Heart Of A Cowboy

Brody finally stepped back so Conner could get by him, and they both fell into the old routine of doing the usual barn chores, feeding the horses, switching some of the animals to other stalls so the empty ones could be mucked out.

“I meant it, Conner,” Brody said gruffly, and after a long time. “This place is home, and it’s time for me to buckle down and make something of the rest of my life.”

Surprised by the sincerity in his brother’s voice, Conner, in the process of pushing a wheelbarrow full of horse manure out to the pile in back of the barn, a fact that would strike him as ironic in a few moments, stopped and looked at the other man with narrowed eyes.

Brody’s gaze was clear, and he wasn’t smirking.

Conner almost got suckered in.

But then he reminded himself that this was Brody he was dealing with, a man who’d rather climb a tall tree to tell a lie than stand flat-footed on the ground and tell the truth.

“Brody?” he said.

“What?” Brody asked, a wary note in his voice.

“Go to hell,” Conner answered, wheeling away with the load of manure.

* * *

“YES!” SASHA CRIED, glowing and fairly jamming Tricia’s cell phone under her nose as she searched the commercial real-estate listings on the internet in her kitchen, hoping to discover that places like River’s Bend and the derelict drive-in theater were finally starting to sell again. “Mom and Dad landed in Paris without a problem, and they think it would be wonderful if you and I went horseback riding on the Creed ranch next Sunday!”

Discouraged—there were no properties like hers for sale online, it seemed—Tricia smiled nonetheless. Above their heads, a light rain began to patter softly against the roof, and twilight, it seemed to Tricia, was falling a little ahead of schedule. Valentino and Winston were curled up together on Valentino’s dog bed over in the corner, like the best of friends, snoozing away.

“Yep,” Tricia said, accepting the phone and reading the text message for herself. “That’s what it says, all right.” She felt resignation—she’d been hoping Diana would refuse to grant Sasha permission to ride strange horses—but there was also a little thrill of illicit anticipation at the prospect of spending time with Conner Creed.

Of course, it would have helped if she’d known the first thing about horses, and if the very thought of perching high off the rocky ground in some hard saddle didn’t scare her half to death. Sasha, perceptive beyond her tender years, rested a hand on Tricia’s arm and looked at her with knowing compassion. “You can do this, Aunt Tricia,” she said earnestly. “And I’ll be right there to take care of you, the whole time.”

Tricia’s heart turned over. The child was only ten, but she meant what she said—she’d do her best to keep Tricia safe. And that was way too much responsibility for one little girl to carry.

“I’ll be just fine,” Tricia assured Sasha, giving her a quick, one-armed hug.

Sasha’s attention had shifted to the computer monitor. “How are things in the real-estate business?” she asked, again sounding much older than she was.

Tricia sighed. “Not terrific, I’m afraid,” she replied.

“Dad says the economy is coming back, no thanks to the politicians,” Sasha told her. “He says he’s nonpartisan, but Mom says he doesn’t trust any elected official.”

Tricia smiled and pushed back her chair, being careful not to bump Sasha. Ten years old, and the kid was using words liked nonpartisan. There was no question that homeschooling worked in her case, but was she growing up too fast? Childhood was fleeting and, sure, knowledge was power and all that, but Tricia couldn’t help considering the possible trade-offs.

None of your business, she reminded herself silently, and turned up the wattage on her smile a little as she touched Sasha’s nose. “Let’s walk Valentino once more and then start supper.”

Sasha glanced at the window and gave a little shiver. “But it’s starting to rain,” she protested, not quite whining, but close.

“You’re from Seattle,” Tricia pointed out. “You won’t melt in a little rain.”

“But Valentino is sleeping,” Sasha reasoned, widening her eyes. “Maybe we shouldn’t disturb him. And if we go out, Winston will be all alone in the apartment.”

Tricia crossed to the kitchen door, took her jacket off one of the pegs and held Sasha’s out to her. “Winston,” she said, “will find ways to amuse himself while we’re gone.” Valentino awakened, apparently sensing that there was a walk in the offing, and stretched luxuriously. He went to Tricia, waited patiently for her to fasten the leash to his collar.

Sasha resigned herself to the task ahead and pulled on her coat. Her mind was like quicksilver, and she immediately backtracked to the Seattle reference Tricia had made earlier. “You’re from Seattle, too,” she said. “Are you ever coming back?”

“Yes,” Tricia answered, though there were times when she wondered if she’d ever get out of Lonesome Bend. It wasn’t just the properties her dad had left her—she’d made a lot of friends in town and, besides, the thought of leaving Natty alone in that big house bothered her.

They stepped out onto the landing and found themselves in a misty drizzle and a crisp breeze. It wasn’t quite dark, but the streetlights had already come on, and a car splashed by, the driver tooting the horn in jaunty greeting.

Busy descending the outside stairs, Tricia and Sasha both took a moment to wave in response.

“Who was that?” Sasha inquired, taking Valentino’s leash from Tricia when they reached the bottom.

Tricia laughed. “I have no idea.”

“When, though?” Sasha asked.

Tricia blinked. The child did not do segues. “Huh?”

“When are you moving back to Seattle?” Sasha sounded mildly impatient now, as they crossed the lawn to step onto the sidewalk.

“When I sell the campground and the drive-in theater,” Tricia answered, putting herself between the little girl and the dog and the rain-washed street. “And, of course, I’ll have to make sure my great-grandmother will be looked after.”

“Oh,” Sasha said, her expression serious as she weighed Tricia’s reply. “Then are you going to marry Hunter?”

Tricia sighed. For all their “carrying on,” as Natty referred to it, she and Hunter had never actually talked about marriage. “Do you want me to?” she asked, stalling.

To her surprise, Sasha made a face. “No. I just want you to live close to us again, so we can do things together, the way we used to.”

Tricia didn’t pursue her goddaughter’s obvious distaste for Hunter, though she felt a slight sting of resentment toward Diana for passing her unfair antipathy toward him on to the child. “You’re going to be living in Paris for a few years, remember? So we won’t be seeing each other as often anyway.”

Sasha looked up at her with big, worried eyes. “I miss you when we’re not together, Aunt Tricia,” she said. “You are coming to visit us in Paris, aren’t you? We could go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and visit the Louvre—”

“I’ll do my best,” Tricia promised quietly, hoping Sasha would cheer up a little. “France is a long way from here, though, and the airline ticket would cost a lot of money.”

“I’ll bet you could get a ticket with Dad’s frequent-flier miles. He’s got a million of them.”

“We’ll see,” Tricia hedged, as they all stopped to wait for Valentino to sniff the base of a streetlight.

Sasha changed the subject again, this time to the horseback ride on the Creed ranch, scheduled for the following Sunday afternoon. She was practically skipping along the sidewalk, she was so excited.

Tricia listened and smiled, gently taking Valentino’s leash from Sasha, but behind that smile, she was wishing for a gracious way to get out of the whole thing.

With Natty away, she really should help run the rummage sale and chili feed, and she’d already be super busy at the campground and RV park, with so many customers reserving spots. The biggest job—cleaning up—would come after everyone had gone home, but Murphy’s Law would be in full operation throughout the weekend, too. Things invariably went wrong with this electrical hookup or that part of the antiquated plumbing. Such situations made for unhappy campers, and Tricia had to be on call to make sure the repairs were done promptly.

Where, she wondered now, had she thought she would get the time to go riding on the Creed ranch? And what if she got hurt?

Valentino made good use of his walk, and Tricia, carrying her trusty plastic bag, picked up after him.

Back at the apartment, Valentino and Winston greeted each other as joyfully as if they’d expected to be apart forever, touching their noses and then retiring to the dog bed again.

Tricia washed up and started supper—a simple meat loaf made from canned soup—and Sasha, having been granted permission, sat down in front of the computer and went online to check her email.

It seemed to Tricia that kids today came into the world already hard-wired for all forms of technology. When she was Sasha’s age, she reflected, personal computers were just coming into common use, and things like digital cameras and MP3 players hadn’t even been invented yet. She’d listened to CDs and watched movies on VHS and wondered how her parents, not to mention her great-grandmother, had gotten by with vinyl records and analog TV.

She was considering all this, and keeping one eye on Sasha and the display on the computer monitor, plus chopping vegetables for a salad to go with the already-baking meat loaf, when the wall phone jangled.

“Hello?”

“It’s you, dear,” Natty’s quavery voice responded, with relief. Whom, Tricia wondered, had her great-grandmother expected to answer?

Natty promptly answered that unspoken question, as it happened. “I meant to call Conner Creed,” she said. “I must have dialed your number out of habit. How are you, dear? How is Winston?”

Tricia barely registered the words that came after I meant to call Conner Creed, but she managed to get the gist of them. “Winston and I are both doing fine. How are you?”

Natty sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve developed a little hitch in my get-along,” she said. Then, almost too quickly, she added, “Not that it’s anything serious, of course. I planned to be back in Lonesome Bend before the weekend, so I could oversee the chili making, but it seems my heartbeat is a tiny bit irregular and the doctors don’t want me traveling just yet.”

Tricia was so alarmed that she forgot to ask why Natty wanted to call Conner. “Your heartbeat is irregular? I don’t like the sound of that—”

“I’ll be fine,” Natty broke in, chirpy as a bird. “Don’t you dare waste a moment worrying about me.”

Tricia closed her eyes, opened them again. Forced a smile that she hoped would be audible in her voice. “I have a visitor,” she said, and proceeded to tell her great-grandmother all about Sasha and the move to Paris. “Oh,” honor compelled her to add, at the tail end of the conversation, “and I’m fostering a dog. I hope you don’t mind. He’s really very well behaved and Winston seems to like him a lot.”

“I didn’t object to Rusty,” Natty said, sounding less shaky-voiced than before and thereby lifting Tricia’s spirits, “and I certainly won’t object to this one. You’re alone too much. A dog is at least some company.”

Sasha, eavesdropping shamelessly, frowned.

When Natty and Tricia finally said goodbye, Sasha planked herself in front of Tricia, hands on her hips. “You’re just fostering Valentino?” Sasha demanded. “He doesn’t get to stay with you?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

CONNER, WHO HAD taken his sandwich and his can of beer out onto the porch so he could watch the rain fall while he ate—and, in the process, ignore Brody—fumbled for his ringing cell phone, juggled it and finally rasped a gruff “Hello?” into the speaker.

His favorite elderly lady announced herself in a perky tone. “Natty McCall here,” she said brightly. “I am speaking to Conner, aren’t I?”

He chuckled. “You are,” he said. Seated in the wooden swing some ancestor had added, Conner shifted to set the beer and his sandwich plate aside on a small wicker table. “Are you back in town, Natty, or do we have to get by without you for a little while longer?”

“You always were a charmer,” Natty said, all aflutter. “Alas, I’ve been detained in Denver for a little longer, and I have a favor to ask.”

Conner smiled at her terminology—the word detained made it sound as if she’d been arrested. “Have you been carousing around the Mile High City again, Natty?” he teased. “Riding mechanical bulls in honky-tonks and the like?”

She tittered at that, well aware that he was joking, but probably a little bit flattered to be thought capable of walking on the wild side, too. “I do declare,” she said, and he could actually hear a blush in her voice.

That was when the screen door creaked on its hinges, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brody step out onto the porch. “You know you’re my best girl,” he told her. “What’s the favor?”

Natty was warming to her subject; there was a sense of revving up in the way she spoke—it reminded him of the toy cars and trucks he and Brody had as kids, the kind a kid winds up by rolling them fast and hard on the floor before letting them speed away. “Nothing big,” she said. “I’d like you to check on my house now and then, that’s all. Just to make sure everything’s all right with—well—with the plumbing and things of that sort.”

Conner raised his brows slightly, avoiding Brody’s gaze, though he could see out of the corner of his eye that his brother was leaning idly against the porch rail, rain dripping from the eaves in a gray curtain behind him, his arms loosely folded. He wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t listening in.

“The plumbing?” Conner echoed, searching his memory for any occasion when Natty had expressed concern about the pipes in her house, to him, anyway.

It crossed his mind that the old woman might be up to some matchmaking between him and Tricia, but he quickly dismissed the thought as unworthy of Natty.

“Pipes can freeze, you know,” Natty fretted, her voice still picking up speed. “And I would hate to come home and find that there had been a flood in my kitchen or something like that. Those floors are original to the house, and it would be a pity if they were ruined, being irreplaceable and all—”

“Natty,” Conner interrupted gently.

She paused, drew an audible breath and let it out again. “What?”

“I’ll be happy to check on the plumbing at your place,” he said.

Brody grinned at that. Shook his head slightly, as if he was at once bemused and disgusted.

“It’s mainly the pipes under the house that I’m concerned about,” Natty went on. “I couldn’t ask Tricia to crawl around under the house. There might be spiders.”

“I’m on it,” Conner reiterated, “but I do have one question.” He’d never known Natty to miss the annual rummage sale/chili feed. She was, after all, the Keeper of the Secret Recipe. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Natty said briskly.

He suspected that she was fibbing, but challenging an old lady’s statement hadn’t been part of his upbringing. Elders, be they friends, like Natty, acquaintances or total strangers, were to be treated with respect—particularly if they happened to be female.

“You’re sure?” he ventured just the same, slanting a glare at Brody then. Go away.

Brody, being Brody, didn’t budge an inch. He just broadened his grin by a notch.

“I’m absolutely sure, Conner,” Natty replied. Then she gave a trilling little laugh that sounded almost bell-like. Years fell away, and Conner could easily picture her as a young woman, and a pretty one, not unlike her great-granddaughter. “I’m perfectly fine. Fit as a fiddle.”

“It’s just that the rummage sale is coming up,” Conner pressed, still concerned.

Brody frowned comically at this.

“I’ve stepped down from chairing the committee,” Natty told him. “I am getting on a little, you know.”

She’d been ninety-one on her last birthday, Conner knew, though he’d missed the party because he was down in Stone Creek at the time, helping Steven paint the nursery before the twins were delivered.

“You’re younger than springtime,” Conner said, recalling the line from one of the old songs Natty liked to play on her stereo.

“And you’re full of beans,” Natty shot back, always ready with another cliché. She was getting tired, though; he could hear that in her voice.

The chat ended soon after that and, for all Natty’s insistence that she was “just fine,” Conner was still worried. He sat there frowning for a few moments, then decided he’d head for Natty’s house as soon as the chores were done the next morning. Take along some insulation and some duct tape to wrap around the pipes under the house.

Tricia probably wouldn’t be around, of course. She’d be over at the campground, working, or maybe at the drive-in theater—a spooky place, closed down long before the multiplex movie houses in Denver came along—doing whatever might need doing.

He’d track her down, ask her if she’d spoken to Natty recently.

Brody, still lounging against the porch railing, shifted his weight from one side to the other, distracting Conner from his thoughts. “For a minute there,” Brody said, in a low drawl, “I had high hopes that you were lining up a hot date.”

Conner realized that he was still holding his phone and dropped it back into the pocket of the clean but worn flannel shirt he’d put on, along with a pair of jeans, after his shower. Then he reached for his beer and took a long draw of the stuff before answering, “There are other things in life besides getting laid, you know.” The statement sounded prissy-assed even to him, and Conner immediately wished he could take it back.

“Like what?” Brody joked.

Conner didn’t reply, but simply sat there, holding his beer and wishing Brody would go away. To another state, say. If not another planet.

“Once upon a time,” Brody said easily, determined to push, “you had a sense of humor.”

“I still do,” Conner said, staring past Brody, into the gray drizzle. “When something’s funny, I laugh.”

Brody heaved a sigh. Pushed away from the porch rail, finally, to stand up straight. His arms fell to his sides. “It’s hard to imagine that,” he said, very quietly, and then he went back inside the house. The screen door shut behind him with barely a sound.

And Conner felt guilty. How crazy was that? If Brody had expected to just pick up where they’d left off—before their knock-down-drag-out over Joleen—he’d been kidding himself. Conner swore under his breath and used the heels of his boots to thrust the ancient porch swing into slow, squeaky motion.

Brody wouldn’t stay long, he thought, trying to console himself. His brother was bound to get bored with Lonesome Bend and the ranch, sooner rather than later, and hit the road again, following the rodeo. Or some woman.

The rain picked up, and the wind blew it in under the roof of the porch, and Conner finally had to give up and go inside. He climbed the front staircase, noticing that the crystal chandelier was dusty, and headed for the master bedroom. The suite had belonged to Kim and Davis before they moved into the new house, and it didn’t lack for comfort. There was a big-screen TV on one wall, and the private bath was the size of an NFL locker room, with slate-tile floors, a big shower with multiple sprayers and a tub made for soaking the ache out of sore muscles.

While all that space might have made sense for his aunt and uncle, it felt cavernous to Conner. He probably would have moved back into the room at the other end of the corridor—the one he’d shared with Brody and, in the summertime, Steven, too, when they were all growing up—but he knew Brody had stowed his gear in there.

Conner switched on the TV, then switched it off again, in the next moment. In his opinion, TV sucked, for the most part. He did enjoy watching athletic women in bikinis “surviving” in some hostile environment, but that was about all.

He hauled his shirt off over his head, to save himself the trouble of unbuttoning it, and tossed the garment to one side. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, which was way too big for one person, and got out of his boots and socks. Standing up again, he dispensed with his jeans, too, and stood there, in the altogether, thinking Brody wasn’t so far wrong, implying that he didn’t have a life.

In the end, he tossed back the covers, crawled between them and reached for the thick biography of Thomas Jefferson sitting on the nightstand. He sighed. Another night with nobody but a dead president for company.

Yee-freakin’-haw.

* * *

TRICIA OPENED ONE EYE—how could it possibly be morning already?—and slowly tuned in to her surroundings, glimmer by glimmer, sound by sound, scent by scent.

The sun was shining. Rain dripped from the eaves, but no longer pelted the roof. The timer on the coffeepot beeped, and the tantalizing aroma of fresh brew teased her nose.

Valentino approached, laid his muzzle on her pillow, inches from her face, and whined almost inaudibly.

Something, somewhere, was clanging.

Tricia sat up, glanced at her alarm clock, which she’d forgotten to set the night before, and sucked in a breath. She’d overslept. And that wasn’t like her at all.

Clang, clang, clang.

Since she was wearing a sweat suit, and she figured that was the next best thing to being fully dressed, Tricia didn’t bother with a robe. Nor did she pause to put on the ugly pink slippers. Sasha, still clad in pink pajamas, joined her in the kitchen.

The child’s eyes were big. “What is that?” she asked, nearly in a whisper.

“I’ll find out,” Tricia said, annoyed but not alarmed. She went to the sink and, wadding up a dish towel, wiped a circle into the steam covering the window so she could peer out at the backyard.

The driveway was empty.

“Is something going to blow up?” Sasha fretted, probably imagining an antiquated furnace, or even a steam boiler with a pressure gauge, chugging cartoonishly away in Natty’s basement, building up to a roof-raising blast.

“No, sweetie,” Tricia said, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m sure nothing is going to explode. This is an old house, and sometimes the pipes make odd noises. So do the floorboards.”

“Oh,” Sasha said, clearly unconvinced.

Valentino, meanwhile, was standing very close to Sasha, actually leaning into her side. Clearly, he was no guard dog.

“Wait here, while I go downstairs and have a look around,” Tricia told them both.

Sasha swallowed visibly, looking small and vulnerable, and then nodded.

The clanging resumed, intermittent and muffled.

Tricia descended the inside stairway and followed the sound through Natty’s chilly rooms to the kitchen.

Silence.

Then the clang came again, this time from directly under her feet.

Tricia started slightly, then after gathering her resolve, marched over to Natty’s basement door. She barely registered the rapid rush of footsteps on the wooden stairs beyond—she hadn’t had coffee yet—and she’d turned the knob and pulled before it occurred to her that the idea might not have been a good one.

A squeak scratched its way up her windpipe and past her vocal cords when she found herself staring directly into Conner Creed’s smiling face. Because he was still on the basement stairs, they were at eye level.

And that alone was disconcerting.

“Sorry,” he said, clearly delighted by her expression. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing here?” The squeak had turned to a squawk, but at least she could speak coherently now. Tricia’s heart seemed to be trying to crash through her rib cage.

Conner held up a roll of gray duct tape in one hand and a wrench—no doubt the source of the clanging sounds—in the other. “Plumbing?” he asked, as though he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been doing and wanted Tricia to affirm it for him.