Free The Creed Legacy by Linda Lael Miller Page A

smile was a little weak. “You think he’s planning to leave again? Even though he’s building that big house and a fancy barn to go with it?”
    Carolyn’s casual shrug was, in reality, anything but casual. “He could always sell the house and barn, if he wanted to move on,” she reasoned. In truth, though, she didn’t like the idea of Brody going back to his other life any more than Kim did, and that surprised her. The prospect should have been a relief, shouldn’t it?
    Kim’s gentle blue eyes filled with tears. “Brody’s had a tough time of it,” she said.
    Carolyn needed a few moments to recover from that tidbit—she’d always imagined Brody whooping it up, as the cowboys liked to say, riding bulls and winning gleaming buckles and bedding a different woman every night.
    “How so?” she asked, finally, in an oddly strangled voice.
    Kim sniffled, squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “I can’t say,” she told Carolyn, in a forthright tone. “I’m not supposed to know what Brody went through, and neither is Davis. He’d be furious if he knew Conner had told us.”
    “Oh, boy,” Carolyn said.
    “He’ll tell you himself, one of these days,” Kim said, with new certainty. “And that’s the way it should be.”
    Just then, the bell over the front door jingled and Smidgeon and Little Bit ran, yapping, to greet whomever was there.
    Kim rolled her eyes and chased after them. “Little devils,” she muttered, with abiding affection.
    Carolyn smiled, but on the inside, she was shaken.
    She knew better than to go to supper at her friends’ place, since it was a given that Brody would be there. Just being around him was playing with fire, especially in light of that stolen kiss—and last night’s dream.
    She’d be there, just the same.
    Maybe she’d take in the gypsy skirt—just baste it to fit temporarily—and wear that.
     
     
    B RODY WATCHED with a combination of affection and envy, that evening, in Kim and Davis’s kitchen, while Conner and Tricia flirted like a pair of teenagers.
    It was enough to make Brody roll his eyes.
    Get a room, he wanted to say.
    Davis, sitting beside him at the unset table, nudged him with one elbow. “You remember how it was with those two?” Brody’s uncle asked, keeping his voice low. “When they first noticed each other, I mean?”
    “I remember,” Brody said, grinning a little. A stranger would have given odds that Conner and Tricia would never get together, but everybody who knew them wondered when the wedding would be.
    Was Carolyn going to show up for supper or not?
    He hoped so.
    He hoped not.
    “You and Carolyn remind me of them,” Davis said, with a twinkle in his eyes.
    That got Brody’s attention, all right. He swiveled in his chair to look at his uncle with narrowed eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Just what I said,” Davis replied, undaunted. “You know me, son. If I say it, I mean it.”
    Tricia snapped a dish towel at Conner, who laughed, and the dogs all started barking, while an apron-wearing Kim tried to shush the lot.
    It was happy chaos.
    It was a family.
    Again, Brody felt that bittersweet sense of mingled gratitude and loneliness.
    “Give things a chance, boy,” Davis told him, pushing back his chair and heading for the back door. His uncle had always been able to read him and, clearly, that hadn’t changed.
    Brody hadn’t heard the car drive up, what with all the barking and shushing, dish-towel snapping and laughing, but Davis must have.
    He opened the door just as Carolyn was raising one hand to knock.
    She looked shy and sweet standing there, wearing black jeans and a gossamer white shirt. Her sun-streaked hair was pulled back in a French braid and, unless Brody missed his guess, she had on just a touch of makeup, too.
    “Hi,” she said to Davis, with a little wobble in her voice, shoving a large plastic food container into his hands and not sparing so much as a glance for Brody. “I brought