The Creed Legacy (29 page)

“Oh,” Carolyn said, hopeful that this meant Bill and Angela were reconsidering their breakup. They belonged together, in her opinion.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Bill said quickly. “Angela’s feelings about my job haven’t changed. She hates it, and she’s furious because I refused to turn down this assignment.” He sighed, thrust a hand through his hair. “But I know she’ll take good care of Ellie, and that’s what matters most. The two of them are close.”

Carolyn thought of her friend soaring above a burning forest in a small plane, spraying fire retardant on flames clawing at the smoky sky like gigantic red-orange fingers, and she was afraid for him. The words
don’t go
scrambled up into her throat and got stuck there, making her eyes sting.

Seeing her expression, Bill smiled sadly, gripped her shoulders gently and kissed her forehead. “Think good thoughts,” he said hoarsely, in parting, and then he was turning away, walking out, closing the front door behind him.

Carolyn didn’t move until several moments after he’d gone.

If only she’d had the power—or the right—to call him back, make him stay right there in Lonesome Bend, where he’d be safe.

But was anyone ever really safe, anywhere?

The answer, unfortunately, was no. Bill’s plane
could
crash, plummet right into the raging, hellish heart of a forest fire, leaving Ellie an orphan and Angela—sweet, well-meaning Angela—in a state of permanent grief. But he could just as easily drop dead from a heart attack, contract some fatal disease, or be run down in a crosswalk by a speeding car.

No one was getting out of here alive, no one had a guarantee that there would be another tomorrow, and another after that.

Living wasn’t safe. Look what had happened to Brody’s wife, Lisa, and their baby son. They were alive one moment and gone the next.

And as for laying the heart bare by loving another person? Why, that was the biggest, most deadly risk of all.

The starch drained out of Carolyn’s knees, and she took a few groping steps backward and plunked herself down on one of the stairs, propping an elbow on one knee and resting her chin in her palm.

Winston approached, purring, and snuggled against her hip, either offering comfort or seeking it—or both.

Numbly, Carolyn stroked his glossy back with her free hand.

Yes, indeed, she’d been right all along—it was downright dangerous to love a person, or a pet, or even a house or a town or a job. Everything could change with a single turn of the steering wheel, or a phone call, or a policeman knocking at the front door.

But in the end, what choice did anyone have?

Could a person choose
not to
love?

They could try, of course, maybe even succeed to some degree.

But they might as well buy a plot and a tombstone, Carolyn reflected, and stretch out prone on the grass to wait for death, while others marched on in the parade of life, laughing and crying, loving and hating, knowing triumph and defeat and everything in between.

She might be able to kid herself that she was safe, but she’d also miss out on the party.

“Y
OU’RE PRETTY CHIPPER TODAY
,” Davis observed, that morning, with a slight twinkle, as he and Conner and Brody rode out to mend the broken fence lines Brody had taken note of the day before, while riding the lines. “Yesterday, you were traveling a rocky road.”

Brody didn’t answer right away, but he was poignantly aware of the value of ordinary moments. Conner was in the back of the pickup, with Valentino and Barney, hoops of new wire and the communal toolbox, while Brody drove and Davis rode shotgun.

They were working together, he and his brother and his uncle, just the way they ought to be.

Another part of Brody wished he was back in bed with Carolyn; it was too bad a man couldn’t be in two places at once.

“That was yesterday,” he finally replied, “and this is today.”

Davis kept his face turned toward the windshield as they bounced and jostled over rough ground, but Brody knew his uncle was watching him from the corner of his eye. “We all racked up a whole lot of ‘yesterdays’ before you decided to go on ahead and tell me about Lisa and Justin. Why was that, Brody?”

Brody raised and lowered one shoulder, looking not at Davis, but ahead, at the cattle-speckled terrain of the ranch that had been home to generations of Creeds. Some branches of the family tree bore good fruit—solid, honest men and women committed to giving the best of who they were and what they had to building a lasting legacy for their children and grandchildren, right on down. Here and there, though, a rotten apple cropped up, a rascal or even an outlaw.

Most likely, by his own reckoning, he fit into the second category better than the first.

“It was a hard thing to talk about,” he finally said.

“Life is full of things that are hard to talk about,” Davis countered matter-of-factly. “Seems to me, if a man’s lucky enough to have a home and kinfolks who care about him, it would be better to run
to
them when he had troubles, rather than
from
them.”

Brody glanced at his uncle, unclamped his jawbones. “What do you want me to say, Davis? That I was wrong to stay away all those years?” A pause. “Well, fine. I was wrong.”

“It’s not a matter of what’s right or wrong,” Davis countered quietly. “What bothers me is that you must not have known you’d be welcome here.”

“There was that blowup between Conner and me, over Joleen—”

“Don’t bullshit me, boy,” Davis broke in, sounding gruffer and more annoyed now. “That could have been settled over a couple of beers after supper, and you damn well know it.” He gave a deep, ragged sigh. “Here’s how I figure it…correct me if I’m mistaken—you were
ashamed
to come home. You figured it was your fault, what happened to the wife and the boy, and you wouldn’t
let
yourself turn to your family and your friends.”

Again, Brody’s back teeth ground together. He had to consciously relax his whole face, and that made it damn near impossible to keep the devil-may-care mask in place.

“I never loved Lisa,” he heard himself say, straight out.

It was crazy, because he’d never intended to say anything of the sort.

“You tried to do right by her, Brody. When you found out she was carrying your baby, you went to her. You took responsibility. That might not amount to the kind of love they print up inside Valentine cards, but it
is
love. It’s the practical, take-hold, buckle-down-and-get-itdone kind of love that pretty words can’t hold a candle to.”

Conner thumped on the roof of the cab with one fist, signaling that they’d reached a place where the fence needed mending. Brody stopped the pickup with a lurch that made his brother shout a swear word.

Brody grinned over at Davis. “You missed your calling, cowboy,” he said. “You ought to sign on with a greeting card company and write poetry.”

Davis didn’t crack a smile. “You think about what I said, son. What happened, happened. No getting around it—that kind of loss is an awful thing, but it’s over. Your wife and your little boy are gone, and that’s a shame, but you’re
alive,
and that’s counts for something.
Make use of the time you have,
Brody.”

Just then, Conner stepped onto the driver’s-side running board and banged at the window once, with the flat of his hand. He looked seriously pissed.

“Are you trying to kill me
and
these dogs, driving like that?” he demanded. “First you’re doing fifty, then you stop on a damn dime!”

Brody shoved the truck door open, forcing Conner to scramble clear. “Hell, no,” Brody mocked, grinning. “If that were the case, I would surely have succeeded.”

Davis rolled his eyes. “Don’t start, you two,” he warned. “We’ve got work to do.”

T
HE BIDS ON THE GYPSY SKIRT
were still climbing, Carolyn learned, later in the morning, when she checked the auction site again. Tricia had a routine doctor’s appointment, so she wouldn’t be in for a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, Carolyn couldn’t seem to concentrate on the task at hand long enough to get anything done.

Ideas for more one-of-a-kind garments had been pouring into her head in such plentitude that she had to keep stopping whatever she happened to be doing at the time to rough out a sketch, lest, in her scatterbrained state of mind, she forget.

A few customers stopped in, and she boxed and addressed several orders for shipping.

Every time she passed through the main part of the shop, her gaze went straight to the large square package containing the Weaver. She hadn’t given the batik a thought the night before, for obvious reasons, and Brody probably hadn’t, either.

Too bad, because he could have taken it with him when he headed home, and saved her a trip.

On the other hand, Brody Creed had a stubborn streak as wide as the river, and he might have refused to take the piece with him just because he wanted her to deliver it.

Carolyn ran a fingertip over the wrapping, a little smile playing around her mouth but never quite coming in for a landing.

When the time was right, she would take the batik to Brody’s place, as agreed, but there might be more to the delivery than a piece of art.

She was thinking this lascivious thought, and flirting with a few others, when the door of the shop opened, bell jingling, and she braced herself for another onslaught of unexpected customers.

Instead, Primrose Sullivan swept in, wearing one of her brightly colored caftans and lugging more paintings.

“I’ve been working like a crazy woman,” she enthused. “Any time you want me to stop bringing in artwork, you just tell me.”

Carolyn laughed, glad to see her friend. And the paintings.

The last batch was selling fast, via the website.

Primrose set down her burden with the gentleness of a mother putting a child down for an afternoon nap and beamed at Carolyn, her blue eyes huge behind the lenses of her leopard-skin glasses.

“It’s all over town,” Primrose announced gleefully.

This was another OMG moment for Carolyn, but not the pleasant kind. She felt her ears burning and her throat closed up tight. Which was a good thing, as it turned out, because she’d been on the verge of blurting out that Brody
hadn’t
stayed the whole night, which was true, and that nothing had happened—
not
true—and that, frankly, she was getting sick of being gossiped about.

“You’re planning to expand the shop,” Primrose rushed on, making Carolyn almighty thankful that she hadn’t been able to speak before. “I think that’s so exciting! Is it true that you’re planning to hire help?”

“Y-yes,” Carolyn managed to respond, somewhat weakly. “It’s true. Tricia and I are hoping you might consent to teach some classes…?”

Primrose rubbed her many-ringed hands together in anticipation. “You bet I will,” she said. “And you might consider bringing Mavis Pawlings in to teach sometime—she knows everything there is to know about scrapbooking and rubber stamps and all that sort of thing. Then there’s Lily Wilde—one of her quilts won best of show last year at the state fair—”

Carolyn smiled, held up both hands, palms out. “Whoa, Primrose,” she said good-naturedly, “give me a minute to catch up.”

But Primrose was too excited to be still, even for that long. “Scrapbooking is very big, you know,” she blurted. “And quilts? Heavens, that’s become a regular
industry,
all by itself.” She looked around speculatively, a comical sight with her magnified eyes. “Knock out a wall or two,” she mused, “and you could sell fabric. This town needs a fabric store—folks have to drive all the way to Denver for a few yards of cotton and spool of thread as it is now.”

“Primrose,” Carolyn pleaded, grinning, “take a breath.”

Primrose
did
take a breath, but the respite was brief. “Handmade items are great,” she continued, “but most of your business comes in over the website, doesn’t it?”

“Most of it,” Carolyn agreed cautiously. “Why?”

Primrose was on a real roll. “The sachets and the doilies and all the rest of it are
fine
—and heaven
knows
I’m grateful to you and Tricia for selling so many of my batiks—but it might be a better use of floor space to display things people would come in purposely to buy. Like quilting fabric. Maybe even a sewing machine or two.”

Carolyn smiled. “Primrose?”

“Yes, dear?” The older woman beamed.

“How would you like a part-time job?”

Primrose all but clapped her hands. “Are you offering me one? My friends all say I spend too much time in my studio, and I’m bound to get stale or even burn out, and I’d just love a change of scene for a few hours a day.”

“I’ll have to double-check with Tricia, of course,” Carolyn said, “but I can’t think of anybody I’d rather hire to help out around here, and I’m sure she’ll agree.”

Primrose looked around, her expression dreamy now. “Oh,” she said, “I can just
see
it all, in my mind’s eye.”

“Me, too,” Carolyn agreed.

It was then that Primrose noticed the parcel containing the Weaver, still resting on top of a display table. There was something of a caress to the way she touched the wrapping. “I could drop this off at Brody’s place on my way home,” she offered.

Silently, Carolyn called herself three kinds of crazy— here was her chance to cross an errand off her to-do list
and
a way to show Brody that she wasn’t about to dance to his tune—but she shook her head. “He’s out at the ranch, working with Davis and Conner,” she said. “And the Weaver is much too valuable to be left on his doorstep.”

Primrose watched Carolyn closely for a moment, a happy light dancing in her eyes. “You know right where Brody Creed is, at this very minute,” she observed, in a teasing tone. “Now, isn’t that interesting?”