The Creed Legacy

“That’s fine,” Davis said, in that Sam Elliott voice of his, sounding amused. “Come on in and make yourself at home.”

Conner and Tricia knocked off the prelude to foreplay to greet Carolyn—Conner with a smile, Tricia with a hug. When Kim joined in, it was like something out of a reality-show reunion.

All Brody could do was wait, though he did remember enough of his manners to stand in the presence of a lady.

Carolyn finally forced herself, visibly, to look at him. Pink color pulsed in her cheeks and hot damn, she looked good.

“Hello, Brody,” she said.

“Carolyn,” he replied, with a nod of acknowledgment.

Brody immediately grew two left feet and felt his tongue wind itself into a knot.

It was junior high school all over again.

Only worse.

In junior high, it had been all about speculation. As a man, he knew, only too well, what it was like to kiss this woman, to make love to her.

Stand in a puddle and grab hold of a live wire, he thought.

That’s what it’s like.

“Kim says everything’s fine at the shop,” Tricia told Carolyn, with a sparkling little laugh. “I was hoping I’d be missed a little bit, though.”

Carolyn smiled, no longer looking quite so much like a doe poised to run after catching the scent of a predator on the wind. “Oh, you were definitely missed,” she said.

“Absolutely,” Kim agreed cheerfully, opening one of the big double ovens to check on the tamales.

They smelled so good that Brody’s stomach rumbled.

Things settled down to a dull roar over the next few minutes—Carolyn and Tricia washed up at the sink and began setting the table, while Davis pulled the corks on a couple of bottles of vintage wine.

It came as no surprise to Brody—and probably not to Carolyn, either—that they wound up sitting side by side at the huge table in the next room. The others made sure of it, the way they always did.

Brody and Carolyn were so close that they bumped elbows a couple of times. The scent of her—some combination of baby powder and flowers and a faint, citrusy spice—made him feel buzzed, if not drunk, which was weird because he let the wine bottle go by without pouring any for himself.

Tricia passed on it, too, of course, being pregnant.

Carolyn, by contrast, seemed uncommonly thirsty. She nibbled at the salad, and then the tamales and Kim’s incomparable Mexican rice and refried beans, but she seemed to be hitting the wine pretty hard.

“So, anyway,” Kim said, her voice rising above the others. “Carolyn signed up for Friendly Faces—that dating website—and she’s practically under siege, there are so many men wanting to meet her.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Brody saw Carolyn go pink and then mauve. Obviously, she hadn’t expected Kim to spill the frijoles in front of God and everybody.

Brody wanted to chuckle. He also wanted to stand on Carolyn’s front porch with a shotgun and make sure no other man got past him.

“Oops,” Kim said, widening her eyes. She’d let the news slip on purpose, and everybody knew it, but since the horse was already out of the barn, so to speak, that was that. “Sorry.”

Davis gave his wife a look.

Carolyn looked down at her lap, still red and making no pretense of eating.

Casually, Brody leaned over, took hold of the nearest wine bottle and refilled her glass. She glanced at him with an expression of mingled desperation and gratitude and practically drained the thing in a few gulps.

Brody bit back a grin. Well, there was one bright spot to the situation, he reflected. Now he had the perfect excuse to drive Carolyn home, because she was obviously in no condition to get behind the wheel.

An awkward silence fell, broken only by the clinking of silverware against colorful pottery plates.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Tricia piped up, breaking the verbal stalemate. “The dating service thing, I mean. More and more people are meeting their soul mates online these days. Why, the statistics—”

Carolyn looked so utterly miserable by then that Brody felt downright sorry for her. She swallowed hard, raised her chin and bravely interrupted, “It’s only a trial membership. I was curious, that’s all.”

“She’s swamped with guys wanting to get to know her,” Kim said, warming to the topic all over again.

Another wine bottle was opened and passed around.

Carolyn sloshed some into her glass, avoiding Brody’s eyes when she shoved the bottle at him to keep it moving.

“Are you sure you ought to…?”

At last, Carolyn looked at him. She flashed like a highway flare on a dark night, because she was so angry.

Because she was so beautiful.

“I’m of legal age, Brody Creed,” she said, slurring her words only slightly.

The others were talking among themselves, a sort of distant hum, a thing apart, like a radio playing in the next house or the next street, the words indistinct.

“Besides,” Carolyn went on briskly, before he could reply, “I’ve only had two glasses.”

“Four,” Brody said quietly, “but who’s counting?”

“It’s not as if I normally drink a lot,” she informed him, apropos of he wasn’t sure what.

“Have another tamale,” Brody counseled, keeping his voice down even though they still seemed to be alone in a private conversational bubble, him and Carolyn, with the rest of the outfit someplace on the dim periphery of things. “I don’t want another tamale,” Carolyn told him.

“You’re going to be sick if you don’t eat something,” Brody reasoned. He didn’t think he’d used that particular cajoling tone since Steven and Melissa’s last visit, when he’d been appointed to feed his cousin’s twin sons. He’d had to do some smooth talking to get them to open up for the pureed green beans.

“That’s my problem, not yours,” Carolyn said stiffly.

“Around here,” Brody said, “we look out for each other.”

She made a snorting sound and tried to snag another passing wine bottle, but Brody got hold of it first and sent it along its way.

That made her furious. She colored up again and her eyes flashed, looking as if they might short out from the overload.

Brody merely held her gaze. “Eat,” he said.