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

by Linda Lael Miller

  Everything but a horse’s grave, in a peaceful copse of trees, added the voice in his mind. Now that the possibility had had a chance to sink in, he knew instinctively that the sheriff and his crew would find something besides Sugarfoot’s bones when they dug that hole.

  Kristy’s smile was misty. “I envy you,” she said.

  Again, Dylan was taken aback. He’d forgotten Kristy’s capacity to surprise him—one of the things he’d loved best about her. “Why?” he asked, honestly puzzled.

  “Because you have a child,” she said slowly, and with amused patience.

  “I just hope I can keep her,” he answered. The worry that Sharlene would change her mind and take Bonnie back circled in the darkest depths of his mind, liable to drag him under when he least expected it.

  Kristy raised one eyebrow. Waited.

  “I plan to file for permanent custody when Logan gets home from Vegas,” he explained. “Until then, I’m pretty much hanging out there in the wind.” He studied Kristy, remembering—no, remembering wasn’t the right word, because he hadn’t actually forgotten in the first place—how good it had felt to hold her tightly again.

  “You didn’t—steal her, did you?”

  “You’re the second person who’s asked me that,” Dylan said. “No, I didn’t kidnap my daughter. Sharlene left her in my truck while I was inside some dive in Las Vegas, playing poker, along with a note saying she couldn’t take care of her anymore.”

  Kristy’s mouth dropped open. “She left a child alone in a truck?”

  “She was around someplace, keeping an eye out.”

  Like that made a difference. He’d probably never know what Sharlene would have done if he hadn’t found Bonnie. Even if they happened to have a reasonable conversation at some point, Sharlene wasn’t likely to be honest and straightforward.

  “Oh, well,” Kristy said skeptically, “that changes everything.”

  “Sharlene isn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee,” Dylan allowed. “But in her own crazy way, I think she was doing what she thought was best.”

  Kristy pulled in her horns a little. Sighed again. “Why not simply call you, if she felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for Bonnie, and ask for help?”

  Dylan didn’t like the answer that came to him, liked saying it out loud even less. “She probably thought I’d say no, so she didn’t give me the chance.”

  A short silence fell, during which Kristy regarded Dylan long and hard. “Would you have said no?” she finally asked.

  “Of course not,” he said, mildly affronted. “Bonnie is my daughter.”

  “Excuse me,” Kristy countered, “but some guys would have married the mother of their child.”

  Just like that, she’d gotten his hackles up. That was another thing he’d forgotten about Kristy—her gift for pissing him off royally. “I didn’t love Sharlene,” he said tautly, “and she sure as hell didn’t love me.”

  “Did either one of you love Bonnie?” Kristy asked.

  Dylan had to unclamp his back molars before he could reply. “I never missed a child-support check,” he said.

  “Aren’t you noble?” Kristy challenged, bending one knee and sitting on her leg, which was still another thing he recalled about her. Her forehead was furrowed, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Did you ever see Bonnie, before you found her in your truck? Did you ever take care of her when she was teething, or had the flu? Did you even carry her picture in your wallet?”

  “Yes,” Dylan growled, leaning in a little. “I saw Bonnie whenever I could catch up with Sharlene. No, I wasn’t there when she was teething, or if she had the flu.” He raised his haunches, pried his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open to the discount-store photo of the one person in the entire world he was absolutely, positively sure he loved. “Sharlene’s grandmother sent me this,” he finished, confounded by his own fury. After all, none of this was Kristy’s fault—not directly, anyway. “Along with a bill for Sharlene’s boob job. It seemed they both thought she’d have a better chance of landing a husband with a big set of knockers.”

  Kristy blushed.

  Dylan didn’t care. If she wanted to play hardball, so be it.

  “Did you pay it?”

  For a moment, Dylan wasn’t sure he’d heard the question correctly. “What?”

  A smile teased at the corner of Kristy’s lush and highly kissable mouth. “Did you pay the bill for the boob job?”

  “No,” he said.

  She laughed.

  And then, remarkably, he laughed, too. “Your coffee is still awful,” he said.

  “And you still get your back up too easily.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.”

  He needed to leave, pick Bonnie up at Cassie’s and get her settled out at the ranch. But first he had to know for sure that Kristy was going to be all right.

  Spotting a small blackboard on the wall next to the back door—Kristy’s grocery list was on it, in her precise librarian’s handwriting, all loopy and firm—he crossed to it, picked up a stubby piece of blue chalk and scrawled his cell number below broccoli.

  “Call me,” he told Kristy, turning to see her clearing their cups from the table with brisk, efficient motions, “if you need anything.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Need anything, I mean.”

  Her stubbornness. Her pride. It was all coming back to him now.

  “Why didn’t you marry Mike?” he asked. He felt entitled to ask that question; turnabout was fair play, after all.

  She sighed, turned to face him. He could tell that holding his gaze was an effort, but she managed it. “I came to my senses,” she said.

  Now, what the hell did that mean?

  “Mike is a nice man,” she went on, when Dylan didn’t speak. Although he’d come in through the front door, he was at the back now, with one hand on the knob. “He deserved to be happy.”

  “He looked pretty happy to me, that night I ran into the two of you in Skivvie’s Tavern.” The vision filled his mind’s eye; he might as well have been in that darkened bar again, watching Mike and Kristy dancing to a slow song playing on the jukebox, Kristy making sure Dylan got a good look at the diamond glittering on her left hand. He could feel the sawdust and peanut shells under the soles of his boots, smell cigarette smoke and draft beer.

  “I was using him,” Kristy said forthrightly. “When I realized that, I broke our engagement. A few months later, he married Julie. End of story.”

  End of story? After that night at Skivvie’s, Dylan had left Stillwater Springs, his tires flinging up gravel, swearing he’d never set foot in his hometown again. He’d spent the better part of a year drowning his sorrows in cheap whiskey, dodging bill collectors and backing down from the one thing he was really good at—bull-riding.

  He’d probably have drunk himself to death, in fact, if an old friend, a retired rodeo clown named Wiley Spence, hadn’t gotten him by the shirt collar one night in Cheyenne, after bailing him out of jail, and threatened to call Logan if he didn’t get his act together pronto.

  Kristy wasn’t the only one with pride. Although he and Logan had been estranged back then, he’d known his big brother would track him down and probably throw him into the nearest treatment center. He hadn’t wanted Logan to see him down and out. So he’d laid off the booze, except for an occasional beer, cleaned up and gotten back into the rodeo as soon as he’d scraped together an entry fee.

  None of which was Kristy’s concern.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. And then he left.

  *

  DYLAN WAS GOOD AT LEAVING.Very good at leaving.

  Kristy banged the mugs around in the sink for a few moments, then decided to wash them later, when she wasn’t apt to break off the handles.

  What had she expected?

  Well, she certainly hadn’t expected him to show up at her front door that evening, that was for sure. And if anyone had told her she’d—well, throw herself at him the way she
had, she’d have called them crazy.

  The hardest thing to face was the knowledge that if he’d kissed her, she’d have let him make love to her right there in the front hallway.

  The thought made her cringe.

  And yearn.

  It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten pregnant, back when they were still together, as often as they’d made love.

  Things would have been so different if she’d been the one to conceive Dylan Creed’s child, not this Sharlene person with the breast implants.

  Her gaze swung to the blackboard, and Dylan’s number, written hard and fast and slanting to the right. Like she would call him, even if there were ten muggers in the house and the place was on fire to boot.

  She marched over and resolutely wiped away the blue chalk with the palm of her hand, leaving a streaky smudge.

  But erasing the number hadn’t helped.

  It was already burned into her memory, like the letters on the old sign over the gate out at Stillwater Springs Ranch.

  She let her forehead rest against the blackboard.

  And tears came. Again.

  She’d lost so much—her parents, Sugarfoot, Madison Ranch, the home and family she and Dylan might have shared, if they hadn’t been such hotheads.

  Winston curled around her ankles, meowing uncertainly, and a tear plopped onto the top of his head. He looked up, in a curious way, as though wondering if it was raining.

  His expression made Kristy laugh.

  And laughing made her square her shoulders, dry her cheeks with the back of one hand and pull herself together.

  Maybe all hell would break loose when Sheriff Book and his crew opened Sugarfoot’s grave.

  Maybe Dylan Creed was back in town for good, with his child and his wicked smile and his death-to-women body.

  She was no gutless wonder, and no stranger to trouble.

  Whatever came her way, she’d handle it.

  Somehow.

  *

  THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE ranch house was a sleepless one for Dylan, and not just because he spent half of it trying to comfort Bonnie, who’d taken to calling for her mother during their fast-food supper and hadn’t quit until she’d fallen asleep against his chest, after one last, hiccoughy sigh.

  Sitting on the beat-up old couch that, like the bed and the kitchen table, had been in the place since the last Creed had lived and died there—his great-uncle, Mick—his chin propped on top of Bonnie’s sweat-dampened head, Dylan felt real despair.

  He hadn’t expected raising a child to be easy; it wasn’t that. Now that the novelty of being with him was wearing off, Bonnie was missing Sharlene, and it was likely to get worse.

  You’re a real tough guy, Creed, he told himself silently. When Bonnie had cried, and then wailed, he’d felt like crying right along with her. Almost called Cassie in a panic, ready to beg her for help.

  Cassie? Who was he kidding?

  It was Kristy he’d wanted to call.

  When the hell were Logan and Briana coming back from their damned honeymoon, anyhow? Briana was a mother—a good one, from what he’d seen—and she’d surely know what you were supposed to do when a kid started crying and wouldn’t stop.

  The knock at the back door startled him.

  Careful not to wake Bonnie, he stood, carried her with him through the kitchen, crossing the dark place worn into the linoleum by decades of passing feet.

  Tyler peered in at him through the glass.

  Dylan scowled a little, then nodded.

  Tyler came in. “Is that old bull in the pasture yours?” he asked, as though nary a harsh word, let alone a fist, had ever flown back and forth between them.

  “Yes,” Dylan answered, whispering. “Do you know anything about kids?”

  Tyler grinned. “Only that that’s about the cutest one I’ve ever seen.”

  Bonnie stirred against Dylan’s chest, whimpered a little. Her face felt hot against his shoulder, even through the cloth of his shirt. He carried her into the bedroom, laid her down carefully on the bed, made sure the inked-up rubber doll with the wild hair was within reach, and sneaked back out into the kitchen.

  By that time, Tyler was going through the cupboards.

  “No whiskey?” he asked.

  “I’m a beer man these days,” Dylan answered quietly, wondering what the unexpected visit was all about. Five would get you ten it wasn’t a social call. “In the fridge.”

  Tyler opened the refrigerator door, recoiled as if he’d found a live rattler coiled inside. “The cheap brand?”

  “Beer is beer. Keep it down, will you? The kid’s been screaming for three hours straight and she’ll probably start up again if you wake her.”

  Tyler extracted a can from the six-pack and popped the top. His expression was unreadable. “Is she sick or something?”

  “I don’t know. Her forehead felt kind of warm when I was holding her a minute ago.”

  So much for the inscrutable singing cowboy. Tyler looked alarmed. He set aside his beer—hell, it was the cheap brand, anyway—headed for the bedroom and bent over Bonnie, touching the backs of his fingers to her cheek.

  He frowned, gazing at Dylan, who stood in the doorway.

  Back in the kitchen, Tyler said, “I think she has a fever. You got any baby aspirin?”

  “No,” Dylan said, more scared than he was about to let Tyler see. “She was upset earlier—like I said, she cried a lot—it’s probably just that.”

  “Why was she crying?” Tyler demanded, as though he thought Dylan had been pinching the kid or something.

  “She wanted her mother,” Dylan answered. Tyler wasn’t much comfort, but he was better than nothing.

  “Oh,” Tyler said, picking up his beer again, taking a swallow.

  “Yeah, oh,” Dylan said, annoyed.

  “I still think we should take her to a doctor.”

  “Gee, all this concern. It’s almost like having a brother.”

  Tyler frowned angrily. “I’m going to town to get some baby aspirin,” he said. “While I’m there, I’ll ask the pharmacist if he thinks Bonnie needs medical attention.”

  In spite of himself, in spite of all that had gone down between him and Tyler over the years, Dylan felt a sudden rush of relief, and something a lot like affection. He was swallowing the lump that had risen in his throat when Tyler went on, already headed for the door.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  A few moments later, Dylan heard his brother’s rig start up outside.

  He checked on Bonnie again—he’d have sworn she did have a fever—but decided to do his pacing in the kitchen so he wouldn’t disturb her sleep.

  When Tyler blew in again, forty-five minutes later, he had baby aspirin, cough medicine, a stuffed animal of indeterminate species and a digital thermometer.

  “If this thing reads above a one-oh-one, according to the pharmacist, Bonnie should be taken to the emergency room.”

  Dylan frowned, examining the unfamiliar plastic stick in its bright green box. “Where does this thing—go?”

  Tyler chuckled. He made quite a picture, standing there in Dylan’s kitchen, full of avuncular concern. The bad-ass cowboy, spilling a toy dog, if that was what it was, along with a bottle of aspirin and a carton of children’s cough syrup onto the table.

  “In her ear, shit-for-brains,” he said.

  “Oh,” Dylan said, squinting at the instructions on the back of the box.

  Tyler grabbed the whole works right out of his hand. “Give me that,” he said, after the fact. “Bill—that’s the pharmacist—told me how to use it.”

  “Great,” Dylan said.

  “I ran into a friend of yours while I was at the drugstore,” Tyler added, as an aside. “You might get company any minute now.”

  “What?” Dylan asked, irritated all over again.

  Tyler grinned, rummaging in the drugstore bag again and pulling out a packet with a sterile wipe inside. Damned if he hadn’t thought of everything, old Uncle Ty. “T
he thing’s got to be sanitized,” he said.

  “Who—?”

  Tyler wiped down the thermometer, dispensing with all those offensive Dylan germs, and headed for Bonnie.

  “Ninety-eight point seven,” he announced, in a low but triumphant voice, after gently easing the end of the thermometer into Bonnie’s right ear. “She’s probably fine.”

  Suddenly, Dylan felt unaccountably territorial.

  Bonnie was his daughter. He should have been the one taking her temperature.

  As if in direct response to his thought, she woke up at precisely that moment, looked around, and let out one long, piercing shriek, followed by a plaintive, “Mommmmmmeeeee!”

  “I see what you mean,” Tyler said.

  Vaguely, Dylan heard a knock at the back door. He tried to pick Bonnie up, but she flailed both arms and kicked like she’d been raised by wolves.

  And then Kristy swept in, like an avenging goddess, and scooped Bonnie up into her arms.

  “There, now,” she murmured, stroking Bonnie’s back. Gradually—very gradually—blessed silence filled the room. “I’m here, sweetie. I’m here. Everything will be all right.”

  Over Bonnie’s head, Kristy gave Dylan a what-were-you-doing-to-her kind of glare.

  “She was out of cat litter,” Tyler explained.

  “Huh?” Dylan asked, stung by Kristy’s look and, at the same time, glad as hell that she was there.

  “That’s why I happened to run into Kristy at the store. She stopped by for a bag of cat litter.”

  “You could have warned me,” Dylan growled, after Kristy had carried Bonnie out of the bedroom.

  “Ah, hell,” Tyler answered smugly. “That wouldn’t have been any fun at all.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SOMETHING HAPPENED to Kristy, as she held Dylan’s child, there in that old, rundown ranch house that warm summer night. Something sacred and inexplicable and eternal, the kind of shift that comes along once or twice in a lifetime, if that often. It was like the meeting and melding of two colliding universes, at a quantum level.