Cowboy Country: The Creed Legacy / Blame It on the Cowboy. Delores Fossen

bungee-jumping or riding bulls in a rodeo.”

      Conner’s face tightened momentarily and, once again, Brody knew what was on his twin’s mind because they so often thought in tandem.

      “There’s no connection between our mom’s pregnancy and Tricia’s,” Brody added quietly. “Stop looking for one.”

      Conner sighed, managed a raw kind of grin. Nodded.

      It struck Brody then, though not for the first time, of course, just how vulnerable loving a woman made a man. And after the baby came? It would be way worse.

      Brody shivered, momentarily swamped with recollections.

      “What happened to your clothes, anyhow?” Conner asked, looking him over. He tended to get around to things in his own good time.

      “Moonshine got a little overenthusiastic crossing the river,” Brody replied.

      They headed into the house, the dog trotting behind them, and Brody ducked into the laundry room to swipe a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and some socks from the folded stacks on top of the dryer. After a quick shower to thaw out his bone marrow, he dressed in the room he and Conner had shared as kids, with their cousin Steven joining them in the summertime, and emerged to find his brother still in the kitchen, brewing a cup of coffee with one of those fancy single-shot machines designed for the chronically caffeine-deprived.

      “How’s the new place coming along?” Conner asked, holding out a steaming mug, which Brody took gratefully.

      “It’s a slow process,” he replied, after a sip of java. “The builder swears up and down that it’ll be move-in ready by the middle of August, though.”

      Conner gave a snort at that, retrieved a second cup from under the spout of the shining gizmo and raised it slightly, in a little salute. “Nice clothes,” he observed wryly. “I once owned some just like them.”

      * * *

      CAROLYN SIMMONS HELD her breath as she watched her very pregnant friend and business partner, Tricia Creed, making her wobbly way down from the top of a ladder. Tricia had just hung a new batik depicting a Native American woman weaving at a loom. The work of a local artist, the piece wouldn’t be in the shop long, which was possibly why Tricia had placed it so high on the wall. No doubt she reasoned that if the picture wasn’t within easy reach, she and Carolyn could enjoy it for a while before some eager buyer snatched it up.

      With her long, dark braid, loose-fitting cotton maternity clothes and attitude of serene faith in the all-around goodness of life, Carolyn thought Tricia resembled the weaver a little.

      Taller than Tricia, with artfully streaked blond hair, Carolyn wore her usual garb of jeans, boots and a fitted T-shirt. Tricia liked to joke that if an opportunity to ride a horse came up, Carolyn was determined to be ready.

      “What were you doing on that ladder?” she asked now, propping her hands on her hips as she regarded Tricia. “I promised Conner I’d keep an eye on you, and the minute I turn my back, you’re teetering on the top rung.”

      Tricia dusted her hands together and smiled, stepping back a little way to look up at the batik. “I was nowhere near the top rung,” she argued cheerfully, her face glowing in the sunlight pouring in through the big front window. She sighed. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

      Carolyn, following Tricia’s gaze, nodded. Primrose Sullivan, the artist, had outdone herself this time. The weaver was indeed beautiful. “I think some of our online customers would be interested,” she mused. “I’m not sure it would photograph all that well from this angle, though—”

      The hydraulic squeal of brakes interrupted.

      Tricia moved to the window and peered through the antique lace curtains. “It’s another tour bus,” she said. “Brace yourself.”

      The business, a combination boutique and art gallery, filled the first floor of Natty McCall’s venerable Victorian house—Carolyn lived upstairs in Tricia’s former apartment, along with her foster cat, Winston. The items the two women sold ranged from goats’ milk soap and handmade pincushions to one-of-a-kind dresses and near museum-quality oil paintings.

      “I’m braced,” Carolyn confirmed, smiling and taking her customary place behind the counter, next to the cash register.

      Tricia straightened an already straight display of handmade stationery.

      The shop wasn’t going to make anyone rich, but for Carolyn, it was a dream come true. In Lonesome Bend, she had a comfortable place to live—not a small thing to a person raised in no fewer than fourteen foster homes—and an outlet for the various garments, decorative pillows and retro-style aprons she was constantly running up on her sewing machine. Formerly a professional house sitter, Carolyn had been selling her designs online for years. Her online business brought in enough extra money to build a small savings account and buy thread and fabric for the next project she had in mind, but that was the extent of it.

      The little bell over the front door jingled merrily, and the busload of customers crowded in, white-haired women with good manicures and colorful summer clothes, chatting good-naturedly among themselves as they thronged around every table and in front of every shelf.

      The store, loftily titled Creed and Simmons—Tricia’s great-grandmother, Natty, said the name sounded more like a law firm or an English jewelry shop than what it was—barely broke even most of the time. Tour buses heading to and from Denver and Aspen and Telluride stopped at least twice a week, though, and that kept the doors open and the lights on.

      For Tricia, having sold property inherited from her father for a tidy sum and then having married a wealthy rancher to boot, the place was a hobby, albeit one she was passionate about.

      For Carolyn, it was much more—an extension of her personality, an identity. A way of belonging, of fitting into a community made up mostly of people who had known each other from birth.

      It had to work.

      Without the business, Carolyn would be adrift again, following the old pattern of living in someone else’s house for a few days or a few weeks, then moving on to yet another place that wasn’t hers. House-sitting was a grown-up version of that old game musical chairs, only the stakes were a lot higher. Once or twice, when the figurative music stopped unexpectedly, Carolyn had been caught between houses, like a player left with no chair to sit in, forced to hole up in some cheap motel or sleep in her car until another job turned up.

      Thankfully, there were plenty of opportunities around Lonesome Bend—movie stars and CEOs and high-powered political types kept multimillion-dollar “vacation homes” hidden away in private canyons, on top of hills and at the ends of long, winding roads edged with whispering aspen trees.

      Carolyn still did some house-sitting now and then, for longtime clients, but she much preferred the cozy apartment above the shop to those enormous and profoundly empty houses, with their indoor swimming pools and their media rooms and their well-stocked wine cellars.

      In the apartment, she was surrounded by her own things—the ceramic souvenir mugs she’d collected from cities all over the country, a few grainy photographs in cheap frames, her trusty laptop and the no-frills workhorse of an electric sewing machine that had been a parting gift from her favorite foster mom.

      In the apartment, Carolyn felt substantial, real, rooted in one particular place, instead of some ethereal, ghostlike being, haunting lonely castles.

      For the next forty-five minutes, Carolyn and Tricia were both so busy that they barely had a chance to look at each other, let alone speak, and when the tour bus pulled away at last, it was almost time to close up for lunch.

      The cash drawer was bulging with fives, tens and twenties, and there was a nice pile of credit card receipts, too.

      The shelves, racks and tables looked as though they’d been pillaged by barbarians, and the air still smelled of expensive perfume.

      “Wow,” Tricia said, sagging into the rocking chair near the fireplace.