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

by Linda Lael Miller

  Briana patted his arm. “I don’t think Josh would really hit the road on his own, but I’d rather not take the chance.”

  Jim heaved a heavy sigh, shoved a hand through his longish, blue-black hair. “Kids do stupid things sometimes,” he said.

  Briana thought of the bull in Dylan’s pasture, and the bears that apparently fed in the orchard on occasion. She glanced at her watch. It was almost lunchtime; she’d call home from the employees’ lounge behind one of the casino’s three restaurants and make sure Alec and Josh were following orders.

  “Yeah,” she agreed belatedly. “Sometimes they do.”

  She and Jim parted, and she headed for the lounge, went straight to the pay phone. She needed a cell, but it wasn’t in the budget.

  Josh answered on the third ring. “Alec is a butt-face,” he said, without preamble.

  “Be that as it may,” Briana answered, used to the running battle between her sons, “he’s your brother. What are you two up to?”

  “Alec is doing his math, and I was on the Internet until you called. Wanda ate a woodchuck or something, and her farts are, like, gross.”

  “I feel your pain,” Briana said cheerfully. “And how could Wanda have eaten a woodchuck?”

  “I said ‘or something,’” Josh pointed out.

  Briana smiled. “Joshua?”

  “Okay, it was the bratwurst left over from night before last,” Josh said. “It wasn’t my idea to give it to her. Alec did that.”

  Situation normal.

  “Will you come and get us?” he asked. “It’s boring around here, when we can’t even go outside.”

  “No time,” Briana said. “You’ll have to tough it out until I get home. I’m stopping off at the supermarket after work, so I might be a few minutes late.”

  “Alec really thinks Dad’s coming on Saturday.”

  Briana closed her eyes. “Maybe,” she said evenly. “Maybe he’s coming on Saturday.”

  “With Dad, it’s always ‘maybe,’” Josh replied.

  “True enough. Do me a favor, though, and hold the remarks. It really upsets Alec.”

  “He’s living in a fantasy world.”

  “You’re Alec’s big brother,” Briana said. “Be nice to him.”

  Josh sighed dramatically. “Okay, but only until you get home,” he said. “Then all bets are off.”

  “Fair enough,” Briana said, with a smile.

  Josh responded with a disgusted wail.

  “What?” Briana asked anxiously, thinking the house had caught fire or a serial killer was trying to break down the back door.

  “Wanda just cut one,” Josh lamented. “Again!” In the background, Alec whooped with manic delight.

  “Butt-face!” Josh yelled.

  “No name-calling, Josh,” Briana said. “You promised.”

  “All right,” Josh countered, “but if you’re not here by five-thirty, I’m going to have to kill him.”

  “I’ve only got one word for you, Joshua Grant.”

  “What?”

  “Babysitter,” Briana replied. Then she said goodbye and hung up.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE WERE TWO CARS parked in front of Cassie’s ramshackle place at the edge of town, and she’d scrawled With a client on the whiteboard nailed up beside the front door. Logan took the marker, dangling from a piece of tattered baling twine, and added I was here. Logan.

  That done, he turned and swung his gaze across the property.

  Sidekick was sniffing around the edge of the teepee, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Stillwater Springs, Montana, had to offer. It was authentic, built in the old way, by Cassie’s father, of tree branches and buckskin, and she charged fifty cents per visit.

  Logan approached, dropped two quarters into the rusty coffee can that served as a till—Cassie believed in the honor system and so did he—and ducked into the cool, semidarkness where he and Dylan and Tyler had played as boys.

  Except for the long-cold fire circle in the center, rimmed by sooty stones, the teepee was empty. Gone were the ratty blankets he remembered, the gourd ladle and wooden bucket, the clay cooking pots. No sign of the mangy bearskins, either.

  He sat down, cross-legged, facing the fire pit, and imagined the flames leaping before him. Sidekick took an uncertain seat beside him, leaned into his shoulder a little.

  Maybe the animal knew that in the old times, he might have been on the supper menu.

  Logan wrapped an arm around the dog, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Nobody’s going to boil you up with beans.”

  Sidekick stuck close, just the same.

  As Logan sat, he drifted into a sort of meditation, recalling other visits, sometimes alone, sometimes with his brothers. They’d always built a fire, filling the place with hide-scented smoke, and taken off their shirts. Sometimes, they’d even painted their chests and faces with cosmetics left behind by one or the other of their mothers.

  Jake never threw anything away.

  Except, of course, for three wives and three sons.

  Something tightened inside Logan, and Sidekick seemed to feel it, as though the two of them were tethered together by some intangible cord. The dog gave a low, throaty whine.

  The warp and woof of time itself seemed to shift as Logan sat there, waiting. It stretched and then contracted, until, finally, he could no longer measure the passing of seconds or minutes or even hours.

  Outside, car doors slammed.

  Engines started.

  Sidekick eased away from his side, restless, and headed for the opening to look out.

  And still Logan didn’t move.

  He knew the bulky shadow at the entrance was Cassie, but he didn’t look up or speak.

  “You’ll have to make peace with him, you know,” she said quietly.

  Logan didn’t respond, even to nod, nor did he meet her eyes. He knew she was referring to Jake, the man he both loved and hated, with such intensity that most times, he couldn’t separate one emotion from the other.

  “He won’t rest until you do,” Cassie went on. She stepped into the teepee then, sat down on the ground across from him, graceful despite her size.

  Logan blinked, came out of the meditation, or whatever it was. He smiled. “Still telling fortunes, I see,” he said, referring to the client she’d been with when he arrived.

  “It’s a living,” she said, with a little shrug and a partly sheepish smile.

  “You don’t need to read cards to make a buck, Cassie,” he pointed out, as he had at least a hundred times before. “You get a regular check from the tribal council.”

  “Maybe it isn’t about the money,” Cassie suggested mildly, laughing a little when Sidekick gave her a nuzzle with his nose and tried to sit in her ample lap.

  “What do you tell them?” Logan asked. “Your clients, I mean?”

  “Depends,” Cassie answered, “on what I think they need to hear.” She regarded him with a focus so sharp that it was unsettling. “Did you call Dylan and Tyler?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Dylan basically blew me off. I left a message for Ty, but he hasn’t called back.” He grinned. “Off the hook,” he finished.

  “In your dreams,” Cassie said.

  “Is this the part where you tell me what you think I need to hear?”

  “Yes,” she replied succinctly.

  He huffed out a sigh.

  Sidekick arranged himself on Cassie’s broad thighs, and she didn’t push him away. Instead, she stroked his back idly, though her attention was still on Logan, one hundred percent. It felt a little like a ray of sunlight coming through the lens of a magnifying glass, searing its way through the brittle inner shell meant to hide his secrets.

  “Jake won’t rest until you’ve come to terms with being his son,” Cassie said.

  Logan bristled. “What do you mean, he won’t rest? He’s dead, gone, crossed over, whatever. Maybe they let him into heaven, but I’m betting he gets his mail in h
ell.”

  “So bitter,” Cassie said, in a tsk-tsk tone. “No one is all bad, Logan. Including Jake Creed.”

  “He was a son of a bitch.”

  Cassie frowned. “Wrong. Your grandmother was a fine woman.”

  Logan said nothing. He’d never known his grandmother, or his grandfather, either. They’d both died long before he was born, and Jake neither told stories about them nor kept their pictures around.

  “People come into this life with agendas to fulfill, Logan,” Cassie told him quietly. “Sometimes they’re simple. Sometimes they’re complicated. Jake did what he was supposed to do.”

  “What? Raise hell?”

  “He made you strong. You and Dylan and Tyler. You’re as tough as the walls of this teepee, all three of you.”

  “It would have been easier,” Logan said, “if he’d just named me Sue.”

  Cassie laughed. “Easier isn’t necessarily better,” she pointed out.

  Logan wanted to refute that statement, but even with all his legal training, he couldn’t come up with a solid argument. “I called my brothers,” he said. “The ball is in their court. What else is there to do?”

  “You haven’t been to Jake’s grave, have you?”

  Logan stiffened, shook his head. Cassie, it seemed, had eyes everywhere, in the bushes, in the trees, in the walls. She’d always known, somehow, what he’d done and what he hadn’t done. Worse, she believed she had the right to comment.

  “His things are still packed away, too. That’s convenient, isn’t it? Because then you don’t have to remember quite so readily.”

  “I came back here, didn’t I?”

  Again, Cassie executed a half shrug. “You won’t stay if you don’t settle things with Jake,” she said. “I know what your dream is—to make the name Creed mean something good—and I can tell you that it’s more than just a dream. It’s a quest—the most important thing you’ll ever do.” At this, she paused and looked up and around at the interior of that teepee, as though her ancestors were hovering in the air or something. When her brown gaze collided with Logan’s, he felt like a butterfly with its wings pinned to a mat. “You’ll fail if you don’t own who you are—all of it. Not just the law degree, and the fancy silver belt buckles you won at the rodeo, and all that money you’re pretending you don’t have. You’ve got to accept that you’re flesh of Jake Creed’s flesh, bone of his bone, blood of his blood, and nothing is going to change that.”

  Logan shifted, got to his feet. “He was a bastard,” he said. “If I could be anybody else’s son—anybody’s—I would.”

  “Well,” Cassie said implacably, moving Sidekick gently off her lap and then accepting Logan’s hesitantly offered hand so she could stand, “you’re not. That’s one thing I know for sure.”

  “Maybe you should have told him,” Logan said, seething. “He used to say otherwise. He said Teresa was a whore—did you know that? Practically every time he got drunk, which was often, he told me she’d been catting around, and I probably wasn’t his.” He leaned in a little, despite the flinch he saw in Cassie’s broad, kindly face. “And you know what? I wished to God it was true back then, and I wish it now!”

  Cassie stood her ground, like she always had. It was a trait he blessed her for, even when he hated what she said. “How’s that working out for you, Logan?” she asked quietly. “All that wishing?”

  He glared at her.

  She waited.

  “You’re so sure he wasn’t telling the truth, for once in his miserable, worthless life?”

  “Teresa was faithful to her husband. She loved him. She loved you.” Cassie drew in a long, somewhat quivery breath. “Besides, you have Jake’s bone structure. His temper, too, and that mile-wide stubborn streak that ought to be in every dictionary under ‘Creed.’”

  “Great,” Logan said, sagging a little on the inside, now that he’d let off steam. “And what am I supposed to do with all this information, oh, great medicine woman?”

  “Break the curse,” Cassie answered. “Make different choices than Jake did. Find a woman, love her with your whole heart and mind and body and spirit. Make babies with her. Stick with her—and the children—for the duration.” She paused, regarded him with a kind of warm sorrow that got under his skin in a way her challenges hadn’t. “You’ve been running ever since the day they put Jake in the ground,” she went on, touching his arm. “Coming back here was a big thing. I know that. But until you can forgive Jake—really forgive him—you’ll be stuck, no matter where you go or what you do.”

  Logan thrust a hand through his hair. “I can’t,” he said.

  “Then you and your dog might as well get back in that old truck and move on, because you’re wasting your time here.” Tears glittered in Cassie’s wise brown eyes. “In all the ways that really count, Teresa was my daughter. I know what Jake put her through—Maggie and poor Angela, too. I had to let it all go, Logan—the hatred, the need for revenge—because it was devouring me from the inside.

  “Look at your life. Your brothers are strangers to you. Twice, you married the wrong woman. The ranch—your legacy—is practically in ruins. You can’t just ignore all of that. You have to make it right.”

  “How?” Logan demanded, furious because it was all true. Both his wives, Susan and Laurie, had been good women. He’d never raised a hand to either one of them, barely raised his voice, in fact. But in his own way, he’d been no more available to them than Jake was to Teresa or Maggie or Angela. “Short of committing bigamy—”

  Cassie smiled. “Those marriages are behind you,” she said. “Did you part friends?”

  Friends? Logan ached. He’d loved Susan, or thought he did. And when they weren’t having monkey sex, they’d been giving each other the cold shoulder. Now, she was happily married to a balding dentist with a slight paunch, and expecting her second child. He’d given her a settlement when his company took off, several years after their divorce, and she’d put it in trust for her children. Still, the last time he’d seen Susan, he’d known by the look in her eyes that she could barely restrain herself from spitting in his face.

  “Not so much,” he admitted. He still talked to Laurie sometimes—usually when she needed something. She’d used her divorce settlement to open a hair salon in Santa Monica, and the last time they’d spoken, she’d told him all about her recent wedding ceremony on a beach at sunset.

  She’d married herself. White dress, veil, cake and all.

  Still, it had to be an improvement over being married to him, Logan reflected ruefully. Except, if he did say so himself, for the sex.

  That had been beyond good, with both Susan and Laurie.

  It was also pretty much all he missed about being married.

  “Are they happy?” Cassie asked, ostensibly asking about his exes.

  He nodded. “Nothing like divorcing one of the Creed men to improve a woman’s outlook on life,” he said.

  Cassie laughed. Dusty light poured into the teepee as she pulled the flap aside to step out. Sidekick preceded her—Logan followed.

  The sun dazzled him, made him fumble for his sunglasses, which he’d left on the dashboard of the Dodge.

  Another car pulled into the driveway, parked beside his truck.

  “That’s Elsie Blake,” Cassie said, with a philosophical sigh. “She’s going to ask if I see a man in her future, the way she does every time she comes for a reading. I ought to tell her she’d be better off marrying herself, like Laurie did.”

  Logan blinked. “You knew about that?”

  “Of course I did,” Cassie answered brightly, and the dismissal was as clear as if she’d flat-out told him to get his butt into his truck and go home already. “She mailed out announcements, with a picture of herself on the front, wearing a white dress. I sent her a toaster.”

  Logan was rolling his eyes as Cassie walked away.

  *

  RUSHING INTO the kitchen with a grocery bag in each arm, Briana surveyed her surroundings. The counters
were clear, except for the vestiges of lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches, she guessed, by the burned crusts of bread—sneakers were neatly lined up just inside the back door and both boys looked angelic enough to light candles for a Vatican Mass. Only Wanda was her regular self.

  “Okay,” Briana said suspiciously, juggling the bags and heading for the table to set them down. “What have you guys been up to?”

  “I’ve been doing my history homework on the computer,” Josh said loftily, and whatever Web page he’d been looking at faded into cyber-oblivion at the click of the mouse.

  “And I swept the floor,” Alec volunteered. “After I did my homework, of course. Not that stink-face would let me use the computer.”

  “What did I say about name-calling?”

  The boys exchanged poisonous glares.

  “Don’t do it,” they chorused dolefully.

  Briana had been concerned that Alec and Josh might head for the orchard—it was infested with bears, to hear Logan tell it—or dash off to Cimarron’s pasture to play matador the moment she’d driven out of sight that morning. Instead, they’d probably watched something they weren’t supposed to on TV, or gotten into her secret stash of snack-size candy bars.

  Or both.

  “What are we having for supper?” Alec asked, as Briana began taking things out of the bags—milk, oversize cans of soup, packages of hamburger and chicken breasts, bread and fresh fruit, frozen potatoes compressed into little cylinders.

  “A casserole,” she said.

  Alec frowned in obvious disapproval while Wanda scratched hopefully at the back door, asking to be let out. “You do remember that we’re having company tonight?”

  Briana smiled hurriedly, went to open the door for Wanda, and then put away everything except the soup, two pounds of lean hamburger and the potato chunks. “Yes, Alec,” she said. “I remember.”

  “I think cowboys eat steaks,” Josh observed, drawing nearer. This particular casserole was Briana’s specialty—her dad had taught her how to make it—and both boys loved it.

  Usually.

  “Not tonight, they don’t,” she replied, going to the sink to wash her hands before assembling the meal. She would shower while the dish was in the oven, and put on fresh mascara and lip gloss, too. There was no time for a shampoo, so she’d wind her braid into a chignon at her nape, pin it into place and hope for the best. “Tonight, it’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza or nothing.”