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

a five o’clock shadow, a part of Carolyn observed with a strange detachment. Or maybe he hadn’t shaved at all that morning.

      Oh, hell, what did it matter?

      “You think I’m asking you to ‘cozy up’ to me?” Brody almost growled. His nose was an inch from Carolyn’s, at most. “Damn it, woman, I can’t avoid being around you, and you can’t avoid being around me, and all I’m suggesting here is that you let go of that grudge you’ve been carrying for seven-plus years so we can all move on!”

      Carolyn would have loved to slap Brody Creed just then, or even throttle him, but suddenly the door to the next room opened and Tricia peeked through the opening, stifling a yawn with a patting motion of one hand.

      “Have you two been arguing?” Tricia asked, her gaze shifting from one of them to the other.

      They stepped back simultaneously.

      “No,” Carolyn lied.

      “Everything’s just great,” Brody added, through his teeth.

       CHAPTER TWO

      MISCHIEF LIT TRICIA’S blue eyes as she studied Brody and Carolyn, the pair of them standing still in the middle of Natty McCall’s kitchen.

      Just looking at her took the edge off Brody’s irritation. He’d always wanted a sister, after all, and now he had one. He felt a similar affection for Melissa, his cousin Steven’s wife, but he didn’t see her practically every day, the way he did Tricia, since Steven, Melissa and their three children lived in Stone Creek, Arizona.

      “Did Conner send you to check up on me, Brody Creed?” Tricia asked in a tone of good-natured suspicion, tilting her head to one side and folding her arms before resting them atop her impressive belly.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Brody saw Carolyn turn away. Her streaky blond hair swung with the motion, brushing against her shoulders, and just that fast, she was busy thumping things around on the counter again.

      “Brody?” Tricia persisted, while Brody was untangling his tongue.

      “It was my own idea to look in on you while I was in town,” Brody finally answered, grubbing up a crooked grin and turning the brim of his hat in both hands, like some shy hero in an old-time Western movie. “I don’t figure Conner would object much, though.”

      Tricia smiled broadly, flicked a glance in Carolyn’s direction.

      The can opener whirred and a pan clattered against a burner.

      Brody sighed.

      “Join us for lunch?” Tricia asked him.

      Carolyn’s backbone went ramrod-straight as soon as Tricia uttered those words, and Brody watched, at once amused and confounded, while she jammed slices of bread down onto the beginnings of two bologna sandwiches. She used so much force to do it that the things looked like they’d been made with a drill press.

      Deciding he’d stirred up enough ill will for one day, Brody shook his head. “I’d better get back to the ranch,” he said. “We’re replacing some of the wire along one of the fence lines.”

      “Oh,” Tricia said, as if disappointed.

      She moved slowly to the table, pulled back a chair just as Brody went to pull it back for her and sank onto the seat.

      “Hey,” Brody said, concerned. “Are you feeling all right?”

      Tricia sighed. “Maybe I’m a little tired,” she confessed. “It’s no big deal.”

      At that, Carolyn stopped flinging food hither and yon and turned to look at Tricia. “I think you should go home and rest,” she said. “This morning was crazy, and we’ve been taking inventory for a couple of days now.”

      “And leave you to straighten up the shop and restock the shelves all by yourself?” Tricia asked. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

      “I can handle it,” Carolyn said. She spoke in a normal tone, but Brody could feel her bristling, all over, like a porcupine fixing to shoot quills in every direction. She didn’t deign to glance his way, of course. “And, anyhow, I’d like to close the shop early today. That way, I could catch up on the bookkeeping, then put the finishing touches on that gypsy skirt I’ve been working on and get it posted on the website.”

      Brody neither knew nor cared what a gypsy skirt was. He was feeling indignant now, standing there on the fringes of the conversation as if he’d either turned transparent or just disappeared entirely.

      He cleared his throat.

      Tricia didn’t look at him, and Carolyn didn’t, either.

      The cat fixed an amber gaze on him, though, and Brody was affronted all over again. He’d never met a critter that didn’t take to him right away—until this one.

      “Tell you what,” Tricia finally said to Carolyn, after a few moments spent looking happily pensive. “I’ll take the afternoon off. If you promise not to stay up half the night stitching beads and ribbons onto that skirt.”

      “I promise,” Carolyn said quickly.

      Most likely, by her reckoning, persuading Tricia to go home was the best and fastest way to get rid of him, too.

      Brody felt his back teeth mesh together.

      “All right, then,” Tricia conceded. “I guess I could use a nap.” With that, she headed off into the other room, probably on the hunt for her purse, and thus Brody and Carolyn were left alone again, however briefly.

      On the stove, soup began to boil over the sides of the saucepan, sizzling on the burner and raising a stink.

      Brody automatically moved to push the pan off the heat, and Carolyn did the same thing.

      They collided, sideways, and hard enough that Carolyn stumbled slightly. And Brody grabbed her arm, an instinctive response, to steady her.

      He actually felt the charge go through her, arc like a bolt of electricity from someplace inside Carolyn to someplace inside him.

      Instantly, both of them went still.

      Brody willed his fingers to release their hold on Carolyn’s arm.

      She jerked free.

      And Tricia was back in the kitchen by then, taking it all in.

      Although he and Carolyn were no longer physically touching each other, it seemed to Brody that he’d been fused to her in some inexplicable way.

      The very air of the room seemed to quiver.

      “I’ll drive you home,” Brody managed to tell Tricia, his voice a throaty rasp.

      “I’ll drive myself home,” Tricia countered, friendly but firm. There’d be no more use in arguing with her than with any other Creed. “I don’t want to leave the Pathfinder behind, and, anyway, I told you—I feel just fine.”

      Carolyn favored her friend with a wobbly smile. “Take it easy, okay?” she said.

      Tricia nodded on her way to the back door. She noted the spilled-over soup on the stove and, with the smallest grin, shook her head.

      Brody happened to see her expression because he’d just leaned past her, to take hold of the knob. Where he came from—right there in Lonesome Bend, as it happened—a man still opened a door for a lady.

      And this particular lady was trying hard not to laugh.

      Brody’s neck heated as he stood there, holding the door open for his brother’s wife, all too aware that she’d drawn some kind of crazy female conclusion about him and Carolyn.

      He clamped his jaw down tight again and waited.

      * * *

      ONCE