A Creed in Stone Creek. Linda Miller Lael

preambles.

      Melissa frowned, confused. “Who?” she asked, watching the judge over the rim of her cup.

      J.P. leaned forward a little way, and dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “Steven Creed,” he said.

      Melissa’s mind flashed on the drop-dead gorgeous man she’d encountered at the Sunflower that morning. He and the little boy were probably the only people in town she didn’t know, since she’d grown up on a ranch just outside of Stone Creek.

      Except for college and law school, and then a stint in Phoenix, working for the Maricopa County prosecutor, she’d lived in the community all her life. So, by process of elimination…

      “Oh,” she said. “Right. Steven Creed.”

      Word had it that Creed was a distant cousin of the McKettrick clan, over at Indian Rock, and he was in the process of buying the old Emerson place, bordered by Stone Creek Ranch, the sprawling cattle operation that had been in Melissa’s own family for better than a century. Her brother, Brad, lived there now, with his wife, Meg, herself a McKettrick, and their rapidly growing family.

      “He rented that space next door to the dry cleaners,” J.P. went on. “He’s a lawyer, you know. He’ll be hanging out a shingle any day now, I’m told.”

      “Stone Creek could use a good attorney,” Melissa said, largely uninterested. Was this the reason J.P. had asked for a Friday morning meeting—because he wanted to shoot the breeze about Steven Creed? “Since Lou Spencer retired, folks have had to have their legal work done in Flagstaff or Indian Rock.”

      J.P. took a loud sip from his coffee cup. “I hear Mr. Creed plans on working pro bono,” he added. “Championing the downtrodden, and all that.”

      That caught Melissa’s full attention. Stone Creek wasn’t exactly a hotbed of litigation, but it had its share of potential plaintiffs as well as defendants, that was for sure. There were disputes over property lines and water rights, Sheriff Parker hauled in the occasional drunk driver, and some of the kids in town seemed to gravitate toward trouble.

      “That’s interesting,” Melissa said, vaguely unsettled as some pertinent recollection niggled at the back of her brain, just out of reach. As for Mr. Creed, well, she tended to be suspicious of do-gooders—they usually had hidden agendas, in her experience—but she was also intrigued. Even a little pleased to learn that Steven Creed wasn’t just passing through town on his way to somewhere more fashionable, like Scottsdale or Sedona.

      She remembered the child, his ebony hair a gleaming contrast to Creed’s light-caramel locks. “The boy must take after his mother,” she mused.

      “Boy?” J.P. echoed, sounding puzzled. Then a light seemed to go on inside his head. “Oh, yes, the boy,” he said, shifting around on his chair. “His name’s Matthew. He’s five years old, and he’s adopted.”

      Melissa blinked, a little taken aback by the extent of his knowledge until she recalled that J.P.’s youngest daughter, Elaine, had moved back to Stone Creek after a divorce two years before, and opened a private, year-round preschool called Creekside Academy.

      Of course. Creed must have enrolled the child in advance—and Elaine had passed the juicy details on to her father.

      J.P. finished up with a flourish. “And there’s no Mrs. Creed, either,” he said.

      According to Elaine—she and Melissa had gone through school together—from the day she’d jettisoned the loser husband and returned to the old hometown to make a fresh start, her dad had been after her to “get out more, meet people, kick up your heels a little… As if Stone Creek were overrun with single men,” Elaine had grumbled, the last time Melissa had run into her, a few days before, over at the drugstore.

      Melissa, who hadn’t had a date in over a year herself, had sympathized. Between her sisters, Ashley and Olivia, and her big brother, Brad, somebody was always after her to go on out there and find True Love. Easy for them to say. Brad had Meg. Olivia had Tanner. And Ashley had Jack. The unspoken question seemed to be, So what’s your problem, Melissa? When are you going to get with the program and corral yourself a husband?

      Melissa frowned.

      J.P. either missed the expression or ignored it. Rising to his feet, he lobbed his empty coffee cup into the circular file with the grace of a much younger man. Back in the day, during high school and college, Judge Carpenter had been a basketball star, but in the end, he’d chosen to pursue a career in the law. “Well,” he said cheerfully, “I hereby declare this meeting over.”

      “That was a meeting?” Melissa asked, arching one eyebrow. The subtext was: I wolfed down the one turkey- sausage biscuit I allow myself per week just so you could tell me Steven Creed is single?

      “Yes,” J.P. said. “Now, I think I’ll go fishing.”

      Melissa laughed and shook her head.

      J.P. had just left when Sheriff Tom Parker peeked in from the doorway. Tom was a hometown boy, a tall, lean man with dark hair and, usually, a serious look on his face.

      “Hey,” he said.

      “Hey.” Melissa smiled. She and Tom were old friends. Nothing more than that, though—he was attractive, in a rustic sort of way, if shy, and he’d been divorced from his high school sweetheart, Shirleen, for years. Everybody in Stone Creek knew he’d fallen head over heels for Tessa Quinn the day she opened the Sunflower Bakery and Café—everybody, that is, except Tessa.

      “Just wanted to remind you that Byron Cahill gets out of jail today,” Tom said, looking spiffy in his summer uniform of brown khaki.

      Melissa felt a mild shiver trip down her spine. Two years ago, when Cahill was still a teenager, he’d gotten high one Saturday afternoon, compounded the problem with copious amounts of alcohol, swiped his mother’s car keys and gone on a joyride. The joy was short-lived, as it turned out, and so was fifteen-year-old Chavonne Rowan, who was riding shotgun.

      When the “borrowed” car blew a tire on a sharp curve outside of town, it shot through a guardrail, plunged down a steep cliff into Stone Creek, teetered on its nose, according to witnesses, and went under. Two fishermen had rescued Byron; he came out of the wreck with a few cuts and bruises and a really bad attitude. Chavonne, it turned out, had died on impact.

      Byron was arrested as he left the hospital in Flagstaff, where he’d been taken by ambulance, as a precaution. Although uninjured, he’d been admitted for a week of detox.

      Melissa had successfully petitioned the Court to have young Cahill tried as an adult, over his mother’s frantic protests that he was a good boy, just a little high-spirited, that was all, and then Melissa had thrown the proverbial book at him.

      It was a slam dunk. Byron was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and dispatched to a correctional facility near Phoenix to serve his sentence—just over eighteen months, as it turned out.

      Velda Cahill, his mother, who cleaned motel rooms and served cocktails to make ends meet, rarely missed a chance to corner Melissa and tell her about all the things poor Byron was missing out on, all because she, Melissa, “a high-and-mighty O’Ballivan,” had wanted to show off. Let everybody know that the new county prosecutor was nobody to mess with.

      Melissa felt sorry for Velda. Never reminded her that Chavonne Rowan was missing out on plenty—the rest of her life—and so were her devastated parents.

      Tom Parker knotted one hand into a loose fist and tapped his knuckles against the framework of the door to get Melissa’s attention, bring her back to the present moment.

      “You be careful now,” he said. “If Cahill so much as looks cross-eyed at you, call me. Right away.”

      Melissa blinked a couple of times, dredged up a smile. “You don’t think he’d come back to Stone Creek, do you?” she asked. “It’s not as if the town would throw a parade to welcome him home, you know.”

      Tom tried to smile