The Creed Legacy (32 page)

“Sit,” he said to Brody.

Brody took time to grab a second beer, for backup, before he sank into a chair.

“How did Carolyn’s face happen to rub off on your— my—shirt?” Conner asked mildly. Brody saw amusement in his brother’s eyes, along with a generous amount of sympathy. That last part pissed him off.

“It isn’t your shirt,” Brody bit out. “I bought it two years ago, in San Antonio.”

“Whatever,” Conner said affably. Then he sighed and went on. “I’ve figured this much out on my own—the big movie date must have been a bust for some reason,” he said, “but you’re going to have to help me out with the rest, if you want me to understand.”

Brody drained the first beer, reached for the spare, decided to wait until some of the carbonation in his stomach fizzled out and drew his hand back empty. Shoved it through his hair. He’d stopped by the lodge after the debacle with Carolyn to pick up Barney before heading for the home-place, and that poor dog probably thought he’d fallen in with a crazy man.

Not that he seemed particularly shaken up, old Barney, bunking in with Valentino over by the stove as he was. The two of them just fit on the dog-bed, and they were both sound asleep.

Must be nice, Brody thought, figuring he’d never sleep again.

Conner snapped his fingers a few inches in front of Brody’s nose. “Talk to me,” he said. “You got me out of a warm bed, with an even warmer woman, and you owe me a reason.”

Brody chuckled. “You want me to tell you what happened,” he said.

“Basically,” Conner answered dryly, “
yeah.
That would be a start.”

“I’ll be damned if I know,” Brody answered. “One minute, we were having a great time, Carolyn and me. Wine, fancy food, a waiter—we had everything but a string quartet playing smooch music. Then it came time to watch the movie, and all hell broke loose.”

Conner’s expression was skeptical to say the least. “Come on, Brody. You’re not seriously trying to tell me you don’t know what happened? You were
there,
damn it.”

“Must have been the movie,” Brody said, reconsidering that second beer. Might as well down it, he thought. He wouldn’t be driving back to River’s Bend tonight anyway. Nope, he and ole Barney, they were spending the night.

“What was wrong with the movie?”

“It starred Gifford Welsh,” Brody said.

“Oh, my
God,
” said Tricia, from the doorway to the hall.

She was barefoot, dressed in one of Conner’s shirts and pregnant out to here.

“I tried to tell her it was an accident,” Brody explained, “but she just
lost it.
Started babbling on about gossip and how she never had an affair with the guy—”

Tricia threw both hands up in the air, for emphasis. “
Honestly,
Brody,” she exclaimed. “Do Conner and I have to watch you
every minute?
”

He reddened a little, and stiffened his spine, avoiding Conner’s gaze because he knew he’d see laughter there. “How was I supposed to know she’d go off like that? Decide I’d chosen that movie on purpose…?”

Tricia was standing next to Conner’s chair now, with her hands propped on her hips and her stomach sticking halfway into next week and her head cocked to one side. “Those lousy rumors have been knocking around Lonesome Bend for
years,
Brody. How can you be the only one who’s never heard them?”

Brody swallowed, still careful not to look at his brother’s face. “Joleen might have said something about it once, but I didn’t take it seriously.”

Tricia patted Conner’s shoulder and he pushed back his chair a little ways, so she could sit on his lap without being pinned between him and the table’s edge. “Carolyn almost left town because of it, several times,” she confided. “Between that and the stunt you pulled, it was almost too much humiliation for one woman to put up with. It’s a testament to how much she loves Lonesome Bend and wants to make a home here that she didn’t bolt a long time ago.”

Brody’s ears felt hot. “This is
my
fault?”

“Partly, yes,” Tricia said. “You were probably one of the first people Carolyn ever allowed herself to trust— you have no idea what things have been like for her— and you
let her down.
”

“Tricia,” Conner interrupted quietly, his arm around her, “you know Brody had his reasons for what he did.” Conner was
defending
him? Brody could barely believe it.

“We’ll be lucky if Carolyn doesn’t pull up stakes and take off for good,” Tricia said, though some of the wind had gone out of her sails by then, and she was resting against Conner’s chest. “Did you explain that you made a mistake?”

Brody closed his eyes to count to ten, but only got as far as seven before he had to blurt out, “
I
made a mistake? I practically refurbished the Bluebird Drive-in for one date and
I
made a mistake? Hell, Tricia, I didn’t even look at the titles of those movies—I just grabbed a DVD and shoved it into the machine, and two seconds after I got back to the car, Carolyn was
freaking out.
”

Conner chuckled. “Sounds like most of the drama never got as far as the screen,” he observed.

“Hush,” Tricia scolded, giving her husband a light jab with one elbow. “This is
serious,
Conner.” She turned to Brody. “You’ve got to talk to her,” she insisted, as serious as an old-time preacher describing the torments of hell. “Right now, tonight.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Conner stated. “He’s been swilling beer like his insides were on fire.”

“I have not,” Brody answered.

“Nevertheless,” Conner reiterated, “you’re
still
not going anywhere tonight.”

Normally, Brody would have argued, just on principle, because he didn’t take kindly to anybody—Conner in particular—telling him what to do. Trouble was, Conner was right. He probably wasn’t over the legal limit on a beer and a half, but he wasn’t exactly in his right mind, either, so why take unnecessary chances?

“You made her cry,” Tricia accused sadly, spotting the makeup stain on his shirt. At least, he
thought
it was his shirt. Might be that he had it mixed up with one belonging to Conner.

“She went ballistic,” Brody recalled, before finishing the second beer. “Granted,” he said, when he’d caught his breath, “I should have checked out the movies before shoving one in the hopper, but it was an
honest mistake,
Tricia. Even if Carolyn
had
had an affair with Gifford Welsh, it wouldn’t be any of my damn business, now would it?”

“This is all a big mess,” Tricia said despairingly.

Conner gave her a one-armed squeeze. “But it’s
Brody’s
mess, sweetheart,” he reminded her. “And he’ll have to straighten it out. In the meantime, let’s go back to bed.”

That now-familiar sensation of benevolent envy ground in Brody’s middle.
He,
of course, would be sleeping alone, in his boyhood bed, unless Barney decided to join him.

And that didn’t seem too likely, the way that dog was snoring.

Brody decided he needed a third beer after all.

Tricia got to her feet, and so did Conner.

While his wife padded back toward the bedroom, Conner paused to lay a hand on Brody’s shoulder. “Go easy on the brew,” he said. “You’re going to have problems enough in the morning without waking up to a hangover.”

Brody sighed, too stubborn to agree. “Good night,” he said, in a grudging tone.

Conner merely chuckled, shook his head once and followed Tricia into the corridor.

CAROLYN MANAGED TO GET
some
sleep that night, though it was certainly nothing to write home about.

Not that she had a home or anybody to write to.

“Oh, stop it,” she told herself, standing straight and tall in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink. “I’ve had it with your whining, Carolyn Simmons.”

For once, there was no snarky answer.

Carolyn lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and critically examined her face.

Her eyes, rimmed with splotches of mascara, put her in mind of a raccoon. And they were puffy, to boot.

What remained of her lipstick was a pink mark on her right cheek.

And was she getting a cold sore, there, by her nos tril?

Resolutely, she started the water running in the sink, scrubbed away the remnants of the Cinderella makeup job, and splashed her face with repeated palmfuls of cold water for good measure.

When she’d finished, she still looked bad, but she was clean at least.

She dabbed ointment on the budding cold sore and marched back out into the kitchen, where the gypsy skirt was draped over the back of a chair.

It wasn’t a hopeless case, as she’d thought the night before, but it would require fairly extensive repairs. Along with Winston and a week’s supply of sardines, she’d pack up the skirt, various sewing notions and her trusty machine to take to Kim and Davis’s place, where she’d agreed to house-sit for the next week. Stitch by stitch, she’d put the garment—and the person she really was—back together.

With this mental to-do list rolling around in her brain, Carolyn put on a pot of coffee—she needed
something
to get her going—and decided to reward Winston with his favorite meal for breakfast.

The moment she peeled back the lid on the sardine can, however, the nausea was upon her.

She raced to the bathroom, holding her hair back with both hands as she got very, very sick.

And in the midst of all that, it came to her.

She’d had wine the night before—several glasses of it—and, dazzled by all Brody had done to make the evening special, she’d never given a single thought to her special sensitivity to alcohol.

She
wasn’t crazy,
she thought, with a rush of jubilation, even as another spate of retching brought her to her knees in front of the commode.

It was the wine.

BRODY DROVE
Kim and Davis’s car up to their place first thing the next morning, to swap it out for his truck. While there, he’d feed the horses and have another look at the Thoroughbred, too. With luck, he could cadge breakfast from Kim, or at least a decent cup of java.

Down at Conner and Tricia’s place, a man needed an engineering degree to run the damn coffeepot. Marriage and impending fatherhood, it seemed to Brody, had rendered his twin brother a little strange.

He’d been keeping his mind busy with pithy observations like that one for much of the night and all there was of the morning so far, and it wasn’t helping. Thoughts of Carolyn were just beneath the surface the whole time, and they broke through in every unguarded moment.

Even now, he thought a dinner and a private showing of a first-run movie put him in the major leagues when it came to creative dating. He’d seen the look of wonder in Carolyn’s eyes when she saw the snack bar decked out for a romantic dinner for two. She’d been charmed, maybe even a little enchanted, exactly as he’d intended.

Okay, so he could have made a more sensitive choice when he chose the actual movie. He’d apologized, hadn’t he? Once he understood what the hell she was so upset about, anyway?

He sighed and resettled his hat.

Well, it was actually
Conner’s
hat, like everything else he had on this morning.

The question was, how could something so right have gone straight to hell in a handbasket the way last night had?

“Mornin’,” Davis called, from the back door, when Brody came out of the barn. “Coffee’s on.”

“I’ll be right there,” Brody responded, pausing to watch Firefly at the corral feeder.

Now
that,
Brody mused, was a
horse.

“Don’t even think about it,” Davis warned, materializing beside him to set his arms on the top rail of the fence and nod toward Firefly. “He’s off-limits, Brody, and that’s the end of it.”

Brody gave his uncle a sidelong glance. “I can handle any horse,” he said evenly. “I’ve got the championship belt buckles and the prize money to prove it.”

Davis narrowed his eyes, and his tone was as solemn as his expression. “Your dad said something a lot like that once,” he said. “It was the day I warned him to stay off the stallion we’d roped wild, up in the foothills, until he’d been gelded and had some time to calm down a little. Blue told me he’d never met the horse he couldn’t ride, but I thought he was just talking, that he’d seen the sense in what I’d said. Next thing I knew, my brother was lying in the middle of the corral with his neck broken, and that stallion circling him like a buzzard, closing in, fixing to finish him off then and there.”

Davis paused, took a ragged breath and gazed off into the middle distance like he could see the scene playing out in front of him, clear as crystal, even after so many years.

“I had the hunting rifle in the truck,” he went on presently, without looking at Brody, “and I brought that horse down with one shot, right where he stood.” He made a sound that might have been a laugh, but wasn’t. “I thought there was still a chance that Blue would pull through,” he added. “If I’d seen him tossed by one horse, I’d seen him fly off a hundred, and a couple of those times, he’d even broke a few bones. But Blue didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes. Kim called the ambulance, and I stayed there with Blue, in the corral, with that dead horse a dozen feet away, telling my brother it would be all right. ‘Just hang on, help is coming. I’m here, Blue, right here, and I’m not going anywhere—’”

Davis choked up then, had to stop for a second or two to get a grip.

Brody waited, hot behind the eyes, while his uncle, one of the toughest men he’d ever known, pulled himself back together.