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

by Linda Lael Miller

  He looked at Jake.

  He looked at his mother.

  He looked at himself as a baby.

  He ate another sandwich, and made one for Briana, in case she woke up hungry.

  Twilight came, and he went outside to feed the horses, taking the dogs with him.

  When he got back, Briana was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing one of his Tshirts and eating the sandwich he’d built for her earlier. She’d showered and unwound her hair from its braid, and it burned like golden fire around her face and shoulders, tumbled down her back, nearly to her waist.

  Logan’s heart stopped, started again.

  He stood clogging up the doorway, him and the dogs, unable to move.

  Briana nodded to the album, still open on the table. Idly gave Wanda a corner of her sandwich as she spoke. “Is that you in those pictures?” she asked, as though it were a normal thing for her to be sitting in his kitchen, practically naked, with her hair loose and shiny and damp.

  What would it smell like, all that hair? What would it feel like, flowing between his fingers?

  “Some of them,” he said, and he didn’t sound like himself. But he did move out of the doorway, mainly because the dogs were pushing at him from behind, wanting in.

  “If you don’t want to make love to me,” Briana said, “I’ll understand.”

  “Oh, I want to make love to you,” Logan answered, “but since I’m pretty sure you’re not in your right mind, I probably won’t.”

  She just looked at him, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  He thought of the high-heeled shoes she’d worn the day before, and the short, gossamer sundress.

  Maybe there was another side to Briana Grant.

  “You think I’m still in shock,” she said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “Until I’m absolutely sure of that,” he said, after drumming up all the resolution he could, “I’m not touching you.”

  “Fair enough,” she replied. She yawned, picked up her sandwich plate, carried it to the sink. Then she sashayed out of the kitchen, on into the living room.

  When he worked up the nerve to follow, he found her in his bed, curled up on her side, sound asleep.

  He took a shower, changed clothes.

  Checked on Briana again.

  Then he went back to the living room, checked his e-mail, surfed the Net for a while. He ate another sandwich, and after that, he couldn’t think of anything else to keep himself busy.

  So he found a blanket and stretched out on the couch.

  Jake came to him as soon as he closed his eyes.

  Are you crazy, boy? There’s a warm and willing woman in your bed, and you’re on the damned couch?

  I’m not you, Dad, Logan answered silently. Jake seemed so real, so present, that Logan thought he’d see him if he opened his eyes.

  So he didn’t.

  You’re damn right you’re not me. I knew enough to take my pleasure where I found it—especially when it was right under my nose.

  Logan shifted onto his side, with his back to the room. To his dead father. Yeah, you did. And I’m trying to live that down, not follow in your footsteps. Go away.

  Something stirred the air.

  Logan turned over, opened his eyes.

  It wasn’t Jake standing there; it was Briana.

  Without a word, she crawled under the blanket with him, snuggled close.

  “Hold me,” she said.

  Logan put his arms around her. Kissed the top of her head. “I’m here,” he told her. “I’m here.”

  She nodded against his chest, bunching her fingers in the front of his shirt, and went back to sleep.

  Eventually, he slept, too.

  And when he woke up the next morning, she was still cuddled up close.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BEFORE SHE DARED to open her eyes, Briana let her mind race through the events that had brought her to that moment, pressed against Logan Creed on a narrow couch. The frustrating discussion with Heather, the then-disturbing encounter with Brett Turlow in the casino parking lot. Finding the door open at home, and Wanda gone. Wandering into the orchard. The bear. The oddly calm terror she’d felt. Logan’s truck bumping and bucking over rough ground, wending between trees, horn blaring. And then…blessed safety, sanctuary in the ranch house that had stood empty for so long.

  Her fingers were still knotted in the front of his shirt.

  And he had a serious erection.

  Was he awake?

  She forced herself to look.

  He was, dark eyes solemn. And smoldering.

  She should get up off that couch, she told herself silently. Find her clothes, put them on and hightail it out of there, on foot if necessary.

  On foot? She’d risk running into the bear again if she walked home, and, anyway, she couldn’t expect Wanda to make that hike, bear or no bear.

  Dylan’s truck was still where she’d parked it the day before—next to the clothesline at the other place.

  Briana gave a languid stretch, heard Logan groan under his breath. His erection, already hard and hot against her, searing through the only thing she was wearing—a T-shirt—grew harder still, and hotter.

  The night before, he’d refused to make love to her. Said she wasn’t in her “right mind,” whatever that meant. Well, this morning she was, and she wanted him, if only this once, hurriedly, the two of them fumbling on his couch, like a pair of teenage lovers left unsupervised.

  Her body was already expanding, warm and achy, to receive him.

  She wasn’t using birth control—there’d been no reason to—and even if Logan happened to have condoms on hand, she knew by his breathing, by the hard tension and the heat, that he might not take the time to find one and put it on.

  But she was tired of the constant self-denial, and the need ran deep, a canyon in the center of her being, yawning and dangerous.

  So she found his mouth with hers, and kissed him.

  He held back at first, but then gave in.

  Their tongues tangled, Logan shifted, and she was beneath him, squirming, arching her back. It wasn’t yet dawn; they were blanketed in shadows, alone. Somewhere nearby, a clock ticked, marking off seconds like heartbeats.

  Logan pulled back breathlessly. She saw his face clearly—there must have been a lamp burning, or maybe it was moonlight—and saw the reluctance and a need to match her own.

  He didn’t ask the question; she glimpsed it in his eyes.

  Are you sure?

  She nodded. Even then, with no foreplay save that horizon-bending kiss, she was on the brink of shattering. She wanted him inside her, filling her.

  He moaned her name.

  She wriggled beneath him.

  He shifted, tugged the T-shirt up and off, over her head. Tossed it away.

  She slid her hands up under his T-shirt, splayed her fingers across his solid, warm chest. Smooth. It was smooth, his chest. His nipples pressed like hard buttons against the palms of her hands.

  He braced himself on either side of her, thrust his head far back with a ragged gasp. “Briana, I don’t have—”

  “Shh,” she murmured.

  She found the snap on his jeans, set him free, stroked him with a kind of shameless abandon she’d never felt before.

  Logan made a raw, scratchy sound, deep in his throat, and allowed her to plunder him for several long, stretched-to-the-snapping-point moments. Then he fell to her, tongued her bare breasts, suckled on them, one and then the other.

  Briana gave a low cry of sheer exultation, arching her back, grinding her hips where their bodies met. She parted her legs slightly, felt him settle between them.

  And then, like the thrust of some fiery sword, he was inside her, deep, deep inside her.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Yes—”

  Her climax was immediate, as she had known it would be, and all-consuming, sucking the breath from her lungs, electrifying even the tiniest nerves, rippling l
ike a current through every muscle. Even as she surrendered to the storm, as powerless as a bird caught up in a whirlwind, tears welled in her eyes.

  It would be over so soon.

  But it wasn’t. She’d barely stopped shuddering, Logan holding himself still inside and above her, when the friction began to build again, more slowly this time.

  “Easy,” he groaned.

  “Oh…my… God—” she pleaded, grasping at his shoulders, tossing beneath him. “Logan—”

  He began to move again, but with excruciating slowness, consummate control. The second climax came several minutes later, more devastating than the first, wringing a long, crooning whine from Briana, but this time, there was no slow descent afterward. The orgasm spiked, and then began to climb.

  As Logan increased his pace, Briana was utterly lost. Dazed, blinded, groping and begging senselessly, she practically disintegrated. Logan’s own cry of satisfaction was a distant thing, an echo heard under deep water, more vibration than sound.

  They strained against each other for what seemed a very long time, slowly coming back to themselves, and then collapsed in a tangle of arms and legs, speechless with exhaustion.

  Even when they’d recovered, they didn’t talk right away.

  What was there to say?

  Logan sprawled across Briana, though he’d been careful not to crush her under his full weight.

  “Next time,” he said, after a long time, “let’s use the bed.”

  She laughed, savoring their closeness, her satiation and his. It would be gone soon enough, that magical, golden feeling of freedom, when reality reasserted itself. “Who says there’s going to be a next time?”

  He lifted his head, grinned at her. “After that? You’ve got to be kidding.” He kissed her lightly. “Of course there’s going to be a next time, and a time after that.”

  Briana felt the truth of her life prodding at the perimeters of her pleasure, looking for a way in. She would hold it at bay as long as she could, stay inside the bubble of contentment until it popped.

  Before her befuddled brain came up with an answer for Logan’s remark, though, his face contorted and he leaped over her, like a man on fire, hopping on one foot and howling.

  Wanda, Sidekick and Snooks all came running, their barking fit to raise the roof.

  “Charley horse!” Logan yelled.

  And Briana laughed, full out, from the place far inside her, where her true self lived, the woman, the goddess, the unflappable One Who Knew. She laughed until she doubled over, until Logan stopped jumping around and Wanda came to the side of the couch and licked the tears off her face.

  *

  LOGAN LIMPED INTO the kitchen, the dogs following, to start the coffee brewing and give Briana a chance to collect herself. Once the java apparatus was in full chortle, he went outside, fed the horses, checked to make sure the water trough in the corral was full.

  By the time he got back to the house, the sun was up, and Briana was dressed in her own clothes, frying bacon and eggs at the stove.

  Logan had slept with a lot of women in his life, and he’d never been at a loss for words the morning after. This day, he was.

  She’d tamed that wild, blazing blond hair of hers into the usual French braid—that part was a pity—but she seemed surrounded by a haze of soft light, as though she didn’t quite belong in the ordinary, rough-and-tumble world, but had gone astray from some finer one.

  “How’s your leg?” she asked.

  Logan was momentarily stymied. “My—?” Then he remembered the charley horse. The result of sleeping on the couch, probably, twisted like a snarl of rusty barbed wire, trying to avoid touching Briana and at the same time keep her from falling off onto the floor. “It’s fine,” he said.

  “Are you just going to stand there all day, Logan Creed?” she asked, sounding for all the world like one of the long, long line of women who’d stood in that kitchen, turning the breakfast bacon in a skillet, urging some Creed husband to get moving. “Wash up and set the table. The food is almost ready.”

  The sweetness of that moment tightened the back of Logan’s throat. It would have been so easy to imagine that this was a regular morning, that they were man and wife and her boys would be tromping in at any minute, fresh from their little-kid beds. Even that there might be a baby nearby, in a playpen or one of those cradle-like things that folded up for easy transport.

  So easy, and so dangerous.

  Logan put kibble out for all three dogs and refilled their common water dish before washing his hands with soap and water at the sink, drying them on a wad of paper towels and setting plates and silverware on the table.

  What now? He wanted to ask her that, and Where do we go from here?

  But he didn’t dare. Things seemed too delicately balanced for that, too fragile. Whatever was insulating the both of them from the real world was as flimsy, and as transparently beautiful, as a butterfly’s wing.

  Since there were no serving dishes to speak of, Briana shoveled the food onto their plates, straight from the big skillet and the smaller one she’d fried the eggs in.

  Sitting down, she stole a glance at the Regulator clock on the wall separating the kitchen from the living room. Six-thirty.

  Logan read her mind by reading her face. Her mouth puckered a little, as did her forehead, and then that slight shake of her head.

  Too early to call Josh and Alec and find out if they’d survived the overnighter at Vance and Heather’s.

  “Sooner or later,” Logan said, his voice sounding like five miles of dry gravel, “we’re going to have to talk about what we just did.”

  She set her fork down. Frowned. But the pinkish tinge to her cheeks betrayed her. “We had sex.”

  “We made love.”

  Even though she didn’t actually move, he saw her pull back inside herself, become the regular Briana—the hardworking single mother, barely making it from paycheck to paycheck. “What’s the difference?” she asked.

  Heat surged up Logan’s neck. Was she trying to piss him off?

  Sure she was.

  She needed to throw up a barrier between them.

  “What’s the difference?” he echoed, determined not to let her pretend nothing had happened between them. Maybe she had resurrection sex all the time, but he’d never been hurled outside himself like that before. He still felt the jolt.

  Briana bit her lower lip, wouldn’t look at him.

  “And where the hell did you get a name like Briana, anyway?” he sputtered, because, damn it, he had to say something.

  Her green eyes twinkled a little. “Wild Man was quite a reader,” she said, and it took Logan a second to make the connection that Wild Man was her dad’s rodeo nickname. “He read a story with a character named Briana, and the name took his fancy.”

  The tension was ebbing, but it was a goodnews/bad-news kind of thing. Now, the pretending would start.

  Sure, they’d had sex, but they were two consenting adults, weren’t they?

  No big deal.

  A pulsing sorrow welled up in Logan—he might have been onboard the Titanic, watching the last of the lifeboats skim away into the frigid Atlantic darkness. “Did your mother agree?”

  “I don’t know,” Briana said. “She died when I was eight.”

  Logan glanced at the Our Family album, still lying on the other side of the table, where he’d left it the night before. Looked back at Briana. “I don’t know much about my mother, either,” he said. “I had stepmothers, though. They both tried to take up the slack.”

  Briana studied him. “Stepmothers, plural?”

  He nodded, smiled wistfully at the memory of Dylan’s mother, Maggie, puttering in this same kitchen, and then Tyler’s mother, Angela. “Two of them,” he confirmed. “Jake—my dad—seemed to think he could outrun his demons by marrying some good woman and getting her pregnant five minutes after the ceremony.” He sighed. “It never worked.”

  Remember that.

  Briana pushed
her food around with the prongs of her fork. “Is that why you got married more than once, Logan? To outrun some demon?”

  The question stung, striking bare nerves. He wondered briefly who’d told her about his marriages, decided it could have been anybody in Stillwater Springs. For all he knew, he’d told her himself.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “Looking back, though, I’d have to say it just seemed like a good idea—twice.”

  She chuckled ruefully at that. “So many things seem like good ideas, at the time. When I met Vance, I didn’t bother to find out who he was. I created an identity for him—the cowboy prince I’d read about in so many library books—and when that turned out to be false, I tried to change him into what I wanted.”

  “Good luck with that,” Logan said.

  “Didn’t you want to change your wives? Ever?”

  “No. But about six months in, I wouldn’t have minded volunteering them both for long-term space flights. Say to Jupiter, or the asteroid belt on the other side of Pluto.”

  Briana laughed, swatted at his arm. Her touch made his nerves jangle under his flesh.

  And then the phone rang.

  Somebody had really lousy timing.

  Logan sighed, got up and crossed the room. Barked a “Hello” into the receiver.

  “Is my mom there?” Alec asked meekly.

  Logan bit back the automatic “Yeah” that rolled to the tip of his tongue. It wasn’t even seven in the morning, and young as Alec was, he might put two and two together, which would not, Logan knew by the look on Briana’s face, be a good thing.

  “She just stopped by for coffee,” he said.

  Briana was at his side in an instant; he surrendered the phone.

  “Josh? Alec?”

  Logan watched her face as she listened. Saw the anxiety drain from her eyes.

  “You’re fine?” she asked. “Really?” A long pause. “Yes. Yes, I’m going to work.” More listening. Briana’s gaze touched Logan, ricocheted off immediately. “Yes, I’ll remember to charge my cell phone…. Sure, I’ll see you tonight—bye.”

  She moved to hang up the phone, keeping her back to Logan.

  “Can we act like this morning didn’t happen?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered, without hesitation.