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

Melissa picked up the telephone handset, squinted at the written message with Steven’s name on it and dialed.

While she waited, a miniature Cirque de Soleil sprang to life in the pit of her stomach, performing death-defying spins and leaps and dives.

This was ridiculous. Maybe Steven Creed was attractive—okay, he was definitely attractive—but he was a mortal man, not a Greek god, for heaven’s sake.

Then again, that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was all man—too much man—maybe even more man than she could handle.

As if.

“Steven Creed,” he said suddenly, startling Melissa. She realized she hadn’t actually expected him to answer the call—she’d planned on leaving a message. Counted, inexplicably, on that little buffer of time.

“H-hello,” she responded, all but croaking the word. Get a grip, she told herself silently. You’re a grown woman, dammit, not a teenager.

“Melissa?”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. Squeezed her eyes shut tight. “It’s me. I’m sorry—I was planning to answer your call earlier, but then something came up and I had to leave the office and—”

“I just wanted to invite you to lunch,” Steven said, with a smile in his voice, when she bogged down in the middle of her sentence. She’d have sworn he knew how rattled she was, and that only made her more so. “I’ll understand, of course, if you’re busy or something. It’s pretty short notice.”

Say you’re busy, advised Melissa’s inner chicken little. He gave you an out.

“I’m not busy,” she said aloud.

“Great,” Steven responded. “Meet you at the Sunflower Café at noon?”

Melissa checked her watch. It was quarter after eleven, so she had forty-five minutes to pull herself together. “Perfect,” she said, sounding way more perky than she considered necessary.

Her “perky” quota was normally zero. Add Steven Creed to the equation, though, and she was about as sedate as a middle-school cheerleader at the first big game of the season.

“See you then,” Steven said. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Melissa said, a few seconds after he’d hung up.

She took several sips of her rapidly cooling coffee, then squared her shoulders, raised her chin and started answering the messages Andrea had given her earlier.

A big believer in tackling the least appealing task first, she dialed Bea Brady’s number. The older woman answered on the second ring, but not with a hello, or her name, the way most people would have done.

“It’s about time you called me back, Melissa O’Ballivan!” she snapped, instead.

Melissa’s temper surged, nearly breaking the surface of her professional composure, but she managed a pleasant tone when she replied. “I’m at work, Bea,” she said. “Parade Committee business should probably be handled after hours.”

“How do you know I’m calling about the parade?” Bea demanded, every bit as surly as before.

Melissa reread the message, hoping she’d transcribed Andrea’s handwriting correctly. “It says here that you’re concerned about someone purchasing toilet paper?”

“Adelaide Hillingsley bought a truck load of the stuff at one of those box stores in Flagstaff,” Bea blurted. “She lives by herself. There’s only one bathroom in her house. What would one woman be doing with so much tissue if she didn’t plan on flouting the rules and using it to decorate the Chamber of Commerce float for the parade?”

Melissa closed her eyes, sat back in her chair and counted mentally until she was sure she wouldn’t laugh. Adelaide was a force to be reckoned with; although she’d originally been hired as a receptionist, she’d been running the organization for years.

“Maybe you should ask Adelaide about that, Bea,” Melissa said, when she dared to speak at all. “Since it’s committee business and I’m at work—”

“Oh, don’t give me that, Melissa O’Ballivan,” Bea broke in. “Everybody knows you don’t have anything to do most of the time anyway!”

Melissa counted again, but this time it was to keep from yelling.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, when she’d reached the double digits.

Bea backed off a little. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she conceded. She was a nice person, despite being a bit on the pushy side—as president of the local Garden Club, and an old-line Stone Creeker, she was used to being in charge, getting things done, that was all.

“I’m glad,” Melissa said pleasantly, thinking the other woman’s remark might not have stung so much if it wasn’t so damn true.

“You’ll speak to Adelaide? Remind her that the Parade Committee specifically voted never to use toilet paper in the construction of a float? It would be so tacky—”

“I’ll talk to Adelaide,” Melissa said, because she had other calls to make and she needed to move on to the next one. None of them were any more important or pressing than this one but, still. She was drawing a paycheck, and she was on county time.

“When? When will you talk to her?”

Melissa’s cuts and bruises tuned up again, all at once, in a dull, throbbing chorus. “Tonight,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow. But soon, Bea. I promise.”

In those moments, Melissa went from wishing Tom would win their bet to wishing he’d lose and take over the Parade Committee.

Fat chance.

Bea was silent for a beat or two, but then she huffed out a sigh. “All right,” she said. “But you mark my words, Melissa. Stone Creek will be the laughingstock of the whole state of Arizona if Adelaide has her way.” She paused to sputter indignantly, then finished with “Toilet paper, for heaven’s sake. That woman is obsessed with toilet paper.”

Melissa bit the inside of her lower lip as a means of corralling the obvious response—that Adelaide wasn’t the only one with an obsession—before promising to attend to the matter at the first opportunity.

By the time she’d made the remaining calls, noon had rolled around and it was time to meet Steven for lunch over at the Sunflower Café. Because the small restaurant was close, and she thought the walk might be a remedy for some of her soreness, let alone her frustrations, she decided to leave her car at the office.

She and Steven arrived at the same time.

“I like the look,” he said, taking in her skirt and sweater with a slow sweep of his eyes as they stood on the sidewalk in front of the café.

She let that pass. “Where’s Matt?”

One side of his mouth kicked up in a grin. He looked better than good in his white shirt and well-fitting blue jeans. “At day camp,” he replied, with a grin dancing in his eyes. “I spent the morning with an architect from Flagstaff. I’d like to have the house finished and the new barn up by fall.”

Melissa looked down at the community dog dish, filled with clear water, and stopped just short of asking about Zeke.

Steven smiled again, opened the door for her, and held it wide. “Zeke’s at home,” he said, evidently reading her mind. “And he’s fine.”

It was disconcerting, the way this man could guess what she was thinking. What if he figured out that, even against her better judgment, just being around him made her want his body? She looked away quickly.

The café was crowded, as it usually was at that time of day, but Tessa seated them right away, at a corner table.

Melissa immediately reached for a menu, although her stomach was doing that nervous thing again.

“I had a great time last night, Melissa,” Steven said. “So did Matt.”