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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 message-box 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 (#uf7c115c5-a9d7-5b32-aee2-ae56f0742b88)
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 cotton-print 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.”
