Creed's Honor (17 page)

The two of them rode in companionable silence for a while and, eventually, the riders up ahead stopped along
a quiet inlet in the river, to dismount and stretch their two legs, and let their four-legged companions drink.

Even from so far back, Tricia could see that Sasha was having a good time—maybe the best since she’d arrived in Lonesome Bend for a visit that was already halfway over—and that touched her heart.

Her feelings must have shown in her face, because Conner commented, “That little girl means a lot to you.”

“Yes,” Tricia agreed, after swallowing. “Sasha’s mother, Diana, and I are close friends.” She sighed, and then added, without meaning to at all, “Seattle won’t be the same without them.” A pause. “They’re moving to France, because of Paul’s job. That’s Sasha’s dad.”

Conner absorbed that. Nodded. “You’re planning on going back there?” he asked presently. “To Seattle?” His voice was quiet, and if he cared about the answer, one way or the other, there was nothing in his tone to indicate it.

“If I ever manage to sell the drive-in and River’s Bend,” she said, “I’ll definitely go back. I loved living there.”

“Why?” Conner asked.

The simplicity and directness of that question caught Tricia off guard. “I guess I’m a city girl at heart,” she finally replied. “And Seattle is a great town.”

“I hear it rains a lot.” His tone was noncommittal and a little flat.

Tricia grinned. “Not as much as the hype would lead a person to believe,” she replied. “When the weather is good, Seattle is unbelievably beautiful. It’s so green, and the Olympic Mountains are white with snow year-round.
The seafood is excellent, and you can buy the loveliest fresh flowers at the Pike Place Market—”

Conner didn’t comment.

Tricia watched him out of the corner of her eye for a few moments, then went on talking. She wasn’t one of those women who couldn’t stand silence, but today, for some reason, it made her uncomfortable. “I guess it’s all a matter of perspective,” she said tentatively, standing up in the stirrups because her thighs ached.

After this, she was going to be bow-legged.

“I guess so,” Conner agreed. “I can’t imagine living anyplace but here.”

They’d almost reached the river’s edge by then, where the other riders and their horses were taking a break, and she could see the campground on the opposite side of the water, and beyond that, a glimpse of the top of the peeling screen at the Bluebird Drive-in, since the two properties adjoined each other.

Over the years, Diana had accused Tricia of not knowing when to cut her losses and run—referring to Hunter, in most instances—and this was evidently one of those times. She knew she should shut up, but the words just kept spilling out of her. “You’ve never even thought about living anywhere but Lonesome Bend?” she asked, finding that hard to believe.

“I went to college in Denver,” Conner said, tugging his hat brim down lower over his eyes and keeping his face in profile. “Couldn’t wait to graduate and get back here.”

To Joleen,
Tricia thought, with a bruising sting in the center of her heart, and then wondered where in the heck
that
had come from.

“What about Brody?”

Conner spared her a sidelong glance, but it didn’t last more than a moment. “What about him?” he asked, and there was a tautness in his voice now. The Conner who’d told her about his mother, the pregnant barrel racer, was gone.

Tricia closed her eyes for a moment, realized how tightly she was gripping the reins and eased up a little. “I just meant—well—he left Lonesome Bend—”

“That he did,” Conner bit out.

Tricia sighed, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
Shut up, shut up,
said the voice of common sense.

“And now he’s back,” she went on, against her own advice.

“Yeah,” Conner said. “Until he starts itching to follow the rodeo again, anyhow.” His tone was entirely civil, but it was also cold. Even dismissive. He was telling her, as surely as if he’d said it in so many words, that he didn’t want to talk anymore.

Not to her. And not about Brody.

Before, they’d been enjoying an easy, open exchange, a friendly chat. When, Tricia wondered, saddened, had things taken this unhappy turn? When she’d told him that she planned on leaving Lonesome Bend, once she’d sold her land, she thought. But, no, that couldn’t be it. Why would Conner Creed care whether she stayed or moved away?

By then, they’d caught up with the others, and Sasha rushed over on foot, bright-eyed from the fresh air and an afternoon spent doing something she clearly loved. She gripped Buttercup’s bridle expertly and smiled up at Tricia.

“Get down and walk around,” the little girl said. “That way, you won’t be as sore later on.”

Conner swung down off Lakota’s back and left the horse to graze. He waited, probably intending to help Tricia down from the saddle, but she, smarting at the way he’d suddenly shut down, had something to prove.

And that something was that she didn’t need Conner Creed’s help to get down off a horse.

She dismounted, glad her back was turned to him when her feet struck the ground, because pain raced up her legs on impact, so intense that she caught her breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds.

“You shouldn’t jump down like that,” Sasha counseled solemnly, and very much after the fact. “It usually hurts a lot, landing on the balls of your feet. Has to do with the circulation.”

Tricia lifted her chin. Then turned, smiling, from Buttercup’s side.

“No worries,” she said, too quickly to be really credible, even to a child.

Conner sliced one unreadable look at her and then walked away, engaging Carolyn and some of the other riders in conversation. In its own way, that hurt as much as making contact with the ground had.

“You’re doing really well,” one of the rancher’s wives told Tricia. Her name, Tricia recalled, was Marissa Rogers. In the old days, she’d been part of Joleen Williams’s crowd, with no time for the likes of Tricia.

Now, though, the look in Marissa’s clear eyes was kind and friendly.

“Thanks,” Tricia said, managing a little smile. It wasn’t as though Marissa had shunned her when they
were kids, or bullied her in any way. She’d simply ignored her, and it had all happened a long, long time ago.

“I hear Natty’s back from Denver,” Marissa went on. “I’d love to stop by the house and say hello, but I don’t want to intrude if she’s not feeling well.”

“Natty’s a little tired,” Tricia replied carefully. Her great-grandmother was a sociable person, and she enjoyed company, but she wasn’t a hundred percent by any means. “I’m sure she’d be glad to see you, though.”

“I’ll give it a few days,” Marissa said, with a smile. But then she was looking past Tricia, her eyes narrowing a little. “Uh-oh,” she murmured, so quietly that Tricia nearly didn’t hear her. Automatically, Tricia turned to follow Marissa’s gaze.

Brody and Joleen were riding toward them, at top speed, both of them laughing, though the sound didn’t carry above the sound of their horses’ hooves. They were racing, and it was neck-and-neck, a dead heat.

Tricia looked around for Conner, and this was an automatic response, too, but her glance snagged on Carolyn first. Her friend’s face was full of pain.

Tricia started toward her, but before she could make her way to Carolyn’s side, the other woman was back on her horse and riding along the riverbank, her head held high, her spine rigid.

“Poor Carolyn,” Marissa said, in a tone of genuine sympathy, standing at Tricia’s elbow.

Tricia didn’t ask what Marissa had meant by that, though she wanted to. To do so would have been a little too much like gossiping behind Carolyn’s back.

Sasha had Show Pony by the reins again, and she looked as though she might mount up and chase after Carolyn herself.

“Let her go,” Tricia said, very gently, putting a hand on Sasha’s shoulder.

After that, though it was a while before everybody headed back, the party was essentially over. If Brody and Joleen cared, they gave no sign of it; they didn’t even slow their horses as they shot past, both of them leaning low over the animals’ necks and shedding happy laughter behind them like a dog shaking off water.

When the time came to get back in the saddle, Tricia hauled herself up onto Buttercup with a difficulty she hoped no one else noticed. Conner had left Lakota standing nearby, and he mounted up with barely a glance at Tricia.

He stayed close beside her all the way back to the barn, dutiful but silent, the small muscles along his jawline bunched tight. And for all that Tricia could have reached over and touched him, she knew by the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head that his thoughts were far away.

O
N THE WAY HOME
, Conner was careful to hold Lakota in check—the horse wanted with everything in him to bolt for home at a dead run, and it wasn’t going to happen. Buttercup, despite her age, would go from zero-to-sixty in hardly more than a heartbeat, causing Tricia to either fall off or be scared half to death.

You’re a damn fool, Conner Creed,
he told himself grimly. By his reckoning, any half-wit should have known a woman like Tricia wouldn’t be content to spend the rest of her life in a backwater place like Lonesome Bend. Why, she’d fairly shimmered before, telling him about Seattle, with its seafood and its cut flowers and its snow-covered mountains.

Hell.
Colorado
had snow-covered mountains aplenty, and fields
full
of wildflowers three seasons of the year. As for seafood—who needed it, when the river and the creeks and a dozen lakes were all right there, handy and practically brimming with fish?

Conscious of Tricia beside him, Conner went right on ignoring her. He knew she wasn’t going back to Seattle at the first opportunity because of that city’s many charms. The real draw was the guy he’d glimpsed on her computer monitor that first morning, when he’d dropped by with Natty’s firewood.

Conner unclamped his back molars, to ease the growing ache in the hinges of his jaws. He supposed the yahoo in that screen-saver picture was good-looking enough to suit most women, but Conner figured him for an idiot, if only because he’d let Tricia McCall out of his sight for what—a year and a half? In the other guy’s place, he would have visited often, at the very least, and probably made sure there was an engagement ring on her finger, too. One with plenty of sparkle, so any man with eyeballs would know she was spoken for.

He was thinking like a cave dweller, thinking like
Brody
—Conner knew that. But he couldn’t seem to get a handle on his attitude. Being around Tricia made him feel as though all the known laws of physics had been suspended—up was sideways and down was someplace beyond the clouds.

Conner swept off his hat with one hand, ran the other through his hair and sighed. And if all that wasn’t enough to chap his hide, there was that little show Brody and Joleen had put on, out there on the range.

What the hell was
that
about?

And why had Brody helped himself to Conner’s
clothes and gotten his hair cut shorter? It gave Conner a schizophrenic start just to look at his twin, since he’d gone to the barbershop the other day as Brody and come out as a more-than-reasonable facsimile of Conner.

Yep, Brody was definitely up to something. But what?

“Conner?” Tricia said, out of the blue.

They’d almost reached the far side of the inner pasture by then, moving, as they were, at the breathtaking speed of rocks trying to roll uphill, and the rest of the trail riding party was already at the barn. Folks were unsaddling their horses, leading them into their trailers. Hell, some of them were already on the road home.

“What?” he asked, sounding more abrupt that he’d intended. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bite her lower lip.

When she’d formulated her reply, she said, “Thank you.”

He turned his head to look straight at her then. “For—?”

She blushed. Her eyes dodged his, widened when she forced herself to face him again. “Inviting Sasha and me on the trail ride,” she told him shyly.

He felt like a jerk. “You’re welcome,” he bit out.

“D
ON’T ASK ABOUT
the trail ride,” Tricia told Natty early the next morning, when she and Valentino got back from their walk. “It was an absolute disaster.”

Still in her robe and slippers, though she had pinned her silver-white hair up into its customary Gibson-girl style, Natty sat at her kitchen table, Winston perched on the chair next to hers while she fed him little morsels of sardine.

“Did I ask about the trail ride?” Natty inquired sweetly.

Sasha was out of bed, Tricia thought, with a glance up at the ceiling. She could hear the shower running upstairs.

“You were
about
to ask,” she said, unfastening Valentino’s leash so he could walk over and rub noses with Winston.

Natty waited a beat. “Why was the trail ride a disaster, dear?”

Tricia sighed, shoved the leash into the pocket of her jacket, and helped herself to a cup from Natty’s cupboard and coffee from her old-fashioned plug-in percolator. “Let me count the ways,” she said, after a few sips.

Valentino lost interest in Winston and focused on the little plate of sardines instead. Natty fed him the
last smidgen, much to her cat’s consternation, and rose to set the dish in the sink and wash her hands.

“Sasha had a
marvelous
time,” Natty observed, drying her fingers on a small embroidered towel with a fussy crocheted edge and returning to her seat at the table.

Winston, disgruntled, leaped down from his chair and pranced into the hallway. Valentino was right behind him.

“Sasha,” Tricia said patiently, “knows how to ride a horse. She didn’t need babysitting the whole time, the way I did.”

Natty arched one snowy eyebrow. “‘Babysitting’?” she repeated. Her tone was innocent, but her eyes danced with amused interest.

“Conner gave me a horse reserved for greenhorns, and rode beside me the entire time,” Tricia said.

“Why, that awful man,” Natty teased.

Tricia frowned. When it came to the list of things she wanted to talk about, Conner Creed ranked dead last. “It was embarrassing,” she said, somewhat lamely.

Natty sighed deeply. “How I miss that particular brand of embarrassment,” she said. “In my day, we women
liked
being protected by a handsome cowboy.”

Tricia huffed out a breath.

And Natty chuckled. “From what you’ve told me so far,” she said cheerfully, “I’d hesitate to describe the experience as a ‘disaster.’ But that’s just me.”

Tricia thought of Carolyn then, and the way she’d vanished after Brody and Joleen showed up out there on the range, racing their horses and laughing into the wind. She’d looked for her friend after she and Conner
got back to the barn area, but Carolyn had already put her horse away, gotten into her car and left.

“All right,” she conceded, “maybe
disaster
is too strong a word.”

Just then, there was an exuberant clatter of small feet on the inside stairway and, moments later, Sasha burst into Natty’s kitchen, fully dressed, her hair still damp from the shower. “Mom and Dad sent me an email!” she announced. “They’re coming back early!”

While this was obviously good news to Sasha, who had missed her parents a lot, it further dampened Tricia’s already low spirits. “Oh,” she said, aware of the understanding glance Natty sent her way. “They found the
perfect
house for us to live in,” Sasha said, bubbling with enthusiasm, “and they’re lonesome for me, so they’re catching an earlier flight. Mom said she’ll call you later today, on your cell phone, so the two of you can decide what to do next.”

Tricia managed a smile—if Sasha was happy,
she
was happy—and went to hug the child. “I’m going to miss you something fierce,” she said.

“You could live in Paris, too,” Sasha suggested. “Then we could all be together, you and me and Mom and Dad, whenever we wanted.”

Tricia held on to her smile, though it felt shaky on her mouth, as if it might fall away at any moment. “I’ll visit if I can,” she said, very quietly. “In the meantime, let’s make the most of our together-time. I’ll fix us all some breakfast, and then, while Natty’s resting, you and I will go over to the campground and make sure it’s still standing.”

Sasha nodded, pleased by the simple prospect of food and an outing. Of course, her excitement might wane a
little when she realized they were going to pick up litter and sweep ashes out of the fire pits.

Breakfast was a speedy matter of cold cereal, sliced bananas and milk, as it happened. Natty declined the meal and went into the “parlor” to watch her favorite morning news show on television. She was a big fan of Robin Roberts.

By the time Tricia, Sasha and Valentino reached River’s Bend in the Pathfinder, the campers were all gone, though it looked as if they’d left the place in unusually tidy condition. Without the tents and the RVs, not to mention the people, the campground had the lonely feel of a ghost town, not only deserted, but forgotten as well.

“Why are you so sad?” Sasha asked, tugging at the sleeve of Tricia’s jacket to get her attention. Her eyes were huge and somber in her little face.

Tricia swallowed. “I’m not sad,” she said, and her voice came out sounding hoarse. “I’m just feeling a little nostalgic at the moment, that’s all.”

“Isn’t nostalgia the same thing as sadness?”

Tricia smiled and tugged lightly at one of Sasha’s pigtails. “A perceptive question if I’ve ever heard one,” she replied. “But there is a subtle difference. Nostalgia is a way of remembering people and places and things, and wishing things hadn’t changed. It has a sweetness to it. Sadness is just—well—
being sad.
”

“Okay,” Sasha said, drawing the word out and looking benignly skeptical.

Tricia laughed, though her eyes were stinging.

“I’m glad I came to Lonesome Bend,” Sasha said, when they’d both been quiet for a while. Valentino had wandered down to the swimming beach, and he was
sniffing at some invisible trail running along the edge of the river. “Now, when I think about you, I’ll be able to put houses and people around you in my head.”

Tricia bent, kissed her goddaughter on top of the head. “I’m glad you came to Lonesome Bend, too,” she said. “Let’s go inside and get a fire started. I have some paperwork to do, and I want to check the voice mail one last time before I shut this place down for the winter.”

Sasha nodded, but her arm was still around Tricia’s waist, and her face was pressed into her side. It took Tricia a moment to realize that the little girl was crying.

“What is it, honey?” she asked, leading Sasha to the nearest picnic table, so they could sit down side by side on the bench.

Sasha sniffled and rested her head against Tricia’s upper arm. “I know you love your great-grandma Natty and Valentino,” she replied, “but it makes me have nostalgia when I think about you being here and Mom and Dad and me being all the way over a whole ocean, in Paris, France.”

Touched, Tricia held the child close for a long moment. “You’re going to have a wonderful time in Paris,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak. “But you won’t be in Europe forever. Your mom is pretty sure your dad will be transferred back to Seattle in a couple of years, and I’ll be right there waiting for you when you get home.”

“But I’ll be a different me then,” Sasha protested, “and you’ll be a different
you.
”

“And we’ll still be the very best of friends,” Tricia promised gently. Then she gave a little shiver—the wind blowing in off the river had a bite.

Valentino came when Tricia summoned him, and settled himself in front of the fire inside the office as soon as she’d gotten it going.

Sasha, though still a bit subdued, explored the tiny lodge while Tricia booted up her computer to enter the weekend’s receipts from River’s Bend into her accounting program. Joe had taken a number of black-and-white photographs of the place over the years, and he’d framed a lot of them.

“Is that you, with the fishing pole?” Sasha asked once.

“Um-hmm,” Tricia replied, concentrating on debits and credits. Once she’d made her entries, she would write up a bank deposit slip.

“That must be your dad,” Sasha said, a little later. “The guy standing on the swimming dock with the kayak?”

“Yup,” Tricia said. “That’s him.”

Soon, the little girl got bored, since there was only so much to see in a place that small. She curled up on the rug next to Valentino, wrapping both arms around him, and drifted off to sleep.

The sight brought tears to Tricia’s eyes again, but she blinked them away. Parting would be difficult, but that was life for you. There was always someone to say goodbye to, always someone to miss when they were gone.

Determined to keep it together, Tricia added up checks, cash and credit card slips from the weekend just past, and filled out the deposit slip.

Then, reluctant to disturb Sasha and Valentino—why trifle with a perfect moment before it was absolutely necessary?—she dialed the number and access code
for her voice mail. She was pretty much going through the motions, given that the season was over and people wouldn’t be asking for reservations at the campground or looking for a place to park travel trailers and RVs until early spring, at least.

Tricia wondered if she’d still be in Lonesome Bend then, marking time, waiting for somebody to buy River’s Bend and the Bluebird Drive-in and getting older by the minute. It was a dismal thought.

“You have two messages,” a robotic female voice reported from inside the ancient telephone receiver.

Tricia frowned slightly and settled back in her uncomfortable desk chair to wait.

“This is Carla, with Lonesome Bend Real Estate,” said another voice, this one fully human. “It’s Monday morning, early. Call me. I have big news.”

Tricia’s heart shinnied up into the back of her throat.

The second message came on. “It’s Carla again. I forgot to leave my cell number, and since you might not have it handy—” A pause, during which Carla drew in an audible breath. “It’s 555-7242.
Call me.
”

Tricia hung up the handset, picked it up again and worked the rotary dial with an unsteady index finger.

Carla didn’t even say hello when she answered her cell, she simply blurted out, “Two offers! Tricia, we have
two offers
on your properties, and they’re good ones!”

Tricia put a hand to her heart, temporarily speechless. Nearly two years without a single showing, and now, all of a sudden, they had
offers?

“One came in this morning, and one was waiting in my fax machine when I got home last night,” Carla rushed on. “It was late, or I would have called you then.
I was so excited, I didn’t even
think
about leaving a message on your cell.”

“But how, who—?”

Carla laughed. “Well, that’s the mystery,” she said merrily.

“The mystery?”

“It’s corporate,” Carla said, almost whispering, like she was confiding a secret. “That’s how these big companies operate. They buy real estate through their attorneys—most often as tax write-offs, but sometimes as investments.”

Tricia wondered why she wasn’t happier. After all, she’d been waiting for this news. Hoping for it. Constructing her whole future around it.

Now here it was—her problems, the financial ones, at least—were over. And she felt hollow, rather than jubilant.

“Okay,” she managed. “What happens now?”

“Well,” Carla nearly sang, “we’re in the enviable position of choosing between two excellent offers. They’re very similar, both a little over the asking price, if you can believe it, and all cash.” She paused, clearly savoring what she was going to say next. “There might even be a bidding war, Tricia.”

Tricia’s head was spinning by then, and Valentino and Sasha were both awake, and watching her.
A bidding war?
Was this really happening? It was all too much to take in.

“Tricia?” A giggle from Carla. “Are you still there? You didn’t faint, did you?”

“I’m here,” Tricia said woodenly. “These corporations—which ones are they?”

“Why should we care?” Carla reasoned. “We’re going
to be laughing all the way to the bank, as the old saying goes.” She was quiet for a moment. “Tricia, this
is
what you want, isn’t it?”

Tricia imagined leaving Lonesome Bend. Leaving Natty. Leaving her apartment. Maybe never seeing Conner again.

“I—yes—yes,
of course
this is what I want.”

She’d set the asking price high, in the beginning, to leave room for negotiation. Even after settling debts and paying taxes,
and
opening her own art gallery in Seattle, she would be very well off indeed. In fact, working would be optional—so maybe she’d take that trip to France after all. She’d set herself up in a modest hotel, refusing to impose on Diana and Paul, and get to know Paris. She might even purchase a train pass and explore the Continent—

But what about Natty?

Her great-grandmother might be seriously ill—after all, she was over ninety—and Tricia had made certain promises. Just that morning, in fact, she’d assured Natty that Winston would be looked after, no matter what.

And then there was Valentino. She couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—abandon him just because she suddenly had the means to live anywhere she chose. No, she would have to find the dog a home—and just the right one, too—before she could even consider leaving town for good.

“Tricia?” Carla prompted again.

“Still here,” Tricia said weakly.

“Forgive me,” Carla said, gentle now. “I guess I got a little carried away for a minute there. I know River’s Bend and the Bluebird have been in your family for a long time, and you
must
have a sentimental attachment
to them. Letting go won’t be easy, and we don’t have to decide this second.”

Realistically, Tricia couldn’t afford to miss out on this opportunity, and she knew it. What if both buyers changed their minds, and she never got another chance to sell the businesses? River’s Bend barely brought in enough to cover local taxes and a very modest living allowance for her. The Bluebird, going unused, was probably
costing
her money.