Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  Briana closed her eyes. Vance loved to toss the word family around, as if just by using it, he could rewrite history and undo the truth—that he’d virtually thrown his wife and children away, like the candy-bar wrappers and burger cartons that collected on the floorboards of his van.

  “I might be passing through Stillwater Springs in a week or so,” the disembodied voice drawled on. “I’ll bunk in on the couch, if it’s all right with you, and see what I can do about making that check good.” A slight pause. “The couch folds out, right?”

  The graveyard supper of bologna and juice roiled in Briana’s stomach.

  Alec erupted with joy, jumping all over the kitchen like one of those Mexican worms trapped inside a dry husk.

  “If he’s coming here,” Josh huffed, fingers flying over the computer keyboard, “I’m running away from home!”

  “See you soon,” Vance crooned. “Love you all.”

  Click.

  See you soon. Love you all.

  Right.

  Briana swore under her breath. The earlier, almost mystical sense of profound change receded into the background of her mind, instantly replaced by a tension headache, bouncing hard between her temples.

  “Go ahead and run away,” Alec taunted his brother. “I’d like to have the bottom bunk, anyway!”

  Briana sighed. “Enough,” she said, rising weakly from her chair, going through the motions. She filled Wanda’s water and kibble bowls, but her gaze kept straying to the answering machine. Vance hadn’t left a number, and she didn’t have caller ID, since the phone was vintage. “Do either of you have your dad’s cell number?”

  Vance used cheap convenience-store phones, mostly. To him, everything was disposable—including people and a dog he’d raised from a pup.

  “Like I’d call the jerk,” Josh muttered. He put up a good front, but there were tears under all that scorn. Briana could relate—she’d cried a literal river over Vance herself, though the waterworks had long since dried up, along with everything else she’d ever felt for him. She was so over him—in fact, she’d been looking for a way out long before the drop-off outside of Wal-Mart.

  “Why do you want Dad’s number?” Alec asked, red behind his freckles, practically glaring at Briana. “You’re not going to call him and tell him not to come, are you?”

  That was exactly what Briana had intended to do, but looking down into Alec’s earnest little face, she knew she couldn’t. Not while he and Josh were within earshot, anyhow.

  “He probably won’t show up, anyhow,” Josh observed, still busily surfing the Web. What exactly was he doing on that computer? “With his word and one square of toilet paper, you could wipe your butt.”

  “Joshua,” Briana said.

  “I hate you!” Alec shrieked. “I hate both of you!”

  Wanda whimpered and flopped down by her water dish in dog despondence. When Alec pounded into the bedroom just off the kitchen that he and Josh shared, Wanda didn’t pad after him, which was unusual.

  Briana sighed again, pulled the carafe from the coffeemaker and went to the sink to fill it, glowering at the nearby answering machine. Damn you, Vance, she thought grimly. Why don’t you just leave us alone? That’s your specialty, isn’t it?

  “He’s a cowboy, all right,” Josh said, sounding almost triumphant. The keyboard clicking had ceased, definitely a temporary phenomenon. Josh was online way too much, and he was way too skillful at covering his tracks for Briana’s comfort.

  She frowned, still feeling disconnected, out of step. Went on making coffee, even though she didn’t need the caffeine. After the bomb Vance had just dropped, she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night anyway. “Your dad?” she asked.

  Josh echoed the sigh she’d given earlier. “Logan Creed,” he said, with the exaggerated patience of a Rhodes scholar addressing a blathering idiot. “I ran a search on him. He’s been All-Around Cowboy twice. He’s been married twice, too, no kids, no visible means of support.”

  “He’s a…cowboy?” Briana echoed stupidly. In a way, she found that news even more disconcerting than the threat of Vance’s imminent arrival.

  “He does have a law degree,” Josh said, hunching his shoulders to peer at the monitor screen. “Maybe he’s rich or something.”

  The Creeds were legendary in and around Stillwater Springs. Even as a comparative newcomer, Briana had heard plenty about their exploits, but if the state of the ranch was anything to go by, they not only weren’t rich, but they’d also been lucky to escape foreclosure.

  “Now why would you run a search on Mr. Creed?” Briana asked, with an idleness she didn’t feel, as she took a mug down from the cupboard and dumped in artificial sweetener and fat-free cream.

  Creed is a cowboy, said a voice in her head. Consider yourself warned.

  “He said we could call him Logan,” Josh reminded her.

  “Logan, then,” Briana said, filling her mug even though the pot wasn’t finished brewing. The stuff had that strong, bottom-of-the-pot taste, fit to curl her hair, but it steadied her a little. “Why check him out online?”

  “It was the boots,” Josh reminisced, either hedging or ignoring Briana’s question entirely. “They weren’t fancy, like the ones that guy at the Ford dealership wears, with stars and cactuses and bears stitched on them—”

  “Cacti,” Briana corrected automatically, ever the teacher.

  “Whatever,” Josh said, turning to face her now. “Logan’s boots are beat-up. Anybody with boots like that probably rides horses and works hard for a living.”

  Briana thought of Vance’s boots. He’d had them resoled several times, and they were always scuffed. “Maybe he’s just poor,” she suggested. “Logan, I mean.”

  Josh shook his head. “He’s got a law degree,” he repeated.

  “And ‘no visible means of support,’ as you put it. Stop evading my question, Josh. Why did you research our neighbor?”

  “To make sure he isn’t a serial killer or something,” Josh answered.

  Briana hid a smile. In a few minutes, she’d check on Alec. Right now, she suspected, he needed some alone time. “And what’s your assessment, detective? Is the neighborhood safe for decent people?”

  Josh grinned. His smiles were so rare these days that even the most fleeting ones were cause for celebration. Some inner light had dimmed in Josh, after Vance’s desertion, and sometimes Briana feared that it would go out entirely.

  “At least until Dad gets here, it is,” Josh said.

  Ignoring that remark, Briana flipped on the overhead lights, sent the twilight shadows skittering. “You wouldn’t really run away, would you?” she asked carefully, making the artwork flutter like ruffled feathers on some big bird when she opened the refrigerator door again. Bologna sandwiches aside, the boys would need a real supper. “If your dad comes to visit, I mean?”

  The silence stretched thin between her question and Josh’s answer.

  Still in the chair in front of the computer, he looked down at the floor. “I’m ten, Mom,” he said. “Where would I go?”

  Briana set aside the package of chicken drumsticks she’d just taken from the fridge and went to her son. Moved to lay a hand on his shoulder, then withdrew it. “Josh—”

  “Why can’t he just leave us alone?” Josh broke in plaintively. “You’re divorced from him. I want to be divorced from him, too.”

  Briana bent her knees, sat on her haunches, looking up into Josh’s face. He was one very worried little boy, trying so hard to be a man. “I know you’re angry,” she said, “but your dad will always be your dad. He’s not perfect, Josh, but neither are the rest of us.”

  A tear slipped down Josh’s cheek, a little silvery trail coursing through an afternoon’s worth of happy dirt. “I still wish we could trade him in for somebody different,” he said.

  Briana’s chuckle was part sob. Her vision blurred, and her smile must have looked brittle to Josh, even forced. “Cardinal cosmic rule number one,” she said. “You ca
n’t change the past—or other people. And the truth is, while things were pretty hard a lot of the time, I don’t regret marrying your dad.”

  Josh sniffled, perplexed. “You don’t?”

  Briana shook her head.

  “Why not? He’s chronically unemployed. When he does send a child-support check, it always bounces. Don’t you ever wish you’d married another kind of man? Or just stayed single?”

  Briana reached up, ran a hand over Josh’s ultra-short summer haircut. “I never wish that,” she said. “Because if I hadn’t married your dad, I wouldn’t have you and Alec, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”

  Josh ruminated. They’d had the conversation before, but he needed to be reminded, even more often than Alec did, that she was there for the duration, that she’d fight monsters for him, or walk through fire. For a year after Vance had left them, Josh had had nightmares, woke screaming for her. Alec had suffered, too, wetting the bed several times a week.

  “We’re a lot of trouble,” Josh said finally. “Alec and me, I mean. Fighting all the time, and not doing our chores.”

  “You’re the best things that ever happened to me,” Briana said truthfully, standing up straight. “It would be kind of nice if you and your brother got along better and did your chores, though.”

  The door to the boys’ bedroom creaked partway open, and Alec stuck his head out.

  “I’m done being mad now,” he said. His glance slid to Josh. “Mostly.”

  Briana laughed. “Good,” she replied, getting out the electric skillet to fry up chicken legs. “Both of you need to clean up. Josh, you go first. Shut down that computer and hightail it for the bathroom. Alec, you can wash here at the kitchen sink, and then we’ll go over your multiplication tables.”

  For once, Josh didn’t argue.

  Alec dragged the step stool over to the sink, climbed up and scrubbed his face and hands. “It’s summer, Mom,” he protested. “I bet the kids who go to real school aren’t worrying about any dumb old multiplication tables.”

  “Alec,” Briana said.

  “One times one is—”

  “Alec.”

  Alec rattled through his sixes, sevens and eights, the sequences that usually gave him trouble, before he got down off the step stool. Then he stood facing Briana, hands and face dripping.

  “I know Dad’s cell-phone number,” he said.

  Briana’s heart pinched. Alec lived for any kind of contact with Vance, no matter how brief or limited. He probably expected her to shoot down the visit like a clay bird on a skeet-shooting range, but he was willing to give her the information anyway.

  “That’s okay,” she said, a little choked up. Alec was only eight. Even after all the disappointments, and all Briana’s cautious attempts to explain, he simply didn’t understand why the four of them plus Wanda didn’t add up to a family anymore. “You know, of course, that your dad…changes his mind a lot? About visits and things like—”

  Alec cut her off with a glum look and a nod. “I just want to see him, Mom. I know he might not come.”

  Briana’s throat cinched tight. Vance was always chasing some big prize, some elusive victory, emotionally blindfolded, stumbling over rough ground, trying to catch fireflies in his bare hands. Their marriage was over for good, but he still had their sons. They were smart, wonderful boys. Why were they always at the bottom of his priority list?

  “I know,” she said, at last. “I know.”

  *

  CASSIE STROKED the dog as she regarded Logan in her thoughtful way, seeing way inside. She looked completely at home in her skin, sitting there on the porch step. Unlike most of the women Logan knew, Cassie never seemed to fret about her weight—it was simply part of who she was. To him, she’d always been beautiful, a great and deep-rooted tree, sheltering him and his brothers under her leafy branches when they were young, along with half the other kids in the county. Giving them space to grow up in, within her constant, unruffled affection.

  “You look so much like Teresa,” she said quietly. “Especially around the eyes.”

  Logan didn’t answer. Cassie was thinking out loud, not making conversation. She never made conversation, not the small-talk variety, anyway.

  Teresa, his mother, had been Cassie’s foster daughter, so they weren’t really related, he and this “grandmother” of his. Still, he loved her, and knew she loved him in return.

  Cassie looked around, sighed. “The place is a shipwreck,” she said, still petting Sidekick, who was sucking up the attention, snuggling close against Cassie’s side. “You should come and stay in my guest room until the contractors are through.”

  “Your guest room,” Logan said, “is a teepee.”

  Cassie laughed. “You didn’t mind sleeping out there when you were a boy,” she reminded him. “You used to pretend you were Geronimo, and Dylan and Tyler always fussed at me because you wouldn’t let them be chief.”

  The memory—and the mention of his brothers—ached in Logan’s rawest places. “You ever hear from them, Cassie?” he asked, very quietly and at a considerable amount of time.

  “Do you?” Cassie immediately countered.

  Logan shoved a hand through his hair. He still needed a trim, but there were only so many things a man could do on his first day home. “No,” he said. “And you knew that, so why did you ask?”

  “Wanted to hear you say it aloud,” Cassie said. “Maybe it’ll sink in, that way. Dylan and Ty are your brothers, Logan. All the blood family you’ve got in the world. You play fast and loose with that, like you’ve got all the time there is to make things right between the three of you, and you’ll be sorry.”

  Logan approached at last, found a perch on the bottom step. His first inclination was to get his back up, ask why it was his job to “make things right,” but the question would have been rhetorical bullshit.

  He knew why it was up to him. Because he was the eldest. Because nobody else was going to open a dialogue. And because he’d been the one to start the fight, the day of their dad’s funeral, by speaking ill of the dead.

  Okay, he’d been drunk.

  But he’d meant the things he’d said about Jake—that he wouldn’t miss him, that the world would be a more peaceful place without him, if not a better one.

  He’d meant them then, anyway.

  Cassie reached out and mussed his hair. “Why did you come back here, Logan?” she asked. “I think I know, but, like before, I’d like to hear you say it.”

  “To start over,” he said, after another hesitation.

  “Sounds like a big job,” Cassie observed. “Getting on some kind of terms with your brothers—even slugging terms would be better than what you have now—that’ll be part of it.”

  Logan nodded, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t trust his voice beyond the three-word sentence he’d offered up last.

  “I’ll give you their numbers,” Cassie said, shifting enough to extract her purse from between her right thigh and the porch rail, taking out a notepad and a pen. “You call them.”

  “What am I going to say?”

  For all the figuring he’d done, all the planning and deciding, he’d never come up with a way to close the yawning gap between him and Dylan and Tyler.

  Cassie chuckled. “Start with hello,” she said, “and see where it goes from there.”

  “I shouldn’t need to tell you where it might ‘go from there,’” he replied.

  “You’ll never know if you don’t try,” Cassie told him. She scrawled two numbers onto the notepad, quickly and from memory, Logan noted, and tore off the page to hand to him. Having done that, she stood with the elegant grace that always surprised him a little, given her size. She patted Sidekick once more and descended the steps with the slow and purposeful motion of a glacier, leaving Logan to step out of her way or get run over.

  Sidekick remained behind on the porch step, but he gave a little snort-sigh, sorry to see Cassie go.

  Logan opened the door of her ca
r, like a gentleman. Why Cassie didn’t buy herself something decent to drive was beyond him—she received a chunk of the take from the local casino twice a year, as did the other forty-odd members of her tribe.

  “Next time I see you,” she said, shaking a finger at him, “you’d better be able to tell me you’ve spoken to Dylan and Tyler. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to shave and put on something with a collar and buttons.” She paused to tug at his T-shirt. “In my day, these things were underwear.”

  Logan laughed. “I’ve missed you, Cassie,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Sidekick and I will stop by tomorrow—I’m taking him to the vet and I have a meeting with my contractor. I can promise the shave and the button-down shirt, maybe even a haircut, but whether I’ll have called my brothers or not…well, that’s a crapshoot.”

  “Longer you put it off, the harder it will be,” Cassie said, making no move to get into the car. “Are you going to stay, Logan, or are you just blowing through to spit on your father’s grave and sell your share of this land to some actor?”

  “I hope you’re not going to stand there and pretend you were the president of Jake Creed’s fan club,” Logan said.

  “We had our tussles, Jake and me,” Cassie admitted. “But he was your father, Logan. In his own crazy way, he loved you boys.”

  “Yeah, it was right out of Leave it to Beaver, the way we lived,” Logan scoffed. There was a note of respect in his tone, but it was for Cassie, not Jake. “I guess you’ve forgotten the year he cut the Christmas tree in half with a chainsaw. And how about that wonderful Thanksgiving when he decided the turkey was overcooked and threw it through the kitchen window?”

  Cassie sighed, laid a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “What about the time you and Dylan decided to run away from home and got lost up in the woods? It was November, and the weatherman was predicting record low temperatures. The sheriff gave up the search when the sun went down, but Jake…? He kept looking. Found you and brought you both home.”