A Creed in Stone Creek Read online

  And that was the whole thing.

  Steven chuckled. His cousin was definitely a man of few words.

  He hit Reply and told Conner he was always welcome and there would be a bed waiting when the time came. Compared to his cousin’s email, Steven’s was downright verbose.

  A low whimper distracted him from the computer; he looked up and saw Zeke standing with his nose to the door crack, wanting to go outside.

  Steven left the laptop on the table and accompanied Zeke out into the yard.

  It wasn’t quite dark, but a few stars had begun to pop out here and there, and the ghost of a three-quarter moon peeked over the horizon, like a performer waiting in the wings.

  Zeke sniffed around for a while, did his business and went back to the door, ready to go in.

  Steven opened the door and the dog mounted the steps, then went directly back to Matt’s room.

  Wide-awake, already bored with the internet and in no mood to watch TV, Steven sat on the fold-down metal steps in front of the threshold and looked out over what he could see of his ranch.

  Some ranch, he thought. Most of the fences are down, the barn probably collapsed ten years ago and the house is a disaster.

  He sighed and combed the fingers of his right hand through his hair, something he always did when he was questioning his own decisions.

  His dad and Conner had both tried to persuade him to stay in Colorado and raise Matt on the family’s spread. Set up a law practice in Lonesome Bend.

  He wasn’t sure they understood, his father and his cousin, why he’d needed to strike out on his own, create something new for himself and Matt and any generations that might follow.

  He wasn’t sure he understood, either.

  The Creed ranch was rightfully Conner’s, Steven figured, Conner’s and Brody’s. Their dad, dead since the brothers were hardly more than babies, had been Davis’s older brother and, therefore, the heir to the kingdom.

  Not that anybody knew exactly where Conner’s identical twin brother was keeping himself these days. He’d had some kind of knock-down-drag-out with Conner, Brody had, and except for a Christmas card every few years, with a terse message scrawled somewhere inside, the family hadn’t heard from him in a decade.

  Conner, like the good elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, had worked shoulder to shoulder with Davis to make the ranch prosper, and it had. Even with the ups and downs of the economy and the ever-changing beef prices, it was a profitable operation.

  When he was younger, shuttling back and forth between his mother’s place back East, where he lived fall, winter and spring, and the ranch, which he’d thought of as home, Steven had been more than a little jealous of his cousins. Two years younger than he was, the twins got to live on the land year-round, and Davis was a substitute father to them, the kind he couldn’t be to Steven, for the better part of every year, because of the distance between Lonesome Bend and Boston.

  So, Steven had essentially lived a double life. Summers, he’d been a ranch kid, a cowboy. He’d herded cattle on horseback, mended fences, skinny-dipped in the lake, brawled with his cousins like a wolf cub in a litter, competed in rodeos.

  All too soon, though, fall would roll around, and he’d find himself on an airplane, wearing preppy clothes instead of jeans and a T-shirt and old boots, with his hair cut short and brushed shiny.

  In Boston, Steven played tennis and held a spot on the rowing team. He dated girls with trust funds. Even as a relatively little kid, he had his own suite of rooms in his grandfather’s sprawling mansion, and it was generally agreed—make that, assumed—that he would one day join the prestigious law firm, founded well before the Civil War broke out, where his mother, two uncles and, of course, Granddad, carried on the family business.

  School was difficult for Steven, at least in the beginning, a fact that troubled his mother to no end, but he’d worked hard, gotten the grades, made it through college and law school, and joined the company as a junior clerk, just like any other newbie.

  Within a year, both Steven’s mother and his grandfather were gone, his mother having died of pneumonia, which had started out as an ordinary case of the flu, Granddad of a heart attack.

  Steven had soon realized he couldn’t work for his uncles.

  They resented the fact that he’d inherited his mother’s share of the family fortune, as well as a chunk that had been set aside for him at birth and gathering interest ever since. His uncles had never understood what had possessed their sister to hook up with a cowboy in some shithole town out West during a summer road trip with her college roommates, get herself pregnant and compound the everlasting disgrace by keeping the baby.

  But there were other reasons for the break, too; Michael and Edward Fletcher had never shared their father’s commitment to excellence, not to mention integrity, and his death hadn’t changed that. Nor could they match their sister’s keen intelligence.

  A few months after the second funeral, his grandfather’s, Steven had called his best friend from school, Zack St. John, and Zack had recommended him for a position at the Denver firm where he worked.

  The rest, as they say, was history.

  In Boston, in the operation his mother had referred to as the “store,” Steven had practiced corporate law. As soon as he’d made the move to Denver, however, he’d switched to criminal defense.

  And he’d loved it.

  He and Zack had worked together a lot, and they made a crack team. Steven was proud of their record, not just the wins, but the losses, too.

  In every case, they’d done their absolute best.

  Just then, Steven’s cell phone rang in his pocket, and the sound jolted him. For the briefest fraction of a moment, he’d forgotten that Zack was dead and gone, expected to hear his voice.

  “Hello?” he said, still sitting in the doorway of the tour bus, realizing that the night was turning chilly.

  “Why didn’t you call?” Kim asked, with a smile in her voice.

  Steven went inside, shut the door, kept his reply low because he didn’t want Matt waking up. The boy needed his rest, especially since he’d be starting day camp on Monday morning.

  “Because I sent an email instead,” he answered. His dad and stepmother had never had any children of their own, which was a pity, because they both had a real way with kids. They were good people, decent and responsible, and he loved them.

  “So tell me all about Stone Creek,” Kim said.

  MELISSA PLUCKED her formerly frozen diet dinner out of the microwave and plunked it on the kitchen counter to cool, getting a mild steam-burn in the process. With her other hand, she held the cordless phone to her ear.

  “I tell you that there are eighty-plus-year-old nudists cavorting on your property, Ashley O’Ballivan, and all you can do is laugh?”

  “The name is McKenzie,” Ashley replied cheerfully. “What did you expect me to do, Melissa? Call out the National Guard to restore order?”

  “I didn’t think you’d laugh, that’s all,” Melissa said, miffed and not entirely sure why.

  “Why wouldn’t I laugh?” Ashley asked reasonably. “It’s funny.”

  “Not to mention illegal.” A belated giggle escaped Melissa. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted, eyeing her food warily. The microwaved dish looked more like a plastic replica of lasagna than the real thing, the kind that might be sold in a joke shop—assuming there was even a market for stuff like that. “But trust me, it was also a shock. You haven’t lived, my dear, until you’ve seen a pack of bare-ass naked senior citizens engaged in a lively game of croquet.”

  “And you without a fire hose,” Ashley quipped.

  “Ha-ha,” Melissa said, carefully peeling the cellophane cover from her lasagna. Ashley was the one with the cooking talent; Julia Child was her patron saint. Melissa had never really caught the culinary bug; in fact, she’d all but had herself vaccinated against it. “When are you coming home? I miss the pity suppers.”

  Ashley laughed aga
in, but the underlying tone was gentle, and betrayed a slight degree of worry. “‘Pity’ suppers, is it?” she countered. “You know when we’re coming home. I’ve told you nineteen times, it’ll be early next week.” She paused, drew in a breath. “Melissa, what’s going on? Besides the nudist uprising, I mean?”

  “Interesting choice of words,” Melissa commented dryly, giving up on the lasagna and shoving it toward the back of the counter. “And it’s already Friday, so ‘early next week’ might be—”

  “Okay, Tuesday,” Ashley said with a chuckle, then waited stubbornly for an answer to Melissa, what’s going on?

  “Byron Cahill got out of jail this morning,” Melissa told her.

  “Yes,” Ashley prompted, sounding only mildly concerned.

  “He didn’t show up on schedule,” Melissa said. “Velda was upset.”

  “What else is happening?” Ashley pressed. “Velda’s been upset for years, and you knew Byron’s release date all along.”

  I met a man, Melissa imagined herself saying. His name is Steven Creed. He’s all wrong for me, and I think he’s beyond hot.

  While she might well have confided in Ashley in person, she wasn’t ready to talk about Steven over the telephone. And, anyway, what was there to say? It wasn’t as if anything had happened.

  Still, Ashley was an O’Ballivan and, among other things, that meant she wouldn’t give up until she got a story she could buy.

  So Melissa threw something out there. “I was roped into heading up the Parade Committee,” she said.

  “Oh, my,” Ashley replied, sounding taken aback. “How did that happen?”

  “I’m not sure, beyond the fact that Ona Frame can’t serve on the committee this year because her gallbladder exploded.”

  “It—exploded?”

  “Not literally, Ash. And thank heaven for that, because you can just imagine the fallout—”

  “Melissa,” Ashley groaned.

  “Sorry,” Melissa lied brightly. She had always loved grossing Ashley out.

  Another chuckle came from Ashley’s end. “Not that you deserve this,” she began, “but as soon as Jack and Katie and I get back from Chicago, I’ll see what I can do to help you get the parade—well—rolling.”

  It was Melissa’s turn to groan. “Bad pun,” she complained, but she was grateful—wildly and instantly so—and she wanted Ashley to know it. “You’re merely saving my life,” she said next.

  “How hard can it be?” Ashley asked. “One small-town parade with—what?—fifteen floats, a high-school marching band, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the sheriff’s posse riding their horses?”

  How hard can it be?

  “Don’t tempt fate,” Melissa said. “Just because poor Ona has made it look easy all these years, that doesn’t mean it is.”

  Ashley sighed. “Try to stay calm,” she said, but she still sounded buoyantly optimistic, and why wouldn’t she? Ashley was happy. Completely in love with her husband, Jack, and thoroughly loved in return. The mother of beautiful Katie and expecting a second child in six months or so. “And since when are you superstitious enough to worry about tempting fate?”

  Maybe since always, Melissa thought.

  In many ways, their childhoods hadn’t been easy—their mother had left home for good when she and Ashley were small, and their father had been killed in a freak accident while herding cattle on Stone Creek Ranch, struck by lightning.

  After that, the four young O’Ballivans had been raised by their grandfather, Big John. While Big John had really stepped up, loving them with all his strong, kindly heart, of course there were issues. Weren’t there always issues?

  Did anybody make it to adulthood unscathed? Melissa didn’t think so.

  “Melissa?” Ashley said, when she’d been quiet too long.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” Melissa insisted. She bit her lower lip, peering into her fridge now, finding nothing that appealed to her. “But what do you want me to do if the vice squad raids your house on grounds of lewd conduct?”

  Ashley laughed.

  It was a sound Melissa knew well, and loved.

  As much a part of her as it was of her sister since, at some level, it sometimes seemed they were one and the same person.

  “What do I want you to do?” Ashley teased. “Well, you could maybe loosen up a little. Sign up for the croquet team or something.”

  “You are just too hilarious.”

  “Melissa?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks for calling. I love you, I’ll see you in a few days and goodbye.”

  Melissa made a face at the receiver and hung up.

  Hunger finally drove her to get back to her car, drive to the supermarket, and invest in a salad from the deli department, a carton of low-fat yogurt for breakfast and the new issue of Vanity Fair.

  She was on her way back to her car, shopping bag in hand, when she saw Andrea drive up. Spotting Melissa at the last moment, it seemed, the girl didn’t have time to hide her guilty expression.

  Melissa smiled cordially and waited until her assistant got out of her old car, slung her purse strap over one shoulder, and nodded a shy “Hello.”

  “Feeling better?” Melissa asked, keeping her voice sunny. “Cramps can be pretty terrible.”

  Andrea’s taste in clothing was questionable, and so was her memory for watering plants and things like that, but she was basically honest, and Melissa knew she was intelligent, too. If Andrea ever learned to believe in herself, there would be no stopping her.

  “I was faking,” the girl said miserably, her confession coming in a breathy little rush. “I didn’t really have cramps.”

  “No kidding?” Melissa chimed.

  Andrea didn’t catch the faint sarcasm in her boss’s tone. “I went to pick Byron up,” she said, looking down at the asphalt of the parking lot instead of directly at Melissa. “Byron Cahill, I mean.”

  “I see,” Melissa said, though she was genuinely surprised. She’d had no clue that Andrea and Byron were friends.

  With obvious effort, Andrea made herself meet Melissa’s eyes. Now, there was an obstinate set to the girl’s jaw as she waited for—what? Recriminations? A lecture? The verbal equivalent of a pink slip?

  “Byron’s mother was pretty worried when he didn’t get off the bus this afternoon,” Melissa said, feeling weary again. “She thought something bad must have happened.”

  Andrea nodded, and her shoulders dropped a little. “I know,” she said, small-voiced. “But everything’s all right now. I took Byron home, and his mom was there, and she’s making pizza. I just came up here to get some sodas and rent a couple of movies.” She had the good grace to blush. “Since it’s Friday night and everything.”

  “And everything,” Melissa said lightly.

  Andrea straightened her spine. “Are you going to fire me?”

  “Probably not,” Melissa answered, thinking how ironic it was that Andrea, Velda and Byron would spend a chummy evening eating pizza and watching DVDs together, while she dined alone on a deli salad. “For future reference, though, if you have personal plans that will take you away from work, just say so. Unless there’s something pressing I need you to do, Andrea, I’ll be happy to give you time off.”

  Andrea took that in, looking ashamed again. “It’s just that I thought you’d disapprove. Of Byron and me going together, I mean.”

  Melissa looked around to make sure none of the local gossips were hovering nearby, with an ear cocked in their direction. “‘Going together’?” she repeated. “How could you and Byron be—‘going together’—when he’s been in jail for the better part of two years?”

  “We were pen pals,” Andrea said. “I’d see Velda around town sometimes, and she’d tell me how lonesome Byron was, locked away like some kind of criminal—”

  Melissa put up a hand. In a courtroom, she would have snapped out, “Objection!” In the supermarket parking lot, facing a young woman who’d had a drug-addicted mother and the very elderly Cro
ckett sisters for her main female role models, she took a different tack.

  “Hold it,” she said, very quietly. “Byron did get high, consume alcohol, then climb behind the wheel of a car and get into a terrible accident. And someone died in that accident, Andrea.”

  Andrea’s eyes widened. She swallowed visibly and then nodded. “I was just telling you what Velda told me,” she said reasonably, softly. “I started writing to Byron, because I know what it’s like to feel all alone, and he wrote back. We got to be friends.” She paused, drew in a breath. “Byron understands how wrong it was, what he did, and so do I.”

  Melissa closed her eyes for a moment, surprised to find that they were scalding with tears. “Yes,” she said. She was remembering Chavonne’s funeral, and the graveside service, and how the dead girl’s mother had let out a cry of such raw grief when the coffin was lowered into the ground that Melissa could still hear it, sometimes, in her nightmares.

  Andrea stooped a little, peered at Melissa. Moved to touch her arm and then drew back. “Are—are you all right? You look sort of—I don’t know—pale or something.”

  Melissa shook her head, not in answer but to indicate that she didn’t want to talk any more that night, and stepped around Andrea to get into the roadster.

  It wasn’t until she’d set the grocery bag on the passenger seat, fumbled for her keys, started the engine and driven to the edge of the lot that she looked into her rearview mirror and saw that Andrea hadn’t moved.

  She was still standing in exactly the same spot, staring down at the ground.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MATT, STEVEN AND ZEKE the Wonder Dog were up early the next morning, even though it was a Saturday, normally a sleep-in day.

  Steven showered, then Matt, and both of them dressed “cowboy,” in jeans and boots. Matt wore a T-shirt, while Steven pulled on an old cotton chambray shirt, a favorite from years ago when he was still riding and roping on the ranch.

  “Here’s the plan,” Steven said, sipping from a mug of instant coffee while Matt fed Zeke his morning ration of kibble and put fresh water in his bowl. “We’ll go into town, have some breakfast at the Sunflower Café, or whatever it is, then take a spin by the day camp so you can get a look.”