Creed's Honor Read online

  Sasha’s eyes were wide with solemn excitement. “But I’d be there to help them,” she said.

  Evelyn patted the girl’s head. “Of course you would,” she agreed. “Mind, you stay behind the door when you open it. Junk collectors are a dangerous breed—they might just run right over a little bitty thing like you.”

  About that time, the day crew arrived to monitor the sales of chili and hot coffee, and Evelyn and her bunch put on their coats, picked up their large patent-leather purses, said goodbye and left.

  Two other women turned up to help Carolyn and Tricia out front, and Sasha raced to unlock the door.

  Time, as Natty had always maintained, had wings. The morning flew by, the chili was consumed, along with two giant urns of coffee and all the canned soda that was left from the day before, and the last of the rummage was boxed up for charity.

  “Now we can go riding!” Sasha cried, all but jumping up and down in the kitchen.

  Tricia had taken Natty home some time before and the day crew was busy scrubbing out the huge soup kettles, sweeping up and putting the third load of dirty coffee cups into the dishwasher.

  “Yippee,” Tricia said mildly, putting on her jacket.

  Since they’d dressed casually for rummage sale duty, and she’d taken Valentino out for a quick walk when she drove Natty back to the house earlier, there was no reason go home.

  Tricia and Carolyn left the center together, Sasha skipping along behind them, unable to contain her joy. “It’s still an hour before the trail ride starts,” Carolyn said, after looking at her watch. “Why don’t you and Sasha follow me back to Kim and Davis’s place, and we’ll head over to the main house when the time comes?”

  Tricia recalled that Carolyn was housesitting for Davis and Kim, who were away on one of their frequent road trips. She considered both of them friends, but she’d never actually visited their home, and she was a little curious, so she agreed.

  Once Sasha was safely ensconced in her booster seat, Tricia got behind the wheel of the Pathfinder and followed Carolyn out of the parking lot, into the alley behind the community center and then onto a paved street.

  The drive out into the countryside was spectacular, the hillsides practically on fire with changing leaves in every shade of orange and crimson, yellow and rust, the sky so blue that just looking at it made Tricia’s throat constrict a little.

  Carolyn led them past the colonial-style ranch house that had stood even longer than Natty’s house in town. Like Natty’s property, it was well-maintained, with grass and a picket fence and venerable old rosebushes everywhere. The barn, though it looked sturdy enough to last another century, showed its age. The reddish paint, fading and peeling away in places, lent it a distinctly rural charm.

  The rambling one-story log house Kim and Davis Creed called home stood high on a ridge, overlooking much of the ranch, and was considerably newer than its counterpart, though it had a rustic appeal all its own. The driveway was paved, and there was a huge metal outbuilding, which most likely housed the couple’s RV.

  The Creeds had a barn, too, smaller than the one down the hill, but surrounded by a large, fenced-in pasture. Three horses grazed the plentiful remains of that year’s grass crop.

  “Are they the ones we’re going to ride?” Sasha piped up, before she was even out of the booster seat. She was pointing toward the buckskin, Appaloosa and bay in the field.

  Carolyn, having parked her car and waited for Tricia and Sasha to get out of the Pathfinder, smiled and shook her head. She looked every inch the country woman, Tricia thought, standing there in her jeans and boots and Western-cut blouse, with her hands in the pockets of her coat.

  “Nope,” Carolyn answered. “These guys are all retired. They’re basically pets. The horses we’ll be riding are down at the other place.”

  Sasha frowned. “I didn’t see any horses there,” she said.

  Carolyn chuckled. “Trust me, they’re around,” she promised. “Let’s go inside.”

  They entered through a side door, stepping into a spacious modern kitchen. Everything gleamed—the windows, the floors, the appliances and the counter-tops.

  “Kim’s a housekeeping demon,” Carolyn explained, evidently reading Tricia’s mind. “It’s intimidating, isn’t it?”

  Tricia laughed. “I’d be dusting twice a day.”

  Carolyn nodded, hanging her shoulder bag from a peg on the wall next to the door and then placing her jacket on top of it. “If Kim wasn’t such a nice person,” she agreed, “I’d probably be so paranoid about messing something up that I couldn’t housesit.”

  Sasha, a city child, was taking in the wide-open spaces of a Colorado ranch house. “Is it scary, staying here all alone?” she asked.

  “No,” Carolyn answered, with a smile. “I like it a lot.”

  “Can we look around?” Sasha asked, barely noticing as Tricia helped her extract herself from her coat.

  “Sure,” Carolyn said. “Let’s take the tour.”

  The living room and dining area were one huge room, and the table, surrounded by more than a dozen charmingly mismatched chairs, must have been twenty feet long. The natural-rock fireplace was so big that Sasha could have stood upright in the cavity, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides.

  The view was quite literally stunning.

  “Wow,” Tricia said.

  “Yeah,” Carolyn agreed wryly. “Wow is definitely the word.”

  By tacit agreement, they didn’t go into the master suite, but the other bedrooms, one of which Carolyn was using, were all impressive. Each boasted its own bath and, like the ones in the living/dining room, the windows offered a grand tableau of the mountains and the vast expanse of rangeland.

  A well-stocked library with a baby grand piano and a spacious, leather-scented studio, where Davis did his saddle making, completed the house.

  “Where do you live when you’re not here?” Sasha asked Carolyn, when they were back in the kitchen.

  Something flickered in Carolyn’s eyes—the briefest flash of sorrow, Tricia thought—but her smile didn’t waver.

  “All over,” Carolyn answered. “That’s my job. I take care of people’s houses for them when they’re away.”

  “But where’s your house?” Sasha persisted.

  “Sasha,” Tricia protested quietly.

  Carolyn swallowed, went to shove her hands into her jacket pockets before remembering that she wasn’t wearing the garment. Still, her smile held. “I don’t really need a house,” she told the child, after tossing an It’s okay sort of glance at Tricia.

  “Everybody needs a house,” Sasha maintained. She could be stubborn, when she took a notion.

  “Sasha,” Tricia repeated, this time more forcefully. “That’s enough, honey.”

  Sasha looked up at her then, and Tricia was startled to see tears shining in the little girl’s eyes. “But what if people stop going on trips?” she fretted. “If everybody stays home, all at once, Carolyn will be homeless.”

  Tricia felt that familiar pang of love for this amazing child, but she was a little embarrassed by the outburst, too. “I’m sure Carolyn earns a very good living,” she said, in an awkward rush. The words were out of her mouth before she realized how lame they sounded.

  Carolyn smiled and gave Sasha a sideways hug. “As the cowboys say, don’t you worry your pretty little head, missy. I enjoy being a gypsy.”

  Sasha looked only partly mollified by the claim. In her world, people without homes slept on sidewalks and panhandled for change in downtown Seattle. “But, you don’t look like a gypsy—”

  “Figure of speech, kiddo,” Carolyn said, the soul of kindness. Then she held up one arm and tapped at the face of her watch. “Look at the time,” she went on, her smile mega-bright. “We’d better get ourselves down to the main barn if we want first pick of the horses.”

  That was all it took to distract Sasha from the plight of the homeless. For the moment, at least.

  The ten-year
-old let out a whoop of sheer pleasure and dashed for the door, grabbing her coat from the peg where Tricia had hung it earlier, along with her own.

  Within moments, they were back in their vehicles, on their way to one of the last places Tricia wanted to go. And it wasn’t just because she was timid around horses.

  Tricia would have liked more time to brace herself for another encounter with Conner Creed, but, alas, it wasn’t to be. He was standing in front of the barn when they pulled in, and he looked wicked good.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IF BRODY CREED WAS AROUND, there was no sign of him, which probably accounted, at least in part, for Carolyn’s good spirits. Not that Tricia was really paying that much attention; even before she’d parked the Pathfinder beside her friend’s car and turned off the ignition, she was feeling it again, that sense of being magnetized to Conner.

  The vulnerability of that made her want to drive right on past, back to town. Forget the whole crazy idea of going on a trail ride, of all things, with a guy who affected her like a turn on a runaway roller coaster.

  As if escape were even possible, with Sasha along and excited enough to jump out of her skin.

  Although she didn’t notice until after the fact, there were other people around, and other vehicles, mostly trucks and large SUVs, with horse trailers hitched behind them. Friends and neighbors began unloading various mounts and saddling up.

  “This is Buttercup,” Conner said, as Sasha hurried up to him, Tricia lagging a pace or two behind the child.

  Tricia blinked. The docile-looking mare might have materialized beside Conner by magic, so thoroughly had the creature evaded her notice.

  Conner’s smile was slow and easy, and fetchingly crooked in that way that made Tricia’s nerves skitter wildly out of control. Holding Buttercup’s reins loosely in his left hand, he stroked the horse’s neck with the other.

  “Is that the horse I get to ride?” Sasha asked, almost breathless.

  “Nope,” Conner replied, never looking away from Tricia’s face. “Buttercup is more suited to a greenhorn.” At last, his gaze slanted to Sasha. “You’ll be on the one we call Show Pony. She’s gentle, too, but old Buttercup, here, she’s practically a rocking horse.”

  Tricia tensed ever so slightly, her pride nettled by the term greenhorn. Okay, so she wasn’t an experienced rider. She wasn’t a coward, either. She was there, wasn’t she, in spite of all her very sensible trepidation, willing to try something new?

  A blue spark ignited in Conner’s eyes, there for an instant and then gone again, and Tricia knew he’d been joshing her a little. “Ready?” he asked, watching her in a way that made her feel electrified.

  Everyone except for the two of them and Buttercup seemed to have slipped into some kind of dimly visible parallel universe. There was an indefinable charge, a silent buzz, in the crisply cool air, too, and Tricia was startled to recognize it as anticipation, not fear.

  “Ready,” she confirmed.

  Carolyn came out of the barn, leading a pinto mare she must have saddled herself, and a smaller horse that was probably Show Pony. Sasha needed no urging at all to scramble up into the waiting saddle.

  Tricia, meanwhile, tried to follow Conner’s quiet instructions. Approaching Buttercup’s side, she put her left foot into the stirrup, as he told her to do, and reached up to clasp the saddle horn in both hands, praying she could make it without needing a boost.

  And then she was up, sitting astride Buttercup’s narrow back, and she’d gotten there under her own power, too, without the humiliation of being goosed in the backside. Exhilaration filled Tricia, straightening her spine, raising her chin a notch or two. Buttercup stood still as stone, bless her equine heart.

  Conner smiled. “You’re doing fine,” he said. Then, with a twinkle in his eyes, he added, “It’s okay to let go of the saddle horn now.” He reached up, placing the reins in Tricia’s hands. Although their fingers barely brushed against each other, the contact sent a hot jolt racing through Tricia’s entire body. “That’s it,” he said. “Just let the reins rest easy in your grasp, and whatever you do, don’t wrap them around your hands.”

  Tricia nodded, one step from terror and, at the same time, thrilled through and through.

  She was on a real horse.

  Of course, it wasn’t moving yet, but so far, so good.

  Sasha rode up, buckling on the riding helmet Carolyn must have brought from the barn. The little girl’s smile stretched from ear to ear.

  “You’re a natural!” Sasha said, beaming at Tricia.

  Carolyn, riding up beside Sasha, held out a second helmet to Tricia. “Put this on,” she said, with an encouraging smile. Tricia knew, even without looking around, that she and Sasha were the only riders present who’d be wearing headgear, but she didn’t care. She did have a moment of panic, however, when she looked around for Conner and realized that he was gone.

  Buttercup didn’t so much as flick her tail, but Carolyn leaned from the saddle to take a light but firm grip on the mare’s bridle strap, probably so the animal wouldn’t spook while Tricia was putting on the helmet.

  Conner reappeared a moment later, ducking with magnificent grace as he rode out through the wide doorway of the barn, mounted on a black gelding with three white boots and a matching blaze on its face.

  The sight of him, so at ease riding that powerful horse, literally took Tricia’s breath away. Her heart started to pound as Conner adjusted his hat with a second-nature motion of one hand, grinning at the other riders as he passed through their midst to rein in beside Tricia.

  Even then, Buttercup didn’t move a single muscle. She might have been stuffed, that mare, for all the animation she seemed to possess. And that was just fine with Tricia.

  The problem was that everybody else was on the move—even Sasha and Carolyn were riding away, like all the others, toward the gate opening onto the rangeland beyond the corral and the pasture.

  Conner waited, shifting in his saddle once, adjusting his hat in what must have been an attempt—a vain one—to hide his grin in the shadow of the brim.

  Buttercup stood still as a statue.

  “Should I—well—nudge her with my heels or something?” Tricia asked.

  A few of the other riders were looking back at her and Conner, and some of them were smiling. Exchanging little comments Tricia was glad she couldn’t hear.

  “You could do that,” Conner answered affably, and in his own good time. “But Buttercup won’t go anywhere until Lakota heads out.”

  Lakota, Tricia deduced, was the gelding Conner rode.

  “Oh,” she said, at something of a loss. Now what?

  This time, Conner made no attempt to hide his amusement. Tricia could have hit him if she weren’t afraid to let go of the reins. She felt silly, sitting there like a child waiting for the carousel to start turning, the only grown-up wearing a helmet.

  “Buttercup is Lakota’s mama,” Conner explained, in that same slow drawl he’d used before. “She likes to keep him in sight when they’re out of the corral.”

  “I see,” Tricia said, though she didn’t, actually. All she could think of was a special she’d seen on TV once, and it had been about elephants, not horses. It seemed that baby elephants would follow their mother for their entire lives, unless, of course, they were separated.

  “If you’re ready,” Conner went on, “we’ll start.”

  Tricia swallowed hard. Sasha and Carolyn and the other participants in the trail ride—over a dozen of them—were way ahead. A few of the more experienced people were even racing each other.

  “I’m ready,” Tricia lied.

  Conner nodded, clicked his tongue once, and Lakota started to walk away.

  Buttercup didn’t actually bolt, but she moved forward so quickly that Tricia was nearly unseated.

  “You’re doing fine,” Conner told Tricia, riding alongside and obviously controlling the gelding, which wanted to run. Tricia could tell that by the way the muscles bunched in its h
aunches.

  And then, they were trotting. Tricia bounced unceremoniously in the saddle. Conner and the others, by contrast, Sasha included, moved with their horses, almost as though they were part of them.

  “It takes practice,” Conner said.

  Tricia didn’t dare answer, bouncing like that. She’d sound like someone driving a springless wagon over a washboard trail, and maybe even bite her tongue in the process.

  Practice? she thought, skeptical. She would probably have bruises after this, along with back spasms and, as for her thigh muscles, forget about it. She was doomed.

  Conner’s mouth kicked up at one corner again as he slowed Lakota to a walk, which prompted Buttercup to stop trotting, too, of course. Once again, he resettled his hat, the gesture so innately masculine that, for a moment, Tricia’s immediate predicament went right out of her head. She even allowed herself to imagine—very briefly—what it would be like to make love with Conner Creed.

  Her cheeks burned as if the scene had been flashed onto the screen at the Bluebird, on a very dark night, instead of on the back of her forehead.

  “You must want to ride with the others,” she said, in a tone of bright misery, nodding across the widening breach between her and Conner and the rest of the party. “We haven’t gone far. I could walk back.”

  Conner tilted his head to one side, looked at her from under the brim of his hat. It was an ordinary thing to do, especially for a cowboy on horseback, but it had the same impact as before, practically knocking the breath out of her. Like a hard fall.

  “You’d probably never live that down,” he teased. “Walking back to the house, I mean.”

  Never mind living anything down, Tricia thought, with bleak resignation. She had to keep Sasha in sight, the way Buttercup did Lakota. Even though the child was perfectly safe riding with Carolyn.

  “Probably not,” she replied, just so Conner wouldn’t think she’d been struck dumb in the interval.

  “As I said, learning to ride takes time and some practice, same as anything else,” Conner told her.