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One of the ladies seemed particularly taken with the Weaver. “That’s lovely,” she said, looking up at the batik.
Carolyn, busy ringing up purchases at the register, heard the remark even over the cheerful din of oohs and ahhs bubbling up around the shop as the other red-hats examined the merchandise.
So, apparently, did Tricia.
A glance flew between her and Carolyn.
“Isn’t it?” Tricia said, edging over to stand alongside the woman who’d spoken first.
“I can’t see the price from here,” the woman said.
“I’m afraid the piece is already spoken for,” Tricia replied quickly, a pink flush rising to her cheeks. “The artist is very prolific, though. I’d be glad to give you her contact information if you’d consider commissioning something—?”
Carolyn frowned. The Weaver was spoken for? Since when?
Several people had admired the batik, but they’d all sighed and shaken their heads when they were told how much it cost.
Tricia gave her another look, as if she thought Carolyn might contradict her.
Carolyn pointedly returned her friend’s gaze, though she didn’t speak up. She simply turned her attention back to the task at hand.
It was almost lunchtime when the red-hat ladies climbed into their vans and left, leaving the shop pleasantly denuded.
Carolyn was about to ask Tricia why she’d said the batik was sold when the shop door opened again, and Conner strode in, with Brody right behind him.
Carolyn’s breath caught, though she tried to look as though she hadn’t noticed the man.
Not noticing Brody, she reflected, was like not noticing a meteor big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs.
Still, she had to try. It was a matter of principle.
Conner greeted Tricia with a resounding kiss and then picked her up and swung her around once, in a small, gentle circle, making her laugh ring out like church bells on Easter morning.
Distracted by these goings-on, Carolyn didn’t see Brody approach.
He was just there, all of a sudden, standing on the other side of the counter.
Carolyn started; every last nerve in her body jumped.
Brody favored her with a slow, unperturbed smile. Either he hadn’t heard the gossip about her coffee date with Bill—this option seemed highly unlikely given the nature of small towns—or he simply didn’t care.
“That picture up there,” he said, indicating the Weaver with a motion of one thumb. “Is that one of Primrose Sullivan’s?”
Carolyn cleared her throat, in a way she hoped was subtle, and nodded. “Yes, but—”
Tricia sidled over. Bumped against Brody from one side. “Are you in the market for art?” she asked.
Conner, standing a few feet away, stared at his wife with an expression of baffled wonder on his handsome face. Clearly, to him at least, Tricia was a brilliantly colored butterfly in a black-and-white world.
“I might be,” Brody said. “A lot of wall space is going to need filling, once my house is finished.”
Carolyn reminded herself to breathe. Told her heart to start beating again, pronto, and no more of that Bambi-on-ice business. After all, this was a perfectly ordinary conversation.
“Primrose would be thrilled if the Weaver found a home right here in Lonesome Bend,” Tricia said brightly. “You know how sentimental she is.”
Carolyn frowned at her business partner, confused. “Didn’t you say it was already spoken for? The Weaver, I mean?”
Tricia smiled. “I was lying,” she said, with no apparent qualms whatsoever.
Carolyn opened her mouth, closed it again. Frowned harder.
Brody, meanwhile, got out his wallet, extracted a credit card and set it down on the counter. “I’ll take it,” he said.
“Don’t you want to know how much it costs first?” Carolyn asked.
He gave her that smile again. She was powerless against that smile.
Did Brody know that?
“I reckon I can probably afford it,” he said easily.
Carolyn blushed, embarrassed and clueless when it came to the reason. “Okay,” she said, and stated the price.
Brody didn’t bat an eye. He glanced down at his credit card, and Carolyn recovered enough to swipe it through the machine and push the necessary sequence of buttons.
Conner and Tricia were in the kitchen by then. Carolyn heard their voices, and the sounds of lunch being assembled.
The credit-card machine spit out a slip, and Brody signed it.
“I’ll just get the ladder,” Carolyn began nervously. “I can have the picture down off the wall and wrapped in no time.”
Brody hadn’t moved, after putting away his card and wallet. “We’re on horseback,” he said.
Carolyn blinked. “You’re what?”
“Conner and I,” Brody said, and she could feel his grin like sunshine against her skin, even though she was still being very careful not to look at him directly. “We rode our horses into town.”
“Why?”
He chuckled, and she had to look at him then. He drew her eyes the way a magnet draws metal shavings. “It’s what cowboys do,” he said simply.
“Oh,” Carolyn said, wishing she could shrink, like Wonderland’s Alice after a swig from the drink-me bottle, or just fall down any old rabbit hole.
“It would be sort of awkward, hauling that big picture over to my place on a horse, so I’m hoping you’ll be so kind as to deliver it for me.”
She stiffened her spine. Raised her chin. “I’m sure Tricia would be happy to drop it off for you,” she said.
“She can’t be carrying heavy things in her condition,” Brody answered, with a faint note of disapproval in his voice. He looked around. “Where’s that ladder?”
Carolyn told him where the ladder was, and he went and fetched it.
He came straight back, jackknifed that ladder open with a purposeful squeak of metal hinges and climbed nimbly up to the top rung. Lifted the framed batik off its hook and brought it down when he descended, the muscles in his back moving gracefully beneath the fabric of his shirt.
Blood pulsed in Carolyn’s ears.
Tricia and Conner were laughing now, their joy in life and in each other bursting out of them between silences. She heard the fridge door open and close, and plates clattering, as if from some great distance, or from fathoms under the sea.
Carefully, almost reverently in fact, Brody laid the Weaver on the round table where Carolyn and Tricia normally displayed handmade papers. She watched his face as he studied the image and knew it would hang in his new house one day soon, a thing he was proud to own.
“You’ll bring it by the lodge, then?” he asked, his voice hoarse, as if he’d gone a long time without speaking.
“You could always stop by with your truck,” Carolyn said, because it seemed important—if pointless—to stand up to him.
“I could,” Brody agreed. “But I’d like to show you my house, and you did seem taken with Moonshine’s friendly face. Here’s your chance to say howdy to him in person.”
“Moonshine?”
“My horse,” Brody said, with a ghost of a grin. “I think he gets pretty lonesome, out there in that unfinished barn. He’d probably like a visitor.”
Carolyn thrust out a sigh. She might be able to resist Brody, albeit not with anything resembling ease, but she could not resist a horse. “All right,” she said. “I’ll bring the picture over. What’s a good time?”
“I’m usually there in the evenings,” Brody replied.
Of course you are. And what big teeth you have, Grandma.
“I like to sew in the evenings,” she said.
Brody was facing her again—and the counter between them wasn’t wide enough to suit Carolyn. The whole state of Colorado wouldn’t have been wide enough.
He let his eyes drift over her, and she’d have sworn he left her clothes in smoldering rags, just by looking at her.
“And then there’s that ride you owe me,” he said, his voice low.
Carolyn’s face flamed—even after all the talk about horses she managed to misunderstand him right from the get-go—and then he laughed, the sound low again, and raspy.
“The horseback ride,” he drawled.
Carolyn gulped. “Why are you pushing this?” she whispered angrily, leaning toward him without thinking and then wishing she hadn’t.
His mouth was within kissing distance of hers and she couldn’t pull back out of reach. She couldn’t move.
“You said yes when I asked you to go riding with me,” Brody reminded her, very quietly, “and that makes it a matter of honor. Either your word is worth something, Carolyn Simmons, or it isn’t.”
That freed her from the spell he’d cast over her.
Carolyn snapped her head back and glared. She gripped the edges of the counter so tightly that her knuckles ached. “You’re a fine one to talk about honor,” she told him, her voice ragged with fury, “after what you did. Furthermore, my word has never been in question here. Yours, on the other hand—”
He had the audacity to grin, to raise both hands, palms out, in an ingenuous bid for peace that made her want to slap him silly.
“Carolyn,” he said slowly, “you are a hard woman. You are a stubborn woman. And you sure do know how to hold a grudge.”
“Count on it,” Carolyn practically snarled.
They glowered at each other for a long, silent moment.
Then Tricia pushed open the kitchen door and poked out her head, like a turtle peering out of a shell.
“Are you two joining us for lunch or not?” she asked sunnily.
“I’m not hungry,” Carolyn said.
“Me, either,” Brody agreed.
“Okaaaaay,” Tricia replied, singing the word and ducking back into the kitchen.
Carolyn rounded the counter, stormed past Brody toward the front window and dragged a lace curtain aside to look out at the street.
Sure enough, there were two horses, a buckskin and a bay, saddled and standing untethered at the picket fence. They were systematically devouring the leaves of Natty McCall’s century-old lilac bush.
Carolyn turned on Brody, full of challenge. And heat.
And things it was better not to identify.
“Two people, two horses,” she said tautly. “Let’s take that ride right now, Mr. Creed, and get it over with.”
“‘Get it over with’?” Brody sounded amused—and a little insulted.
“I didn’t promise to like it,” she reminded him. “All I said was that I’d go.” Carolyn indicated her jeans, boots and long-sleeved T-shirt. “And I want to go now.”
“Fine,” Brody said, inclining his head toward the fence, where the horses waited. “We’ll go now.”
Carolyn didn’t even pause to tell Tricia that she was leaving the shop, because then she’d have had to explain why she was leaving, and she wasn’t willing to do that. Steam would probably shoot out of her ears if she tried.
So she strode to the door, wrenched it open and crossed the threshold, then the porch.
“Take the bay,” Brody told her, when, reaching the gate, she finally hesitated. Ire had carried her this far, but now she was at a loss.
“Great,” she bit out.
She gathered the bay’s dangling reins, stuck one foot in the stirrup and mounted with an expertise born of outrage as much as long experience.
Brody was standing on the sidewalk one moment, and sitting easy in the saddle the next. Holding the buckskin’s reins loosely across one palm, he said, “One hour, Carolyn. Anything less than that doesn’t amount to a ride, unless you’re on a pony at the carnival.”
On the ground, Carolyn was uncertain about a great many things.
In the saddle, she ruled. Her confidence, once she was on the back of a horse—any horse—was complete. Unshakable.
This was something she knew, something that came as easily to her as her breathing or the beating of her heart.
