Cowboy Country. Linda Lael Miller
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Carolyn retrieved the garment, draped it carefully over the side of the table opposite her sewing machine and silently reveled in the beauty of the thing.
The floor-length underskirt was black crepe, but it barely showed, for all the multicolored, bead-enhanced ribbons she’d stitched to the cloth in soft layers. She’d spent days designing the piece, weeks stitching it together, ripping out and stitching again.
It was exquisite, all motion and shimmer, a wearable fantasy, the kind of original women like Ardith Sperry wore to award ceremonies and premieres.
Carolyn hadn’t sized the piece for a movie star’s figure, though. It was somewhere between a ten and a twelve, with plenty of give in the seams, allowing for a custom fit.
Carolyn, a curvy eight since the age of seventeen, had deliberately cut the skirt to fit a larger figure than her own, for the simple reason that, if she could have worn it, parting with it would have been out of the question.
She’d been making purposeful sacrifices like that since she’d first learned to sew, in her sophomore year of high school. Once she understood the basics, she hadn’t even needed patterns. She’d sketched designs almost from day one, measured and remeasured the fabric, cut and stitched.
And she’d quickly made a name for herself. While other kids babysat or flipped burgers for extra money, Carolyn whipped up one-of-a-kind outfits and sold them as fast as she could turn them out.
That made two things she did well, she’d realized way back when, with a thrill she could still feel. Carolyn had an affinity for horses; it seemed as though she’d always known how to ride.
Over the years, most of her foster homes being in rural or semirural areas, where there always seemed to be someone willing to trade riding time for mucking out stalls, she’d ridden all kinds of horses, though she’d never actually had one to call her own.
Now, determined not to waste another second daydreaming, she shook off the reflective mood and picked up the skirt again, carefully removing the plastic wrap and holding it up high so she could admire the shift and shiver of all those ribbons, the wink of crystal beads.
It was silly, she supposed, but she coveted that skirt.
Aside from the money the sale would bring in, which, as always, she needed, where would she even wear a garment like that? She lived in blue jeans, cotton tops and Western boots, and for good reason—she was a cowgirl at heart, not a famous actress or the wife of a CEO or a cover model for Glamour.
With a sigh, Carolyn put the skirt back on its hook on the bedroom door—out of sight, out of mind.
She crossed to the small desk Tricia had left behind when she moved to the ranch, and booted up her laptop. While the magic machine was going through its various electronic thumps, bumps and whistles, Carolyn heated a cup of water in the microwave to brew tea.
Winston, still keeping his vigil over the side yard from the windowsill, made a soft yowling sound, his tail swaying like a pendulum in overdrive. His hackles were up, but his ears were pitched forward instead of laid back in anger. While Carolyn was still trying to read his body language, she heard someone coming up the outside stairs.
A Brodylike shape appeared in the frosted oval window at the door, one hand raised to knock.
Before he could do that much, however, Carolyn had yanked the door open.
“I don’t believe this,” she said.
Over on the windowsill, Winston expressed his displeasure with another odd little yowl.
“What is that cat’s problem, anyway?” Brody asked, frowning as he slipped past Carolyn, graceful as a billow of smoke.
Carolyn shut the door. Hard.
“Winston,” she said stiffly, “is a very discerning cat.”
Brody sighed, and when Carolyn forced herself to turn around and look at him, he was gazing at Winston with an expression of wounded disbelief on his handsome face.
“Does he like Conner?” Brody inquired.
Carolyn hesitated. Brody threw an emotional wrench in the works every time she encountered him, but she didn’t hate him. Not all the time, that is. And she didn’t enjoy making him feel bad.
“Yes,” she replied, eventually. “But you shouldn’t take it personally.”
“Easy for you to say,” Brody answered.
“Tricia’s okay, isn’t she?” That was it, she decided. He was there because he had bad news. Why else would he have come all the way back in from the ranch, where he was supposed to be stringing new fence lines with Conner and the crew?
Brody must have seen the alarm in Carolyn’s eyes, because he shook his head. Holding his range-battered hat in one hand, he ran the other through his shaggy, tarnished-gold hair.
Sighed again.
In a searing flash, it came back to her, the feel of that mouth on her skin.
“As far as I know, she’s taking a nap.” Another grin flickered in Brody’s eyes and twitched at one corner of his amazing mouth. “As soon as Tricia turned in, Conner decided he was a little tired, too. That was my cue to make myself scarce.”
Carolyn’s cheeks were stinging a little, but she had to smile. “Probably a good call,” she agreed. And then she waited. It was up to Brody to explain why he’d come back.
His remarkable blue eyes seemed to darken a few shades as he looked at her, and the gray rim around the irises widened. “I know the word doesn’t mean much,” he said, at long last, “but I meant it before, when I told you I was sorry about the way things ended with us.”
Suddenly, Carolyn wanted very much to cry. And this was a sign of weakness, an indulgence she rarely allowed herself. All her life, she’d had to be strong—as a matter of survival.
She swallowed painfully and raised her chin a notch. “Okay,” she said. “You’re right. We’ll just...let it go. Act as though it never happened.” She put out her hand, the way she might have done to seal a business agreement. “Deal?”
Brody looked down at her hand, back up at her face. “Deal,” he said hoarsely. And in the next moment, he was kissing her.
Carolyn felt things giving way inside her and, as good as that kiss was, she wasn’t about to surrender so much as an inch of the emotional ground she’d gained after the cataclysm that was Brody Creed.
She wrenched herself back out of his arms, put a few steps between them and then a few more.
Brody merely looked at her, with his mouth upturned at one corner, a bemused I thought so gleaming in his eyes.
Stunned, not only by his audacity, but also by what he made her feel, Carolyn touched her lips, as if relearning their contours after a long absence from her own body.
“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” she muttered.
Brody chuckled as he opened the door to leave. “Oh, believe me,” he intoned. “I’m not the least bit sorry—not for that kiss, anyhow.” His gaze shifted to Winston, who watched him from the windowsill, ears laid back, fur ruffled. “So long, cat,” he added. “For now.”
In the next moment, Brody was gone—so thoroughly gone that Carolyn felt as if she might have imagined the visit, at the same time certain that she hadn’t.
After that, her concentration was shot.
She waited until Brody had had plenty of time to drive away. Then she logged off her computer, pulled on a lightweight blue corduroy jacket and retrieved her purse and car keys.
Sewing was out of the question, and so was doing the bookwork. She was too jumpy to sit still, or even stay inside.
So she drove to the Creed ranch, taking the long way around, following the back