The Creed Legacy (33 page)

“You know what happened,” Davis said, looking right into Brody’s face now. “Your dad never came out of the coma. Six miserable weeks later, he was gone.” The older man swallowed hard, and his eyes glistened with rare moisture. “I brought Firefly to this ranch to save his life, Brody. Nobody else wanted him, said he was worthless, nothing but trouble. But you hear me, son, and hear me well…I’ll put a bullet in his brain before I’ll let anybody—and I mean
anybody—
ride him. Do we understand each other?”

“Breakfast is getting cold!” Kim sang out, from the side porch.

Neither Brody nor Davis moved, or looked away from each other’s faces.

“Do we understand each other?” Davis asked, for the second time.

Brody thrust out a sigh. “We understand each other,” he replied.

Davis slapped him on the shoulder, and he even smiled a little, but his eyes were as serious as Brody had ever seen them. “I need your word, son,” he said.

“You have it,” Brody replied. “I won’t ride the horse.”

C
AROLYN HAD JUST RELEASED
a very disgruntled Winston from his crate into the wide-open spaces of the Creeds’ erstwhile empty kitchen when she heard a vehicle drive up and stop with a squeak of brakes.

She glanced at the clock—it was a little after noon— before peeking out the window, half-expecting to see Kim and Davis, ostensibly well on their way to Stone Creek in the RV, with Smidgeon and Little Bit, returning for something they’d forgotten.

Instead, Tricia, cumbersome, climbed from her Pathfinder, waving one hand in front of her face to dispel some of the dust she’d stirred up arriving.

Heartened, but at the same time feeling like one big bruise, exposed to every jostle and bump, Carolyn opened the side door to greet her friend with a smile and a wave. “You’d better get those brakes checked. I could hear them from inside the house.”

Tricia smiled. “Don’t worry. Conner made me promise to trade my rig for Kim and Davis’s car until the mechanic in town can have a look at it. That’s the main reason I’m here.”

The
main
reason, Carolyn thought wryly, but not the
only
reason.

By now, Tricia would have at least an inkling about the things that had happened last night, at the storied Bluebird Drive-in.

“You look like five miles of bad road,” Tricia observed bluntly, confirming Carolyn’s suspicion and duckwalking toward her. Carolyn wondered idly—and very briefly—if her friend wasn’t further along in her pregnancy than everybody thought she was. Tricia looked as though she might deliver baby Blue at any moment.

“Gee, thanks,” Carolyn chimed merrily, holding the screen door wide so Carolyn could squeeze past and enter the kitchen. Immediately, she hung the Pathfinder keys from the hook nearby and took the ones for Kim’s car.

The car Brody had picked her up in the night before, predisaster.

“But,” Tricia went on, dropping into a chair at the table with a relieved sigh and tossing Kim’s keys into her purse, “I’m happy to relate that Brody looks even
worse
than you do
.”

“I guess that’s something,” Carolyn replied, with a grim little chuckle.

Tricia’s gaze had fallen on the gypsy skirt, neatly spread out on the table, awaiting rehabilitation.

“Yikes, Carolyn,” she marveled. “What
happened?
”

“You’ve seen Brody?” Carolyn said, letting Tricia’s question ride for the moment. She bit her lower lip and sat down, propping her chin in one hand. “Since last night, I mean?”

“He stayed at our place,” Tricia answered, squinting a little. “You really do look awful, Carolyn. You’re pale, and there are shadows under your eyes. And the
skirt—
what on earth…?”

Carolyn spread her fingers wide and shoved all eight of them into her hair, along with her thumbs, shaking her head as she recalled the latest calamity to befall her love life.

If it could be
called
a love life.

“I freaked,” she moaned. “Lost it. Ruined everything.” She made herself lift her eyes to meet Tricia’s. “First, I drank wine,” she admitted.

“Oh, no,” Tricia said.

“Oh, yes,” Carolyn responded glumly. “But I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve decided that’s no excuse for the way I behaved. Part of the reason, maybe, but not an excuse.” She sighed before going on. “Okay, the few times I’ve ever indulged in alcohol have all proven… imprudent. I should have anticipated that, and skipped the wine, but I was dazzled, Tricia. Honestly
dazzled.
What
really
went wrong was, I got scared, because nothing could ever be as good as that date was shaping up to be—I’m pretty sure that’s how my reasoning went, anyway—and something awful was bound to happen if I let myself believe for another second that—that—”

“That Brody might actually love you?” Tricia supplied gently, with a brief, reassuring touch to Carolyn’s hands.

“I made the mistake of thinking he did, once,” Carolyn said slowly. “And when I came to my senses, it was like being run over by a freight train. I spent a long time gathering up the pieces, Tricia, and putting myself back together.” She managed a thin smile. “Problem is, I think I might have put some of those pieces in the wrong places.”

“What happens now?” Tricia asked, after a sigh and a long pause.

“I fix the gypsy skirt and hope whoever’s driving the bid through the roof is happy with the results,” she said, fairly certain that Tricia had expected her to say she was packing up and leaving Lonesome Bend without a backward glance.

But she’d meant it when she promised herself she was through running, literally
and
figuratively.

Tricia’s blue eyes twinkled with a sort of sad mischief. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about the bidder,” she said. “She’s a very understanding woman. One of
two
very understanding women, actually.”

Carolyn felt her own eyes widen. “You know who…?”

Tricia smiled and struck a comical glamour pose without getting out of her chair.

“You?”
Carolyn whispered. “
You’re
the mystery bidder?”

“Kim and I are going halves,” Tricia answered, undaunted.

Now Carolyn was
really
confused. Both Kim and Tricia were beautiful women, and both of them had great bodies—normally—but they were built differently, and Kim was at least three inches taller than Tricia, so there was no possible way they could wear the same garment without extensive alterations.

“Why?”

“Because we’ve both seen how much that skirt means to you,” Tricia said. “We were planning to wait a while, and then surprise you with it—for your birthday, maybe. Or Christmas.”

Carolyn knew better than to get her back up and accuse Tricia of joining forces with Kim to offer her charity. They’d done this amazing thing because they were
her friends,
because they had the means and because they cared about her.

Her eyes filled. “Oh, Tricia,” she said.

“Don’t cry,” Tricia said, waving her hand again, the way she had outside, when she was fanning away the dust. “If you do, I will, too, and then my nose will get all red and my eyes will practically swell shut and it
will not be pretty.
”

Carolyn laughed, giving her cheeks a swipe with the backs of her hands. “Not pretty?” she joked. “We can’t have that.”

Tricia smiled and sniffled once and said, “Well.”

Winston, having scouted out the new surroundings, returned to the kitchen to wind himself around and around Carolyn’s ankles in a figure-eight, purring like an outboard motor.

Evidently, he liked it here, at Kim and Davis’s ranch house.

“The auction doesn’t end until tomorrow,” Carolyn mused aloud, looking at the skirt now. Even bedraggled and in need of mending and some serious sprucing up, it was still breathtakingly beautiful. “Maybe someone has outbid you by now.”

“Nope,” Tricia replied, with a smug little smile. “Ain’t gonna happen. Our ceiling bid is so high, nobody will match it.”

With a tentative hand, Carolyn reached out and touched the garment almost as gently as if it were a living thing, and suffering from various painful injuries. “None of it matters, now,” she said. “The skirt needs too much fixing to sell to anyone, and I couldn’t have let you and Kim go through with your crazy, wonderful and unbelievably generous plan anyway. Not once I found out what you were up to.”

Carolyn’s natural practicality reasserted itself. She’d call off the auction as soon as she got the chance, she decided, and keep the skirt for herself. Not that she had any more reason to wear it than before, because she didn’t, but they shared something now, she and that onceglorious mass of beads and ribbon and fine cloth. They were both veterans of the Cinderella wars.

And they’d both been on the losing side.

A peaceful silence fell.

Tricia broke it with a soft “Come to our place for supper tonight, Carolyn?”

Carolyn grinned wanly, thinking how lucky she was to have friends like Tricia and Conner and Kim and Davis, among others. Not that she could trust either of those women any farther than she could have thrown them, when it came to their matchmaking schemes.

“So you can corral Brody and me in the same room and hope we’ll kiss and make up?” she countered, though not unkindly. “No way, girlfriend. I’m not ready to deal with Brody face-to-face quite yet, and I’ll wager the reverse is true, as well.”

Tricia looked sad, but she clearly understood Carolyn’s position, too. “I just wish you weren’t all alone, that’s all,” she lamented. “You’ll call Conner and me if you need anything, won’t you?”

“You can bet on it,” Carolyn promised. “And it’s not as if I’ve become a hermit, hiding out at some robber’s roost tucked away in the distant hills, after all. I promised Kim I’d spend the nights here, and basically hold down the fort, but I’ll still be going to the shop in the morning, like I do every Monday.”

Tricia brightened. “Speaking of the shop—what have you decided? Are you taking me up on my offer or not?”

Carolyn smiled. “I’d be crazy if I didn’t,” she said. “No matter what happens, Tricia, I’m staying right here in Lonesome Bend. I’ve had enough of the gypsy life, and I’m through trying to escape my problems. I’m digging in for the duration.”

“That’s great!” Tricia cried, delighted.

“I thought I’d start by hiring Primrose to work for us part-time,” Carolyn said, profoundly grateful for the change of subject. “If it’s all right with you, of course. She has some very interesting ideas and, besides, she’s a natural saleswoman.”

Tricia laughed, getting slowly to her feet. “That she is,” she agreed. “Go ahead and offer her a job whenever you’re ready. In the meantime, I’ll make a preliminary deposit to the business account, just to get things rolling.”

Carolyn was teary again. “You’re sure you want to do this, Tricia? Really,
really
sure? Because I’d understand if you didn’t, and I’d be fine without the shop—”

Well, maybe not
fine,
exactly—she loved the shop— but she’d survive, like always, and eventually thrive.

Tricia gave her one of those impulsive, Tricia-hugs, quick and awkward and wholly sincere. “Well, the
shop
wouldn’t be fine without
you,
and neither would I. I’m
having a baby,
Carolyn, not a lobotomy. Before I came to Lonesome Bend to settle Dad’s estate, I ran a gallery, remember? I love Conner more than I ever knew it was possible to love a man, and we’ll both be crazy about this baby and all his brothers and sisters, but I
need
to be around art on a regular basis—I need color and texture and all the rest.”

Carolyn certainly understood; art fed her soul, it was a form of prayer for her, of praise and thanksgiving

She recalled Tricia’s arrival in town, a couple of years ago. Naturally, there had been a lot of talk about her when she moved in with her great-grandmother and put the River’s Bend Campground and RV park up for sale, along with the ramshackle Bluebird Drive-in. People had claimed Tricia was too citified for a town like Lonesome Bend, even though she’d spent summers there since childhood, and they were sure she’d be on her way back to Seattle and her old life before the ink was dry on the sales agreements for her father’s properties.

Instead, Tricia had fallen in love with Conner Creed, married him and fit into the community like the proverbial hand in glove.

After walking Tricia to the garage and watching her drive away in Kim’s car, Carolyn went back inside, feeling somewhat at loose ends.

She supposed that house should have felt lonely, as big as it was, with just her and Winston rattling around in it like a pair of pebbles in the bottom of a barrel, but it didn’t feel that way at all.

It was a real home, a sanctuary where a man and a woman loved each other, day to day, through thick and thin, working separately and side by side to keep a ranch and an extended family going. There were memories here, practically tangible, and pictures on the walls and mantelpieces full of smiling faces and birthday cakes and Christmas trees and first cars.

In the hallway between the living room and the guest room where she’d be sleeping, Carolyn paused to look more closely at some of those photographs. One showed Brody and Conner and Steven on what was probably a fishing trip, a blond, sun-burned trio, none of them in their teens yet, beaming and holding up the day’s catch.

Next to it was a shot taken on a long-ago Christmas morning—Brody and Conner posing in front of an enormous tree decorated with a hodgepodge of ornaments, each of them gripping the shiny handlebars of a brand-new bicycle. Steven, who had lived in Boston with his mother most of the year, wasn’t in the picture, but there was a bulging stocking hanging from the mantel with his name stitched across the top, so he must have been expected to arrive for a visit soon.

Carolyn smiled, touched their faces with a fingertip, lingering a little longer on Brody’s image. To look at them, a person would have thought they’d always had it easy, but of course that wasn’t true.

Everybody, no matter how fortunate some aspects of their lives might be, had things to overcome. Dragons to face, and rivers to cross.

In Brody and Conner’s case, it was a double loss: their parents had both died, in separate accidents, when the twins were just babies. And as much love as Kim and Davis had given these boys over the years, as much guidance and security, they’d still had their battles to fight, not only in the outside world, but also with each other.

Conner and Brody had been on the outs for years and, of course, Brody’s wife and child had been taken from him, in a very cruel way.

Carolyn sighed and went on to the guest room, Winston romping at her heels like a kitten, to unpack the few things she’d brought from the apartment in town. Since she’d be going to the shop every day, she didn’t need more than fresh underwear, a nightshirt, the usual toiletries and something to wear to work in the morning.