A Creed in Stone Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

stress levels and double workweeks of her previous jobs. She liked having the time to paint the rooms of her little house evenings and weekends, read stacks of books, enjoy her growing gaggle of nieces and nephews and even garden a little.
    Okay, so she’d been through a romantic—not to mention sexual—dry spell since her breakup with Dan Guthrie, several long and eventful years before. Nobody had everything, did they?
    Something sagged inside Melissa when she asked herself that question. Her sisters had everything a personcould reasonably want, it seemed to her—babies, hunky husbands who adored them, work they loved—and it went without saying that Brad had caught the brass ring. During his amazing career, he’d collected more than a dozen awards from the Country Music Association, along with a few Grammys for good measure, his marriage to Meg McKettrick was beyond happy, and they were building a beautiful family together.
    Melissa sighed. Time to put away the tiny violin, stop comparing herself to her brother and sisters. Sure, she was a little lonely from time to time, but so what? She was healthy. She had kin, people who loved her. Stone Creek Ranch, with its long and colorful history, was still home. She had a fine education, no mortgage, a jazzy car custom-built to look just like a 1954 MG Roadster, and enough money socked away to retire at forty if she wanted to.
    Which she probably wouldn’t, but that wasn’t the point, was it?
    For Melissa, success meant having options. It meant freedom.
    If she had a notion to pull up stakes and throw herself body and soul into a job in a more exciting place—say, L.A. or New York—she could do that. There was nothing to tie her down: she could simply resign from her present position, rent out her house or even sell it, say another goodbye to Stone Creek and boogie.
    She loved her sisters and her brother. She had lots of friends, people she’d known all her life. But it was the idea of leaving her nieces and nephews, not being there, in person, to see them grow up but instead settling for digital photos, phone calls, rare visits and emails that made a hard knot form in her throat.
    And why was she even thinking these thoughts, anyway? Because Tom had been right, that was why.
    Steven Creed and his little boy had appeared in her office and, at some point, the earth had moved. Shifted right off its axis. Gravity was suspended. Up was down and down was up, and the proof of that could be stated in one short, simple sentence: She’d agreed to head the Parade Committee.
    Melissa drew in a breath, huffed it out hard enough to make her bangs flutter, and scanned the list of new messages on her computer screen.
    Tom Parker, sitting three doors down at his own keyboard, IMed her to say that time was wasting and she really ought to schedule a meeting so she could get on the same page with everybody on the Parade Committee.
    The response she sent was not something one would normally say to a police officer, face-to-face or via email. But this was Tom, the guy she’d grown up with, the man who’d named his dog Elvis, for Pete’s sake.
    Tom replied with a smiley-face icon wearing big sunglasses and displaying a raised middle finger.
    Melissa laughed at that—she couldn’t help it—and went back to the official stuff.
    Eustace Blake, who was ninety if he was a day and nonetheless managed to navigate the public computer over at the library just fine, thank you very much, had hunted-and-pecked his way through a complaint he’d made many times before, with subtle variations. Visitors from some faraway planet had landed in his cornfield— again —and scared his chickens so badly that the hens wouldn’t lay eggs anymore, and for all he knew, they’dcontaminated his stretch of the creek, too, and by God he wanted something done about it.
    Smiling to herself, wishing mightily for a fresh cup of coffee, Melissa wrote back, politely inquiring as to whether or not Eustace had