A Creed in Stone Creek (29 page)

The door snapped shut behind her.

Steven immediately followed. He knew he was probably making bad matters worse, but he damn well couldn’t help himself.

He caught up to her at the door of her office.

“Melissa,” he ground out. “Wait—”

“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to deal with you right now.”

He steered her inside the room where Andrea normally worked, and closed the door. “Well, that’s just
tough,
counselor, because you
are
going to deal with me.”

She glared up at him, folded her arms. Her words flew like well-aimed bullets, staccato and dead on target. “It was all a mistake. You and me, I mean. I should have known better. Case closed.”

“Melissa,” Steven heard himself say, “that’s crazy.”

She was on a roll. “You do criminal defense. I’m a prosecutor. We don’t think the same way.”

“Of course we don’t think the same way,” Steven countered easily. “Why would two intelligent, independent adults even want that?”

“Do the math,” Melissa persisted. “We might as well be from different planets.”

“Mars and Venus?” Steven teased.

“Very funny,” she replied. But she didn’t look or sound all that amused.

Steven tried again. “What I meant was—”

“I don’t
care
what you meant, Steven.”

“I can see that,” he answered calmly. “So, what happened, Melissa? Was your mother scared by a member of the Dream Team when she was pregnant with you?”

“Ha-ha,” Melissa said.

“Can’t we just agree to disagree?”

“Yes,” she said, after swallowing visibly. “We can agree to disagree. How about forever?”

Steven whistled, long and low. “Hello? Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little here?”

“All we have to do is pretend nothing happened—”

“No,” Steven interrupted flatly. “We aren’t going to do that.”

“Why not?”

Damn, she was stubborn. Too bad he found that quality so attractive in a woman. Or, at least, in
this
woman.

“Because it
did
happen.”

“Now you’re just nitpicking,” she protested.

Steven rolled his eyes. “We went to bed together,” he said slowly and with emphasis.

“Keep your voice down!” Melissa retorted, glancing toward the door.

He flung out his hands. “I give up.”

“Good,” Melissa said. “It’s about time.”

He leaned in, so their noses were almost touching.
“For now,”
he clarified. Then he left her standing there,
and strode out into the corridor, headed back to Tom’s office.

He had business to attend to—and he’d better put Melissa O’Ballivan out of his head.

“T
HIS IS AN INTERVENTION,”
Olivia announced solemnly, a week and a half after Melissa’s last conversation with Steven Creed.

Melissa looked around Olivia and Tanner’s living room, sweeping Meg and Ashley up in an indignant glance.

“You tricked me,” she said, in an accusing tone. Olivia had suggested that all four of them meet at her place that Thursday evening, after Melissa got off work, to discuss the parade, which was scheduled for the following night. Ostensibly, her devoted sisters and sister-in-law were supposed to assist her with last-minute logistics.

What a sucker she was.

“We had to do something,” Ashley said earnestly, near tears. “You’ve gone around the bend.”

“You’re definitely not yourself,” Meg added, plainly concerned. She took in Melissa’s outfit. “Since when do you go to work in sweats and sneakers?”

“Without makeup,” Olivia pointed out.

“And look at your
hair,
” Ashley all but wailed.

“Plus you haven’t been running,” Olivia contributed. This whole confrontational thing had probably been her idea—she’d always been the bossy big-sister type.

“Maybe I’m a little depressed,” Melissa admitted,
feeling defensive. “It’ll pass as soon as they catch Nathan Carter and this damn parade is over.”

“Even after you and Dan parted ways, you didn’t let yourself go like this,” Ashley pressed, waving off Melissa’s words as she spoke. “We’re worried about you.”

“You’re falling apart,” Olivia said.

“I think this
mood
you’re in has something to do with Steven Creed,” Meg insisted. “You’ve been different ever since he hit town.”

Olivia and Ashley nodded in unison.

“No, it does
not
have to do with—him,” Melissa lied. The truth was, she couldn’t seem to get the man out of her mind, even for her own good.

“Level with us,” Olivia urged, her eyes softening. “We want to help you.”

“I need help with the parade,” Melissa said. “Not my personal life.”

Olivia, Ashley and Meg all looked at each other, exchanging unspoken messages.

Melissa stood up.

“Sit down,” Olivia said firmly.

Melissa sat. “This is silly,” she said.

“Are you in love with this Steven Creed person?” Ashley wanted to know.

“No,” Melissa said, hoping she sounded convincing. By then, she was so confused, she didn’t know
what
she felt. Was wanting somebody—not just physically, but emotionally and mentally and even
spiritually,
for pity’s sake—the same as
loving
him? “It was just a case of temporary lust.” She waved one hand dismissively, much as Ashley had done earlier. They were, after all, twins. “Anyway, it’s over.”

“What happened?” Meg asked.

“That,” Melissa said, “is none of your business—any of you—but I’ll answer anyway. Yes, there was an attraction. But Steven and I are both lawyers. Worse yet, we have very different viewpoints, since he’s Defense, and I’m Prosecution. While that may not seem like a big deal to
most people,
it constitutes irrevocable differences in our private philosophies. When it comes to our philosophies of life, we’re polar opposites.”

Ashley shook her head, marveling. “What a lot of gobbledegook,” she said.

“I’d call it BS,” Olivia interjected.

“Now you know why I didn’t want to talk about this,” Melissa said loftily. She stood up again, and this time she meant it. She was leaving. “I knew none of you would understand. And why should you? All three of you have children, and happy marriages—”

“Melissa—” Ashley said.

Melissa picked up her purse, ferreted inside it for her car keys and headed for the Quinns’ front door. There, she paused and turned to assess—very coolly—the three other women who had summoned her on false pretenses. “The parade starts at six tomorrow night,” she said. “We’re gathering at four, in the parking lot behind the high school. If any of you actually want to
help,
be there.”

Nobody said anything.

Naturally.

Slinging the strap of her purse over one shoulder, Melissa left with a flourish.

I
T HAD BEEN OVER A WEEK
since he’d seen Melissa, except at a distance, and Steven did his damnedest to carry on as if nothing had changed.

Every morning, he fed Matt and the dog breakfast, made do with stale, reheated coffee himself. At night, he slept heavily, mired in mixed-up dreams he couldn’t remember two seconds after he opened his eyes, and he sure as hell didn’t feel rested—more like a wino, hung over after a three-day binge.

Quite a trick, since he hadn’t had anything to drink since before Brody left.

Leaving the tour bus that Friday morning, locking it behind him, Steven was mildly pleased to see that the renovation crew had already arrived to put in another day’s work. The barn, a nifty-looking prebuilt structure, already had walls and a roof and, by Monday, the stalls would be in, as well. He stopped to confer briefly with the foreman, who told him they were putting up drywall in the bedrooms that day, and they’d start installing the kitchen and bathroom fixtures tomorrow.

“If you don’t watch it,” Steven said, only half kidding, “you’re going to give the contracting business a good name.”

The foreman smiled at the comment, puny as it was, and informed Steven that the company was family-owned, had been in business for four generations and there had been at least one member of the clan on one crew or another from the first.

The watchword, Steven thought, was
continuity.
It was a way of life with most of the Creeds—the McKettricks and the O’Ballivans, too. And it was what Steven wanted for Matt, for himself, and for any descendants inclined to live out their lives on a ranch.

He hadn’t reckoned on Melissa when he’d decided to put down roots in Stone Creek, but life was full of things nobody had reckoned on, wasn’t it? A man had
to do the best he could with whatever hand he was dealt, press on, take the good with the bad.

Some family histories just happened. Others were deliberately created.

Steven intended to build a dandy one, and to do that, he’d need a wife. Eventually.

Things would turn out just fine, he assured himself, while he was buckling Matt into his safety seat in the truck, as long as he stayed away from lady lawyers— Cindy aside, he’d never been able to get along with them, outside the office or the courtroom, even when they played on his team.

Insanity, the saying went, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get different results.

Melissa was beautiful and funny and smart, everything he admired in a woman, but when push came to shove, she had the prosecutorial mind-set: The accused was guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around. And Steven, to the roots of his being, was
all about
the other way around.

Matt brought him out of his reflections with a jolt, his tone worried. “You look really sad.”

“Maybe I am a little,” Steven said, once he’d helped Zeke onto the seat, next to his pint-size master.

“Because you’re not going out on dates with Melissa anymore?”

“Partly,” Steven replied. He never lied to the boy, but he wasn’t inclined to burden a five-year-old with adult problems, either. He just wished Matt hadn’t developed a shining set of high hopes as far as the Stone Creek County prosecutor was concerned.

In Matt’s mind, Steven was sure, Melissa was on the
fast track to becoming his new mommy. His drawing of the stick-people family was still taped to the refrigerator door, and he wouldn’t hear of taking it down, except to pore over it and add a detail here and there, with a pencil or a stub of crayon.

“I guess it’s grown-up stuff?” Matt asked, with a certain resignation.

Steven grinned, though he felt hollow inside. “Grownup stuff,” he confirmed. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Okay,” Matt agreed, but he didn’t seem convinced.

Steven shut the door, walked around the truck and hauled himself up behind the wheel. He was only thirty-five, but he felt about eighty that morning.

The dreams he couldn’t remember still weighed on him.

He shoved a hand through his hair and started the engine.

Matt was quiet during the drive into town; Steven could almost hear the gears grinding in that little head.

When they pulled up at Creekside Academy, Matt didn’t seem happy to be there, as he usually did.

Kids, Steven reassured himself, as Matt dawdled along the sidewalk, delaying entering the building for as long as he could, are resilient.

Must be nice, he thought, trying to remember what it felt like, being good at bouncing back.

He watched until Matt was safely inside the building, then turned and got into the truck again. Zeke, still in back, craned his neck and laved the side of Steven’s face once with his sandpaper tongue.

Steven chuckled, checked all the mirrors and backed out of the parking space.

The Stop & Shop was back to business as usual, had been since the morning after the robbery.

Talk about resilience.

On impulse, he turned into the lot and parked.

Martine was back at work, as he’d hoped—she’d taken some time off after the robbery, and Steven hadn’t wanted to bother her at home.

After adjusting the windows and telling Zeke he’d be right back, he walked into the store.

Martine was there, looking a little pale around the gills, but otherwise she seemed pretty cheerful.

A plain young woman standing at the counter paid for her purchases—a half gallon of milk and two lottery tickets—and nodded to Steven as she passed him on her way out of the store.

Steven nodded back, waited until he and Martine were alone, then reintroduced himself. They’d already met, of course, but she’d been through a trauma and he figured she might not remember.

“Hello, again,” Martine responded, with a wan smile, proving him wrong. He recalled last time’s reference to her unmarried daughter. “What can I do for you, Mr. Creed?”

“Steven,” he corrected, approaching the counter. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about the other night, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Martine looked reluctant, almost pained, but she nodded. “You and half the cops in the state of Arizona,” she sighed. Evidently not one to be idle, she wiped ineffectually at the glass countertop with a cloth as she spoke. “It started out as a normal night. Things were
quiet, so I went back to the storage room to call my boyfriend on my cell. We’ve been having some trouble lately, him and me. Anyhow, when we were finished talking, I was too antsy to finish my break, so I headed for the front of the store. And the guy with the ski mask was standing there, right about where you are now, with a gun in one hand—” she paused to point, blanching as the experience replayed itself in her mind.

“And you recognized Byron, even with the ski mask covering his entire head?”

“I recognized Velda’s car,” Martine stressed. “I was too scared to identify anybody, notice eye color or height or anything like that. I just wanted to give the robber whatever he wanted so he’d get out of here—without shooting me.”

Steven nodded. “Any customers in the store right before your break?” Steven asked moderately.

But Martine shook her head. “As I said, it was quiet. Everybody in town was over at the dance.” She paused, gave a husky, rueful chuckle. “Everybody except George and me, anyhow.”

George, Steven assumed, was the boyfriend, the one she’d been on the outs with on the night in question. He didn’t pursue the subject. “No strangers came in? Say, early in your shift?”

Another shake of the head. “Last strangers I recall seeing were an older couple traveling in an RV, and that was at least a couple of days before—before it happened.”

Steven didn’t respond directly. Since he hadn’t gotten around to having cards printed yet, he helped himself to a stenographer’s notebook resting on the countertop, along with the accompanying pen, and wrote down his
cell and office numbers. “I’d appreciate a call if you remember anything else,” he said. He started to turn away, but Martine stopped him with a remark meant to sound offhand, most likely, but falling a ways short.

“I hear you’re serving as Byron Cahill’s lawyer.”

“Not exactly,” Steven said, after an inaudible sigh. “As you know, Byron is no longer a suspect. I’m just trying to help out in whatever way I can.”

“It was good of Tom to take the boy in for a while,” Martine said. “Byron and Velda haven’t had it easy, that’s for sure. Do you think they’ll catch Nathan Carter anytime soon?” She stopped for a breath, shuddered slightly. “It gives me the heebie-jeebies, knowing he’s still out there. What if he comes back and tries again, since he didn’t get to keep the money last time?”

“I don’t think he will,” Steven said in parting.

It wasn’t much, but at the moment, it was all he had to offer.

Feeling as if he’d made no progress at all—what else was new?—Steven left the Stop & Shop and drove to his office, passing the Sunflower Café on the way. The place was doing a brisk business, as usual, the parking lot packed with cars, motorcycles and pickup trucks.

Steven cruised on past the courthouse next, casually stealing a glance in that direction, as he did every time he came into town for any reason. Melissa’s roadster was parked in its usual place, with the top up and a reflective shield across the inside of the windshield.

He considered stopping by to say hello—
hello?
—but soon discarded the idea.

What was there to say? Melissa had made up her mind about him, and about what he did for a living. She was an intelligent woman, a practicing attorney; at
least in principle, she definitely understood that under the American judicial system, faulty though it was, everyone—guilty or innocent—has the right to counsel.

It seemed more probable that she was merely using that difference of opinion as an excuse to avoid anything remotely resembling a lifetime commitment. She’d admitted to caring a lot for Dan Guthrie, once upon a time, and Steven had seen what could only be called regret in her eyes when she spoke of Dan’s children, the two boys she’d expected to raise as her own.