Creed's Honor by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

babies—a level look. “Yeah,” he answered, “I got the serum. Didn’t know it was a rush job, though.”
    Davis sighed, rummaged up a sheepish smile. “We’ve still got plenty of daylight left,” he said. “Kim and I had words a little while ago, that’s all. She put my favorite boots in the box of stuff she’s been gathering up to donate to the rummage sale. I took issue with that—they’re good boots. Just got ’em broken in right a few years ago—”
    Conner laughed. Kim, Davis’s wife, was a force ofnature in her own right. And she’d been a mother figure to her husband’s orphaned twin nephews, never once acting put upon. It was a shame, Conner had always thought, that Kim and Davis had never had any children together. They were born parents.
    “I reckon it would be easier to buy those boots back at the rummage sale than argue with Kim,” Conner remarked, amused. The woman could be bone-stubborn; she’d had to be to hold her own in that family.
    “We won’t be here then,” Davis complained. “I’ve got half a dozen saddles ready, and we’ll be on the road for two weeks or better.”
    “I remember,” Conner said, opening a rear door and reaching into the extended-cab pickup for the boxes of serum he’d picked up at Doc Benchley’s clinic. There were still a few hours of daylight left; if they saddled up and headed out right away, they could get at least some of the calves inoculated.
    So Conner thrust an armload of boxes at Davis, who had to juggle a little to hold on to them.
    “You’ll be here, though,” Davis went on innocently. “You could buy those boots back for me, Conner, and hide them in the barn or someplace—”
    Conner chuckled and shook his head. “And bring the wrath of the mom-unit down on my hapless head? No way, Unc. You’re on your own with this one.”
    “But they’re lucky boots,” Davis persisted. “One time, in Reno, I won $20,000 playing poker. And I was wearing those boots at the time. ”
    “We’re doomed,” Conner joked.
    “That isn’t funny,” his uncle said.
    Davis and Kim lived up on the ridge, in a split-level rancher they’d built and moved into the year Brody andConner came of age. Because Blue had been the elder of the two, the firstborn son and therefore destined to inherit the spread, the ranch belonged to them.
    Conner occupied the main ranch house now, and since Brody was never around, he lived by himself.
    He hated living alone, eating alone and all the rest. He frowned. There he went, thinking again.
    “Everything all right?” Davis asked, looking at him closely.
    “Fine,” Conner lied.
    Davis was obviously skeptical, but he didn’t push for more information, as Kim would have done. “Let’s get out there on the range and tend to those calves,” he said. “As many as we can before sunset, anyhow.”
    “You ever think about getting a dog?” Conner asked his uncle, as they walked toward the barn. “Old Blacky’s been gone a long time.”
    Davis sighed. “Kim wants to get a pair of those little ankle biters—Yorkies, I guess they are. She’s got dibs on two pups from a litter born back in June—we’re supposed to pick the critters up on this trip, when we swing through Cheyenne.”
    It made Conner grin—and feel a whole lot better—to imagine his ultramasculine cowboy uncle followed around by a couple of yappers with bows in their hair. Davis would be ribbed from one end of the rodeo circuit to the other, and he’d grouse a little, probably, but deep down, he’d be a fool for those dogs.
    Reaching the barn, they took the prefilled syringes Conner had gotten from Doc Benchley out of their boxes and stashed them in saddlebags. They chose their horses, tacked them up, fetched their ropes and mounted.
    Once they were through the last of the gates and onthe open range, Davis let out a yee-haw, nudged his gelding’s sides with the heels of his boots, and the race was on.
     
    V ALENTINO LOOKED LIKE a different dog when