A Creed in Stone Creek

Ashley, too, was almost continually involved in one fundraising event or another—and their brother, Brad? He was a country-music superstar, even though he’d technically retired around the time he and Meg McKettrick got married. His specialty was writing whopping checks for pretty much any worthy cause—and doing the occasional benefit performance.

“You have the wrong O’Ballivan,” she told Tom, feeling like a slacker. They were overachievers, her sibs, with a tendency to make her look bad. “Talk to Olivia—or Ashley. Better yet, have Brad buy you a parade.”

Tom grinned faintly and then gave his head a sad little shake. “Olivia’s too busy,” he said. “Ashley is out of town. And Brad has his hands full running Stone Creek Ranch—”

“No,” Melissa broke in, to stop the flow. “Really. I wouldn’t be any good at organizing a parade. I’ve watched a lot of them, on TV and right here in Stone Creek. I’ve seen Miracle on 34th Street four million times. But that’s the whole scope of my experience—I wouldn’t know the first thing about putting something like that together.”

The sheriff colored up a little, under the jaw and around his ears. “You think Aunt Ona was an expert on parades, back when she took over? No, ma’am. She just pushed up her sleeves and plunged right in. Learned on the job.”

“There must be someone else who could do this,” Melissa said weakly.

But Tom shook his head again, harder this time. “We got the Food Concession Committee, and the Arts and Crafts Show Committee, and the committee to deal with the carnival folks. Everybody’s either already volunteering, doing something else or out of town.”

Melissa set her jaw. By then, she was starting to feel downright guilty, but that didn’t mean she was going to give in.

Out front, Andrea chirped a sunny greeting to someone. Melissa felt an odd little zip in the air, like the charge before a summer thunderstorm.

“Then I guess you’ll have to cancel the parade this year,” Melissa said.

And that was when the little boy she’d seen at the café that morning, eating pancakes at the counter, popped into her office.

He looked up at Tom, then over at Melissa, his dark violet eyes troubled. His lower lip began to wobble.

“There isn’t going to be a parade?” he asked.

CHAPTER TWO

QUICKLY—BUT NOT QUITE quickly enough, as it turned out—Steven pursued Matt through the open doorway, scooped him up from behind and immediately locked eyeballs with the certifiably hot woman he’d checked out while he and the boy were having breakfast earlier that morning, over at the café.

When their glances connected, his-meets-hers, there was an actual impact, it seemed to Steven. He half expected things to explode all over the place, walls to tumble, ceilings to collapse, founts of fire to shoot up out of the floor, as in some apocalyptic action movie.

Damn, he thought, dazed by the strength of his reaction. He’d known plenty of beautiful women in his time, none of whom had ever affected him in just this way. Was it the amazing body, the face, the crazy mane of thick brown hair, falling past her shoulders in spiral curls, the jarringly blue eyes that seemed to see past all his defenses?

Who knew? He glanced down at the nameplate on her desk.

Melissa O’Ballivan. Prosecutor.

Uh-oh, he thought. Been there, done that.

After what Cindy Ryan had done to him, he’d sworn off dating other lawyers—especially DAs and their assistants.

“Sorry,” Steven said, finally finding his voice and dredging up the patented, lopsided grin that had been serving Creed men well for generations. “We stopped by to pay a parking ticket, and Matt here got away from me.”

It was only then that he noticed the uniformed lawman standing just inside the small room, arms folded, assessing him with a certain noncommittal detachment, as if he might be running through a mental database of wanted criminals, in case he could match up Steven’s face to one of them. Here was a man who took his job seriously.

Maybe he’d been the one to write that ticket and place it neatly under the windshield wiper of Steven’s old truck.

Either way, Steven liked him right off, and figured that liking would stick. His first impressions of people were usually, though not always, accurate ones.

“County Clerk’s office is just down the hall,” the cop said, relaxing visibly. “You can settle up on the ticket there.” That said, he put out his hand in that quintessentially small-town way Steven knew so well. “Tom Parker,” he said.

“Steven Creed,” Steven replied, setting a squirmy Matt on his own two feet.

“How come there isn’t going to be a parade?” Matt piped up. He wheeled to look up at Steven. “You said there would be a parade. And a rodeo, too. That’s the main reason I didn’t run away from home when you told me we were moving here!”

By that time, the spectacularly sexy Ms. O’Ballivan had pushed back her chair and stood, soon rounding the desk to face the boy. There was no telling what she thought of Steven, if he’d even registered on her radar, but the lady had obviously fallen for Matt, hook, line and sinker.

“Hi,” she said, with a smile that tugged at Steven’s gut like a fishhook, even though she was looking down at the child, not at him. “My name is Melissa O’Ballivan. What’s yours?”

“Matt Creed,” the boy responded, somewhat warily because he’d been taught to be careful of strangers, and Steven felt another tug, this time at his emotions. He’d given Matt the choice, when the adoption became final, of keeping his folks’ last name—St. John—or taking on his new father’s. And it still touched him that Matt, who remembered Zack and Jillie with a clarity Steven did everything he could to maintain, had decided to go by Creed.

“Matt,” Steven managed, clearing his throat. He still had that weird feeling going on inside and he wanted to get away, so he could mull it over, come to terms, make some sort of sense of it.

Whatever “it” was.

“Let’s go take care of that parking ticket,” he prompted, after an entirely rhetorical glance at his watch, failing completely to note the time. “We’re due to sign the papers for the ranch in a few minutes.”

“You said there would be a parade,” Matt repeated, turning away from the dazzle of Melissa O’Ballivan to frown up at Steven. The kid could be bone-stubborn when he’d made up his mind about something, which meant the Creed name would suit him just fine.

The lawman, Parker, cleared his throat. Slanted a glance at Ms. O’Ballivan. “Aunt Ona already did most of the work,” he told her. “Laid the groundwork, signed off on the different floats and even arranged for all the permits. Only thing you’d have to do is oversee a couple of meetings, check stuff off on a clipboard. Make sure folks live up to their commitments.”

Melissa laid a hand on top of Matt’s head and ruffled his dark hair slightly. Her shoulders rose and fell as she drew in a big breath and sighed it out, looking cheerfully doomed. “Welcome to Stone Creek, Matt Creed,” she said. “And here’s hoping you’ll enjoy the parade.”

Mollified, Matt punched the air with one small fist and turned to Steven. “Yes!” he said, with a grin.

By then, Steven had pieced the scenario together in his mind, or part of it, at least. Ms. O’Ballivan hadn’t wanted to oversee the upcoming event, but she’d been roped in anyhow—by the sheriff, from the sound of it.

Steven allowed himself a long look at Melissa—an indulgence, considering the way she shook him up. The Realtor who’d sold him the Emerson ranch had touted both the parade and the rodeo as “longstanding community traditions,” in addition to other selling points, and Steven had made a big deal about the festivities so Matt would have something to look forward to, besides the relatively immediate dog and the eventual pony.

“Thanks,” Steven told Melissa, and the word came out sounding gruff.

She made a comical face. “Don’t mention it,” she replied, rueful.

“Maybe I could help out somehow,” Steven heard himself say, as he took Matt’s hand and started to turn away. “Not that I know much about parades.”

“Join the club,” Melissa said, with another of those lethal smiles of hers.

Steven grinned, nodded and managed to peel himself away.

He forgot all about paying the parking ticket, though, because his mind was full of Melissa O’Ballivan, and it was bound to stay that way.

All through the closing, held in a meeting room over at the Cattleman’s Bank, Matt fidgeted. Steven signed papers, handed over a cashier’s check covering the cost of the property in full, probably came across as a man who knew what he was doing.

Adopting a little boy. Quitting the prestigious Denver firm where he’d worked since he’d left the family business. Winding up so far from the Creed ranch outside Lonesome Bend, Colorado, which had been in the family for well over a hundred years, only to buy a run-down spread in another state.

Was he a man who knew what he was doing? Before he’d encountered Ms. O’Ballivan, Steven would have answered with an unqualified “yes.” Now, he wasn’t so sure.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED HERE?” Melissa asked, widening her eyes at Tom Parker and laying the splayed fingers of one hand to her chest. Steven Creed and his little boy, Matt, had probably been gone for all of thirty seconds, but it seemed as if they’d taken all the oxygen in the room away with them, leaving a vacuum.