wanted very much to touch him then, not sexually, but to offer comfort, one human being to another. She was careful not to move. “You legally adopted Matt,” she said. Judge Carpenter had told her that, the first day. The day everything changed for Melissa.
“I figured it made sense,” Steven replied, “and Matt was all for it.”
“It can’t be easy, being a single parent.”
“Oh, believe me,” Steven said, smiling again, “it isn’t. But, just the same, I’d be hard put to think of anything more rewarding.” He held out his hand once more, and she crossed to him, took hold. “This place will be a lot different when the contractor and his crews get through with it,” he added.
Melissa’s throat tightened. “Don’t let them change it too much,” she said, without intending to say any such thing. It was none of her business what Steven Creed did to his house.
Steven cupped her cheeks in his hands then, and she knew by the touch of his palms that, professional man or not, he was no stranger to physical work. “I guess I probably shouldn’t kiss you,” he mused, his gaze focused on her mouth.
“I guess not,” Melissa agreed, but weakly.
He kissed her—lightly at first, and then thoroughly.
She moaned and slipped her arms around his neck.
“It’s too soon,” she said breathlessly, when the kiss finally ended.
“I know,” Steven rasped in reply.
After the longest moment of Melissa’s life, he stepped back, away from her, let his hands fall to his sides. He was breathing hard, and a muscle bunched in his jawline, then smoothed out again.
They stood there, just looking at each other.
It was Steven who finally broke the silence, and what he said surprised her. A lot. “Tell me something about yourself, Melissa.”
“Like what?”
Steven chuckled, standing there in a shifting mist of sun-speckled dust. Spread his hands. “What you love—what you hate—whether or not you believe in God. That sort of thing.”
A smile tugged at the side of her mouth. She was relaxing a little—in spite of herself. “Oh, that,” she said. She considered the question briefly. “Yes, I believe in God. I don’t see how a person could help it, looking up at a sky full of stars, or in the early spring, when the grass comes up green, or watching a baby take those first few steps—”
So much for relaxing. Heat suffused Melissa’s face. Why had she gone and blurted out a loaded word like baby? The man was going to think she was one of those women for whom all roads lead to marriage and children.
Steven was gracious enough to ignore her embarrassment, obvious as it was. “I agree,” he said. “I’m convinced because of thunderstorms, the kind that seem to shake the ground itself. And because of the way little kids laugh, from way down deep in their middle, just because they’re so full of joy they can’t hold it in.”
Melissa’s eyes smarted, and her throat thickened, too. “Yeah,” she managed to croak out, after what seemed like a long time.
Steven smiled, stretched out a hand to her.
Melissa hesitated only briefly, then took it. He led her out of the house, with its benign ghosts and soft, musty shadows, into the deep grass that was once a lawn.
With a sweep of his free arm, he indicated the surrounding countryside. “Now it’s your turn, Melissa,” he said, his gaze resting gently on her face. “Show me the Stone Creek Ranch you remember, the parts of it you loved the best.”
The request quickened something inside Melissa. “Okay,” she said.
They took his truck, since there wouldn’t have been room for Zeke in the roadster and neither of them had the heart to leave the dog behind.
She directed him to the pioneer cemetery first, the place where generations of O’Ballivans were buried, along with her dad and Big John, her grandfather.
“Olivia and I used to come up here on horseback all the time,” Melissa confided, with a slight smile. “We were hoping to see a ghost and absolutely terrified that we might get our wish.”
Steven grinned. “You and Olivia? What about Ashley?”
“She didn’t care much fo
r riding horses,” she answered. “And even less for ghosts.”
He laughed.
She loved the sound of his laugh.
“So,” Steven began presently, looking around that peaceful place, “did you ever get your wish? See a ghost?”
She knew her answer would surprise him. “Once or twice, I thought I did,” she said softly, remembering. “But it happened in the ranch house, not here.”
Steven arched an eyebrow, ever so slightly, and the breeze raised tendrils of his hair, as if offering a mischievous caress. And he waited for her to elaborate.
“A glimpse of a figure, out of the corner of my eye, that’s all it was,” she said. She’d been comforted, rather than frightened, by the experience.
After a few moments, during which the two of them tacitly agreed that it was time to move on, Steven whistled for Zeke, who’d gone exploring amid the tall grass, sheltered, like the graves, within the cluster of flourishing oak trees.
Their next stop was the high ridge, with its spectacular view of both Stone Creek Ranch and, in the near distance, the town as well. Melissa had hoped for a sighting of King’s Ransom, the legendary wild stallion that sometimes put in an appearance, but that day, he kept himself and his band of mares and foals well hidden.
“There’s still the house, of course,” Melissa said, once she was settled in the passenger seat of Steven’s flashy truck again, figuring the tour was complete, “but since it’s occupied, that part will have to wait.”
Steven smiled, looked back at Zeke to make sure he was settled, and started up the engine.
Something had definitely changed between herself and Steven, Melissa thought. There was still tension, of course, but the strange sense of urgency had passed. Being together seemed only natural now, and easy.
Things just sort of unfolded after that, with no hurry and no fretting and no drama.
“What will it be, Melissa?” he asked her, very quietly and after a long silence, when they were back at his place, inside the tour bus. “Is it now, or is it never?”
“How about now?” Melissa murmured, realizing, as her heartbeat quickened and her breath caught, that she was completely lost. If the scent of lilacs had made her drunk, this man’s close proximity affected her like opium.
The Cowboy Way Page 16