Montana Creeds 5 - A Creed in Stone Creek by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HQN
Published: 2011-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

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 for relaxing. Heat suffused Melissa’s face. Why had she gone and blurted out a loaded word like baby? The man was going to think she was one of those women for whom all roads lead to marriage and children.

Steven was gracious enough to ignore her embarrassment, obvious as it was. “I agree,” he said. “I’m convinced because of thunderstorms, the kind that seem to shake the ground itself. And because of the way little kids laugh, from way down deep in their middle, just because they’re so full of joy they can’t hold it in.”

Melissa’s eyes smarted, and her throat thickened, too. “Yeah,” she managed to croak out, after what seemed like a long time.

Steven smiled, stretched out a hand to her.

Melissa hesitated only briefly, then took it. He led her out of the house, with its benign ghosts and soft, musty shadows, into the deep grass that was once a lawn.

With a sweep of his free arm, he indicated the surrounding countryside. “Now it’s your turn, Melissa,” he said, his gaze resting gently on her face. “Show me the Stone Creek Ranch you remember, the parts of it you loved the best.”

The request quickened something inside Melissa. “Okay,” she said.

They took his truck, since there wouldn’t have been room for Zeke in the roadster and neither of them had the heart to leave the dog behind.

She directed him to the pioneer cemetery first, the place where generations of O’Ballivans were buried, along with her dad and Big John, her grandfather.

“Olivia and I used to come up here on horseback all the time,” Melissa confided, with a slight smile. “We were hoping to see a ghost and absolutely terrified that we might get our wish.”

Steven grinned. “You and Olivia? What about Ashley?”

“She didn’t care much for riding horses,” she answered. “And even less for ghosts.”

He laughed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.