Cowboy Country. Linda Lael Miller
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whispering aspen trees.
Carolyn still did some house-sitting now and then, for longtime clients, but she much preferred the cozy apartment above the shop to those enormous and profoundly empty houses, with their indoor swimming pools and their media rooms and their well-stocked wine cellars.
In the apartment, she was surrounded by her own things—the ceramic souvenir mugs she’d collected from cities all over the country, a few grainy photographs in cheap frames, her trusty laptop and the no-frills workhorse of an electric sewing machine that had been a parting gift from her favorite foster mom.
In the apartment, Carolyn felt substantial, real, rooted in one particular place, instead of some ethereal, ghostlike being, haunting lonely castles.
For the next forty-five minutes, Carolyn and Tricia were both so busy that they barely had a chance to look at each other, let alone speak, and when the tour bus pulled away at last, it was almost time to close up for lunch.
The cash drawer was bulging with fives, tens and twenties, and there was a nice pile of credit card receipts, too.
The shelves, racks and tables looked as though they’d been pillaged by barbarians, and the air still smelled of expensive perfume.
“Wow,” Tricia said, sagging into the rocking chair near the fireplace. “That bunch just about cleaned us out.”
Carolyn laughed. “That they did,” she agreed. “Bless their hearts.”
Tricia tilted her head back, sighed slightly and closed her eyes. Her hands rested protectively over her bulging stomach.
Carolyn was immediately alarmed. “Tricia? You’re all right, aren’t you?”
Tricia opened her eyes, turned her head and smiled. “Of course I am,” she said. “I’m just a little tired from all that hurrying around.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Tricia made a face, mocking but friendly. “You sound just like Conner. I’m fine, Carolyn.”
Frowning slightly, Carolyn went to the door, turned the Open sign around, so it read Closed, and turned the lock. She and Tricia usually had lunch in the downstairs kitchen at the back of the house, and sometimes Tricia’s husband joined them.
Tricia was still in the rocking chair when Carolyn got back.
And she’d fallen asleep.
Carolyn smiled, covered her friend lightly with a crocheted afghan and slipped away to the kitchen.
Winston, the cat, wound himself around her ankles when she entered, purring like an outboard motor. Like the house, Winston technically belonged to Natty McCall, Tricia’s great-grandmother, now a resident of Denver, but because he stayed with Carolyn whenever his mistress was off on one of her frequent and quite lengthy cruises, she loved him like her own.
Apparently, the feeling was mutual.
Or he just wanted his daily ration of sardines.
“Hungry?” Carolyn asked, bending to stroke the cat’s gleaming black ears.
Winston replied with a sturdy meow that presumably meant yes and leaped up onto a sideboard, where he liked to keep watch.
Smiling, mentally tallying up the take from the power-shopper invasion, Carolyn went to the fridge, got out the small bowl of sardines left over from the day before and stripped away the covering of plastic wrap.
She set the bowl on the floor for Winston, then went to the sink to wash her hands.
Winston came in for a landing squarely in front of his food dish and, at the same time, a knock sounded lightly at the back door.
Conner Creed pushed it open, stuck his head inside and grinned at Carolyn, flashing those way-white teeth of his.
Her heart skipped over a beat or two and then stopped entirely—or at least, that’s the way it felt—as he stepped into the house.
Because this wasn’t Conner, as she’d first thought.
No, siree. This was Brody.
Carolyn’s cheeks burned, and she barely held back the panicked “What are you doing here?” that sprang to the tip of her tongue.
The grin, as boyish and wicked as ever, didn’t falter. Clearly, their history didn’t bother Brody at all. It shouldn’t have bothered Carolyn, either, she supposed, since almost eight years had passed since they were together-together. And what they’d shared amounted to a tryst, not an affair of the heart.
Be that as it may, every time she encountered this man—a recurring problem now that his brother was married to one of her closest friends—she wanted to flee.
“Is my sister-in-law around?” Brody asked, well aware, Carolyn would have bet, that he’d rattled her.
Carolyn swallowed hard. Once, when she’d been on a trail ride with Conner and Tricia and a number of their friends and neighbors, Brody and his now-and-then girlfriend, Joleen Williams, had raced past on horseback, their laughter carried by the wind. Carolyn, taken by surprise, had played the fool by bolting for the barn, without so much as a goodbye to the other members of the party, and she’d been kicking herself for it ever since.
“Tricia is in the front,” she replied, in a remarkably normal tone of voice. “We had a busy morning, and she fell asleep.”
Brody closed the door behind him, crossed to the cat and crouched, extending a hand.
Winston hissed and batted at him with one paw.
“Whoa,” Brody said, drawing back.
Carolyn chuckled, relaxing a little. Clearly, Winston was a good judge of character, as well as an expert mouser and a connoisseur of fine sardines.
Having made his position clear, the cat went back to snarfing up his lunch.
Meanwhile, Brody rose off his haunches, still holding his hat in one hand, and looked disgruntled. Being drop-dead gorgeous, he probably wasn’t used to rejection—even when it came from an ordinary house cat.
“Animals usually like me,” he said, sounding baffled and even a little hurt.
Carolyn, realizing she’d been gawking, turned away, suddenly very busy getting a can of soup, a box of crackers and a loaf of bread from the pantry.
Glancing back, she saw Brody approach the inside door, push it open carefully and peer into the next room.
He turned, with a kind of brotherly softening in his eyes, and put his index finger to his lips.
“Shh,” he said.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Carolyn protested, in a whisper.
Why didn’t the man just leave now, if he didn’t want to disturb Tricia?
Instead, he lingered, one-hundred-percent cowboy, with his hat in his hands and his mouth tilted sideways in a grin.
“We don’t have to be enemies, you know,” he said quietly.
Carolyn, in the middle of slapping a slice of bologna onto a piece of bread, opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“Do we?” Brody persisted.
Carolyn recovered enough to reply, though the words came out in a terse little rush of breath. “Tricia is my friend and business partner. You’re her brother-in-law. Therefore, we have to be civil to each other.”
“Is it that hard?” Brody asked. “Being ‘civil,’ I mean?”
Suddenly, all the old feelings rose up inside Carolyn, nearly overwhelming her. Tears stung her eyes and she turned her head quickly, bit down hard on her lower lip.
“Carolyn?” he said.
He was standing right behind her by then; she felt the heat and hard masculinity of him in every