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“You gonna keep him?” Conner ventured, as Valentino trotted out of the back door, joined the group and sniffed Barney from head to tail.
“Yeah,” Brody said. “I’ll keep him. Unless his original owner tracks him down, anyway. Doc’s assistant took his picture, and she’ll upload it onto several lost-pet websites, just in case...”
“But?” Conner prompted.
“But my gut says he’s in need of a home.”
“Mine, too,” Conner agreed. He had been frowning until then, but suddenly, the grin was back. “It’ll be good for you,” he preached. “The responsibility of looking after the poor critter, I mean.”
The words, though he knew they were well-meant, raised Brody’s hackles a little just the same. Was he going to be the Irresponsible One for the rest of his life, while Conner got to play the Good Brother?
Before he could figure out a way to answer, Davis came barreling down the hill in his truck from his and Kim’s place. Kim rode beside him, her smile visible even through the dusty grunge covering the windshield.
“Kim’s pinch-hitting for Tricia today at the shop,” Conner said.
Brody felt a pang of alarm, remembering how tuckered out his sister-in-law had seemed the day before. “Tricia isn’t having trouble, is she?”
“No,” Conner replied, raising a hand to greet the new arrivals. “She just enjoyed yesterday so much that she wanted today to be just like it.”
Brody chuckled, partly amused and partly relieved.
An instant later, though, the worry was back. Women were fragile creatures, it seemed to him. Lisa, for instance, couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds sopping wet; she hadn’t stood a chance against two tons of speeding steel, not driving that little car of hers.
He’d always had access to his inheritance and his share of the ranch profits, even when he was staying as far away from Lonesome Bend as he could. Why hadn’t he gotten her a sturdier rig to drive?
“Brody,” Conner said suspiciously. “Where’s your head right now?”
“You know where,” Brody replied, as Davis parked the truck and he and Kim got out of the vehicle and started toward them. Kim was wearing a lightweight sweater with big pockets, where her impossibly small dogs, Smidgeon and Little Bit, were riding.
Barney whimpered and moved behind Brody, leaning against the backs of his legs. He could feel the animal trembling.
Seeing that, Kim smiled, crouched down and set the two Yorkies on the ground. Ignoring Valentino, who was probably considered old news by now, they wagged their stumpy little tails and one of them growled comically.
“Now, come on out here,” Kim cajoled, addressing Barney. “Smidgeon and Little Bit aren’t going to hurt you.”
Kim definitely had a way with animals, and Barney’s reaction was proof of that. Probably drawn by her gentleness, as well as his own curiosity, he came out of hiding to stand at Brody’s side. His plume of a tail wagged once, tentatively.
The Yorkies nosed him over and then lost interest and tried to start a game of tag with Valentino. They were absolutely fearless, those two. Or maybe their brains were just so small that they couldn’t grasp the difference between their size and Valentino’s.
“Come have supper with us tonight,” Kim told Brody, when she was standing upright again. “You look a little ribby to me, like this dog.”
Brody’s mouth watered at the mere suggestion of Kim’s cooking, not to mention a chance to avoid another lonely evening.
“Is this a setup?” he asked good-naturedly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that everybody was hoping he and Carolyn would get together.
“Of course it is,” Kim replied with a laugh, looking at Brody but slipping an arm around Davis’s waist and giving him a brief squeeze. “Why fight it?”
Brody laughed, too, despite the little thrill that quickened in the pit of his stomach at the thought of being in the same house with Carolyn. He folded his arms and countered, “Why not?”
Kim punched him. “You’re just like your uncle,” she said.
Whatever that meant.
That he was a stubborn cuss, probably.
The quality came free with the Creed name, one to a customer but guaranteed for life.
Conner and Davis, meanwhile, moved off toward the house, where Tricia surely had a pot of coffee brewing.
Smidgeon, Little Bit and Valentino ambled along after them, leaving Brody and Kim in the yard, with Barney.
“Carolyn’s probably wise to your tricks, Kim,” Brody ventured, serious now, his voice a little husky. “She’ll know you’ve invited me to supper, and she’ll think of some excuse to get out of it.”
Kim, still a striking woman in her mid-fifties, shook her head and mimicked his stance by folding her own arms. “Could you be any more negative, Brody Creed?” she asked. “You and Carolyn are perfect for each other. Everybody seems to know that but the two of you.”
Brody recalled kissing Carolyn the day before, and an aftershock went through him. When it was over, she’d looked as if he’d slapped her, and he’d made some smart-ass remark about not being sorry for doing it.
Oh, yeah. He was zero-for-zero in Carolyn’s books, no doubt about it.
Kissing her had only made things worse.
He just hadn’t been able to resist, that was all.
“Brody?” Kim prompted, evidently reading his face.
He smiled, laid a hand on Kim’s shoulder. “I’m all right,” he told her. “Stop worrying about me, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, in a tone of bright irony. “Are you coming to our place for supper tonight or not?” Not waiting for an answer, Kim added, “Six-thirty, on the dot and don’t be late.” She looked around, parodied a frown. “If Davis Creed thinks he gets to keep Smidgeon and Little Bit with him while I’m in town, covering for Tricia at the shop, he’s got another think coming.”
With that, she turned and headed resolutely for the house.
Brody watched her go, one side of his mouth quirked up in a grin. It was anybody’s guess whether Carolyn would accept Kim’s supper invitation or make up some excuse to get out of it, but he sure hoped it would be the former.
He wanted to see Carolyn again, even though the idea pretty well scared the crap out of him.
“Women,” he told Barney ruefully.
Barney gave a little yip of agreement.
Brody chuckled, bent to ruffle the dog’s ears and the two of them started for the house, where the others were gathered and the coffee was on.
* * *
“YOU HAVE DARK CIRCLES under your eyes,” Kim announced, the moment she stepped over the threshold at the shop. “Aren’t you sleeping well?”
Carolyn smiled as her friend took the pair of tiny dogs from her sweater pockets and set them down carefully on the floor, where they proceeded to romp like a couple of kittens.
Winston, long since resigned to the occasional presence of the canine contingent, ignored them.
“I slept just fine, thank you very much,” Carolyn lied, in belated reply to Kim’s question. She’d eventually managed to get to sleep again the night before, but she’d promptly tumbled right back into a variation of her dream. This time, with the added fillip of Brody riding through a conglomeration of suitors and shopping carts on horseback, reaching her side and then leaning down to hook an arm around her and haul her up into the saddle in front of him.
The dream hadn’t stopped there, either. With no noticeable transition, Brody and Carolyn were alone in a forest, both lying naked in a stand of deep, summer-fragrant grass, making love.
She’d awakened in the throes of a very real orgasm, which was downright embarrassing, even if she was alone at the time.
“I don’t believe you,” Kim said, moving behind the sales counter to put away her purse.
Smidgeon and Little Bit were rolling across the center of the floor now, in a merry little blur of shiny fur and pink topknot ribbon.
Carolyn, thinking of the spontaneous climax, was blushing. “Would I lie to you?” she retorted, with an attempt at a light tone.
There weren’t any customers in the shop yet, and she’d been keeping her mind off the nightmare/dream by catching up on the bookkeeping on the store’s computer.
“Depends,” Kim replied mischievously. “How about joining Davis and me for supper tonight? I’m thawing out a batch of my world-famous chicken-and-pork tamales.”
A bar of that old song “Suspicion” played in Carolyn’s head. “Hard to resist,” she admitted. Kim’s tamales were fantastic. “Are Conner and Tricia coming, too?”
Kim nodded, but she averted her eyes and was busying her hands rearranging costume jewelry in the glass case.
“And Brody?” Carolyn asked, rather enjoying herself, despite all her nerves being on red alert.
“Maybe,” Kim said, her manner still evasive. “Did you know he adopted a dog? Brody, I mean? It’s a very good sign. He really is serious about settling down in Lonesome Bend—”
“Dogs travel pretty well,” Carolyn said, amused and, at the same time, wickedly excited over the perfectly ordinary prospect of sitting across a supper table from Brody Creed.
The bastard.
Kim straightened, looked at her directly. Her smile was a little weak. “You think he’s planning to leave again? Even though he’s building that big house and a fancy barn to go with it?”
Carolyn’s casual shrug was, in reality, anything but casual. “He could always sell the house and barn, if he wanted to move on,” she reasoned. In truth, though, she didn’t like the idea of Brody going back to his other life any more than Kim did, and that surprised her. The prospect should have been a relief, shouldn’t it?
Kim’s gentle blue eyes filled with tears. “Brody’s had a tough time of it,” she said.
Carolyn needed a few moments to recover from that tidbit—she’d always imagined Brody whooping it up, as the cowboys liked to say, riding bulls and winning gleaming buckles and bedding a different woman every night.
“How so?” she asked, finally, in an oddly strangled voice.
Kim sniffled, squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “I can’t say,” she told Carolyn, in a forthright tone. “I’m not supposed to know what Brody went through, and neither is Davis. He’d be furious if he knew Conner had told us.”
“Oh, boy,” Carolyn said.
“He’ll tell you himself, one of these days,” Kim said, with new certainty. “And that’s the way it should be.”
Just then, the bell over the front door jingled and Smidgeon and Little Bit ran, yapping, to greet whomever was there.
Kim rolled her eyes and chased after them. “Little devils,” she muttered, with abiding affection.
Carolyn smiled, but on the inside, she was shaken.
She knew better than to go to supper at her friends’ place, since it was a given that Brody would be there. Just being around him was playing with fire, especially in light of that stolen kiss—and last night’s dream.
She’d be there, just the same.
Maybe she’d take in the gypsy skirt—just baste it to fit temporarily—and wear that.
* * *
BRODY WATCHED WITH a combination of affection and envy, that evening, in Kim and Davis’s kitchen, while Conner and Tricia flirted like a pair of teenagers.
It was enough to make Brody roll his eyes.
Get a room, he wanted to say.
Davis, sitting beside him at the unset table, nudged him with one elbow. “You remember how it was with those two?” Brody’s uncle asked, keeping his voice low. “When they first noticed each other, I mean?”
“I remember,” Brody said, grinning a little. A stranger would have given odds that Conner and Tricia would never get together, but everybody who knew them wondered when the wedding would be.
Was Carolyn going to show up for supper or not?
He hoped so.
He hoped not.
“You and Carolyn remind me of them,” Davis said, with a twinkle in his eyes.
That got Brody’s attention, all right. He swiveled in his chair to look at his uncle with narrowed eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said,” Davis replied, undaunted. “You know me, son. If I say it, I mean it.”
Tricia snapped a dish towel at Conner, who laughed, and the dogs all started barking, while an apron-wearing Kim tried to shush the lot.
It was happy chaos.
It was a family.
Again, Brody felt that bittersweet sense of mingled gratitude and loneliness.
“Give things a chance, boy,” Davis told him, pushing back his chair and heading for the back door. His uncle had always been able to read him and, clearly, that hadn’t changed.
Brody hadn’t heard the car drive up, what with all the barking and shushing, dish-towel snapping and laughing, but Davis must have.
He opened the door just as Carolyn was raising one hand to knock.
She looked shy and sweet standing there, wearing black jeans and a gossamer white shirt. Her sun-streaked hair was pulled back in a French braid and, unless Brody missed his guess, she had on just a touch of makeup, too.
“Hi,” she said to Davis, with a little wobble in her voice, shoving a large plastic food container into his hands and not sparing so much as a glance for Brody. “I brought pasta salad. It’s from the deli at the supermarket, but I’m sure it’s good.”
“That’s fine,” Davis said, in that Sam Elliott voice of his, sounding amused. “Come on in and make yourself at home.”
