Heart Of A Cowboy. Linda Lael Miller
think she only wants me to guard the family chili recipe, though.” Like just about everyone in Lonesome Bend, Tricia was curious about Carolyn, who was always ready with a cheerful hello or a helping hand, but extremely private, too. She kept a roof over her head by housesitting, mainly for the reclusive movie stars, corporate execs and other famous types who bought or built enormous homes outside town but rarely used them. Besides that, her only known income was from the original clothes she designed and sold online or through consignment boutiques.
Carolyn chuckled at Tricia’s answer. She had shoulder-length hair, streaked blond but somehow very natural-looking, and her eyes were wide and green, surrounded by thick lashes. “I don’t blame Natty one bit,” she said warmly. “That chili is so good it ought to be patented.”
“Amen,” Tricia agreed. The chili recipe was closely guarded indeed; only Natty and her sister, the one she was visiting in Denver, knew how to make it. The single written copy in existence was brought out of some secret hiding place every October, on the Thursday preceding the rummage sale, and carefully protected from prying eyes.
Even Tricia, a true McCall, had merely managed glimpses of that tattered old recipe card over the years, with its bent corners and its spidery handwriting slanting hard to the right, though Natty had intimated that it might be time to think about “passing the torch.” That remark never failed to alarm Tricia, who adored her great-grandmother, and couldn’t imagine a world without her in it.
“How is Natty, anyway?” Carolyn asked, dropping a full garbage bag into one of the trash containers and dusting off her hands against the thighs of her black jeans. “I usually run into her at the grocery store or the library, but I haven’t seen her around lately.”
Tricia explained about the Denver trip, and quickly realized that Carolyn wasn’t listening. Her gaze had snagged on Brody Creed, laughing with friends on the other side of the campground, and she seemed powerless to jerk it away again.
Intrigued herself, Tricia watched Brody for a few moments, too, thinking in a detached way that while he and Conner did resemble each other closely, there were obvious differences, too.
Conner moved with quiet purpose, for example, while Brody was loose-limbed, ready to change directions at any given moment, if it suited him to do so. There were other qualities, too—some of them so intuitive in nature that Tricia would have had a hard time putting names to them. She knew, somehow, that even if the Creed brothers tried to look as alike as possible, she would still know Conner from Brody in an instant. And that was puzzling indeed.
Carolyn snapped out of her own reverie a bit before Tricia did, and when their eyes met, a sort of understanding passed between them—empathy, perhaps. Or maybe just the silent admission that some questions didn’t have answers. Not obvious ones, at least.
And then Carolyn surprised Tricia by saying calmly, “What a fool I was, way back when.”
This time, it was Hunter who popped into Tricia’s mind. She shook off the image and smiled reassuringly. “Weren’t we all?”
Carolyn’s gaze strayed back to Brody, but didn’t linger. When she looked at Tricia again, it was clear that a door had closed inside Carolyn. It reminded Tricia of the way people board up a house when they know there’s a category 4 hurricane on its way. “Some of us,” she said sadly, with one more glance at Brody, “knew exactly what they were doing.”
Carolyn had a history with Brody Creed?
Whoa, Tricia thought, hoping Carolyn hadn’t noticed the way her eyes had widened for a second or two there. She’d lived part of every year in this small, close-knit community, starting with that first summer after second grade, when Joe and Laurel had called it quits and filed for a divorce, and for the better part of a year and a half since her dad’s death.
None of which meant that she was any kind of insider when it came to the locals and their secrets, but, still, she usually had a glimmer of what was going on, if only because of things Natty and her friends said in passing, when they got together to sip tea around the old woman’s kitchen table. In many ways, Lonesome Bend was like a soap opera come to life, and everybody kept up with the story line—except her, evidently.
Carolyn gave an awkward little laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “That came out sounding pretty bitchy.”
Tricia decided not to comment. Then she remembered that she was still holding her own bag of after-barbecue trash and tossed it into the bin.
“I’m going to be staying on the Creed ranch for a while,” Carolyn said, as she and Tricia walked away from the line of garbage cans. “Looking after things for Davis and Kim, I mean. It’s a great house, and they have horses, too. I have permission to ride the gentler ones, and I was wondering—”
Her voice fell away, perhaps because she’d seen something in Tricia’s face.
Tricia had felt a hard jab to her middle when Carolyn announced her next housesitting assignment, given that, living on the ranch, the other woman would be in close proximity to Conner, and, recognizing the emotion for what it was, she was ashamed. Yes, Carolyn was an attractive woman, presumably available. But she, Tricia, certainly had no business being jealous and, anyway, if Carolyn was interested in one of the Creed men, it was Brody, not Conner.
Her relief was undeniable.
“What?” she asked belatedly. “What were you wondering?”
“Well, if you and your niece might like to go trail riding sometime,” Carolyn said, almost shyly.
“I’ve never been on a horse in my life,” Tricia replied. It wasn’t that she didn’t like horses, just that they were so big, and so unpredictable.
Diana was an accomplished equestrian, and because of that, Sasha was comfortable around the huge creatures.
“Well, then,” Carolyn said, spreading her hands for emphasis and grinning a wide, Julia Roberts grin, “it’s time you learned, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know—”
Just then, Sasha rushed over. Sometimes Tricia thought the child had superpowers—particularly as far as her hearing was concerned. Just moments before, she’d been on the other side of the campground, playing chasing games with other kids and several dogs. Let the word horse be spoken, though, and she was Johnny-on-the-spot.
“I want to go riding,” Sasha crowed. “Please, please, please—”
“Do you read lips or something?” Tricia asked.
“Matt’s uncle Conner is going to ask us to go riding, with a bunch of other people. Matt heard him talking about it, and he told me, and you’ve got to say yes, because I honestly don’t know how I’ll go on if you don’t!”
Tricia chuckled and gave one of Sasha’s pigtails a gentle tug. “When is this big ride supposed to take place?” she asked, hoping nobody would guess that she was stalling.
“Next Sunday, after the chili feed and the rummage sale are over,” Sasha expounded, breathless with excitement. “It’ll be the last of the good weather, before the snow comes.”
“We’ll see,” Tricia said.
Carolyn was still standing there, smiling.
“Please!” Sasha implored, clasping her hands together as if in prayer and looking up at Tricia with luminous hope in her eyes.
“I have to ask your mom and dad first,” Tricia told her, laying a calming hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “I’ll send them a text, and when they land in Paris, they’ll read it and we’ll probably have our answer right away.”
“They’ll say yes,” Sasha said confidently, beaming now. “I ride with Mom all the time.” The smile faded. “We mostly just ride in arenas and stuff, because Seattle’s such a big city. In France, we probably won’t get to do it at all. But this is real riding, on a real ranch, just like in that movie, City Slickers.”
Tricia