A Creed in Stone Creek Read Free Page A

herself a McKettrick, and their rapidly growing family.
    “He rented that space next door to the dry cleaners,” J.P. went on. “He’s a lawyer, you know. He’ll be hanging out a shingle any day now, I’m told.”
    “Stone Creek could use a good attorney,” Melissa said, largely uninterested. Was this the reason J.P. had asked for a Friday morning meeting—because he wanted to shoot the breeze about Steven Creed? “SinceLou Spencer retired, folks have had to have their legal work done in Flagstaff or Indian Rock.”
    J.P. took a loud sip from his coffee cup. “I hear Mr. Creed plans on working pro bono,” he added. “Championing the downtrodden, and all that.”
    That caught Melissa’s full attention. Stone Creek wasn’t exactly a hotbed of litigation, but it had its share of potential plaintiffs as well as defendants, that was for sure. There were disputes over property lines and water rights, Sheriff Parker hauled in the occasional drunk driver, and some of the kids in town seemed to gravitate toward trouble.
    “That’s interesting,” Melissa said, vaguely unsettled as some pertinent recollection niggled at the back of her brain, just out of reach. As for Mr. Creed, well, she tended to be suspicious of do-gooders—they usually had hidden agendas, in her experience—but she was also intrigued. Even a little pleased to learn that Steven Creed wasn’t just passing through town on his way to somewhere more fashionable, like Scottsdale or Sedona.
    She remembered the child, his ebony hair a gleaming contrast to Creed’s light-caramel locks. “The boy must take after his mother,” she mused.
    “Boy?” J.P. echoed, sounding puzzled. Then a light seemed to go on inside his head. “Oh, yes, the boy,” he said, shifting around on his chair. “His name’s Matthew. He’s five years old, and he’s adopted.”
    Melissa blinked, a little taken aback by the extent of his knowledge until she recalled that J.P.’s youngest daughter, Elaine, had moved back to Stone Creek after a divorce two years before, and opened a private, year-round preschool called Creekside Academy.
    Of course. Creed must have enrolled the child in advance—and Elaine had passed the juicy details on to her father.
    J.P. finished up with a flourish. “And there’s no Mrs. Creed, either,” he said.
    According to Elaine—she and Melissa had gone through school together—from the day she’d jettisoned the loser husband and returned to the old hometown to make a fresh start, her dad had been after her to “get out more, meet people, kick up your heels a little… As if Stone Creek were overrun with single men,” Elaine had grumbled, the last time Melissa had run into her, a few days before, over at the drugstore.
    Melissa, who hadn’t had a date in over a year herself, had sympathized. Between her sisters, Ashley and Olivia, and her big brother, Brad, somebody was always after her to go on out there and find True Love. Easy for them to say. Brad had Meg. Olivia had Tanner. And Ashley had Jack. The unspoken question seemed to be, So what’s your problem, Melissa? When are you going to get with the program and corral yourself a husband?
    Melissa frowned.
    J.P. either missed the expression or ignored it. Rising to his feet, he lobbed his empty coffee cup into the circular file with the grace of a much younger man. Back in the day, during high school and college, Judge Carpenter had been a basketball star, but in the end, he’d chosen to pursue a career in the law. “Well,” he said cheerfully, “I hereby declare this meeting over.”
    “That was a meeting?” Melissa asked, arching one eyebrow. The subtext was: I wolfed down the one turkey- sausage biscuit I allow myself per week just so you could tell me Steven Creed is single?
    “Yes,” J.P. said. “Now, I think I’ll go fishing.”
    Melissa laughed and shook her head.
    J.P. had just left when Sheriff Tom Parker peeked in from the doorway. Tom was a hometown boy, a tall, lean