Dear Reader,

Welcome to the third and final book starring the Creed cowboys. First Steven and now his cousin, Conner, have settled down to married life, against all odds. But Conner’s twin, Brody, has never been one to put down roots; residents of Lonesome Bend, Colorado, know it will take a special woman to tame this restless spirit for good. Carolyn Simmons might be perfect for the job…too bad Brody is the opposite of everything she thought she’d been waiting for!

I also wanted to write today to tell you about a special group of people with whom I’ve become involved in the past couple of years. It is The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), specifically their Pets for Life program.

The Pets for Life program is one of the best ways to help your local shelter—that is, to help keep animals out of shelters in the first place. Something as basic as keeping a collar and tag on your pet all the time, so if he gets out and gets lost, he can be returned home. Being a responsible pet owner. Spaying or neutering your pet. And not giving up when things don’t go perfectly. If your dog digs in the yard, or your cat scratches the furniture, know that these are problems that can be addressed. You can find all the information about these—and many other—common problems at www.petsforlife.org. This campaign is focused on keeping pets and their people together for a lifetime.

As many of you know, my own household includes two dogs, two cats and six horses, so this is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I hope you’ll get involved along with me.

With love,

Praise for the novels of Linda Lael Miller

“Miller tugs at the heartstrings as few authors can.”

—Publishers Weekly

“[Miller] is one of the finest American writers in the genre.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Strong characterization and a vivid western setting make for a fine historical romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on McKettrick’s Choice

“Completely wonderful. Austin’s interactions with Paige are fun and lively and the mystery… adds quite a suspenseful punch.”

—RT Book Reviews on McKettricks of Texas: Austin

“Miller is the queen when it comes to creating sympathetic, endearing and lifelike characters. She paints each scene so perfectly readers hover on the edge of delicious voyeurism.”

—RT Book Reviews on McKettricks of Texas: Garrett

“A passionate love too long denied drives the action in this multifaceted, emotionally rich reunion story that overflows with breathtaking sexual chemistry.”

—Library Journal on McKettricks of Texas: Tate

“All three titles should appeal to readers who like their contemporary romances Western, slightly dangerous and graced with enlightened (more or less) bad-boy heroes.”

—Library Journal on the Montana Creeds series

“Miller’s prose is smart, and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek

The Creed Legacy
Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Nicole Blint, with love.

The Creed Legacy

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

BEHIND THE SCENES 1

BEHIND THE SCENES 2

BEHIND THE SCENES 3

BEHIND THE SCENES 4

BEHIND THE SCENES 5

CHAPTER ONE

Lonesome Bend, Colorado

RANCHING, BRODY CREED THOUGHT, shifting in the saddle as he surveyed the sprawling range land from a high ridge. It can mend a broken heart, this life, and then shatter it all over again, in a million and one different ways and twice that many pieces.

There were plenty of perils. Cattle starved or froze to death when a hard winter came around, which averaged once a year up there in the high country. Spring calves and colts fell prey to wolves and coyotes and sometimes bears, hungry after hibernating through the coldest months.

It was now May, and all was well, but come summertime, wells might dry up for lack of rain, and turn the grass to tinder, ready to blaze up at the smallest spark. He’d seen wildfires consume hundreds of acres in a matter of hours, herds and houses and barns wiped out.

Year round, good horses went lame and pickup trucks gave up the ghost, and every so often, somebody drowned in the river or one of the lakes.

On the other hand, Brody reflected, the beauty of that land could heal, take a man by surprise, even though he’d called the place home all his life. That day, for instance, the sky was so blue it made Brody’s heart ache, and the aspens, cottonwoods and pines lining the landscape were shimmering splashes of green, a thousand hues of it, ranging from silvery to near-indigo. The river wound like a ribbon through the valley, clear as azure glass.

After a few moments, Brody adjusted his hat and sighed before giving the gelding a light nudge with the heels of his boots. The buckskin, long-legged with a black mane and tail, picked his way cautiously down the steep slope that led to the water’s edge.

Behind them and a hundred yards farther along the riverbank, in a westerly direction, hammers clacked and power saws screeched, and Brody glanced back, pleased, as always, to see the steel-and-lumber skeletons of his house and barn rising.

Not so long ago, there had been a campground and RV park on the site, owned by Tricia McCall, now his sister-in-law and therefore a Creed. The picnic tables and the concrete fire pits were gone, along with the public showers and electrical hookups for trailers. Only the log building that had once served as the office remained; Brody had been baching in it since last Thanksgiving, when he’d moved out of the main ranch house.

The peace between him and twin brother, Conner, could be a fragile one at times, and they both benefited by a little distance.

Now, ready to get moving, Brody clucked his tongue and gave the gelding, Moonshine, another tap with his heels.

“Come on, now,” he told the buckskin, his tone reasonable. “The water’s shallow here, and it’s real calm. If we’re going to be working livestock on both sides of this river, then you’ve got to learn how to cross it.”

Moonshine, recently acquired at an auction in Denver, was young, and Brody hadn’t had a chance to train him in the ways of a cow pony.

No time like the present, he figured.

Brody was about to get down out of the saddle and lead the horse into the water, which lapped gently at the stony shore that used to be a swimming beach, back when the River’s Bend Campground was a going concern, when Moonshine suddenly decided he was willing to get wet after all.

He plunged into the water, up to his chest, making a mighty splash in the process. Brody, gripping the barrel of that horse hard between his knees, just to stay in the saddle, laughed out loud before giving a whoop of pure delight.

His boots filled, and within moments his jeans were soaked to the tops of his thighs, but he didn’t care. Moonshine swam that river like he had Olympic aspirations, his powerful legs pumping, his head high and his ears pricked up.

“Good boy,” Brody told the horse, with gruff appreciation. “You’re doing just fine.”

Reaching the other side, Moonshine bunched his haunches for the effort and bunny-hopped up the steepest part of the bank, water pouring off him in sheets. Once he’d gained level ground, the animal shook himself like a dog and Brody laughed again, for no other reason than that life was good.

He was home.

And, for the most part, he was happy to be there.

Drenched, he got down from the saddle to pull off his boots, empty them and yank them back on over his sodden socks. When he got to the main house, he’d swap his wet duds for dry ones from Conner’s closet.

Having an identical twin brother had its advantages, and one of them was access to a whole other wardrobe.

There’d been a time when Conner would have groused about Brody’s tendency to borrow his stuff, but last New Year’s Eve, Brody’s “little brother,” born a couple of minutes after he was, had taken a wife. Conner was happy with Tricia, and these days it took more than a missing shirt or pair of jeans to get under his hide.

They were on a perpetual honeymoon, Conner and Tricia, and now, with a baby due in three months, they glowed, the both of them, as if they were lit from within.

Brody mounted up again and reined Moonshine toward the home-place, feeling a mixture of things as he considered his twin’s good fortune.

Sure, he was glad things were working out so well for Conner, but he was a little envious, too.

Not that he’d have admitted it to anybody.

Tricia was beautiful, smart and funny, and she’d taken to ranch life with surprising ease, for a city girl. Essentially a greenhorn, she’d gone horseback riding almost every day since the wedding, when the weather allowed, anyway—until her pregnancy was confirmed. Then Conner had put a stop to the pursuit.

No more trail rides until after the baby’s arrival.

Period, end of discussion.

Brody grinned, recalling how adamant his brother had been. For the most part, the marriage appeared to be an equal partnership, but this time, Conner had laid down the law. And Tricia, normally the independent type, had capitulated.

That was just common sense, to Brody’s mind, though a lot of country women continued to ride when they were expecting a baby, herding cattle, rounding up strays, checking fence lines. Conner’s strong opposition was a no-brainer—Rachel Creed, Conner and Brody’s mother, had continued to enter barrel-racing events long after she learned she was carrying twins. There hadn’t been a specific incident, but soon after giving birth to Brody and Conner, Rachel’s health had begun to go downhill.

She’d died when her infant sons were less than a month old.

Blue Creed, their father, hadn’t lasted much longer. Overwhelmed by the responsibility, he’d brought the babies home to the ranch, right around their first birthday, and handed them over to his brother, Davis, and Davis’s wife, Kim. Soon afterward, Blue himself had been thrown from a horse and broken his neck. He’d been in a coma for six weeks, and then died.

Now, crossing the range between the river and the two-story house Conner and Tricia had been sharing since they got hitched, the grass rippling around him like a green sea, Brody did his best to ignore the clammy chill of wet denim clinging to his legs—and the old, deep-seated sorrow rooted in his soul. He did take some consolation from seeing the cattle grazing all around, most of them Herefords, with a few Black Anguses to break the red-brown monotony. Two dozen broncos, specially bred for the rodeo, and six Brahma bulls completed the menagerie.

Clint and Juan and a couple of the other ranch hands wove in and out among the different critters on horseback, mainly keeping the peace. Brody touched his hatbrim to the other men as he passed, and those who were looking his way returned the favor.

By then, Moonshine was restless, trying to work the bit between his teeth, so Brody gave him his head. That cayuse might be skittish when it came to crossing rivers, but he sure did like to run.

Brody bent low over the buckskin’s neck, holding his hat in place with one hand and keeping a loose grip on the reins with the other.

And that horse ate up ground like a jet taxiing along a runway before takeoff.

Brody was enjoying the ride so much that the corral fence sprang up in front of them as suddenly as a line of magic beanstalks.

Moonshine soared over that top rail as if he’d sprouted wings, practically stretched out flat, and came in for a magnificent landing about one foot short of the place where Conner stood, looking like he’d had rusty nails for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs.

Brody gazed down into a face so like his own that the sight of it even took him aback sometimes, and he was used to being pretty much an exact duplicate of his brother.

Conner was scowling up at him, through swirls of settling dust, and he looked as though he’d like to grab hold of Brody, haul him off that horse and beat the holy bejesus out of him. So much for personality improvements resulting from wedded bliss!

“Oops,” Brody said cheerfully, because he knew that would piss off Conner and he still enjoyed doing that now and again, even though they’d been getting along well for a respectable length of time. “Sorry.”

He swung down and faced Conner, who was taut with annoyance, his shoulders squared, his fists clenched and his attitude contentious.

“Damn it, Brody,” he growled, “am I having one of my invisible days, or are you going blind? You darn near ran me down, and it’ll take me the better part of the morning to get this mare calm enough to work with again!”

Prior to the leap, Brody hadn’t noticed his brother or the pinto mare, now nickering and tossing her head over on the far side of the corral, but he didn’t think it would be smart to say as much. Instead, he decided to come from a place of helpfulness.

“You starting horses yourself these days, instead of letting one of the wranglers do it?” he asked, bending to pick up the lightweight saddle the mare must have tossed when he and Moonshine came over the fence.

Conner grabbed the saddle and jerked it out of Brody’s hands. “Yes,” he snapped in response. “You dropped out for a decade, Davis broke both legs the last time he rode a bronc and Clint and Juan are downright creaky at the hinges. Who the hell did you think was starting the horses?”

“Whoa,” Brody said, recoiling slightly and still grinning. “What’s chewing on you? Did you have a fight with the little woman or something?”

“No!” Conner yelled.

Brody chuckled, adjusted his hat and then turned to get Moonshine by the reins. After the river crossing and the hard run over the range, not to mention that spectacular jump, he figured the horse deserved some stall time, free of the saddle and bridle. “Well, what’s the matter, then?” he asked reasonably, starting toward the side door of the barn.

“Nothing,” Conner bit out, setting the dusty saddle on the top rail of the fence and turning to the mare.

“Something is,” Brody insisted calmly, pausing.

Conner looked at Brody then, through the haze of slowly settling corral dirt, and sighed. “Tricia and I might have had words,” he said grudgingly.

“Trouble in the vine-covered cottage?” Brody teased, knowing it couldn’t be anything serious. He’d never seen a man and a woman more deeply in love than his brother and Tricia were.

“She says I’m overprotective,” Conner said, taking off his hat and swatting his thigh with it before putting it back on.

Brody flashed a grin. Rubbed his beard-stubbled chin with one hand. “You?” he joked. “Overprotective? Just because you’d wrap the lady in foam-rubber padding, if she’d let you, so she wouldn’t stub her toe?”

Conner glared, but there was a grin to match Brody’s brewing in his blue eyes. He held it off as long as he could, but then it broke through, like sunlight penetrating a cloud-bank.

“Put your horse away,” Conner said. “I might as well turn the mare out to graze for the rest of the day, now that you and that gelding scared her out of three years’ growth.”

Brody led Moonshine into the barn, put him in a stall and gave him a couple of flakes of hay. When he left by the main door, Conner was waiting for him in the yard, throwing a stick for the Lab-retriever mix, Valentino.

In Brody’s opinion, that was a prissy-assed name for a ranch dog, but the poor critter had already been saddled with it when Conner and Tricia took up with each other. Conner had tried calling him “Bill” for a while, but the former stray wouldn’t answer to that, so Valentino it was.

Brody looked around. There was no sign of Tricia, or the Pathfinder she drove.

“She’s gone to town to help Carolyn at the shop,” Conner said. He usually had a pretty fair idea what Brody was thinking, and the reverse was also true. “The woman is pregnant out to here.” He shaped his hands around an invisible basketball, approximately at belly level. “What would be so wrong with staying home for one day? Taking it easy, putting her feet up for a while?”

Brody chuckled and slapped his brother on the shoulder. “She’s running a small-town art gallery, Conner,” he said, “not bungee-jumping or riding bulls in a rodeo.”

Conner’s face tightened momentarily and, once again, Brody knew what was on his twin’s mind because they so often thought in tandem.

“There’s no connection between our mom’s pregnancy and Tricia’s,” Brody added quietly. “Stop looking for one.”

Conner sighed, managed a raw kind of grin. Nodded.

It struck Brody then, though not for the first time, of course, just how vulnerable loving a woman made a man. And after the baby came? It would be way worse.

Brody shivered, momentarily swamped with recollections.

“What happened to your clothes, anyhow?” Conner asked, looking him over. He tended to get around to things in his own good time.

“Moonshine got a little overenthusiastic crossing the river,” Brody replied.

They headed into the house, the dog trotting behind them, and Brody ducked into the laundry room to swipe a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and some socks from the folded stacks on top of the dryer. After a quick shower to thaw out his bone marrow, he dressed in the room he and Conner had shared as kids, with their cousin Steven joining them in the summertime, and emerged to find his brother still in the kitchen, brewing a cup of coffee with one of those fancy single-shot machines designed for the chronically caffeine-deprived.

“How’s the new place coming along?” Conner asked, holding out a steaming mug, which Brody took gratefully.

“It’s a slow process,” he replied, after a sip of java. “The builder swears up and down that it’ll be move-in ready by the middle of August, though.”

Conner gave a snort at that, retrieved a second cup from under the spout of the shining gizmo and raised it slightly, in a little salute. “Nice clothes,” he observed wryly. “I once owned some just like them.”

CAROLYN SIMMONS held her breath as she watched her very pregnant friend and business partner, Tricia Creed, making her wobbly way down from the top of a ladder. Tricia had just hung a new batik depicting a Native American woman weaving at a loom. The work of a local artist, the piece wouldn’t be in the shop long, which was possibly why Tricia had placed it so high on the wall. No doubt she reasoned that if the picture wasn’t within easy reach, she and Carolyn could enjoy it for a while before some eager buyer snatched it up.

With her long, dark braid, loose-fitting cotton maternity clothes and attitude of serene faith in the all-around goodness of life, Carolyn thought Tricia resembled the weaver a little.

Taller than Tricia, with artfully streaked blond hair, Carolyn wore her usual garb of jeans, boots and a fitted T-shirt. Tricia liked to joke that if an opportunity to ride a horse came up, Carolyn was determined to be ready.

“What were you doing on that ladder?” she asked now, propping her hands on her hips as she regarded Tricia. “I promised Conner I’d keep an eye on you, and the minute I turn my back, you’re teetering on the top rung.”

Tricia dusted her hands together and smiled, stepping back a little way to look up at the batik. “I was nowhere near the top rung,” she argued cheerfully, her face glowing in the sunlight pouring in through the big front window. She sighed. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Carolyn, following Tricia’s gaze, nodded. Primrose Sullivan, the artist, had outdone herself this time. The weaver was indeed beautiful. “I think some of our online customers would be interested,” she mused. “I’m not sure it would photograph all that well from this angle, though—”

The hydraulic squeal of brakes interrupted.

Tricia moved to the window and peered through the antique lace curtains. “It’s another tour bus,” she said. “Brace yourself.”

The business, a combination boutique and art gallery, filled the first floor of Natty McCall’s venerable Victorian house—Carolyn lived upstairs in Tricia’s former apartment, along with her foster cat, Winston. The items the two women sold ranged from goats’ milk soap and handmade pincushions to one-of-a-kind dresses and near museum-quality oil paintings.

“I’m braced,” Carolyn confirmed, smiling and taking her customary place behind the counter, next to the cash register.

Tricia straightened an already straight display of handmade stationery.

The shop wasn’t going to make anyone rich, but for Carolyn, it was a dream come true. In Lonesome Bend, she had a comfortable place to live—not a small thing to a person raised in no fewer than fourteen foster homes—and an outlet for the various garments, decorative pillows and retro-style aprons she was constantly running up on her sewing machine. Formerly a professional house sitter, Carolyn had been selling her designs online for years. Her online business brought in enough extra money to build a small savings account and buy thread and fabric for the next project she had in mind, but that was the extent of it.

The little bell over the front door jingled merrily, and the busload of customers crowded in, white-haired women with good manicures and colorful summer clothes, chatting good-naturedly among themselves as they thronged around every table and in front of every shelf.

The store, loftily titled Creed and Simmons—Tricia’s great-grandmother, Natty, said the name sounded more like a law firm or an English jewelry shop than what it was—barely broke even most of the time. Tour buses heading to and from Denver and Aspen and Telluride stopped at least twice a week, though, and that kept the doors open and the lights on.

For Tricia, having sold property inherited from her father for a tidy sum and then having married a wealthy rancher to boot, the place was a hobby, albeit one she was passionate about.

For Carolyn, it was much more—an extension of her personality, an identity. A way of belonging, of fitting into a community made up mostly of people who had known each other from birth. It

had to work.

Without the business, Carolyn would be adrift again, following the old pattern of living in someone else’s house for a few days or a few weeks, then moving on to yet another place that wasn’t hers. House-sitting was a grown-up version of that old game musical chairs, only the stakes were a lot higher. Once or twice, when the figurative music stopped unexpectedly, Carolyn had been caught between houses, like a player left with no chair to sit in, forced to hole up in some cheap motel or sleep in her car until another job turned up.

Thankfully, there were plenty of opportunities around Lonesome Bend—movie stars and CEOs and highpowered political types kept multimillion-dollar “vacation homes” hidden away in private canyons, on top of hills and at the ends of long, winding roads edged with whispering aspen trees.

Carolyn still did some house-sitting now and then, for long-time clients, but she much preferred the cozy apartment above the shop to those enormous and profoundly empty houses, with their indoor swimming pools and their media rooms and their well-stocked wine cellars.

In the apartment, she was surrounded by her own things—the ceramic souvenir mugs she’d collected from cities all over the country, a few grainy photographs in cheap frames, her trusty laptop and the no-frills workhorse of an electric sewing machine that had been a parting gift from her favorite foster mom.

In the apartment, Carolyn felt substantial, real, rooted in one particular place, instead of some ethereal, ghostlike being, haunting lonely castles.

For the next forty-five minutes, Carolyn and Tricia were both so busy that they barely had a chance to look at each other, let alone speak, and when the tour bus pulled away at last, it was almost time to close up for lunch.

The cash drawer was bulging with fives, tens and twenties, and there was a nice pile of credit card receipts, too.

The shelves, racks and tables looked as though they’d been pillaged by barbarians, and the air still smelled of expensive perfume.

“Wow,” Tricia said, sagging into the rocking chair near the fireplace. “That bunch just about cleaned us out.”

Carolyn laughed. “That they did,” she agreed. “Bless their hearts.”

Tricia tilted her head back, sighed slightly and closed her eyes. Her hands rested protectively over her bulging stomach.

Carolyn was immediately alarmed. “Tricia? You’re all right, aren’t you?”

Tricia opened her eyes, turned her head and smiled. “Of course I am,” she said. “I’m just a little tired from all that hurrying around.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Tricia made a face, mocking but friendly. “You sound just like Conner. I’m fine, Carolyn.”

Frowning slightly, Carolyn went to the door, turned the Open sign around, so it read Closed, and turned the lock. She and Tricia usually had lunch in the downstairs kitchen at the back of the house, and sometimes Tricia’s husband joined them.

Tricia was still in the rocking chair when Carolyn got back.

And she’d fallen asleep.

Carolyn smiled, covered her friend lightly with a crocheted afghan and slipped away to the kitchen.

Winston, the cat, wound himself around her ankles when she entered, purring like an outboard motor. Like the house, Winston technically belonged to Natty McCall, Tricia’s great-grandmother, now a resident of Denver, but because he stayed with Carolyn whenever his mistress was off on one of her frequent and quite lengthy cruises, she loved him like her own.

Apparently, the feeling was mutual.

Or he just wanted his daily ration of sardines.

“Hungry?” Carolyn asked, bending to stroke the cat’s gleaming black ears.

Winston replied with a sturdy meow that presumably meant yes and leaped up onto a sideboard, where he liked to keep watch.

Smiling, mentally tallying up the take from the power-shopper invasion, Carolyn went to the fridge, got out the small bowl of sardines left over from the day before and stripped away the covering of plastic wrap.

She set the bowl on the floor for Winston, then went to the sink to wash her hands.

Winston came in for a landing squarely in front of his food dish and, at the same time, a knock sounded lightly at the back door.

Conner Creed pushed it open, stuck his head inside and grinned at Carolyn, flashing those way-white teeth of his.

Her heart skipped over a beat or two and then stopped entirely—or at least, that’s the way it felt—as he stepped into the house.

Because this wasn’t Conner, as she’d first thought.

No, siree. This was Brody.

Carolyn’s cheeks burned, and she barely held back the panicked “What are you doing here?” that sprang to the tip of her tongue.

The grin, as boyish and wicked as ever, didn’t falter. Clearly, their history didn’t bother Brody at all. It shouldn’t have bothered Carolyn, either, she supposed, since almost eight years had passed since they were together-together. And what they’d shared amounted to a tryst, not an affair of the heart.

Be that as it may, every time she encountered this man—a recurring problem now that his brother was married to one of her closest friends—she wanted to flee.

“Is my sister-in-law around?” Brody asked, well aware, Carolyn would have bet, that he’d rattled her.

Carolyn swallowed hard. Once, when she’d been on a trail ride with Conner and Tricia and a number of their friends and neighbors, Brody and his now-and-then girlfriend, Joleen Williams, had raced past on horseback, their laughter carried by the wind. Carolyn, taken by surprise, had played the fool by bolting for the barn, without so much as a goodbye to the other members of the party, and she’d been kicking herself for it ever since.

“Tricia is in the front,” she replied, in a remarkably normal tone of voice. “We had a busy morning, and she fell asleep.”

Brody closed the door behind him, crossed to the cat and crouched, extending a hand.

Winston hissed and batted at him with one paw.

“Whoa,” Brody said, drawing back.

Carolyn chuckled, relaxing a little. Clearly, Winston was a good judge of character, as well as an expert mouser and a connoisseur of fine sardines.

Having made his position clear, the cat went back to snarfing up his lunch.

Meanwhile, Brody rose off his haunches, still holding his hat in one hand, and looked disgruntled. Being drop-dead gorgeous, he probably wasn’t used to rejection—even when it came from an ordinary house cat. “Animals usually like me,” he said, sounding baffled and even a little hurt.

Carolyn, realizing she’d been gawking, turned away, suddenly very busy getting a can of soup, a box of crackers and a loaf of bread from the pantry.

Glancing back, she saw Brody approach the inside door, push it open carefully and peer into the next room.

He turned, with a kind of brotherly softening in his eyes, and put his index finger to his lips.

“Shh,” he said.

“I didn’t make a sound,” Carolyn protested, in a whisper.

Why didn’t the man just leave now, if he didn’t want to disturb Tricia?

Instead, he lingered, one-hundred-percent cowboy, with his hat in his hands and his mouth tilted sideways in a grin.

“We don’t have to be enemies, you know,” he said quietly.

Carolyn, in the middle of slapping a slice of bologna onto a piece of bread, opened her mouth and then closed it again.

“Do we?” Brody persisted.

Carolyn recovered enough to reply, though the words came out in a terse little rush of breath. “Tricia is my friend and business partner. You’re her brother-in-law. Therefore, we have to be civil to each other.”

“Is it that hard?” Brody asked. “Being ‘civil,’ I mean?”

Suddenly, all the old feelings rose up inside Carolyn, nearly overwhelming her. Tears stung her eyes and she turned her head quickly, bit down hard on her lower lip.

“Carolyn?” he said.

He was standing right behind her by then; she felt the heat and hard masculinity of him in every nerve in her body.

Just go, she thought desperately, unable to risk turning around to face him.

Brody Creed had never been one to leave well enough alone. He took a light hold on her shoulders, and Carolyn found herself looking up into the treacherous blue of those trademark eyes.

“I’m sorry for what I did, way back when,” he told her, his voice a gruff rumble. “I was wrong. But don’t you think it’s time we put all that behind us and stopped walking on eggshells every time we happen to be in the same room?”

He was sorry.

As far as Carolyn was concerned, sorry was the emptiest, most threadbare word in the English language. People hurt other people, said they were so sorry and then, in her experience at least, turned right around and did the same thing all over again.

Or something worse.

Carolyn glanced nervously in the direction of the inside door, afraid of upsetting Tricia. When she spoke, her voice was a ragged whisper. “What do you want me to say, Brody? That I forgive you? Okay, for what it’s worth, I forgive you.”

Brody’s expression was bleak, but his eyes flashed with frustration. He was famous for his temper, among other things.

“You’ll forgive, but you won’t forget, is that it?”

“I might conceivably forgive a rattlesnake for biting me,” Carolyn responded. “After all, it’s a snake’s nature to strike. But I’d be worse than stupid if I forgot and cozied up to the same sidewinder a second time, wouldn’t I?”

A muscle bunched in Brody’s cheek. He was already sporting a five o’clock shadow, a part of Carolyn observed with a strange detachment. Or maybe he hadn’t shaved at all that morning.

Oh, hell, what did it matter?

“You think I’m asking you to ‘cozy up’ to me?” Brody almost growled. His nose was an inch from Carolyn’s, at most. “Damn it, woman, I can’t avoid being around you, and you can’t avoid being around me, and all I’m suggesting here is that you let go of that grudge you’ve been carrying for seven-plus years so we can all move on!”

Carolyn would have loved to slap Brody Creed just then, or even throttle him, but suddenly the door to the next room opened and Tricia peeked through the opening, stifling a yawn with a patting motion of one hand.

“Have you two been arguing?” Tricia asked, her gaze shifting from one of them to the other.

They stepped back simultaneously.

“No,” Carolyn lied.

“Everything’s just great,” Brody added, through his teeth.

CHAPTER TWO

MISCHIEF LIT TRICIA’S blue eyes as she studied Brody and Carolyn, the pair of them standing as still as cigarstore Indians in the middle of Natty McCall’s kitchen.

Just looking at her took the edge off Brody’s irritation. He’d always wanted a sister, after all, and now he had one. He felt a similar affection for Melissa, his cousin Steven’s wife, but he didn’t see her practically every day, the way he did Tricia, since Steven, Melissa and their three children lived in Stone Creek, Arizona.

“Did Conner send you to check up on me, Brody Creed?” Tricia asked in a tone of good-natured suspicion, tilting her head to one side and folding her arms before resting them atop her impressive belly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Brody saw Carolyn turn away. Her streaky blond hair swung with the motion, brushing against her shoulders, and just that fast, she was busy thumping things around on the counter again.

“Brody?” Tricia persisted, while Brody was untangling his tongue.

“It was my own idea to look in on you while I was in town,” Brody finally answered, grubbing up a crooked grin and turning the brim of his hat in both hands, like some shy hero in an old-time Western movie. “I don’t figure Conner would object much, though.”

Tricia smiled broadly, flicked a glance in Carolyn’s direction.

The can opener whirred and a pan clattered against a burner.

Brody sighed.

“Join us for lunch?” Tricia asked him.

Carolyn’s backbone went ramrod-straight as soon as Tricia uttered those words, and Brody watched, at once amused and confounded, while she jammed slices of bread down onto the beginnings of two bologna sandwiches. She used so much force to do it that the things looked like they’d been made with a drill press.

Deciding he’d stirred up enough ill will for one day, Brody shook his head. “I’d better get back to the ranch,” he said. “We’re replacing some of the wire along one of the fence lines.”

“Oh,” Tricia said, as if disappointed.

She moved slowly to the table, pulled back a chair just as Brody went to pull it back for her and sank onto the seat.

“Hey,” Brody said, concerned. “Are you feeling all right?”

Tricia sighed. “Maybe I’m a little tired,” she confessed. “It’s no big deal.”

At that, Carolyn stopped flinging food hither and yon and turned to look at Tricia. “I think you should go home and rest,” she said. “This morning was crazy, and we’ve been taking inventory for a couple of days now.”

“And leave you to straighten up the shop and restock the shelves all by yourself?” Tricia asked. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

“I can handle it,” Carolyn said. She spoke in a normal tone, but Brody could feel her bristling, all over, like a porcupine fixing to shoot quills in every direction. She didn’t deign to glance his way, of course. “And, anyhow, I’d like to close the shop early today. That way, I could catch up on the bookkeeping, then put the finishing touches on that gypsy skirt I’ve been working on and get it posted on the website.”

Brody neither knew nor cared what a gypsy skirt was. He was feeling indignant now, standing there on the fringes of the conversation as if he’d either turned transparent or just disappeared entirely.

He cleared his throat.

Tricia didn’t look at him, and Carolyn didn’t, either.

The cat fixed an amber gaze on him, though, and Brody was affronted all over again. He’d never met a critter that didn’t take to him right away—until this one.

“Tell you what,” Tricia finally said to Carolyn, after a few moments spent looking happily pensive. “I’ll take the afternoon off. If you promise not to stay up half the night stitching beads and ribbons onto that skirt.”

“I promise,” Carolyn said quickly.

Most likely, by her reckoning, persuading Tricia to go home was the best and fastest way to get rid of him, too.

Brody felt his back teeth mesh together.

“All right, then,” Tricia conceded. “I guess I could use a nap.” With that, she headed off into the other room, probably on the hunt for her purse, and thus Brody and Carolyn were left alone again, however briefly.

On the stove, soup began to boil over the sides of the saucepan, sizzling on the burner and raising a stink.

Brody automatically moved to push the pan off the heat, and Carolyn did the same thing.

They collided, sideways, and hard enough that Carolyn stumbled slightly. And Brody grabbed her arm, an instinctive response, to steady her.

He actually felt the charge go through her, arc like a bolt of electricity from someplace inside Carolyn to someplace inside him.

Instantly, both of them went still.

Brody willed his fingers to release their hold on Carolyn’s arm.

She jerked free.

And Tricia was back in the kitchen by then, taking it all in.

Although he and Carolyn were no longer physically touching each other, it seemed to Brody that he’d been fused to her in some inexplicable way.

The very air of the room seemed to quiver.

“I’ll drive you home,” Brody managed to tell Tricia, his voice a throaty rasp.

“I’ll drive myself home,” Tricia countered, friendly but firm. There’d be no more use in arguing with her than with any other Creed. “I don’t want to leave the Pathfinder behind, and, anyway, I told you—I feel just fine.”

Carolyn favored her friend with a wobbly smile. “Take it easy, okay?” she said.

Tricia nodded on her way to the back door. She noted the spilled-over soup on the stove and, with the smallest grin, shook her head.

Brody happened to see her expression because he’d just leaned past her, to take hold of the knob. Where he came from—right there in Lonesome Bend, as it happened—a man still opened a door for a lady.

And this particular lady was trying hard not to laugh.

Brody’s neck heated as he stood there, holding the door open for his brother’s wife, all too aware that she’d drawn some kind of crazy female conclusion about him and Carolyn.

He clamped his jaw down tight again and waited.

ONCE BRODY and Tricia were gone, and far enough along the flagstone walk to be out of earshot, Carolyn let out a loud, growl-like groan of sheer frustration.

The sandwiches were smashed.

Most of the soup—tomato with little star-shaped noodles, her favorite—coated the stove top. The rest was bonded to the bottom of the pan.

All of which was neither here nor there, because she wasn’t the least bit hungry now anyway, thanks to Brody Creed.

Winston, having finished his sardine repast, sat looking up at her, twitching his tail from side to side. His delicate nose gleamed with fish oil, and out came his tiny, pink tongue to dispense with it.

Comically dignified, his coat sleek and black, the cat reminded Carolyn suddenly of a very proper English butler, overseeing the doings in some grand ancestral pile. The fanciful thought made her laugh, and that released most of the lingering, after-Brody tension.

Carolyn frowned at the catch phrase: After Brody. In many ways, that simple term defined her life, as she’d lived it for the past seven years. If only she could go back to Before Brody, and make a different choice.

A silly idea if she’d ever heard one, Carolyn decided.

Resolutely, she cleaned up the soup mess, filled the saucepan with water and left it to soak in the sink. She wrapped the flattened sandwiches carefully and tucked them away in the refrigerator. When and if her appetite returned, she’d be ready.

Winston continued to watch her with that air of sedate curiosity as she finished KP duty and returned to the main part of the shop.

Winston followed; whenever Carolyn was in the house, the cat was somewhere nearby.

She tidied the display tables and put out more goats’ milk soap and handmade paper and the last of the frilly, retro-style aprons that were so popular she could barely keep up with the demand.

That task finished, she stuffed the day’s receipts into a zippered bag generously provided by the Cattleman’s First Bank, double-checked that the front door was locked and there were no approaching customers in sight and went upstairs to her apartment.

Every time she entered that cheery little kitchen, whether from the interior stairway, like now, or from the one outside, Carolyn felt a stirring of quiet joy, a sort of lifting sensation in the area of her heart.

She rented the apartment from Natty McCall for a ridiculously nominal amount of money—nominal was what she could afford—so it wasn’t really hers. Still, everything about the place, modest though it was, said home to Carolyn.

Sure, she was lonely sometimes, especially when the shop was closed.

But it wasn’t the same kind of loneliness she’d felt when she was constantly moving from one house to another and her address was simply General Delivery, Lonesome Bend, Colorado.

The irony of the town’s name wasn’t lost on Carolyn.

She’d ended up there quite by accident, a little over eight years ago, when her car broke down along a dark country road, leaving her stranded.

Her unlikely rescuers, Gifford Welsh and Ardith Sperry, both of them A-list movie stars, had been passing by and stopped to offer their help. In the end, they’d offered her the use of the guest house behind their mansion-hideaway three miles outside of town. After a series of very careful background checks, the couple had hired Carolyn as nanny to their spirited three-year-old daughter, Storm.

Carolyn had loved the job and the child. Most of the time, she and Storm had stayed behind in the Lonesome Bend house, while Gifford and Ardith crisscrossed the globe, sometimes together and sometimes separately, appearing in movies that invariably garnered Oscar nominations and Golden Globes.

Although Carolyn had never given in to the temptation to pretend that Storm was her own child, strong as it was some of the time, she and the little girl had bonded, and on a deep level.

For Carolyn, life had been better than ever before, at least for that single, golden year—right up to the night Gifford Welsh had too much to drink at dinner and decided he and the nanny ought to have themselves a little fling.

Carolyn had refused out of hand. Oh, there was no denying that Welsh was attractive. He’d graced the cover of People as the World’s Sexiest Man, not just once, but twice. He was intelligent, charming and witty, not to mention rich and famous. She’d seen all his movies, loved every one of them.

But he was married.

He was a father.

Those things mattered to Carolyn, even if he’d temporarily lost sight of them himself.

After fending off his advances—Ardith had been away on a movie set somewhere in Canada at the time—Carolyn had resigned, packed her belongings and, once a friend had arrived to pinch-hit as Storm’s nanny, left that house for good.

Within a few months, the property was quietly sold to the founder of a software company, and Gifford, Ardith and Storm, reportedly having purchased a sprawling ranch in Montana, never set foot in Lonesome Bend again.

Even now, years later, standing in the kitchen of her apartment, Carolyn remembered how hard, and how painful, it was to leave Storm behind. The ache returned, like a blow to her solar plexus, every time she recalled how the little girl had run behind her car, sobbing and calling out, “Come back, Carolyn! Carolyn, come back!”

Before that—long, long before that—another little girl had frantically chased after another car, stumbling, falling and skinning her knees, getting up to run again.

And that child’s cries hadn’t been so very different from Storm’s.

Mommy, come back! Please, come back!

“Breathe,” Carolyn told herself sternly. “You’re a grown woman now, so act like one.” Indeed, she was a grown woman. But the child she’d once been still lived inside her, still wondered, even after twenty-five years, where her mother had gone after dropping her daughter off at that first foster home.

“Reow,” Winston remarked, now perched on the kitchen table, where he was most definitely not supposed to be. “Reow?”

Carolyn gave a moist chuckle, sniffled and patted the animal’s head before gently shooing him off the table. He immediately took up residence on the wide windowsill, his favorite lookout spot.

Being something of a neat freak, Carolyn moved her portable sewing machine aside, replaced the tablecloth beneath it with an untrammeled one and washed her hands at the sink.

The gypsy skirt, the creative project of the moment, hung on the hook inside her bedroom door, neatly covered with a plastic bag saved from the dry cleaner’s.

Carolyn retrieved the garment, draped it carefully over the side of the table opposite her sewing machine and silently reveled in the beauty of the thing.

The floor-length underskirt was black crepe, but it barely showed, for all the multicolored, bead-enhanced ribbons she’d stitched to the cloth in soft layers. She’d spent days designing the piece, weeks stitching it together, ripping out and stitching again.

It was exquisite, all motion and shimmer, a wearable fantasy, the kind of original women like Ardith Sperry wore to award ceremonies and premieres.

Carolyn hadn’t sized the piece for a movie star’s figure, though. It was somewhere between a ten and a twelve, with plenty of give in the seams, allowing for a custom fit.

Carolyn, a curvy eight since the age of seventeen, had deliberately cut the skirt to fit a larger figure than her own, for the simple reason that, if she could have worn it, parting with it would have been out of the question.

She’d been making purposeful sacrifices like that since she’d first learned to sew, in her sophomore year of high school. Once she understood the basics, she hadn’t even needed patterns. She’d sketched designs almost from day one, measured and remeasured the fabric, cut and stitched.

And she’d quickly made a name for herself. While other kids babysat or flipped burgers for extra money, Carolyn whipped up one-of-a-kind outfits and sold them as fast as she could turn them out. That made two things she did well, she’d realized way back when, with a thrill she could still feel. Carolyn had an affinity for horses; it seemed as though she’d always known how to ride.

Over the years, most of her foster homes being in rural or semirural areas, where there always seemed to be someone willing to trade riding time for mucking out stalls, she’d ridden all kinds of horses, though she’d never actually had one to call her own.

Now, determined not to waste another second daydreaming, she shook off the reflective mood and picked up the skirt again, carefully removing the plastic wrap and holding it up high so she could admire the shift and shiver of all those ribbons, the wink of crystal beads.

It was silly, she supposed, but she coveted that skirt.

Aside from the money the sale would bring in, which, as always, she needed, where would she even wear a garment like that? She lived in blue jeans, cotton tops and western boots, and for good reason—she was a cowgirl at heart, not a famous actress or the wife of a CEO or a cover model for Glamour.

With a sigh, Carolyn put the skirt back on its hook on the bedroom door—out of sight, out of mind.

She crossed to the small desk Tricia had left behind when she moved to the ranch, and booted up her laptop. While the magic machine was going through its various electronic thumps, bumps and whistles, Carolyn heated a cup of water in the microwave to brew tea.

Winston, still keeping his vigil over the side yard from the windowsill, made a soft yowling sound, his tail swaying like a pendulum in overdrive. His hackles were up, but his ears were pitched forward instead of laid back in anger. While Carolyn was still trying to read his body language, she heard someone coming up the outside stairs.

A Brodylike shape appeared in the frosted oval window at the door, one hand raised to knock.

Before he could do that much, however, Carolyn had yanked the door open.

“I don’t believe this,” she said.

Over on the windowsill, Winston expressed his displeasure with another odd little yowl.

“What is that cat’s problem, anyway?” Brody asked, frowning as he slipped past Carolyn, graceful as a billow of smoke.

Carolyn shut the door. Hard.

“Winston,” she said stiffly, “is a very discerning cat.”

Brody sighed, and when Carolyn forced herself to turn around and look at him, he was gazing at Winston with an expression of wounded disbelief on his handsome face.

“Does he like Conner?” Brody inquired.

Carolyn hesitated. Brody threw an emotional wrench in the works every time she encountered him, but she didn’t hate him. Not all the time, that is. And she didn’t enjoy making him feel bad.

“Yes,” she replied, eventually. “But you shouldn’t take it personally.”

“Easy for you to say,” Brody answered.

“Tricia’s okay, isn’t she?” That was it, she decided. He was there because he had bad news. Why else would he have come all the way back in from the ranch, where he was supposed to be stringing new fence lines with Conner and the crew?

Brody must have seen the alarm in Carolyn’s eyes, because he shook his head. Holding his range-battered hat in one hand, he ran the other through his shaggy, tarnished-gold hair.

Sighed again.

In a searing flash, it came back to her, the feel of that mouth on her skin.

“As far as I know, she’s taking a nap.” Another grin flickered in Brody’s eyes and twitched at one corner of his amazing mouth. “As soon as Tricia turned in, Conner decided he was a little tired, too. That was my cue to make myself scarce.”

Carolyn’s cheeks were stinging a little, but she had to smile. “Probably a good call,” she agreed. And then she waited. It was up to Brody to explain why he’d come back.

His remarkable blue eyes seemed to darken a few shades as he looked at her, and the gray rim around the irises widened. “I know the word doesn’t mean much,” he said, at long last, “but I meant it before, when I told you I was sorry about the way things ended with us.”

Suddenly, Carolyn wanted very much to cry. And this was a sign of weakness, an indulgence she rarely allowed herself. All her life, she’d had to be strong—as a matter of survival.

She swallowed painfully and raised her chin a notch. “Okay,” she said. “You’re right. We’ll just…let it go. Act as though it never happened.” She put out her hand, the way she might have done to seal a business agreement. “Deal?”

Brody looked down at her hand, back up at her face. “Deal,” he said hoarsely. And in the next moment, he was kissing her.

Carolyn felt things giving way inside her and, as good as that kiss was, she wasn’t about to surrender so much as an inch of the emotional ground she’d gained after the cataclysm that was Brody Creed.

She wrenched herself back out of his arms, put a few steps between them and then a few more.

Brody merely looked at her, with his mouth upturned at one corner, a bemused I thought so gleaming in his eyes.

Stunned, not only by his audacity, but also by what he made her feel, Carolyn touched her lips, as if relearning their contours after a long absence from her own body.

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” she muttered.

Brody chuckled as he opened the door to leave. “Oh, believe me,” he intoned. “I’m not the least bit sorry—not for that kiss, anyhow.” His gaze shifted to Winston, who watched him from the windowsill, ears laid back, fur ruffled. “So long, cat,” he added. “For now.”

In the next moment, Brody was gone—so thoroughly gone that Carolyn felt as if she might have imagined the visit, at the same time certain that she hadn’t.

After that, her concentration was shot.

She waited until Brody had had plenty of time to drive away. Then she logged off her computer, pulled on a lightweight blue corduroy jacket and retrieved her purse and car keys.

Sewing was out of the question, and so was doing the bookwork. She was too jumpy to sit still, or even stay inside.

So she drove to the Creed ranch, taking the long way around, following the back roads and bumpy logging trails to avoid running into Brody.

After some forty minutes, she reached Kim and Davis’s place, parked beside the barn and then stood next to her car for a few moments, debating with herself. She and Kim were good friends; she really ought to knock on the door and say hello, at least.

The sprawling, rustic house had an empty look about it, though, and besides, Carolyn didn’t feel like chatting. Kim was perceptive, and she’d know something was bothering her friend just by looking at her.

Because she had permission to ride any of the Creeds’ horses anytime she wanted—with the exception of the rescued Thoroughbred stallion, Firefly—she could go ahead and saddle up one of the cow ponies without asking first.

Firefly, a magnificent chestnut, was “too much horse” for anybody but an experienced jockey, according to Davis. When they’d learned that the animal was about to be euthanized because his racing days were over and, being a gelding, he couldn’t be put to stud, Kim and Davis had hitched a trailer behind their truck and driven all the way to Kentucky to bring him home.

Passing the corral, an enclosure as large as many pastures, Carolyn stopped to admire Firefly, who had the area to himself that cool but sunny afternoon. He towered against the blue of the sky, and his beauty all but took her breath away.

She stood still as he tossed his great head and then slowly approached her.

Carolyn reached up to pat his velvety nose. Normally, if she planned to ride, she stuffed a few carrots into her jacket pockets before leaving home. Today, though, she’d made the decision impulsively as, let’s face it, a kneejerk reaction to Brody’s kiss.

“Sorry, buddy,” she told the former racehorse. “No carrots today, but I’ll be sure to remember them next time.”

Firefly nodded, as if to convey understanding, and Carolyn’s spirits rose a little. For her, there was something therapeutic about horses—even as a kid, cleaning stalls and stacking bales of hay to earn riding privileges, she’d felt better just for being around them.

“Wish I could ride you,” she told the former champion, “but you’re off-limits.”

He stretched his long neck over the top rail of the fence, and Carolyn patted him affectionately before moving on.

Besides coming there to ride when the mood struck and time allowed, she’d spent a lot of time in that place, house-sitting and looking after the horses while Davis and Kim were off on one of their frequent road trips, and everything about the barn was blessedly familiar. In fact, Carolyn figured if she ever went blind, she’d still be able to go straight to the tack room, collect the saddle and bridle Kim had given her and get the pinto mare, Blossom, ready to ride.

The horse knew every trail on that ranch by heart. Blossom would cross the creeks without balking, too, and she was as surefooted as a Grand Canyon mule in the bargain. Snakes and rabbits didn’t spook her, and Carolyn had never known her to buck or run away with a rider.

Blossom, standing in her stall, greeted Carolyn with a companionable whinny.

Five minutes later, the two of them were out there under that achingly blue sky. Carolyn tugged at one stirrup, to make sure the cinch was tight enough, and then mounted up.

Once she was in the saddle, her jangled nerves began to settle down. Her heart rate slowed and so did her breathing, and her mouth curved into a smile.

She reined Blossom toward the green-festooned foothills, headed in the opposite direction from the main ranch house and away from the range as well, still wanting to avoid Brody if at all possible, but beyond that, she allowed the mare to chart her own course.

Blossom strolled along at a leisurely pace, stopping to drink from the icy, winding creek before splashing across it to the high meadow, one of Carolyn’s favorite places to be.

Here, wildflowers rioted, yellow and pink, blue and white, and the grass was tall and lush. From the ridge, Carolyn could not only see the river, but also Lonesome Bend beyond it.

Brody’s new house and barn, both sizable buildings, looked like toys from that distance. The workmen were no bigger than ants, moving over the framework, and the sounds of construction didn’t reach her ears, though the horse might have heard them.

Blossom grazed contentedly, her reward for making the climb to high ground, and Carolyn stood in the stirrups, in order to see even farther.

There was the highway that led to Denver and points beyond.

Immediately after Brody’s return to Lonesome Bend the year before, Carolyn had considered loading up her things and following that road wherever it might lead— like in the old days, she’d had no particular destination in mind.

Just somewhere away.

But her stubborn pride had saved her.

She’d loved Lonesome Bend and its people.

She’d had friends, a library card, a charge account at the local hardware store. Not a lot by most folks’ standards, Carolyn supposed, but to her, they were important. Leaving would have meant starting over somewhere else, from scratch, and the idea of that had galled her.

She’d decided to stand her ground. After all, Brody was bound to take off again, sooner or later, because that was what Brody did.

He took off.

Looking out over the landscape, Carolyn sighed. Trust that man to break his own pattern by staying on this time, buying the land that had belonged to Tricia’s father, Joe McCall, making it part of the family ranch.

Still, staying out of Brody’s way hadn’t been very difficult at first, as small as the town was. No doubt, he’d been doing his best to steer clear of her, too.

Then Tricia and Conner fell in love, and everything changed.

As Tricia’s friend and eventually her business partner, Carolyn was included in every gathering at the Creed ranch and, since they were a sociable bunch, tending to go all out for holidays or anything that could possibly be construed as a special occasion, it happened often. Even in the rare month without a red-letter day on its calendar page, it seemed there was always a picnic, a barbecue, a trail ride, a potluck or some kind of party.

Most of the time, Carolyn attended the shindigs and did her best to have fun, but Brody was inevitably somewhere around, seldom speaking to her, or even making eye contact, but there, nonetheless, a quiet but dynamic presence she had to work hard to ignore.

And just doing that much required a level of concentration tantamount to walking barefoot over hot coals, like a participant in some high-powered seminar.

Frankly, Carolyn resented having to make the effort but, besides pulling up stakes and leaving town herself, she didn’t seem to have any options.

She kept waiting to get over Brody.

Get over the hurt.

Get over caring about him.

So far, it hadn’t happened.

Carolyn drew the scenery into her mind and spirit the way she drew breath into her lungs.

A hawk soared overhead, riding an invisible current of air.

Small animals rustled through the grass.

And beneath it all, Carolyn heard the steady tick-ticktick of her biological clock.

At thirty-two and counting, she wasn’t getting any younger.

How long could she afford to wait around for fate to make her dreams of a home and a family come true?

She leaned forward to pat Blossom’s long, sweaty neck. Shook her head in silent answer to her own question.

She’d wasted enough time waiting around for the proverbial prince to ride up on a snow-white steed and whisk her away to Happily-Ever-After Land.

Okay, sure, she’d hoped a grand passion would be part of the package. But she’d had that with Brody Creed, hadn’t she—for a whole week and a half?

And where had it gotten her? Heartbreak Hotel, that was where.

Obviously, love wasn’t going to just happen to her, like in all those fairy tales she’d lost herself in as a child. It happened to some people—Tricia and Conner and a few others—but those were probably flukes.

Bottom line, she could wish all she wanted, but the fulfillment of said wishes was her own responsibility. Nobody was going to wave a magic wand and make things happen for her.

It was time to do something, time to take action.

Gently, she drew back on the reins so Blossom would stop grazing and continued the solitary trail ride, thinking as she went.

She’d been resistant to the idea of signing up for one of those online dating services, afraid of attracting, oh, say, a serial killer, or a bigamist, or some sort of con man set to make an appearance on America’s Most Wanted. In light of a statistic she’d recently come across—that twenty percent of all romantic relationships begin via a matchmaking website of some sort—she was willing to reconsider.

Or, more properly, she was willing to be willing to reconsider.

Denver was probably full of nice men looking for a partner. Maybe there were even a few eligible guys right there in Lonesome Bend.

It wasn’t as if she needed a doctor, a lawyer, or an Indian chief. She’d settle for a mature man, a grown-up with a sense of humor and a steady job.

The word settle immediately snagged like a hook in the center of her chest.

She drew a few deep breaths as she and Blossom started back toward Kim and Davis’s barn, traveling slowly. She wasn’t signing up to be a mail-order bride, she reminded herself. Posting her picture and a brief bio online wasn’t a lifelong commitment, but just a way of testing the water.

“You can do this,” she told herself firmly.

Now, all she had to do was start believing her own slogan.

CHAPTER THREE

BRODY GAZED WISTFULLY toward his half-finished house—the barn had stalls and a roof roughed in, so Moonshine had shelter, at least—and swung down out of the saddle.

It was twilight—the loneliest time of all.

In town and out there in the countryside, where there were a dozen or more farms and ranches, folks were stopping by the mailbox, down at the road, or riding in from the range after a day’s work, to be greeted by smiling wives and noisy kids and barking dogs. Dishes and pots and pans clattered cheerfully in kitchens, and the scents of home cooking filled the air.

At least, that was the way Brody remembered it, from when he was a boy.

Back then, Kim baked bread and fried chicken in honest-to-goodness grease. She boiled up green beans with bacon and bits of onion, and the mashed potatoes had real butter and whole milk in them. Usually, there would be an end-of-the-day load of laundry chugging away in the washer, in the little room just off the kitchen, since “her men”—Davis, Conner and Brody and, in the summer, Steven—went through clean clothes like there was no tomorrow.

With a sigh, Brody led Moonshine into the partially completed shelter, placed him in one of the twelve stalls and removed the saddle and bridle and blanket. He filled the feeder, and made sure the waterer was working right, and took his time brushing the animal down, checking his hooves for stones or twigs. The overhead lights weren’t hooked up yet, but he didn’t need them to do this chore. Brody had been tending to horses and other critters all his life—he probably could have performed the task in a catatonic state.

He patted Moonshine on one flank before leaving the stall, making his way back to the doorway, which was nothing more than a big square of dusk framed in lumber that still smelled of rawness and pitch, and took off his hat so he could tip his head back and look up at the sky.

It was deep purple, that sky, shot through with shades of gray and black and navy blue, the last fading line of apricot light edging the treetops. A three-quarter moon, the ghost of which had been visible all afternoon, glowed tentatively among the first sparks of stars.

Something bittersweet moved in Brody’s chest, both gentle and rough, a contrary emotion made up of sorrow and joy, and a whole tangle of other feelings he couldn’t name.

He wondered how he’d ever managed to stay away from Lonesome Bend, from this land and its people, for so many years. His soul was rooted in this land, like some invisible tree, tethered to the bedrock and pulling at him, pulling at him, no matter where he wandered.

This was the only place he wanted to be.

But that didn’t mean being here didn’t hurt some times.

Figuring he was getting a little flaky in his old age, he grinned and put his hat back on, raised the collar of his denim jacket against the chill of a spring night in the high country and surveyed the house he’d been building in his head for as long as he could remember—he’d drawn the shape of this room or that one a thousand times, on a paper napkin in some roadside café, on the back of a flyer advertising some small-town rodeo or a stock-car race, sometimes even on paper bought for the purpose.

And now, here it was, a sketch coming to life, becoming a real house.

The question was, would it ever be a home, too?

Brody looked around, taking a mental tally of what was finished and what was yet to be done. The underfloor had been laid throughout, the walls were framed in and the roof was in place. The kitchen—the heart of any country house—was big, with cathedral ceilings and skylights. There was space for one of those huge, multiburner chef’s stoves. The massive double-sided fireplace, composed of stones from the fields and pastures around Lonesome Bend, and from the bans of the river, was ready for crackling fires, except for the hardware.

He moved on, into what would become the combination dining-and-living room. He paused briefly to examine that side of the fireplace. In this part of the house, the skylights were still covered in plastic, turning the shimmer of the moon murky, but the bowed windows overlooking the river would brighten things up plenty during the daylight hours.

There were five bedrooms in that house, besides the master suite, and almost as many bathrooms. Brody planned on filling those bedrooms with rambunctious little Creeds, ASAP, but there was the small matter of finding a wife first. He was old-fashioned enough to want things done in their proper order, though, of course, when it came to babies, that first one could come along anytime, as Davis liked to say, whenever there was a wedding. Invariably, he’d add that the others would take the customary nine months, and Kim would punch him playfully in the arm.

Kim and Davis had a solid marriage, the kind that lasted. The kind Brody wanted for himself, only with kids.

He smiled to himself, there in the gathering darkness of his new house. If she could have heard that thought, Kim probably would have said they’d had kids—him and Conner and Steven.

They’d been a handful, Brody reflected. Most likely, keeping up with two boys year-round, and a third when the school term ended, had been plenty of mothering for Kim. Either way, she’d never complained, never withheld love or approval from any of them, no matter how badly they behaved, but she’d been strict, too.

Chores and homework and church on Sunday were all nonnegotiable, and so was bedtime, until they all reached their teens. Scuffles were permissible, even considered a part of growing up country, but they had to be conducted outside.

Of course, Davis usually refereed, though he was always subtle about it.

Bullying, either among themselves or out there in the bigger scheme of things, was the biggest taboo. It was the one infraction that would guarantee a trip to the woodshed, Davis told them.

None of them had ever wound up there, but they’d sure gotten their share of skinned knuckles and bloody noses interceding when kids at school picked on somebody.

Brody roped in his thoughts. Quieted his mind. Carolyn Simmons popped into his brain. She had a way of doing that.

Which was a waste of thinking power, since that woman had about as much use for him as a stud bull had for tits.

And who could blame her, after the way he’d done her?

He leaned against what would be a wall, someday, and took off his hat. Lowered his head a little.

He’d never set out to hurt Carolyn, and he’d meant it when he apologized. He’d been young back then, and foolish, and when the call from his most recent girlfriend, Lisa, came late one night, her voice full of tears and urgency, he’d panicked.

It was as simple as that.

“I’m pregnant,” Lisa had told him. “The baby’s yours, Brody.”

After she’d calmed down a little, she’d gone on to say that she wasn’t cut out to raise a baby by herself, and she wasn’t about to hand an innocent child over to a rodeo bum like him, either. No, sir, she wanted her child to have a mom and a dad and grow up in one house, not a series of them. If he didn’t marry her, pronto, she knew an attorney who handled private adoptions.

Brody hadn’t discussed the matter with Conner, or with Davis and Kim, because he’d been estranged from all of them during those years. In fact, he’d made damn sure they weren’t around before he showed up on the ranch, badly in need of a hideout, a place to lick his wounds.

And he sure as hell hadn’t brought the subject up with Carolyn. He hadn’t known what to say to her. So he’d simply packed up his gear, within an hour after hanging up with Lisa, and loaded it into his truck.

Carolyn, still flushed from their lovemaking earlier in the evening, had been smiling in her sleep when he leaned over and placed a kiss as light as a whisper on her forehead. Except for a note, hastily scrawled and left next to the coffeemaker on the counter beside the back door, that kiss was all the goodbye he could manage.

There was no way to sugar-coat it, then or now. He’d skipped out on her.

End of story.

All during the long drive to San Antonio, where Lisa was living at the time, though, it had been Carolyn haunting Brody’s heart and mind, not the woman he was heading for in that beat-up old truck, not the life they would make together, him and Lisa and the baby.

Before Lisa’s call, he’d been this close to telling Carolyn he loved her, that he wanted to marry her. Start a family as soon as they were settled.

He’d planned to make up with his kin, too, and, if they’d have him, make a home right there on the ranch.

Fortunately, Brody reflected, remembering his longago honorable intentions, he’d had enough sense to override that particular impulse, on the grounds that he and Carolyn had only known each other for about ten days, and that flat-out wasn’t long enough for anything real to get started.

Reaching San Antonio, he’d driven to Lisa’s tiny rental house, hoisted her few belongings into the back of his truck and the two of them had headed straight for Las Vegas. Within a couple of days, they were man and wife, setting out to follow the rodeo.

They’d been happy enough together, Brody supposed. Especially after the baby came.

Marriage hadn’t cured Brody’s penchant for Carolyn, though. He’d been with Lisa for about a month, when, one night in a seedy bar, after guzzling too much beer with some of his bull-riding buddies, he’d tracked down the pay phone and punched in Davis and Kim’s number, without a hope in hell that Carolyn would answer.

By then, she’d surely have finished her house-sitting stint and moved on, but he had to try. If Kim answered, he’d ask her how to reach Carolyn. Beyond that, he had no clue how to get in touch with the woman he still loved.

Miraculously, though, Carolyn did answer the phone. His aunt and uncle were on the road again, she’d said, and then she’d fallen silent, waited for him to explain himself.

He’d meant to, but it didn’t happen. Brody was thrown and then hog-tied by his own tongue and, in the end, all he said was that ever-inadequate phrase, I’m sorry.

Carolyn had hung up on him then, and justifiably so. Brody had stood in the corridor of that dive of a bar, with his hand still on the receiver and his forehead against the graffiti-covered wall, feeling as though he’d been gut-punched.

After that night, Brody had kept his alcohol consumption to a minimum. He knew Lisa loved him, and he’d made up his mind, then and there, to love her back. Even if it killed him.

It had taken some doing, but he had come to care for his pretty young wife, especially after their son, Justin, was born. One look at that kid, and Brody would have done anything—given up anything—for him.

And he had given up things he’d once believed he couldn’t do without. Carolyn.

The old and tired dream of going home, setting things right with his family, settling down to a rancher’s life. He wanted to show Justin off to the folks, but he was scared shitless of running into Carolyn, so he stayed away.

He’d regret that particular choice forever, probably, because three weeks before he would have turned two, Justin was killed in a car wreck, along with Lisa.

The pain of remembering that time was as fresh as ever, and it nearly doubled Brody over, even now. He’d quit the rodeo after the accident, and stayed drunk for a solid year.

Eventually, he sobered up, but he stayed mad at the world, and he stayed ashamed. More in need of his home and family than ever, he’d denied himself both—as a sort of self-punishment, he supposed.

If he hadn’t been off riding bulls, after all, he’d have been driving that snowy night, not Lisa. He might have been able to avoid the drunk driver doing ninety on the wrong side of the freeway.

And if he’d brought his wife and son home, where they belonged, the greatest tragedy of his life might never have happened.

It was all about choices, Brody reflected, forcibly hauling himself back into the present moment again. The past was over. A man made choices, and then he had to live with the consequences, whether they were good, bad or indifferent.

Brody squared his shoulders, walked on toward the small log structure where he’d been bunking for too damn long.

He switched on the lights as he stepped over the threshold, but two of the three long fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling fixture were burned out, the third flickering ominously, and the ambience was just plain gloomy.

The original furnishings were gone, except for the long counter that had served as a sign-in place for campers, when Joe McCall was still running River’s Bend, and the ancient woodstove. Brody slept on a roll-away bed he’d borrowed from Kim and Davis, never made up now that he and Joleen were in an “off” stage of the onagain-off-again thing they had going. He’d had a shower installed in the small rest room, and he did his laundry either at the Wash-and-Go on Main Street or out at the ranch. He owned a double-burner hot plate and a minifridge with a microwave the size of a matchbox sitting on top, and his desktop computer served as TV, DVD player and general, all-around communication device. He used a cell phone when he had something to say to somebody, or he went to see them in person, face-to-face.

What a concept.

Tricia’s dad had always referred to the shack as a lodge.

Brody called it a log cabin—or a shit-hole, depending on his frame of mind.

That night, despite his best efforts to alter his attitude, it was a shit-hole.

HE’D KISSED HER.

Try though she might, even after the ride on Blossom and the meandering drive back to town, Carolyn could not get past the fact that Brody Creed had had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, after all he’d done to her, to haul right off and kiss her.

“Unbelievable,” she told Winston in the apartment kitchen as she set his nightly kibble ration down in front of him. “The man is unbelievable.”

“Reow,” Winston agreed, though he went straight to his food dish.

Carolyn shoved up one T-shirt sleeve, then the other, still agitated. She was hungry, but not hungry enough to cook. Remembering the flat bologna sandwiches from lunch, she went downstairs, retrieved them from the refrigerator in Natty’s former kitchen and pounded back up the inside steps.

She tossed one wrapped sandwich into her own fridge—maybe she’d have it for breakfast—and slowly removed the plastic from the other one.

Winston was still noshing away on his kibble.

Carolyn washed her hands and then plunked down in a chair at the table, along with her sewing machine, the day’s mail and a rapidly cooling cup of herbal tea.

“I’m talking to a cat,” she told the cat.

Winston didn’t look up from his bowl. “It’s pathetic,” Carolyn went on. She took a bite out of her sandwich, and it was soggy, tasteless. The crusts of the bread were curling a little, too, and none of that even slowed her down. The meal wasn’t about fine dining, after all. It was about making her stomach stop grumbling. “I’m pathetic. And do you know what, Winston? I’m no closer to achieving my goals than I was last year, or the year before that, or the year before that—”

Winston paused at last, gave her a disapproving glance for talking with her mouth full and finished off the last of his supper.

Carolyn offered him part of her sandwich, but he wasn’t into people-food, except for sardines, and he’d already had his daily ration of those.

“You tried to warn me, didn’t you?” she prattled on, dropping the remains of her supper into the trash and then washing her hands again. She squirted a dab of lotion into one palm and then rubbed the stuff in with vigor. “You made your opinion of Brody Creed absolutely clear, but did I pay attention? Did I keep my defenses up?”

“Reoooooow,” Winston said wearily.

“This is ridiculous,” Carolyn said, addressing herself now, instead of the cat. Was talking to herself better than talking to a pet? Seemed like six of one thing and half a dozen of another. “I’ve got to get a grip. Do something constructive.”

Winston, curled up in his cushy bed now, yawned, wrapped his tail around himself with typical feline grace and dozed.

“Am I boring you?” Carolyn asked sweetly. Then, getting no answer, naturally, she laughed, flung her hands out from her sides and let them slap against her blue-jeaned thighs. “I’m certainly boring myself.” She approached the laptop, drew back the chair and sat down. Pressed the on button and waited.

Maybe she could find a helpful website. Say, getalife.com, or something along those lines.

She checked her email first—nothing much there.

Then she went to the online banking site and posted the day’s sales receipts.

“Look at that,” she said, squinting at the screen, though she knew Winston wasn’t listening. “If we have many more days like today, Tricia and I are in serious danger of making a profit.”

There was more bookkeeping to do—there was always more bookkeeping to do—but, being in a lowgrade funk, even after a horseback ride, Carolyn decided not to do today what she could put off until tomorrow. Things were usually slow in the shop on weekday mornings and, besides, she’d be fresh then. Capable of left-brain pursuits like balancing debits and credits in a virtual ledger.

She’d brew another cup of herbal tea and sew, she decided. Let her ever-energetic right brain run the show for the rest of the evening.

It couldn’t hurt to just look at the online dating services, though, she mused, still sitting at the desk and sinking her teeth into her lower lip as she entered a request into her favorite search engine.

The number of choices, as it turned out, was mind-boggling.

There were sites for people who wanted a samereligion partner.

There were sites for dog-lovers, cat-lovers, horselovers and just about every other kind of lover. A person could sign up to meet people who enjoyed the same hobbies, political beliefs, movies, foods and wines, books, etc.

Hooking up by preferred profession was an option, too. Just about every legal vocation—and a few that were distinctly iffy—was represented by not just one website, but dozens of them. If she wanted to meet men with a certain first name, or a particular sign of the zodiac, no problem.

It was overwhelming.

It was also intriguing, especially for a woman who’d eaten a squashed bologna sandwich for supper and carried on an impassioned and fairly lengthy discourse with a cat for her only audience.

Reminding herself that fortune favors the bold, not the lily-livered, Carolyn settled on one of several sites based in Denver, and serving the surrounding area. The main page was tastefully designed, and the questionnaire for trial members was short and relatively nonintrusive— some of the sites required enough personal data to trace a person’s ancestors back to the Ice Age.

Well,practically that far.

The first two weeks of the proposed trial period were free, giving her plenty of time to pull out, and all she had to do was post one photo of herself and give her first name, age and a few minor details.

Carolyn decided to call herself Carol for now. She uploaded a recent picture, taken at the town’s Independence Day picnic, admitted that she’d hit the big 3-O, and then—well—lied. Just a little.

She loved to bowl, she wrote, in the little panel labeled Little Tidbits About Me, and she worked in a bank. She had two rescued dogs, Marvin and Harry, and she’d been married once, when she was very young.

Reading over what she’d entered, Carolyn sighed, propped an elbow on the desk and sunk her chin into her palm. None of this was true, of course, but she couldn’t help being creative—it was in her nature. Besides, she was starting to like the fictional Carol.

She sounded like a good person.

Reassured by the certainty that prospective dates could contact her only through an assigned email address connected with the site, Carolyn moved the cursor to the little box in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, marked Go For It!, and clicked.

Dater’s remorse struck her in the next second, but it was too late now. She was out there in cyberspace, albeit under an assumed identity, and it was kind of exciting, as well as scary.

She’d taken a step, after all. Made a move, however tentative, toward her heart’s desire: a home and family of her own.

Carolyn slumped back in her chair, glumly scanning the Friendly Faces web page for a button that would allow her to back out of her trial membership—what had she been thinking?—but the best she could come up with was the Contact Us link.

That would have to do. She’d send a brief message, say she’d changed her mind about online dating and that would be that.

But then a message popped up.

Someone likes your friendly face! it crowed, in letters that appeared to be dancing across the screen. Click on the heart to get acquainted!

Carolyn hesitated, amazed and curious and wishing she’d worked on the gypsy skirt as planned, instead of surfing the Net.

She thought about Tricia, happily married and expecting a baby.

She thought about Brody Creed, who apparently believed he could just go around kissing women he’d dumped.

Dumped? He hadn’t even had the decency to do that. He’d just boogied, abandoned her in the middle of the night, while she was sleeping.

She clicked on the pulsing heart icon.

A photo of a nice-looking—as in, he looked as though he was probably nice—man popped up immediately. Hi, the message bar read. My name is Darren.

Darren wore a mild expression on his roundish face, and his hairline was receding, just a little. He was a dentist, divorced with no kids and he loved dogs and bowling and computer games.

At least appearance-wise, he was nothing like Brody.

A point in his favor, for sure.

Carolyn drew a deep, shaky breath, let it out slowly, and clicked on the chat button. Hello, she told him. I’m Carol.

Darren, in addition to his other talents, was a speedy typist. He flashed back with an immediate, Wow. That was fast. Hi, there, Carol.

Carolyn felt a pang of guilt. She’d been acquainted with the man for two seconds, and she was already lying to him. Lying to a divorced dentist, with no kids, who loved dogs.

What kind of person was she, anyway?

A careful one, she thought.

Hi, there, Darrell, she wrote back.

Darren, he corrected.

Carolyn stifled a groan. Sorry. Darren. I haven’t had much experience at this, as you’ve probably guessed. And my name isn’t Carol, it’s Carolyn. I don’t work in a bank and I’m looking for a husband to father my children. Anybody who isn’t a Creed and doesn’t have a criminal record will do.

Darren replied with an LOL and an animated smiley face that was winking. Everybody was new here once, he added, in his rapid-fire, e.e. cummings style. On the Friendly Faces site, I mean. It’s a great way to meet new people. Very low-key.

It’s a virtual singles bar, Carolyn thought but did not type. And the secret password is probably loser.

Really? Carolyn wrote in response. Have you met a lot of people through the site? And if so, why are you still trolling the web for prospective dates?

Sure, Darren answered. I’m making friends right and left. So far, it’s just been dinner and a movie, but, hey, at least I’m doing something besides filling cavities and begging patients to floss. Ha ha.

Darren had a sense of humor, then.

Sort of.

Carolyn sat with her fingers poised over the keyboard, and no earthly idea what to say next.

Carol? Darren asked. Are you still there?

I’m here, Carolyn replied.

You’re shy, Darren said.

Carolyn blew out a long breath, making her bangs tickle her forehead. Not really, she answered. There, she’d said something honest. She wasn’t shy. She was merely cautious. Sensible.

It finally occurred to her that if she was stretching the truth, Darren might be, too. Maybe his name was Dave, and he was married and not a dentist at all. Maybe he owned the Friendly Faces website, and this was his way of making people think they were in for some action.

Nice “talking” to you, Darren, she wrote. But I should be going. Lots to do.

Wait! Maybe we could meet for coffee? he replied.

Maybe, Carolyn said.

Your picture is great, Darren hastened to add. Promise we can chat again, at least?

Carolyn sighed. We’ll see, she wrote.

She logged off the computer, pushed back her chair and stood. Stretched, enjoying the pull in her muscles, and turned around. There was the sewing machine, the plastic box full of ribbon scraps saved from various projects, her quilted-top basket, where she kept scissors, thimbles, needles and other notions.

Sewing, like horseback-riding, had long been a refuge for her. She could lose herself in either pursuit…usually.

But tonight was different.

All because Brody Creed had kissed her.

The bastard.

The good-looking, sexy bastard.

Carolyn squared her shoulders, spun around on one heel and marched herself back to the desk, and her computer.

She switched on the laptop and waited impatiently for the system to reboot.

Then she went online and clicked her way straight to the Friendly Faces website.

Who knew? Maybe Darren—Darrell?—the dentist was still hanging around.

Carolyn’s eyes widened when she spotted the messagebox counter. “Carol” had over a dozen emails waiting.

After pushing her sleeves up again, Carolyn plunged in.

BRODY TIPPED what was left of his microwave-box dinner into the trash and looked up at the last of the functioning lightbulbs. Might as well change them out, he figured. It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

He rustled up the extras he’d bought days before, but never gotten around to installing, and vaulted up onto the counter to take out the dead bulbs first. The job was tricky—he’d seen these thingamajiggies shatter into a jillion tiny, razor-sharp shards for no sensible reason—so Brody took his time.

He’d just finished, his eyes still a little dazzled by the glare of three fluorescent tubes, when he heard what sounded like a thump, or maybe a scratch, at the door.

He got down off the counter. Listened.

That was when he heard the whimper. It was faint, and almost human.

A chill trickled down his spine. He sprang to the door and wrenched it open, half expecting to find a person on the other side, injured and bleeding, looking for help.

Instead, his gaze fell onto the skinniest, dirtiest, most pitiful dog he’d ever seen. It was just sitting there, looking up at him with a sort of bleak tenderness in its eyes.

Brody, a sucker for anything with four legs and fur, crouched down, so he wouldn’t be looming over the poor critter like a grizzly or something.

“Hey, buddy,” he said huskily. “You selling something? Spreading the Good News?”

The dog whimpered again.

Brody examined the animal. No collar, no tags.

Fleas were a sure thing, though, and maybe something worse, like ringworm.

Brody stood up, slow and easy, and stepped back. “Come on in,” he said to the dog. “Nothing to be afraid of—you’re among friends.”

The stray just sat there for a few moments, as though he might have heard wrong. He was obviously used to fending for himself.

“Come on,” Brody repeated, speaking gently and giving the dog room.

Slowly, painfully, the wayfarer limped over the threshold and right into Brody Creed’s heart.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DREAM WAS disturbingly vivid.

Carolyn was in a supermarket, surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds, of eager suitors. There were men of every size and shape, color and type, a regular convention for fans of the Village People.

They nudged at her cart with theirs.

Some of them carried signs with her modified name printed on them in ransom-note letters, and one wore a sandwich board that read Marry Me, Carol! and Have Free Dentistry for Life!

“Carol,” all the others chanted, in creepy unison, “Carol, Carol, Carol!”

Carolyn’s feet seemed to be glued to the floor, but she looked wildly around for an escape route anyway. The freezer aisle was completely blocked, in both directions. She was trapped. Cornered.

Heart-pounding panic set in, washing over her in sweeping, electrified waves. A man with an elaborate wedding cake teetering in his shopping cart pushed his way past the others, to the forefront.

Carolyn recognized Gifford Welsh. He smiled his big movie-star smile, and his piano-key teeth sparkled cartoonishly, like something out of an animated mouthwash commercial.

“You’re already married!” she said, turning her head when Gifford tried to stuff a handful of cake into her mouth. Then, pressing back against the cold door of the ice-cream freezer, she shouted, “I don’t want to marry any of you! You’re not—you’re not—

“Brody.” She started awake at the name. Could still feel its singular weight on her lips.

Winston, curled up at her feet, made a halfhearted hissing sound. There was no telling whether the noise was a comment about Brody or annoyance because she’d awakened him from a sound sleep.

Carolyn’s heart thumped against the back of her rib cage, and her breathing was fast and shallow. She lay there, in her dark bedroom, looking up at the ceiling and fighting tears.

Don’t be a crybaby, she heard one of her long string of foster mothers say. Nobody likes a crybaby.

Carolyn had subscribed to that belief ever since, and she blinked until the sting in her eyes abated a little.

Going back to sleep was out of the question, lest the dream go into rewind, so she got out of bed and padded into the kitchen, barefoot. She was wearing flannel pajamas she’d sewn herself, covered in a puppy-dog pattern, and the fabric was damp against her chest and between her shoulder blades. Perspiration.

The nightmare had been a doozy, then. Normally, dreams didn’t cause her to sweat.

But, then, this hadn’t been a normal dream, now, had it?

You’re not Brody. The words still reverberated through her mind.

She took a mug from the cupboard, this one a souvenir of Cheyenne, Wyoming, filled it with water, added an herbal tea bag and stuck the works into the microwave to heat.

A dog, she thought peevishly, would have gotten up when she did, to keep her company, lend silent reassurance. Winston, by contrast, did not put in an appearance, sympathetic or otherwise.

That was a cat for you.

Not that Winston was her cat—he was a frequent boarder and no more. Just passing through.

Somebody else’s cat.

Somebody else’s house.

Everything in her life, it seemed, belonged to somebody else.

Including Brody Creed. Whenever Joleen Williams blew into town, she and Brody were joined at the hip. It was probably only a matter of time before Joleen roped him in for good.

He was building a house, wasn’t he? A big house, obviously not meant for man to live in alone.

The bell on the microwave dinged, and Carolyn carefully removed the cup. Took a sip.

The tea had the usual placebo effect, and she calmed down a little.

In need of something to occupy her mind, but scared to log on to the computer again, lest more men should pop up, in search of her alter ego, Carol, she flipped on the light at the top of the inside stairway and made her way down the steps.

The shop looked magical in the moonlight. Like some enchanted workshop, where elves ran up ruffly cottonprint aprons on miniature sewing machines and made more goats’ milk soap whenever the supply was low.

Carolyn gave a little snicker at the thought.

She made the aprons, and they bought the soap from a woman who ran a small goat farm a few miles out of town. A few elves would certainly come in handy, though, even if it wasn’t Christmas.

She loved the shop; it grounded her, like sewing and riding horseback usually did, and she loved the twinkling quiet surrounding her.

A shaft of silvery light struck the batik of the Native weaver, high on the wall, illuminating the image as though to convey some message.

There was no message, Carolyn thought. Not in the picture, at least.

The dream, now? That had clearly been a manifesto from her subconscious mind.

As usual, she wanted what she couldn’t have.

Right or wrong, for better or worse, she wanted Brody Creed.

She gave a loud sigh of frustration, set her mug of tea down on the glass top of the handmade-jewelry display and shoved all ten fingers into her hair, pulling just a little.

Why couldn’t she just let go? It had been over seven years, after all, since that awful morning when she’d awakened in a guest-room bed at Kim and Davis’s place to find Brody gone.

At the time, she’d figured he was merely out in the kitchen making coffee, or even whipping up some breakfast. He was a fair cook, and he seemed to enjoy it.

She’d gotten out of bed, pulled on a robe and headed for the kitchen, in search of the man she loved.

Instead, she’d found the note.

Have to go, Brody had written. Something came up.

That was it.

Have to go, something came up.

The tears that had threatened before, after the dream, sprang up again. Carolyn hugged herself, chilled, and gazed at her own woebegone face, reflected in the big mirror behind the counter.

“Nobody likes a crybaby,” she told her image.

And then she cried anyway.

“WHERE’D YOU GET the dog?” Conner asked the next morning, with affable interest, as Brody carefully lifted the bathed, brushed and still-skinny critter down from the passenger side of his truck, onto the grassy stretch of ground between the main ranch house and the barn.

“His name’s Barney,” Brody replied. He’d hung that handle on the stray after taking him by the vet’s office that morning for a checkup. And he’d been so glad over the dog’s clean bill of health that he’d named him after the doctor. “He showed up at my door last night, in pretty sorry condition, so I took him in.”

Conner grinned and crouched to look the dog in the eyes, much as Brody had done the night before, when Barney turned up on his doorstep.

“Well, hello there, Barney,” Conner said, putting out his hand.

To Brody’s mingled amazement and irritation, the dog laid a paw in Conner’s outstretched palm.

Man and dog shook hands.

“I’ll be damned,” Brody muttered, impressed, then worried. Maybe whoever had taught Barney to shake hands was out combing the countryside for him, right now. Maybe somebody loved him, wanted him back.

Conner, meanwhile, stood up straight again. “I guess Doc must have checked for a microchip and all that,” he said.

“First thing he did,” Brody replied. “No chip, no identification of any kind.”

“You gonna keep him?” Conner ventured, as Valentino trotted out of the back door, joined the group and sniffed Barney from head to tail.

“Yeah,” Brody said. “I’ll keep him. Unless his original owner tracks him down, anyway. Doc’s assistant took his picture, and she’ll upload it onto several lost-pet websites, just in case…”

“But?” Conner prompted.

“But my gut says he’s in need of a home.”

“Mine, too,” Conner agreed. He had been frowning until then, but suddenly, the grin was back. “It’ll be good for you,” he preached. “The responsibility of looking after the poor critter, I mean.”

The words, though he knew they were well-meant, raised Brody’s hackles a little just the same. Was he going to be the Irresponsible One for the rest of his life, while Conner got to play the Good Brother?

Before he could figure out a way to answer, Davis came barreling down the hill in his truck from his and Kim’s place. Kim rode beside him, her smile visible even through the dusty grunge covering the windshield.

“Kim’s pinch-hitting for Tricia today at the shop,” Conner said.

Brody felt a pang of alarm, remembering how tuckered out his sister-in-law had seemed the day before. “Tricia isn’t having trouble, is she?”

“No,” Conner replied, raising a hand to greet the new arrivals. “She just enjoyed yesterday so much that she wanted today to be just like it.”

Brody chuckled, partly amused and partly relieved.

An instant later, though, the worry was back. Women were fragile creatures, it seemed to him. Lisa, for instance, couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds sopping wet; she hadn’t stood a chance against two tons of speeding steel, not driving that little car of hers.

He’d always had access to his inheritance and his share of the ranch profits, even when he was staying as far away from Lonesome Bend as he could. Why hadn’t he gotten her a sturdier rig to drive?

“Brody,” Conner said suspiciously. “Where’s your head right now?”

“You know where,” Brody replied, as Davis parked the truck and he and Kim got out of the vehicle and started toward them. Kim was wearing a lightweight sweater with big pockets, where her impossibly small dogs, Smidgeon and Little Bit, were riding.

Barney whimpered and moved behind Brody, leaning against the backs of his legs. He could feel the animal trembling.

Seeing that, Kim smiled, crouched down and set the two Yorkies on the ground. Ignoring Valentino, who was probably considered old news by now, they wagged their stumpy little tails and one of them growled comically.

“Now, come on out here,” Kim cajoled, addressing Barney. “Smidgeon and Little Bit aren’t going to hurt you.”

Kim definitely had a way with animals, and Barney’s reaction was proof of that. Probably drawn by her gentleness, as well as his own curiosity, he came out of hiding to stand at Brody’s side. His plume of a tail wagged once, tentatively.

The Yorkies nosed him over and then lost interest and tried to start a game of tag with Valentino. They were absolutely fearless, those two. Or maybe their brains were just so small that they couldn’t grasp the difference between their size and Valentino’s.

“Come have supper with us tonight,” Kim told Brody, when she was standing upright again. “You look a little ribby to me, like this dog.”

Brody’s mouth watered at the mere suggestion of Kim’s cooking, not to mention a chance to avoid another lonely evening.

“Is this a setup?” he asked good-naturedly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that everybody was hoping he and Carolyn would get together.

“Of course it is,” Kim replied with a laugh, looking at Brody but slipping an arm around Davis’s waist and giving him a brief squeeze. “Why fight it?”

Brody laughed, too, despite the little thrill that quickened in the pit of his stomach at the thought of being in the same house with Carolyn. He folded his arms and countered, “Why not?”

Kim punched him. “You’re just like your uncle,” she said.

Whatever that meant.

That he was a stubborn cuss, probably.

The quality came free with the Creed name, one to a customer but guaranteed for life.

Conner and Davis, meanwhile, moved off toward the house, where Tricia surely had a pot of coffee brew ing.

Smidgeon, Little Bit and Valentino ambled along after them, leaving Brody and Kim in the yard, with Barney.

“Carolyn’s probably wise to your tricks, Kim,” Brody ventured, serious now, his voice a little husky. “She’ll know you’ve invited me to supper, and she’ll think of some excuse to get out of it.”

Kim, still a striking woman in her mid-fifties, shook her head and mimicked his stance by folding her own arms. “Could you be any more negative, Brody Creed?” she asked. “You and Carolyn are perfect for each other. Everybody seems to know that but the two of you.”

Brody recalled kissing Carolyn the day before, and an aftershock went through him. When it was over, she’d looked as if he’d slapped her, and he’d made some smartass remark about not being sorry for doing it.

Oh, yeah. He was zero-for-zero in Carolyn’s books, no doubt about it.

Kissing her had only made things worse.

He just hadn’t been able to resist, that was all.

“Brody?” Kim prompted, evidently reading his face.

He smiled, laid a hand on Kim’s shoulder. “I’m all right,” he told her. “Stop worrying about me, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, in a tone of bright irony. “Are you coming to our place for supper tonight or not?” Not waiting for an answer, Kim added, “Six-thirty, on the dot and don’t be late.” She looked around, parodied a frown. “If Davis Creed thinks he gets to keep Smidgeon and Little Bit with him while I’m in town, covering for Tricia at the shop, he’s got another think coming.”

With that, she turned and headed resolutely for the house.

Brody watched her go, one side of his mouth quirked up in a grin. It was anybody’s guess whether Carolyn would accept Kim’s supper invitation or make up some excuse to get out of it, but he sure hoped it would be the former.

He wanted to see Carolyn again, even though the idea pretty well scared the crap out of him.

“Women,” he told Barney ruefully.

Barney gave a little yip of agreement.

Brody chuckled, bent to ruffle the dog’s ears and the two of them started for the house, where the others were gathered and the coffee was on.

“YOU HAVE DARK CIRCLES under your eyes,” Kim announced, the moment she stepped over the threshold at the shop. “Aren’t you sleeping well?”

Carolyn smiled as her friend took the pair of tiny dogs from her sweater pockets and set them down carefully on the floor, where they proceeded to romp like a couple of kittens.

Winston, long since resigned to the occasional presence of the canine contingent, ignored them.

“I slept just fine, thank you very much,” Carolyn lied, in belated reply to Kim’s question. She’d eventually managed to get to sleep again the night before, but she’d promptly tumbled right back into a variation of her dream. This time, with the added fillip of Brody riding through a conglomeration of suitors and shopping carts on horseback, reaching her side and then leaning down to hook an arm around her and haul her up into the saddle in front of him.

The dream hadn’t stopped there, either. With no noticeable transition, Brody and Carolyn were alone in a forest, both lying naked in a stand of deep, summerfragrant grass, making love.

She’d awakened in the throes of a very real orgasm, which was downright embarrassing, even if she was alone at the time.

“I don’t believe you,” Kim said, moving behind the sales counter to put away her purse.

Smidgeon and Little Bit were rolling across the center of the floor now, in a merry little blur of shiny fur and pink top-knot ribbon.

Carolyn, thinking of the spontaneous climax, was blushing. “Would I lie to you?” she retorted, with an attempt at a light tone.

There weren’t any customers in the shop yet, and she’d been keeping her mind off the nightmare/dream by catching up on the bookkeeping on the store’s computer.

“Depends,” Kim replied mischievously. “How about joining Davis and me for supper tonight? I’m thawing out a batch of my world-famous chicken-and-pork tamales.”

A bar of that old song “Suspicion” played in Carolyn’s head. “Hard to resist,” she admitted. Kim’s tamales were fantastic. “Are Conner and Tricia coming, too?”

Kim nodded, but she averted her eyes and was busying her hands rearranging costume jewelry in the glass case.

“And Brody?” Carolyn asked, rather enjoying herself, despite all her nerves being on red alert.

“Maybe,” Kim said, her manner still evasive. “Did you know he adopted a dog? Brody, I mean? It’s a very good sign. He really is serious about settling down in Lonesome Bend—”

“Dogs travel pretty well,” Carolyn said, amused and, at the same time, wickedly excited over the perfectly ordinary prospect of sitting across a supper table from Brody Creed. The bastard.

Kim straightened, looked at her directly. Her smile was a little weak. “You think he’s planning to leave again? Even though he’s building that big house and a fancy barn to go with it?”

Carolyn’s casual shrug was, in reality, anything but casual. “He could always sell the house and barn, if he wanted to move on,” she reasoned. In truth, though, she didn’t like the idea of Brody going back to his other life any more than Kim did, and that surprised her. The prospect should have been a relief, shouldn’t it?

Kim’s gentle blue eyes filled with tears. “Brody’s had a tough time of it,” she said.

Carolyn needed a few moments to recover from that tidbit—she’d always imagined Brody whooping it up, as the cowboys liked to say, riding bulls and winning gleaming buckles and bedding a different woman every night.

“How so?” she asked, finally, in an oddly strangled voice.

Kim sniffled, squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “I can’t say,” she told Carolyn, in a forthright tone. “I’m not supposed to know what Brody went through, and neither is Davis. He’d be furious if he knew Conner had told us.”

“Oh, boy,” Carolyn said.

“He’ll tell you himself, one of these days,” Kim said, with new certainty. “And that’s the way it should be.”

Just then, the bell over the front door jingled and Smidgeon and Little Bit ran, yapping, to greet whomever was there.

Kim rolled her eyes and chased after them. “Little devils,” she muttered, with abiding affection.

Carolyn smiled, but on the inside, she was shaken.

She knew better than to go to supper at her friends’ place, since it was a given that Brody would be there. Just being around him was playing with fire, especially in light of that stolen kiss—and last night’s dream.

She’d be there, just the same.

Maybe she’d take in the gypsy skirt—just baste it to fit temporarily—and wear that.

BRODY WATCHED with a combination of affection and envy, that evening, in Kim and Davis’s kitchen, while Conner and Tricia flirted like a pair of teenagers.

It was enough to make Brody roll his eyes.

Get a room, he wanted to say.

Davis, sitting beside him at the unset table, nudged him with one elbow. “You remember how it was with those two?” Brody’s uncle asked, keeping his voice low. “When they first noticed each other, I mean?”

“I remember,” Brody said, grinning a little. A stranger would have given odds that Conner and Tricia would never get together, but everybody who knew them wondered when the wedding would be.

Was Carolyn going to show up for supper or not?

He hoped so.

He hoped not.

“You and Carolyn remind me of them,” Davis said, with a twinkle in his eyes.

That got Brody’s attention, all right. He swiveled in his chair to look at his uncle with narrowed eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said,” Davis replied, undaunted. “You know me, son. If I say it, I mean it.”

Tricia snapped a dish towel at Conner, who laughed, and the dogs all started barking, while an apron-wearing Kim tried to shush the lot.

It was happy chaos.

It was a family.

Again, Brody felt that bittersweet sense of mingled gratitude and loneliness.

“Give things a chance, boy,” Davis told him, pushing back his chair and heading for the back door. His uncle had always been able to read him and, clearly, that hadn’t changed.

Brody hadn’t heard the car drive up, what with all the barking and shushing, dish-towel snapping and laughing, but Davis must have.

He opened the door just as Carolyn was raising one hand to knock.

She looked shy and sweet standing there, wearing black jeans and a gossamer white shirt. Her sun-streaked hair was pulled back in a French braid and, unless Brody missed his guess, she had on just a touch of makeup, too.

“Hi,” she said to Davis, with a little wobble in her voice, shoving a large plastic food container into his hands and not sparing so much as a glance for Brody. “I brought pasta salad. It’s from the deli at the supermarket, but I’m sure it’s good.”

“That’s fine,” Davis said, in that Sam Elliott voice of his, sounding amused. “Come on in and make yourself at home.”

Conner and Tricia knocked off the prelude to foreplay to greet Carolyn—Conner with a smile, Tricia with a hug. When Kim joined in, it was like something out of a reality-show reunion.

All Brody could do was wait, though he did remember enough of his manners to stand in the presence of a lady.

Carolyn finally forced herself, visibly, to look at him. Pink color pulsed in her cheeks and hot damn, she looked good.

“Hello, Brody,” she said.

“Carolyn,” he replied, with a nod of acknowledgment.

Brody immediately grew two left feet and felt his tongue wind itself into a knot.

It was junior high school all over again.

Only worse.

In junior high, it had been all about speculation. As a man, he knew, only too well, what it was like to kiss this woman, to make love to her.

Stand in a puddle and grab hold of a live wire, he thought.

That’s what it’s like.

“Kim says everything’s fine at the shop,” Tricia told Carolyn, with a sparkling little laugh. “I was hoping I’d be missed a little bit, though.”

Carolyn smiled, no longer looking quite so much like a doe poised to run after catching the scent of a predator on the wind. “Oh, you were definitely missed,” she said.

“Absolutely,” Kim agreed cheerfully, opening one of the big double ovens to check on the tamales.

They smelled so good that Brody’s stomach rumbled.

Things settled down to a dull roar over the next few minutes—Carolyn and Tricia washed up at the sink and began setting the table, while Davis pulled the corks on a couple of bottles of vintage wine.

It came as no surprise to Brody—and probably not to Carolyn, either—that they wound up sitting side by side at the huge table in the next room. The others made sure of it, the way they always did.

Brody and Carolyn were so close that they bumped elbows a couple of times. The scent of her—some combination of baby powder and flowers and a faint, citrusy spice—made him feel buzzed, if not drunk, which was weird because he let the wine bottle go by without pouring any for himself.

Tricia passed on it, too, of course, being pregnant.

Carolyn, by contrast, seemed uncommonly thirsty. She nibbled at the salad, and then the tamales and Kim’s incomparable Mexican rice and refried beans, but she seemed to be hitting the wine pretty hard.

“So, anyway,” Kim said, her voice rising above the others. “Carolyn signed up for Friendly Faces—that dating website—and she’s practically under siege, there are so many men wanting to meet her.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Brody saw Carolyn go pink and then mauve. Obviously, she hadn’t expected Kim to spill the frijoles in front of God and everybody.

Brody wanted to chuckle. He also wanted to stand on Carolyn’s front porch with a shotgun and make sure no other man got past him.

“Oops,” Kim said, widening her eyes. She’d let the news slip on purpose, and everybody knew it, but since the horse was already out of the barn, so to speak, that was that. “Sorry.”

Davis gave his wife a look.

Carolyn looked down at her lap, still red and making no pretense of eating.

Casually, Brody leaned over, took hold of the nearest wine bottle and refilled her glass. She glanced at him with an expression of mingled desperation and gratitude and practically drained the thing in a few gulps.

Brody bit back a grin. Well, there was one bright spot to the situation, he reflected. Now he had the perfect excuse to drive Carolyn home, because she was obviously in no condition to get behind the wheel.

An awkward silence fell, broken only by the clinking of silverware against colorful pottery plates.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Tricia piped up, breaking the verbal stalemate. “The dating service thing, I mean. More and more people are meeting their soul mates online these days. Why, the statistics—”

Carolyn looked so utterly miserable by then that Brody felt downright sorry for her. She swallowed hard, raised her chin and bravely interrupted, “It’s only a trial membership. I was curious, that’s all.”

“She’s swamped with guys wanting to get to know her,” Kim said, warming to the topic all over again.

Another wine bottle was opened and passed around.

Carolyn sloshed some into her glass, avoiding Brody’s eyes when she shoved the bottle at him to keep it moving.

“Are you sure you ought to…?”

At last, Carolyn looked at him. She flashed like a highway flare on a dark night, because she was so angry.

Because she was so beautiful.

“I’m of legal age, Brody Creed,” she said, slurring her words only slightly.

The others were talking among themselves, a sort of distant hum, a thing apart, like a radio playing in the next house or the next street, the words indistinct.

“Besides,” Carolyn went on briskly, before he could reply, “I’ve only had two glasses.”

“Four,” Brody said quietly, “but who’s counting?”

“It’s not as if I normally drink a lot,” she informed him, apropos of he wasn’t sure what.

“Have another tamale,” Brody counseled, keeping his voice down even though they still seemed to be alone in a private conversational bubble, him and Carolyn, with the rest of the outfit someplace on the dim periphery of things. “I don’t want another tamale,” Carolyn told him.

“You’re going to be sick if you don’t eat something,” Brody reasoned. He didn’t think he’d used that particular cajoling tone since Steven and Melissa’s last visit, when he’d been appointed to feed his cousin’s twin sons. He’d had to do some smooth talking to get them to open up for the pureed green beans.

“That’s my problem, not yours,” Carolyn said stiffly.

“Around here,” Brody said, “we look out for each other.”

She made a snorting sound and tried to snag another passing wine bottle, but Brody got hold of it first and sent it along its way.

That made her furious. She colored up again and her eyes flashed, looking as if they might short out from the overload.

Brody merely held her gaze. “Eat,” he said.

She huffed out a sigh. Stabbed at a tiny bite of tamale with her fork. “There,” she said, after chewing. “Are you satisfied?”

He let the grin come, the charming one that sometimes got him what he wanted and sometimes got him slapped across the face. “No,” he drawled. “Are you?”

It looked like it was going to be the slap, for a second there.

In the end, though, Carolyn was at once too flustered and too tipsy to respond right away. She blinked once, twice, looking surprised to find herself where she was, and swayed ever so slightly in her chair.

“I want to go home,” she said.

Brody pushed his own chair back and stood, holding out a hand to her. “I think that’s a good idea,” he replied easily. “Let’s go.”

Kim and Davis, Conner and Tricia—he was aware of them as a group, rimming the table with amused faces but making no comment.

“I guess I have to let you drive me, don’t I?” Carolyn said.

“I reckon you do,” Brody said. “We’ll take my truck. Somebody can bring your car to town later.”

Carolyn, feisty before, seemed bemused now, at a loss. “But what about washing the dishes and…?”

“Davis and Conner can do the cleaning up.” Brody slid a hand under her elbow and raised her to her feet, steered her away from the table and into the kitchen, Barney sticking to their heels like chewing gum off a hot sidewalk.

He squired her to the truck and helped her into the passenger seat, careful to let her think she was doing it all herself.

Barney took his place in the backseat of the extended cab.

Once he was behind the wheel, Brody buzzed his window and Carolyn’s about halfway down. She was going to need all the fresh air she could handle.

“You’re going to hate yourself in the morning,” he said easily, as they drove toward the gate and the road to town.

He’d only been teasing, but Carolyn’s sigh was so deep that it gave him a pang, made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

“It might not even take that long,” she said sadly. I’m—I’m not used to drinking and I—well, I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”

Brody reached over, gave her hand a brief, light squeeze. “That’s pretty obvious,” he said gently.

“I feel like such a fool,” Carolyn lamented, refusing to look at him.

“Don’t,” Brody said.

She looked down at her hand, where his had been rested for a second, and frowned, seemingly surprised to discover that he’d let go.

“You probably think I’m pathetic,” she went on, staring straight through the windshield again.

“Nothing of the sort,” Brody assured her gruffly.

“Getting drunk. Signing up for a dating service—”

Before he needed to come up with a response, she turned to look at him, straight on. And she was pea-green.

“Stop!” she gasped. “I’m going to be—”

Brody stopped, and she shoved open the door and stuck her head out.

“Sick,” she finished.

And then she was.

CHAPTER FIVE

IF SHE’D DELIBERATELY set out to make a lasting impression on Brody Creed, Carolyn thought wretchedly, as she stared at her wan image in the mirror above her bathroom sink later that evening, she couldn’t have done a better job.

First, being the proverbial bundle of nerves, she’d had too much wine at supper. Then, with ultimate glamour and grace, she’d thrown up, right in front of the man. Just stuck her head out of his truck door and hurled on the side of the road, like somebody being carted off to rehab after an intervention.

“Very impressive,” she whispered to her sorrylooking one-dimensional self.

With the spectacle playing out in her mind’s eye, Carolyn squeezed her eyes shut, mortified all over again. Brody had reacted with calm kindness, presenting her with a partial package of wet wipes and following up with two time-hardened sticks of cinnamon-flavored chewing gum.

She’d been too embarrassed to look at him afterward, had hoped he would simply drop her off at home and be on his way again, with his dog, leaving her to wallow privately in her regrets.

She couldn’t be that lucky.

Instead of leaving her to her misery, he’d told Barney to stay put, insisted on helping Carolyn down from the truck and escorting her not only through the front gate and across the yard, but also up the outside staircase to her door.

“I’ll be all right now,” she’d said, when they reached the landing, still unable to meet his eyes. “Really, I—”

Brody had taken her chin in his hand; sick as she was, the combination of gentleness and strength in his touch had sent a charge through her. “I believe I’ll stay a while and make sure you’re all right,” Brody had replied matter-of-factly.

Though she was painfully sober by then, Carolyn didn’t have the energy to fight any losing battles, so she merely unlocked the door and allowed him to follow her inside.

Winston, perched on the windowsill, greeted him with raised hackles and a hiss.

“Whatever, cat,” Brody had said, with desultory resignation. “I’m here, like it or not, so deal with it.”

Carolyn had hurried into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, following up with a mouthwash swish and two aspirin from the bottle in the medicine cabinet. Then she’d slipped into her room and changed her T-shirt.

And here she was back in the bathroom again, trying to work up the courage to go out there into the kitchen, thank Brody for bringing her home and politely send him packing.

He was moving around out there, running water in the sink, carrying on a one-sided chat with Winston, his voice set too low for her to make out the words. The tone was chiding, but good-natured.

Most likely, Brody was bent on winning over the cat.

The idea made Carolyn smile, but very briefly, because even smiling hurt.

How would she feel when the actual hangover kicked in?

Sobering thought. That’s what you get for drinking, she told herself grimly. You know you’re not good at it.

All this self-recrimination, she realized, was getting her nowhere, fast. So Carolyn drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, let the air whoosh out of her lungs and forced herself to step out of the bathroom and walk the short distance to the kitchen.

Brody was leaning against one of the counters, sipping what was probably coffee from one of her three million souvenir mugs.

This one bore the image of a famous mouse and was painted with large red letters trumpeting Welcome to Orlando!

“You have quite a collection,” Brody observed, raising the mug slightly for emphasis.

“I’ve been everywhere,” Carolyn said, in a lame attempt at normality. Some of the mugs were from thrift stores and garage sales, actually, but she saw no point in explaining that sometimes she liked to pretend she’d purchased them on family vacations over the years.

Which was pathetic, because to take a family vacation, one needed a family.

Brody gave her that tilted grin, the one with enough juice to power a cattle prod, his eyes as soft as blue velvet but with a twinkle of amusement, too. Moving to the microwave, he took out a second cup, this one commemorating some stranger’s long-ago visit to the Alamo, in San Antonio.

Carolyn had always wanted to visit the Alamo.

She caught the soothing scent of mint tea with just the faintest touch of ginger. Her throat, still a little sore from being sick, tightened with some achy emotion.

“Good for what ails you,” Brody said, setting down the tea on the kitchen table. “Have a seat, Carolyn. I’m not fixing to bite you or anything.”

She dropped into a chair, wishing she’d put the sewing machine away before she’d left for Davis and Kim’s house to have supper and campaign for fool of the year. Now Brody would probably think she was a slob as well as a shameless lush.

Brody waited a beat, then sat down across from her. Watched in easy silence as she took a sip of the tea, sighed at the herbal goodness of the stuff.

“You’ve been very…kind,” Carolyn managed to say, after more tea. She was recovering in small but steady increments. “Thank you.”

Brody’s eyes smiled before his mouth did. “You’re welcome,” he said. He’d finished his coffee, but he appeared to be in no particular hurry to leave.

“I’ll be fine on my own, now that I’ve had some aspirin and this tea,” Carolyn told him, hoping he’d take the hint and hit the road.

Hoping he wouldn’t.

He lingered, watching her. “I’m sure you will be,” he agreed.

“And your dog is all alone, down there in your truck.”

Brody chuckled. “Barney’s fine,” he replied.

Carolyn let her shoulders slump, and her chin wouldn’t stay at the obstinate angle she’d been maintaining since her kitchen reentry. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said, in a near whisper, without planning to speak again at all.

“Don’t be,” Brody said. “It’s obvious that you can’t hold your liquor, but that’s not such a bad thing.”

Carolyn bit down hard on her lower lip and forced herself to look Brody Creed directly in the eye. Before, she’d spoken without meaning to—now, she couldn’t seem to get a word out.

“You probably should have some soup or something,” Brody said mildly. What was it like to be so at ease, so at home, in his own skin? Was this what came of belonging somewhere, being part of a tribe? Even with all those years away, Carolyn reflected enviously, the man’s roots went deep into the Colorado soil, curling around bedrock, no doubt. “Might settle your stomach down a little.”

Carolyn shook her head quickly. The thought of putting food in her mouth—even soup—threatened to bring on a new spate of helpless retching.

“I couldn’t,” she managed to croak.

“Okay,” Brody said.

Oddly, his unflappable solicitude made her feel even more vulnerable to him than that infamous kiss had.

Carolyn steeled herself against what was surely a perfectly normal human need to be reassured, cared for, looked after—normal for other people, that is. Foster kids, no matter how good the homes they were placed in, had to be strong and self-reliant, tough to the core.

Always.

“You could leave now,” she suggested carefully.

Brody chuckled again. Sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “I could,” he agreed, showing absolutely no signs of doing so anytime soon.

“And as for what Kim said at supper, about my signing up for a dating service…”

“Who said anything about that?” Brody asked, when her voice trailed off.

“If I’d known she was going to tell everyone,” Carolyn said, “I wouldn’t have mentioned it to her in the first place.”

“Kim didn’t mean any harm, Carolyn,” Brody offered quietly. “Anyway, you’re a grown woman, sound of mind and…body—” He paused, and once more that special something sparked in his eyes. “And if you want to date potential con artists, that’s your business.”

On one level, Carolyn knew full well that Brody was baiting her. On another, she couldn’t resist taking the hook. “Potential con artists? Well, that’s cynical,” she accused, and never mind the fact that she’d had similar thoughts herself, right along.

“If you’re in the market for a man, Carolyn, it’s your call how you go about roping one in. All I’m saying is that you ought to be careful. There are some real headcases out there.”

“In the market for a man?” She leaned forward in her chair, incensed. “Roping one in?” Being incensed felt like an improvement over being embarrassed, at least.

“Will you stop repeating everything I say?” Brody intoned. A tiny muscle bunched in his cheek, then smoothed out again.

“Who else would want to date me, right?” Carolyn ranted, stifling her voice so she wouldn’t yell and scare Winston. Or the neighbors. “Only a head-case loser who couldn’t get a woman the normal way?”

Brody laughed. Laughed. He didn’t lack for nerve, that was for sure.

Or sex appeal, damn him.

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