Heart Of A Cowboy: Creed's Honor / Unforgiven

“You sure you don’t want to have supper with us?”

“I’m sure,” Conner said, turning away from Davis, silently reminding himself that he had horses to feed. “Go on and get out of here.”

Davis sighed, hesitated for a long moment and then left.

Moments later, Conner heard his uncle’s truck start up out front. He went back to thinking about his nonexistent wife while he worked—and damn if she didn’t look a little like Tricia McCall.

* * *

WINSTON SAT ON a windowsill in the kitchen, looking out at the rain. The wind howled around the corners of Natty’s old house, but the cat didn’t react; it took thunder and lightning to scare him.

And there hadn’t been any since Tricia had arrived home, taken a quick shower to ease the chill in her bones and donned sweatpants and an old T-shirt of Hunter’s. Every light in the room was blazing, and she’d even turned on the small countertop TV—something she rarely did. That night, she felt a need for human voices, even if they did belong to newscasters.

Tricia couldn’t help thinking about Valentino, alone at the office, and when she managed to turn off the flow of that guilt-inducing scenario, Conner Creed sneaked into her mind and wouldn’t leave.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she told Winston, opening the oven door to peer in and check on her dinner, a frozen chicken potpie with enough fat grams for three days. “That I should be eating sensibly. But tonight, I want comfort food.”

Winston made a small, snarly sound, and his tail bushed out. He pressed his face against the steamy glass of the window and repeated insistently, “Reowww—”

Tricia frowned as she shut the oven door. And that was when she heard the scratching.

Winston began to pace the wide windowsill like a jungle cat in a cage. His tail was huge now, and his hackles were up.

Again, the scratching sound.

Tricia went to the door, squinting as she approached, but there was no one on the other side of the glass oval.

“What on earth—?” She opened the door and looked down.

Valentino sat on the welcome mat, drenched, gazing hopefully up at her.

“How did you get here?” Tricia asked, stepping back and, to her private relief, not expecting an answer.

Valentino’s coat was muddy, and so were his paws. He walked delicately into Tricia’s kitchen, as though he were worried about intruding.

Winston, to her surprise, didn’t leap on the poor dog with his claws bared, despite all that previous pacing and tail fluffing. He simply sat on his sleek haunches as Tricia closed the door and began grooming himself.

Valentino plunked down in the middle of the floor, dripping and apologetic.

Tricia’s throat tightened, and her eyes burned. Somehow, he’d gotten out of the office, and then found his way through town and straight to her door.

She bent to pat his head. “I’ll be right back with a towel,” she told him. “In the meantime, don’t move a muscle.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_45714c99-bbd0-5a4a-b299-2989e0db283b)

WITHIN THREE SHORT DAYS, during which the rainstorms dwindled and finally passed, leaving the scrubbed-clean sky a polished, heartrending shade of blue, Valentino charmed his way into Tricia’s affections and even won Winston over.

Of course she was still telling herself the Valentino arrangement was temporary that Saturday morning, and she wrote her festive mood off to her lifelong love of autumn and the fact that she would be meeting Sasha’s plane in a couple of hours. She’d been in regular contact with Hunter, though mostly by email, because he was so busy getting ready for a big show at a new gallery on Bainbridge Island. Also, it didn’t hurt that virtually every camping spot and RV space was booked for the following weekend—plus a big group had reserved the whole campground for a Sunday barbecue.

The deposits had fattened Tricia’s bank account considerably, and thus it was with figurative change jingling in her jeans that Tricia loaded Valentino into the back of the Pathfinder a few minutes after 10:00 a.m. and set out for the Denver airport.

She put on a Kenny Chesney CD as soon as she cleared the city limits—this was the only context in which Lonesome Bend, population 5,000, was ever referred to as a “city”—so she and Valentino could rock out during the drive.

Kenny’s voice made her think of Conner Creed, though, and she switched it off after the third track, annoyed. Shouldn’t it be Hunter she had on her mind? Hunter she imagined herself dancing with slow and close to the jukebox in some cowboy bar? After all, she hadn’t seen Conner since their lunch date.

Hunter, on the other hand, had invited her to join him on a cruise to Mexico the week between Christmas and New Year’s, going so far as to buy the tickets and forward them to her as an attachment to one of his brief, manic emails.

Remembering that, she frowned. She was—thrilled. Who wouldn’t be? It was just that he hadn’t consulted her first, had just assumed she’d be willing to drop everything—or worse yet, that she didn’t have any holiday plans in the first place—meet him at LAX on Christmas night, and board the ship the next morning.

She knew a sunny, weeklong respite from a Colorado winter would be welcome when the time came and, besides, all that merry-merry, jing-jing-jingling stuff always gave her a low-grade case of the blues. Sure, she had Natty to celebrate with, but the music and the decorations and the lights and the rest of it made her miss her dad so keenly that her throat closed up, achy-tight. Joe McCall had loved Christmas.

To her mother, Laurel, December 25 was a nonevent at best and an orgy of capitalistic conspicuous consumption at worst. A skilled trauma nurse, too-busy-for-her-own-daughter Mom was always in the thick of some international disaster these days—floods in Pakistan, earthquakes in China, tsunamis in the Pacific, mudslides in South American countries whose names and borders changed with every political coup.

Suffice it to say, Laurel and Tricia weren’t all that close, especially now that Tricia was a grown-up. To be fair, though, except for her parents’ quiet divorce when she was seven, and all the subsequent schlepping back and forth between Colorado and Washington state, her childhood had been a fairly secure one. Until Tricia started college, Laurel had stayed right there in Seattle, working at a major hospital, making the mortgage payments on their small condo without complaint, and showing up for most of her only child’s parent-teacher conferences, dance recitals and reluctant performances in school plays.

If there had been a coolness, a certain distance in Laurel’s interactions with Tricia, well, there were plenty of people who would have traded places with her, too, weren’t there? So what if she’d been a little lonely when she wasn’t staying with Joe and Natty in Lonesome Bend?

She’d had a home, food, decent clothes, a college education.

Not that Laurel considered a BA degree in art history even remotely useful. She’d recommended nursing school, at least until one of those Bring Your Kid to Work things rolled around when Tricia was thirteen. Laurel had been in charge of Emergency Services then, and it was a full moon, and Tricia was so shaken by the E.R. experience, with all its blood and screaming and throwing up, that she’d nearly been admitted herself.

Even now, though, on the rare occasions when they Skyped or spoke on the phone, Laurel was prone to distracted little laments like, “It would be different if you were an artist—your degree would make some kind of sense then—” or “You do realize, don’t you, that this Hunter person is just using you?”

Tightening her hands on the steering wheel, Tricia shook off these reflections, determined not to ruin a happy day by dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed. Better to concentrate on the road to Denver, and Sasha’s much-anticipated visit.

Valentino, meanwhile, sat quietly in the back, watching with apparent interest as mile after flat mile rolled past the Pathfinder’s windows. He was good company, that dog. No trouble at all.

When they reached the airport, and she rolled a window down partway and promised she’d be back before he knew she’d even been gone, he settled himself in for a midmorning nap.

Tricia locked the rig and headed for the nearest bank of elevators, checking her watch as the doors slid open and she stepped inside. Sasha was scheduled to land in less than half an hour.

So far, so good.

* * *

THE BIG TOUR BUS rolled up the dusty road to the Creed ranch house just before noon, and the sight of it made Conner smile. The monstrosity belonged to Steven’s wife Melissa’s famous brother, the country-western singer Brad O’Ballivan, and there was an oversize silhouette of his head painted on one side, along with the singer’s name splashed in letters that probably could have been read from a mile away, or farther.

Davis and Kim had postponed their own road trip as soon as they learned that the Stone Creek branch of the family had decided on a spur-of-the-moment visit, and they were standing right next to Conner, grinning from ear to ear at the prospect of seeing their three grandchildren.

Conner, just as pleased as his aunt and uncle were, had nevertheless been waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop ever since he’d learned that Brody was headed home, with Joleen Williams in tow. Several days had gone by since Malcolm had broken the news on the loading dock at the feed store, and there’d been no sign of David and Bathsheba in the interim, but Conner remained on his guard just the same. Brody would show up in Lonesome Bend, if not on the ranch, that was a given; it was only a question of when.

The Bradmobile came to a squeaky-braked stop in between the main ranch house and the barn, and the main door opened with a hydraulic whoosh. Six-year-old Matt and his faithful companion, a dog named Zeke, if Conner recalled correctly, burst through the opening.

Sparing a grin for his “Uncle Conner” as he dashed straight past him, the little boy hurtled off the ground like a living rocket, and Davis, laughing, caught the child in his arms.

“Hey, boy,” he said.

Steven got out of the bus next, turning to extend a hand to his spirited wife, Melissa, a pretty thing with a great figure, a dazzling smile and a law degree.