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

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Everyone in town would know, within a day. And they wouldn’t believe for a minute that we were sleeping in separate bedrooms.”

  “I didn’t say it was a perfect suggestion, Briana. Does gossip really matter that much to you? More than being safe and—” he went ahead and played the trump card, though it pained his conscience a little “—knowing Alec and Josh are safe, too?”

  “You know perfectly well that we’d have sex—”

  “I prefer to think of it as ‘making love,’” Logan said loftily.

  “Whatever,” Briana answered, in that same hissing whisper. “I know lots of good people live together, Logan. I know I’m way behind the times. But I’m not living under the same roof with you unless—” She broke off, blushing even harder than before.

  “Unless we’re married?”

  “Like that’s going to happen. We’ve known each other for a week, Logan.” Her hands flew out at her sides. “Sure, the sex is good—it’s better than good—but…”

  He took her hand. “But…?” he prompted.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why are we even talking about this, anyway? It’s crazy!”

  “Is it?” Logan countered. He probably looked and sounded calm on the outside, but inside his heart was thrumming and his brain was echoing Briana’s sentiment—it was crazy. He was a two-time loser, when it came to marriage. They were virtually strangers to each other. And yet—

  Briana gaped at him, speechless.

  “We could be married in three days,” he heard himself say. “Approach it like a business deal. You get what you want—security and a good name—and I get what I want. A wife and kids.”

  “You’re serious!”

  By God, he was serious. He grinned at the realization of it. “I’ll set up trust funds for both Alec and Josh,” he said, on a roll now. “And instead of a prenup, I could set aside a couple of million in your name—”

  “A couple of million?” She looked around the kitchen, with its peeling wallpaper, outdated cupboards and battered wood floors.

  “Did I forget to mention that I’m rich?” Logan asked.

  “Yeah,” Briana said. “You neglected that little detail.”

  “What do you have to lose, Briana?” Logan reasoned.

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. Glanced toward the inside door, most likely making sure the boys weren’t listening in.

  “On the other hand, look what you have to gain. Several million dollars. Hefty college funds for your sons. You’d never lack for anything, even if the whole marriage thing went bust, and neither would they.”

  She blinked. “What’s in this for you?”

  “I told you. A wife. Kids.”

  “Alec and Josh are Vance’s sons,” Briana reminded him. “And while I don’t mind admitting I wish they weren’t, reality is reality.”

  “Kids of our own,” Logan proposed. “At least two. The first one within the year.”

  Her green eyes fairly popped. My God, those eyes. A man could tumble right into them, end over end, and never be sane again.

  “You’re nuts if you think I’d have babies with you and leave them behind if things went sour,” she warned. “I’d want the children, not the money.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I think I could love you,” Logan said. “We wouldn’t be the first people who ever got married for practical reasons, you know, and fell in love after the fact.”

  “That is the craziest thing I’ve ever—”

  Logan folded his arms, arched one eyebrow. “Think about it,” he said. Then he stood up and headed for the back door. Maybe Dylan hadn’t ridden out yet; if he had, Logan meant to catch up with him. It had been too long since they’d raced each other across a field, in the light of a new dawn, yelping like a couple of Sioux braves on the warpath.

  Way too long.

  *

  “WHERE’D LOGAN GO?” Alec asked, peeking through the doorway to the living room and still blinking a night’s sleep out of his eyes. Josh pushed through behind him.

  Briana stood at the stove, frying up some bacon and eggs. It seemed an oddly normal thing to be doing, making breakfast in that shabby but spacious old ranch house, with all its history.

  “I think he’s gone riding with Dylan,” she said carefully. The truth was, she’d looked out the window and seen the two men riding out together just as the sun came up, Dylan on the buckskin, Logan riding bareback on the gray.

  “Are you mad at Heather?” Alec asked, creeping into the room, dragging back a chair at the table.

  “I’m not sure mad is the right word,” Briana said moderately. “What happened last night, guys?”

  Josh plunked down in the midst of all three dogs, and began ruffling ears. A tentative grin eased the strain in his face as he relaxed. “Somebody called Heather at the trailer, after Dad went back to work his overtime shift,” he said. “She started crying.”

  “We didn’t know what to do,” Alec said solemnly.

  Briana pushed the skillets off the burners. Breakfast could wait. “Of course you didn’t,” she said gently, going to Alec, touching his face, looking over at Josh in the next moment. “Do you know why she was crying?”

  “She said her mom was real sick,” Josh said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Briana replied, very softly.

  “We were going to have supper at the casino before we went to the movie,” Josh added. “Heather said she needed to play some blackjack, and then we’d go. But then she brought the phone back, and she was real mad and crying again, and she said Dad called and we were all in trouble. I called Dad, and he said he was coming to get us and we shouldn’t tell you what happened—”

  “But you told,” Alec said accusingly.

  “Hold it,” Briana said. “Josh did the right thing.”

  “Heather just wanted to win some money so she could help her mom,” Alec maintained. “That’s what she said.”

  Explaining Heather’s convoluted logic wasn’t Briana’s job, even if she’d known how to go about it in the first place. She’d discuss that part with Vance, and with Heather, too, but not in front of her children.

  “She isn’t a bad person, Mom,” Alec insisted. “She was just scared, that’s all.”

  “Are you going to make us stop seeing Dad?” Josh asked.

  “No,” Briana said, struck by her elder son’s apparent change of heart where Vance was concerned. “But we grown-ups are going to have to work some things out.”

  “Do we have to go back to our house?” Alec wanted to know.

  “I think we’ll stay here for a few days,” Briana said, concentrating on making breakfast again because she needed something to do to keep from coming unraveled.

  “What happened over there, Mom?”

  Had she told them about the breakin, the destruction of their belongings? She couldn’t remember. “Who said anything happened?”

  “Something did,” Alec said, staring at her.

  Briana sighed. “Somebody messed the place up,” she said, conscious of both boys watching her now, and unable to look at either one of them directly.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” Briana said. She’d suspected Heather, but now that she’d heard part of what had gone on—Heather getting a call that would upset anybody—she wasn’t so certain. Maybe it had been Brett Turlow, indulging in some kind of nutzoid reprisal because he’d been questioned about the first incident with the nightgown. If so, he’d probably feel obligated to strike again, if Sheriff Book had brought him in like he’d said he was going to do.

  “Did they want to hurt us?” Alec asked.

  She couldn’t bring herself to let them think that, even though it might be true.

  “No,” she lied, hating herself for it. “I think it was just a prank.”

  Alec shivered visibly. “When Logan is around,” he said, “nothing can get us. Not even a bear.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, either, but Josh and Alec were too y
oung to understand. Let them have their illusions, Briana thought, for as long as they could.

  “I’ve got some things I have to do today,” she said, dishing up a plate for each of her children. “Logan might be too busy to look after you—if he is, you’ll have to spend a few hours at the day-care center in town.”

  This announcement elicited a chorus of loud groans.

  “Mom!” Alec wailed. “The day-care center is full of little kids in diapers!”

  “Yeah,” Josh agreed. “Soggy ones that droop.”

  Briana rolled her eyes. “Life is hard,” she said. She hoped they’d never find out how hard. Had Logan meant what he’d told her about the trust funds for Alec and Josh?

  You’d never lack for anything, even if the whole marriage thing went bust, and neither would they.

  She left a note for Logan, after washing up the breakfast dishes and hurrying the boys into getting dressed to go out.

  The people at Happy Dale Day-care Center agreed to look after them, and Briana drove straight to the trailer, noting immediately that the van was gone, parked Dylan’s truck and walked up to knock smartly on the tinny door.

  Heather opened it slowly, bundled into a lavender chenille bathrobe that, like the trailer, had seen better days. She hadn’t washed off her makeup from the night before, so there were black patches under her eyes, and old lipstick clung to the cracks in her lips.

  “Vance isn’t here,” she said, sounding groggy.

  “I didn’t stop by to see Vance,” Briana answered. “May I come in?”

  Heather gave a great, noisy sigh. “Why not?” she asked, stepping back.

  The inside of the trailer was remarkably clean. There were cheap knickknacks, hopefully arranged, on every surface. A grubby crocheted afghan covered the back of the couch.

  “I haven’t made coffee yet,” Heather said.

  “I don’t need any,” Briana replied.

  Heather gestured toward a black recliner patched here and there with duct tape—probably Vance’s TV chair.

  Briana sat down, keeping to the front edge and folding her hands to keep them still. “The kids told me you got some bad news about your mother last night,” she began.

  Heather flopped onto the couch. Her slippers had high plastic heels, and grungy purple feathers fluttered atop her insteps. In Heather-world, this probably represented glamour. “Yeah,” she said. “I got pretty upset. I’m not used to having kids around.”

  I’m not used to having kids around.

  Briana kept her temper. “I take my children’s safety and well-being very seriously, Heather,” she said. “Why did you decide to go to the casino?”

  Heather’s face crumpled. “I thought you might be there,” she replied.

  That made more sense than Briana cared to admit, and it had a ring of truth to it. “To take them off your hands?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Heather insisted, sniffling once and raising her chin a notch. The other woman had had to fight a lot of battles in her life, Briana realized, and many of them had been tough. “I like Alec and Josh, I really do. And Vance wants so much to have a chance to make things up to them.” Tears welled in her puffy eyes, making the mascara situation that much worse. “After that fuss at the casino last night, he’ll probably get fired. Then he’ll want to move on, and I can forget convincing him that we ought to have a kid of our own—”

  “Do you really think you’re ready for that?” Briana asked gently. “A baby, I mean?” The thought of a helpless infant at the mercy of this mercurial woman-child gave her chills.

  Heather didn’t seem to hear her. She was hugging herself and staring through the trailer wall at something far, far away. “I’ll be lucky if he even takes me with him when he goes,” she muttered.

  Briana tilted her head, trying to catch Heather’s eye. “All of that is your business,” she said. “Alec and Josh are mine. Vance isn’t going to be happy about this, but I can’t help that. Until things settle down a little, Heather, I can’t leave my children with you again.”

  “You can’t keep Vance from seeing his own kids!”

  “No, I probably can’t. But I can get a lawyer and restrict visitation.”

  “You don’t understand,” Heather almost wailed. “Vance is already furious with me. When he hears this—”

  Briana stood. “I guess you should have thought of that,” she said evenly, “before you left Alec and Josh at the casino to fend for themselves while you played blackjack.”

  “I told you, I thought you’d be there!” Heather was on her feet, following Briana to the door.

  “You could have called,” Briana pointed out, “and you didn’t.”

  “But—”

  Briana opened the door, went out. “What time does Vance get off work?” she asked.

  “He’s not at work,” Heather burst out. “He’s down at the sheriff’s office, trying to get both of us out of dutch with the casino.”

  “Thanks,” Briana said.

  “Wait!” Heather called, from the slapdash porch. Briana simply got back in the truck, turned the ignition key and drove away.

  Sure enough, Vance’s van was parked in the side lot at Sheriff Book’s office. She ran straight into him at the front door as he was leaving.

  Seeing her, he came to a stop, swept off his hat, ran a hand through his hair.

  “Did they drop the charges?” Briana asked.

  He nodded, looked away, looked back again. “We need to talk,” he said finally.

  “You’re telling me,” Briana said.

  They went, in separate cars, to the Birdhouse Café, on Main Street. Even though Briana hadn’t eaten any of the breakfast she’d made for the boys, the thought of food, or even coffee, was more than she could take. So she sipped water while Vance ordered the ham-and-eggs special.

  “Is Heather mentally ill, Vance?” she asked quietly, when the waitress had gone and a private space had opened around their table. “Is she a compulsive gambler? A drunk?”

  “No. She’s just not all that smart,” Vance said, using too much salt on his eggs. When he felt defensive, he had to be doing something.

  “She hit Alec with a car,” Briana reminded him. “And then she left our children on their own at the casino.”

  “You do it all the time,” Vance challenged, glaring at her. “Did you think they wouldn’t tell me that, Briana?”

  “I kept an eye on them,” Briana said. Now who was defensive? “So did the other employees. It isn’t the same thing and you know it.”

  “Isn’t it?” Vance clenched his fists on either side of his plate and leaned forward, his gaze boring into her face. “Are you saying somebody couldn’t have taken them right out of there when you and ‘the other employees’ weren’t looking?”

  Briana bit her lower lip. “I couldn’t afford day care,” she said. “Small matter of child support.”

  Vance reddened. “I was doing the best I could.”

  “So was I.”

  “Where are they right now?”

  “In day care.” She smiled. “And do they ever hate it. They wanted to stay at Logan’s place, but we’ve imposed on him enough as it is.”

  A muscle bunched in Vance’s jaw. He picked up his fork and jabbed at a piece of ham as though it had suddenly come to life and he meant to kill it. “What you do with Logan Creed, or anybody else, is your own business,” he said.

  “You’ve got that right,”Briana answered. “Logan has nothing to do with this. Heather has everything to do with it. She’s clearly unstable, Vance, and until she settles down, I don’t want Alec and Josh left alone with her.”

  “You think I’d let her take them anyplace, without me, after what happened last night?”

  “I don’t know, Vance. Would you?”

  “No.”

  “And I should believe that, and put our children at risk, because—?”

  All the starch went out of Vance in a whoosh of breath. His broad shoulders sagged, and he hung his h
ead for a long moment. “Because,” he rasped, after several seconds, “I’m trying, damn it.” He met her eyes, and she saw sincerity there, even a certain force of character she’d never guessed was in him. “I don’t know much about being a father. Heather and I probably got married too soon after we met. But when I won that money, Briana… When I won that money, when something went right for me for the first time since I can remember, it felt—it felt like a sign from God or something. It was a chance to start over.”

  Briana reached across the table, touched his hand. “The boys love you,” she said gently. “Don’t be too quick to give up.”

  “My boss is going to hear about that fuss at the casino,” Vance reflected, his voice sad and gruff, his eyes averted again. “He goes to church three times a week. He might just decide I’m a poor moral influence and show me the road.”

  “If he goes to church three times a week,” Briana speculated lightly, “maybe he’s the forgiving type.”

  “Have you been to a church lately?” Vance snapped.

  Briana let the question pass unanswered. When she was young, on the road with Wild Man, they’d dropped in for a lot of different church services, in different places. The people had invariably welcomed them, encouraged them to stay. In some cases, they’d even offered housing, a job, food.

  And Briana had always been relieved when her dad shook his head and said they’d be moving on as planned.

  “Not to overstep or anything,” she said, about to overstep, “but there’s one more thing. I know Heather wants to have a baby. That’s neither here nor there. According to the boys, though, you said you had enough trouble taking care of the children you already have.”

  Vance looked completely deflated now, and Briana did not feel good about it, even though she’d had plenty of fantasies, over the last two years, of bursting his bubble.

  “I didn’t think they heard that.”

  “It wasn’t exactly reassuring to them, Vance.”

  A cord of muscle stood out in his neck. “Are you through?”

  Briana got to her feet. Stood beside the table, looking down at a man she’d married for a lot worse reasons than what Logan was proposing. “Almost,” she said. “I don’t want this to turn nasty, Vance, but if you don’t personally look after Alec and Josh when they’re with you, I’ll get a lawyer.”