A Creed in Stone Creek Read Online Free Page B

shoulders rose and fell as she drew in a big breath and sighed it out, looking cheerfully doomed. “Welcome to Stone Creek, Matt Creed,” she said. “And here’s hoping you’ll enjoy the parade.”
    Mollified, Matt punched the air with one small fist and turned to Steven. “Yes!” he said, with a grin.
    By then, Steven had pieced the scenario together in his mind, or part of it, at least. Ms. O’Ballivan hadn’t wanted to oversee the upcoming event, but she’d been roped in anyhow—by the sheriff, from the sound of it.
    Steven allowed himself a long look at Melissa—an indulgence, considering the way she shook him up. The Realtor who’d sold him the Emerson ranch had touted both the parade and the rodeo as “longstanding community traditions,” in addition to other selling points, and Steven had made a big deal about the festivities so Matt would have something to look forward to, besides the relatively immediate dog and the eventual pony.
    “Thanks,” Steven told Melissa, and the word came out sounding gruff.
    She made a comical face. “Don’t mention it,” she replied, rueful.
    “Maybe I could help out somehow,” Steven heard himself say, as he took Matt’s hand and started to turn away. “Not that I know much about parades.”
    “Join the club,” Melissa said, with another of those lethal smiles of hers.
    Steven grinned, nodded and managed to peel himself away.
    He forgot all about paying the parking ticket, though, because his mind was full of Melissa O’Ballivan, and it was bound to stay that way.
    All through the closing, held in a meeting room over at the Cattleman’s Bank, Matt fidgeted. Steven signed papers, handed over a cashier’s check covering the cost of the property in full, probably came across as a man who knew what he was doing.
    Adopting a little boy. Quitting the prestigious Denver firm where he’d worked since he’d left the family business. Winding up so far from the Creed ranch outside Lonesome Bend, Colorado, which had been in the family for well over a hundred years, only to buy a run-down spread in another state.
    Was he a man who knew what he was doing? Before he’d encountered Ms. O’Ballivan, Steven would have answered with an unqualified “yes.” Now, he wasn’t so sure.
     
    “W HAT JUST HAPPENED HERE ?” Melissa asked, widening her eyes at Tom Parker and laying the splayed fingers of one hand to her chest. Steven Creed and his little boy, Matt, had probably been gone for all of thirty seconds, but it seemed as if they’d taken all the oxygen in the room away with them, leaving a vacuum.
    Tom chuckled. “Stone Creek has itself a new chairman for the Parade Committee,” he said, looking pleased and maybe a little smug on top of that. Then, about to leave, he paused in the doorway to wink at her. “And unless I miss my guess, the earth just moved.” With that, he was gone.
    Melissa stood in the middle of the office floor for a few moments, flustered. Then, because she was nothing if not professional, she walked over, gave her door a firm shove with one palm to shut it and marched back to her desk.
    She didn’t have many cases to prosecute; things had been pretty quiet around Stone Creek since Byron Cahill got himself sent up, but there were a few, and she always had reports to make, files to review, emails to read and respond to. If she’d been smart, she thought to herself, she’d have gone fishing with J.P.
    At midmorning, Andrea rapped on the office door and stuck her head in to say that she needed to go home because she had cramps and there was nothing to do around that place anyway.
    Peering at the girl over the tops of her reading glasses, Melissa mouthed the word go and logged on to her computer. Andrea might or might not have been suffering from cramps, but there was no arguing with the fact that both of them were, for today at least, underworked.
    Melissa, grateful to be putting in eight-hour days, like normal people, didn’t miss the high