The Creed Legacy (5 page)

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.

B
RODY 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.

H
E’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.
”