A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [67]
Melissa rolled her eyes. “You can say that again. That was her cooking we had last night at supper, remember. My culinary repertoire is limited to deli salads and stuff from the freezer aisle at the supermarket.”
“Mine isn’t much better, I’m afraid,” he told her. Sunlight streamed in through a dusty window and cast an aura around him. “We’re having meat loaf tonight, you and I, but it’s takeout from the Sunflower Café. Matt will probably be blown away by supper over at Brad and Meg’s place—a decent meal, for once.”
Melissa left the stove, overwhelmed by a strange, swift tenderness unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
She swallowed. So much for his being easy to talk to. “I think you take very good care of Matt,” she said quietly.
“I try,” Steven said, and she saw a flicker of sadness move in his eyes, quickly gone. “There’s no denying that his mom and dad would have done a lot better job of raising him, though.”
They were standing several feet apart, as they had before, out there in that bower of lilacs, but something electrical arced between them, undiminished by distance.
“What happened to them?” she asked. “Matt’s parents, I mean.”
For a moment, Melissa didn’t think Steven was going to answer. When he did speak, he had to clear his throat first. “Jillie, Matt’s mother, died of breast cancer close to two years ago,” he said. “The grief got hold of Zack and it changed him. He was killed in a motorcycle wreck when Matt was four. I was named in both their wills as Matt’s guardian.”
“You must have been good friends, you and Jillie and Zack, if they trusted you to raise their child.”
Pain moved in that handsome face, the features rugged and aristocratic, both at once. “We were good friends,” he confirmed, after a long time.
She wanted very much to touch him then, not sexually, but to offer comfort, one human being to another. She was careful not to move. “You legally adopted Matt,” she said. Judge Carpenter had told her that, the first day. The day everything changed for Melissa.
“I figured it made sense,” Steven replied, “and Matt was all for it.”
“It can’t be easy, being a single parent.”
“Oh, believe me,” Steven said, smiling again, “it isn’t. But, just the same, I’d be hard put to think of anything more rewarding.” He held out his hand once more, and she crossed to him, took hold. “This place will be a lot different when the contractor and his crews get through with it,” he added.
Melissa’s throat tightened. “Don’t let them change it too much,” she said, without intending to say any such thing. It was none of her business what Steven Creed did to his house.
Steven cupped her cheeks in his hands then, and she knew by the touch of his palms that, professional man or not, he was no stranger to physical work. “I guess I probably shouldn’t kiss you,” he mused, his gaze focused on her mouth.
“I guess not,” Melissa agreed, but weakly.
He kissed her—lightly at first, and then thoroughly.
She moaned and slipped her arms around his neck.
“It’s too soon,” she said breathlessly, when the kiss finally ended.
“I know,” Steven rasped in reply.
After the longest moment of Melissa’s life, he stepped back, away from her, let his hands fall to his sides. He was breathing hard, and a muscle bunched in his jawline, then smoothed out again.
They stood there, just looking at each other.
It was Steven who finally broke the silence, and what he said surprised her. A lot. “Tell me something about yourself, Melissa.”
“Like what?”
Steven chuckled, standing there in a shifting mist of sun-speckled dust. Spread his hands. “What you love—what you hate—whether or not you believe in God. That sort of thing.”
A smile tugged at the side of her mouth. She was relaxing a little—in spite of herself. “Oh, that,” she said. She considered the question briefly. “Yes, I believe in God. I don’t see how a person could help it, looking up at a sky full of stars, or in the early spring, when the grass comes up green, or watching a baby take those first few steps—”
So much