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

by Linda Lael Miller

  “So I hear,” Tyler answered. “Of course, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  Cassie wooed Bonnie into the kitchen, promising her a cookie, after casting worried glances from one Creed brother to the other.

  “If you’re trying to get my back up, Ty, you’re going to have to do better than that. What brings you back to Stillwater Springs?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” Tyler answered, turning to look when Bonnie’s giggle chimed from the kitchen. “Cute kid,” he added, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes warmed. “Bonnie, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Dylan said, still waiting for the explosion. He and Tyler had had several run-ins over the years; the brawl after Jake’s funeral was only one of them. A couple of seasons back, they’d collided at the same rodeo, and Ty’s girlfriend, probably wanting to make him jealous, had been all over Dylan.

  He hadn’t taken the bait, but the girlfriend—he couldn’t recall her name—had ditched Tyler, stayed out all night and claimed she’d been with Dylan, in his hotel room. It wasn’t true—for one thing, there’d been another woman sharing his bed, and he wasn’t into threesomes—but Tyler, with that perennial chip on his shoulder, hadn’t believed him.

  There would have been a fight, right there behind the chutes that day at the rodeo, if ten other cowboys hadn’t jumped in to pull them apart.

  “I’ll be leaving now,” Tyler said. “I just came by to say hello to Cassie.”

  Dylan nodded. There had to be more to it, of course—Tyler hadn’t set foot in Stillwater Springs, as far as he knew, since Sheriff Book turned them all loose the morning after Jake was laid to rest—but he knew better than to try to get an answer out of his brother.

  “See you,” he said.

  “Not if I see you first,” Tyler replied. As kids, that had been a running joke. Now, Tyler meant it.

  A bleak feeling settled over Dylan. He and Logan were speaking, anyway, though they still had things to work through. But that wasn’t going to happen with Tyler, he could tell.

  Tyler was a loner, and he clearly intended to stay that way.

  “What’s he doing here?” Dylan asked Cassie, in the kitchen, after Tyler left. The SUV started up with a roar outside.

  She sat at the table, Bonnie on her knee, deftly spooning toddler grub into the kid’s mouth. “Why didn’t you ask him?” she asked. She’d been trying for years to get the three of them to reconcile and act like brothers, and despite an almost complete lack of success, she still seemed to think it could happen.

  “Might as well ask the totem pole down at the library,” Dylan said, opening the fridge and helping himself to a can of soda. Pre-Bonnie, he’d have had a beer, but since you never knew when you might have to rush a kid to the emergency room with some sudden malady, he figured he’d better lay off the brew.

  Cassie smiled to herself. “You’ve been to the library?”

  Dylan popped the top on the soda can and took a swig. “I can read, you know. I was dyslexic as a kid, but I’ve learned to compensate.”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Cassie said sweetly. How many nights had she sat with him, at that same table, going over the “special lessons” he’d been assigned after a battery of reading tests?

  “Ah,” Dylan said. “Yes. Did I see Kristy—that’s what you’re asking.”

  “And?”

  “I saw her.”

  “Well, don’t overwhelm me with information, here.”

  Dylan sighed. “I saw her. She’s still a looker. She’s still got a way with kids. End of story.”

  “Or the beginning,” Cassie said, smiling at Bonnie.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Dylan warned, though when it came to Kristy, he’d been getting ideas himself. Cassie couldn’t possibly know that, unless she used her X-ray vision.

  “Poor Kristy,” she said, looking solemn now, even sad. Frowning as she gazed over Bonnie’s head, past Dylan, to some unseen world only she could navigate.

  “What do you mean, ‘poor Kristy’?” Dylan asked, knowing he shouldn’t, but too worried to resist. When Cassie worried about people, they tended to meet with severe and immediate problems.

  “She could use a friend, that’s all,” Cassie mused.

  It wasn’t all, of course.

  Dylan set the soda can aside with a thump. He’d have tossed it, but Cassie recycled. “What’s going on?” he demanded quietly. “You didn’t have one of your dreams…?”

  “No,” Cassie said. “I just know these things.” She brightened. “Call it an old Indian trick.”

  “Cassie,” Dylan pressed. “Tell me.”

  “Go see her,” Cassie replied, looking up into his face. “She’s alone, at her place. I’ll look after Bonnie, give her a bath and supper and put her to bed.”

  “I can’t just show up on her doorstep, Cassie. What am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, my foster grandmother sent me’?”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  “I was planning on taking Bonnie out to the ranch.”

  “That can wait, Dylan. I’m not sure Kristy can.”

  “She’ll probably slam the door in my face.”

  “You’re a big boy. Deal.”

  Dylan sighed. He’d never taken Cassie’s so-called psychic abilities very seriously—she’d as much as admitted that she told her Tarot clients whatever she thought they wanted to hear—but there were times when her instincts struck too close to the bone for comfort.

  He bent, kissed the top of Bonnie’s head and left.

  Ten minutes later, he was knocking at Kristy’s door, still wondering what the hell he was going to say to explain being there in the first place.

  She was wearing old pants, a man’s shirt and a lot of yellow paint when she opened the door.

  And she’d been crying. Her eyes were puffy and her nostrils were red around the edges. Seeing Kristy in tears was devastating, but at least he wasn’t the cause of them this time—as far as he knew.

  “Everything okay?” Dylan asked, stricken. Just call him the Wordmeister, he thought glumly. He’d always been able to talk his way into—or out of—any situation—unless that situation involved Kristy Madison.

  “No,” she said. Her voice shook a little. Then she launched herself at him, wrapped both arms around his neck. “No!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DEAR GOD.

  It should have been against the law to smell the way Kristy did—a tantalizing combination of rich grass after a heavy spring rain, leaves burning in autumn, talcum powder of some kind and paint thinner. For a precious moment, Dylan simply held her against him, breathed her in, closing his eyes tightly against the rush of emotion he felt.

  Like most precious moments, that one was brief.

  Kristy quickly bristled in his arms, pulled back, raised her chin and sniffled. The vulnerability in her cornflower-blue eyes turned to defiance.

  “I apologize,” she said stiffly, as though he were a stranger she’d collided with in a crowded airport, not the first man who had ever made love to her. “I’ve just been under a little stress lately and—”

  Dylan drew a long breath, let it out in a sigh as he closed Kristy’s front door behind him and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “Kristy,” he said. “This is me. Dylan. Something’s up with you, or you wouldn’t have practically tackled me on the threshold.”

  Kristy gave an answering sigh, and her usually straight shoulders sagged in a way that tugged at a tender place in Dylan’s heart. “Come in,” she said, with about the same level of enthusiasm she might have shown a visiting terrorist wearing a suit of dynamite.

  Dylan saw no reason to point out that he was already in—he simply followed Kristy through the house, expecting to wind up in the kitchen. When folks around the Springs had something to discuss, or just wanted to jaw awhile, they tended to congregate at the table, with the coffeepot and the refrigerator close at hand.

  He’d visited the huge Victorian once or twice, with hi
s dad, when Jake stopped by to collect an overdue paycheck from old man Turlow. The place had seemed dark and oppressive to him then, but Kristy had brightened it up considerably, with lace curtains and lots of pale yellow walls. The floors were gleaming oak, probably sanded to bare wood and then refinished.

  That, too, would be Kristy’s doing.

  She liked a lot of light and space—used to dream of living in the Turlow house one day.

  It only went to show that some dreams came true, anyway.

  A giant folding ladder stood just inside the kitchen doorway—Kristy ducked around it, Dylan walked between its runged legs.

  “Coffee?” she asked. He saw the struggle in her face, but eventually, she couldn’t keep herself from adding, “You shouldn’t walk under ladders.”

  “That’s a stupid superstition,” Dylan countered, with a twinkle. “And, yes, please, ma’am, I would like some coffee.”

  “I wasn’t referring to the superstition,” Kristy insisted loftily, standing on her toes to fetch two mismatched mugs down from a cupboard. “Things could fall on your head, like a bucket of paint.”

  “Still waiting for the sky to come crashing down, I see.” Dylan grinned, but tension twisted inside him like a screw turned too tight. He regretted those flippant words as soon as he saw them register in Kristy’s face. Behind that flimsy facade of bravery, she was crumbling.

  Perhaps the sky was falling.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong,” he persisted, “or do I have to look it up on the Internet?”

  A flush rose in her face. She poured coffee, carried the two cups to the table, and pulled back a chair with a practiced motion of one foot. “For Pete’s sake,” she said irritably, “sit down.”

  “Not until you do,” Dylan replied. “I’m a gentleman.”

  Kristy snorted at that, dropped into her chair. Added insult to injury by rolling her eyes once, for good measure.

  Dylan took the chair next to hers, idly stroked the big white cat that immediately jumped into his lap.

  “Sheriff Book was here a while ago,” Kristy said, elbow propped on the tabletop, her chin resting forlornly in her hand.

  “Go on,” Dylan said.

  Her eyes filled with fresh tears. “He thinks my father may have—may have killed someone.”

  Stunned, Dylan set down the mug he’d just picked up and stared at Kristy, waiting for the punch line. Tim Madison, a murderer? Impossible. Kristy’s dad had been a soft-spoken, kindly man, hardworking and generous with what little he had.

  Jake Creed, on the other hand, had been possessed of a legendary temper, and if Sheriff Book thought he’d offed some poor bastard, Dylan could have believed it. Although he didn’t tolerate criticism of Jake well, particularly when it came from his brothers, deep down he’d never had many illusions about the sort of man his father was.

  “That’s crazy,” he said, finally.

  Kristy sniffled again, tried a sip of her coffee, made a face and put it down again. “I know. But the county is going to dig up Sugarfoot’s grave. He tried to soften the blow, but Floyd clearly believes my father killed a man, probably by accident, and buried him with—with—”

  Dylan longed to displace the cat and pull Kristy onto his lap, to offer her what comfort he could, but he didn’t move. She’d loved Sugarfoot, that old horse of hers, with a near-sacred constancy.

  The way she hadn’t loved him.

  When he spoke at long last, the words scraped his throat like a swallow of rusty barbed wire. “Suppose they did find a body in that grave besides Sugarfoot’s? Your folks are gone, Kristy, and so is Sugarfoot. This can’t hurt any of them.”

  Stupid, stupid, Dylan thought, in the next instant, raking splayed fingers through his hair as the frustration hit him.

  The Madisons couldn’t be hurt, or the horse, either—but Kristy could.

  She’d lived in or just outside of Stillwater Springs all her life. It was her home, the only place she’d ever wanted to be, which had been a big part of the problem between the two of them back in the day. She’d been Holly Homemaker, he’d been a hell-raiser and a rodeo cowboy with a penchant for the open road.

  Welcome to Heartbreak Hotel.

  Kristy bit her lower lip, reached out and closed her paint-splotched hand over Dylan’s. Tried gamely to smile. “I know you didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said, with a gentleness that bruised him. He was used to rough-and-tumble, growing up with Jake and his brothers and then riding the professional circuit. He could be gentle, especially with Bonnie, or a lost or injured animal, but finding himself on the receiving end was different, and downright unsettling.

  Dylan cleared his throat. Gearing up to make another attempt, because he was a Creed, and therefore nothing if not persistent. Even when it meant digging himself in deeper, he had to keep shoveling.

  “Why didn’t you ever get another horse after Sugarfoot?” he heard himself ask. Damn, but he hadn’t intended to say that, either. It just rolled right off his tongue before he could rope and hogtie it.

  A faraway, wistful look deepened the bluer-than-blue of Kristy’s eyes. “It costs money to keep a horse,” she said, after a very long time. “A lot of money. Librarians don’t exactly pull down the big bucks, Dylan.”

  “You bought this house,” Dylan reasoned.

  “I received a small inheritance when my great-aunt passed away a year and a half ago,” Kristy said, in a why-am-I-telling-you-this-when-it’s-personal tone of voice. “I made the down payment on the house and moved in.”

  The cat had already gotten bored; having shed white hair all over Dylan’s T-shirt, he probably figured his work there was done. Now, he was batting a toy mouse around the kitchen floor.

  “You and your great-aunt’s cat,” Dylan mused, recalling how Kristy had always wanted a large family and lots of pets. Being an only child, she’d said, was too lonely.

  “Oh, Winston didn’t belong to Aunt Millie,” Kristy replied. “He was Freida Turlow’s, and when she moved out after I’d closed on the house, he started turning up on my doorstep at all hours of the day and night. Freida’s been annoyed with me ever since—it’s as if she thinks I wooed him away from her or something.”

  Dylan remembered Freida Turlow clearly. She’d tried to seduce him, the night of his sixteenth birthday, and he might have taken her up on the offer, too, if he hadn’t already been in love with Kristy.

  “Freida’s always annoyed with somebody,” he observed, barely stopping himself from saying right out loud that, faced with a choice between living with the imposing Ms. Turlow or with Kristy, he’d have thrown in with the cat.

  Kristy’s eyes turned bleak. For a few minutes, she’d forgotten about the possibility of impending scandal, but now Dylan could see that the respite was over. “Freida will be the worst,” she said, with soft despair, “if it turns out that Floyd’s suspicions are right.”

  “What will you do,” Dylan ventured to ask, “if he is?” He was surprised by the suspense he felt, awaiting her answer. It would be one hell of an irony if, just when he’d decided he’d be able to settle down on the ranch and make a home for his daughter, Kristy chose to leave town for good.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think—I think it might sour things—the house, my job at the library—” She paused, took another run at getting her point across. “You know how small towns are, Dylan. It was bad enough when my parents died within a year of each other, and the ranch went for debts and taxes. Everybody felt sorry for me. People would never let a story like this rest, and I’m not sure I could face all that pity and gossip again.”

  All that pity and gossip.

  Kristy looked as though she’d like to take those words back, choke on each one whole before giving voice to them. Dylan supposed there had been plenty of gossip, when he came back to Stillwater Springs to ask her to wait for him, a few months after the breakup following Jake’s funeral, and she’d waved Mike Danvers’s huge engagement ring under his nose an
d basically told him to get lost. He’d always supposed, though, that any pity making the rounds had been reserved for him.

  That was one of the reasons he’d stayed away so long—as a ragged kid, with the notorious Jake Creed for a father, he’d had all the sympathy he could take. Charity baskets left on the front porch, at Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. Well-meaning church ladies offering him their sons’ cast-off clothes. And all the rest of it.

  The biggest reason, though, had been Kristy herself.

  He’d ridden the meanest bulls in rodeo. Scraped his knuckles and bloodied his nose in a score of bar brawls—and those were the ones he’d won—but he’d known that seeing Kristy going about her wifely business around town, picking up mail down at the post office, pushing a shopping cart through the supermarket aisles, intermittently blossoming with another man’s child, would bring him to his knees.

  So, except for brief forays, when he’d brought his bull, Cimarron, back to the ranch, not knowing what else to do with him, and hired Briana Grant—now Creed—to look after his empty house, he’d stayed as far away as possible.

  Bonnie—and Logan’s telling him, during his last visit, that Kristy was still single—had changed everything.

  Coming to terms with all that was going to take a while.

  And now there might be a body moldering on the old Madison place.

  His coffee had gone cold, but since the conversation had come to a halt and he didn’t know how to start it up again, he sipped some java.

  That was another thing that hadn’t changed.

  Kristy’s coffee was still bad.

  He smiled at the thought.

  “Tell me about your little girl,” Kristy said, and he knew by the way she framed the request that she’d been working up her nerve during the silence.

  “You probably already know as much about her as I do,” Dylan admitted. “She’s two. Her name is Bonnie. She likes listening to you read aloud.”

  Kristy seemed to relax a little, though there was still a tense undercurrent. “I take it her mother is out of the picture?”

  “God knows where Sharlene is,” Dylan said, sighing. Then he met Kristy’s gaze, and held steady. “Sharlene was a mistake, no denying that. But Bonnie—well—she’s the proof that something good comes out of everything.”