A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [131]
In those days, he’d believed that Brody and Conner would simply work out their differences. After all, identical twins or not, they’d always had plenty of differences.
Instead, a decade had gone by, with both of them holding their grudges, unwilling to give so much as an inch.
The waste made Steven grind his back teeth. All those Thanksgivings and Christmases, when Brody’s chair at the big dining room table was empty. All those weddings and births and deaths. All those years when they could have been, should have been, a family.
When tragedy struck Jillie down, and then Zack, Davis and Kim and Conner had been there for Steven. But he’d missed Brody sorely during those days, just the same.
Now, he felt a strong and sudden—or maybe not so sudden—urge to throttle Conner, right then and there, then find Brody and do the same thing to him. To keep himself from doing just that, Steven turned on one boot heel and headed back to where Matt and Melissa were.
His cousins could do whatever they damn well pleased—they always had—but Steven was through wasting time. He was through waiting and hoping, and being scared of getting things wrong. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to get it. Soon.
MELISSA TOOK STEVEN’S HAND when he sat down beside her in the bleachers, his face still flushed with temper. “Where’s Conner?” she asked, whispering because even though Matt had moved up a few rows to sit with his buddy, Mac, she didn’t want to take the smallest chance of his overhearing.
“I don’t know,” Steven said coldly, “and I don’t care.”
“I don’t believe that,” Melissa said.
His shoulders, tense before, loosened a little as she reached up to rub Steven’s back with her palm. He gave her a sideways glance and grinned, albeit wanly.
“I love you,” he said softly.
She smiled. “Well, that’s convenient, cowboy, because I love you right back.”
“I wish we could leave—right now.”
Her eyes sparkled. “And miss the rodeo? Sacrilege! Besides, my sisters and Meg would know exactly what we were up to.”
“I’m thinking they know already,” Steven pointed out.
“Let me stay in denial as long as I can,” Melissa said.
Steven laughed, and she laid her head against his shoulder for a moment, and he forgot, at least for the time being, what it meant to be unhappy, or lonesome, or scared.
All he felt then was a quiet joy, the kind that weathers every kind of sorrow, the kind that lasts.
Forever.
“Will you marry me?” he asked quietly, his hand tightening around hers.
She smiled sweetly. “Eventually,” she answered.
And Steven kissed her, right there in the stands at the Stone Creek Rodeo, in front of God and everybody.
Let ’em look, he thought.
EPILOGUE
One year later…
MELISSA AWOKE TO STEVEN’S KISS, and his hand moving gently over her pregnancy-distended belly. The birth was still two months away, and she could feel their twin sons moving within her, wondered if they were already at odds, like Conner and Brody.
After the rodeo, Steven’s hardheaded cousins had gone their separate ways—again.
Conner returned to the ranch up at Lonesome Bend, as did Davis and Kim.
Nobody knew for sure where Brody had gone. He’d been conspicuously absent from the wedding, held in Ashley and Jack’s spacious front room at the B&B, barely three months after Steven and Melissa had first met. Even though it had been a wonderful, happy day, Melissa knew Steven missed having Brody there.
Now, Steven’s hand was moving lower on her belly.
Melissa caught hold of it and stopped his progress, which would inevitably lead to serious delay. Also, alas, serious pleasure. They didn’t make love in the usual manner these days, since she was well along with the twins, but Steven had his ways. Oh, yes, he definitely had his ways.
“There’s a wedding today, remember?” she said. “And it starts at noon.”
Tom Parker and Tessa Quinn were finally tying the knot,