The Cowboy Way: A Creed in Stone Creek / Part Time Cowboy

Melissa put up a hand. In a courtroom, she would have snapped out, “Objection!” In the supermarket parking lot, facing a young woman who’d had a drug-addicted mother and the very elderly Crockett sisters for her main female role models, she took a different tack.

“Hold it,” she said, very quietly. “Byron did get high, consume alcohol, then climb behind the wheel of a car and get into a terrible accident. And someone died in that accident, Andrea.”

Andrea’s eyes widened. She swallowed visibly and then nodded. “I was just telling you what Velda told me,” she said reasonably, softly. “I started writing to Byron, because I know what it’s like to feel all alone, and he wrote back. We got to be friends.” She paused, drew in a breath. “Byron understands how wrong it was, what he did, and so do I.”

Melissa closed her eyes for a moment, surprised to find that they were scalding with tears. “Yes,” she said. She was remembering Chavonne’s funeral, and the graveside service, and how the dead girl’s mother had let out a cry of such raw grief when the coffin was lowered into the ground that Melissa could still hear it, sometimes, in her nightmares.

Andrea stooped a little, peered at Melissa. Moved to touch her arm and then drew back. “Are—are you all right? You look sort of—I don’t know—pale or something.”

Melissa shook her head, not in answer but to indicate that she didn’t want to talk any more that night, and stepped around Andrea to get into the roadster.

It wasn’t until she’d set the grocery bag on the passenger seat, fumbled for her keys, started the engine and driven to the edge of the lot that she looked into her rearview mirror and saw that Andrea hadn’t moved.

She was still standing in exactly the same spot, staring down at the ground.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_16b1a5cd-96bc-51d2-99fe-9ebc21a8a7f2)

MATT, STEVEN AND Zeke the Wonder Dog were up early the next morning, even though it was a Saturday, normally a sleep-in day.

Steven showered, then Matt, and both of them dressed “cowboy,” in jeans and boots. Matt wore a T-shirt, while Steven pulled on an old cotton chambray shirt, a favorite from years ago when he was still riding and roping on the ranch.

“Here’s the plan,” Steven said, sipping from a mug of instant coffee while Matt fed Zeke his morning ration of kibble and put fresh water in his bowl. “We’ll go into town, have some breakfast at the Sunflower Café, or whatever it is, then take a spin by the day camp so you can get a look.”

“Can Zeke come, too?” Matt asked, stroking the animal’s back as he spoke.

Zeke didn’t slow down on the kibble.

“Sure,” Steven replied. “Today, anyway.”

Matt nodded, but it was obvious that he had reservations.

“What?” Steven asked, setting his coffee mug in the sink.

Matt looked up at him, eyes wide with concerns that probably wouldn’t even have occurred to most five-year-olds. “Zeke can go to work with you when I’m in day camp, right? And this fall, after school starts?”

“Right,” Steven said, reaching for the truck keys and his cell phone. “But there will be days when that won’t be possible, Tex.”

“Like if you have to be in court or something?”

Steven smiled, gave the boy’s shoulder a light squeeze. “Like if I have to be in court or something.”

“But sometimes he’ll be out here all alone? Shut up in the bus?”

Steven dropped to his haunches. Some conversations had to be held eye to eye, and this was one of them. “I plan on having the contractors put in a yard and fence it off as soon as the renovations are under way,” he said. “We’ll outfit Zeke with a nice, big doghouse and he’ll be fine while I’m working and you’re at school.”

By then, Zeke had wiped out the kibble and moved on to lap loudly from his water bowl.

“What if the coyotes get him?” Matt asked.

Back home in Colorado, it hadn’t been uncommon for people to lose the occasional pet to coyotes, even in the middle of town; as their habitats shrank, the animals were getting ever bolder. Because they traveled in packs, even large dogs were often at a disadvantage in a confrontation.

“We’ll make sure the fence is real high, so they can’t get over it,” Steven said, straightening up because his knees were beginning to ache a little in the crouch.

“How high?” Matt persisted.

“Really, really high,” Steven promised.

Matt brightened. “Okay,” he said, making for the door, with Zeke right behind him. “Let’s roll.”

Steven laughed and, fifteen minutes later, they were nosing the truck into a parking spot in the lot beside the Sunflower Bakery and Café. Recalling yesterday’s parking ticket, he made sure there were no fire hydrants within fifty feet.

They brought Zeke as far as the front of the restaurant and secured one end of his leash to a pole with a sign on it that read, “Park pets here.” An oversize pie pan full of fresh water waited within reach.

Steven was just straightening his back, about to follow Matt inside the café, when Melissa O’Ballivan came jogging around a corner and up the sidewalk, straight toward him.

She wore pink shorts, a skimpy white T-shirt, and one of those visor caps with no crown. Her abundance of spirally chestnut-brown hair bobbed on top of her head in a ponytail.

Her smile nearly knocked Steven over—even if it was focused on Matt and the dog with such intensity that he might as well have been invisible.

Holy crap, Steven thought, because the ground shook under his feet and the sky tilted at such a strange angle that his equilibrium was skewed. He gave his head a shake, in an effort to clear away some cobwebs.

“Morning,” Melissa said, jogging in place.

All the right things bounced, Steven noticed, grinning down at her like a damn fool. “Morning,” he responded, after clearing his throat.

She looked up at him with a surprised expression in her blue eyes, as though she’d momentarily forgotten that he was standing there. Or never noticed him at all.

She apparently wanted to give that impression, anyway, and he was intrigued.

“Would you mind opening the door?” she asked, unplugging the white earbuds attached to an armband MP3 player from her head.

It took Steven a moment to register what that simple phrase actually meant.

She wanted to go inside the café.

Feeling his neck warm, Steven pushed the door open and held it, so she could jog over the threshold and across to the take-out counter.

Morning greetings and the scents of fresh coffee, baked goods and frying bacon washed over Steven, but starved though he was, he barely noticed. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Melissa O’Ballivan’s springy, perfect little backside.

“Over here!” Matt whooped, mercifully distracting Steven. If he was lucky, maybe nobody had seen him staring like a pervert while the county prosecutor ran in place in front of the counter, placing a breathy order for a bottle of very cold water to go.

The boy had found a table by one of the front windows.

Zeke, just on the other side, put his big paws up on the sill and pressed his nose to the glass.

Steven laughed, and that broke the tension—until Melissa jogged past again, water bottle in hand. A truck driver got up from his booth and opened the door for her, and Steven felt a stab of irritation—or was it plain old ordinary jealousy?

Outside, Melissa trotted by the window, favoring Zeke with a smile Steven wanted for himself.