A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [117]
“Nice parade!” Matt complimented her, when she entered their small family circle. “You did a great job, Melissa!”
“Thanks, cowboy,” she said, with tenderness in her voice as well as her eyes, as she reached up to tug at Matt’s “rodeo” hat. It was one of several presents Kim and Davis had brought along.
“I’m Kim Creed,” Steven’s stepmother said warmly, putting a hand out to Melissa. “And this is my husband, Davis.”
Davis’s eyes twinkled as he shook hands with Melissa. “Well, now,” he said, giving a tug at the brim of his own hat, a larger version of the one Matt was wearing, but otherwise a near duplicate. “It’s nice to meet you in person, though I will admit that I feel like I already knew you.”
Melissa blinked at that, and her cheeks turned almost the same enticing shade of peach as her blouse as she darted a confused glance at Steven, looking as though she might be wondering if he was the type to kiss and tell.
So to speak.
“Matt’s been talking about you pretty much nonstop,” Kim explained, smiling at Melissa.
“I showed them the picture I drew,” Matt piped up. “You’re in it. It’s you and me and Dad and Zeke and my pony, looking like a family.”
Inwardly, Steven groaned. Outwardly, he managed to keep his cool.
If Melissa had any reaction at all to the boy’s remark, it didn’t show.
“Not that I have a pony,” Matt added, when no one else spoke up right away. “Even though Dad promised we’d both have horses as soon as the barn was finished.”
Davis chuckled at that. “Give your dad a chance, boy,” he said easily, looking up at Matt. “It was just yesterday that the shavings were put down in the stalls and the water supply was hooked up.”
Steven was grateful to his father for saying something, because his own tongue still felt like a twist of rusted barbed wire. Though he couldn’t stop staring, he hoped Melissa would be too distracted by Matt and Davis and Kim to notice.
I love you, Melissa O’Ballivan, said something inside him.
Steven was, oddly, as shaken by that silent voice as Melissa and the others would have been, if he’d said it out loud. Thank God, he hadn’t. Had he?
She looked up at him, her expression curious. Somehow unsettled.
Then she recovered, smiled a brilliant smile that skirted over him but took in Davis, Kim and especially Matt.
“I’d better be going,” she said. “Once the parade wraps up, I’ll be expected to offer my congratulations to one and all.”
With that, she walked away.
Steven didn’t make a sound. He couldn’t see where Matt was looking, but it wasn’t hard to guess.
Davis and Kim, of course, were watching Melissa hurrying alongside the last straggling remnants of the Independence Day parade.
“I want Dad to marry Melissa,” Matt said, with so much enthusiasm that more people than just his grandparents heard the statement and turned to grin as they registered it. “But I’m not getting anywhere with it.”
Steven reddened, starting with his neck and ending somewhere above his hairline.
Kim smiled, and reached up for Matt with both arms. “The parade’s almost over,” she said, as the boy went to her, readily. “Let’s head over to the fairgrounds and get a jump on the line for the Ferris wheel.”
Matt nodded eagerly.
“And you,” Kim said to Steven, holding the child comfortably in those strong, ranch-woman’s arms of hers, “can probably find something constructive to do while your dad and I spend a little time with our grandson.”
Davis chuckled again, and slapped Steven on the back.
And then all three of them walked away and left him standing there, looking like a damn fool who hadn’t figured out that the parade had already passed him by.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
STEVEN FELT LIKE A STALKER, but he trailed Melissa to the supermarket parking lot at the other end of town, where the parade was already breaking apart into colorful segments, like some snake undergoing a mysterious rite of renewal.
There was a lot of hugging and hand-shaking, and then more hugging. The kids from the marching band stripped right there in the open, shedding uniform coats and creased pants to reveal the shorts