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

by Linda Lael Miller

Bonnie seemed to feel it, too. She looked up at Kristy with wide, startled eyes, then flung both her small arms around Kristy’s neck and held on for dear life.

  “Mommy,” she said.

  Kristy didn’t have the heart to correct the child. Over Bonnie’s head, her gaze connected with Dylan’s. She saw his jaw tighten, and a blue storm flared in his eyes.

  “You have chalk on your forehead,” he said.

  Still dealing with her own internal cataclysm, Kristy merely stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “Guess I’ll be getting back to the cabin,” Tyler said.

  Kristy barely heard him, had only the vaguest sense of his leaving the ranch house kitchen for the dark, yawning world beyond the door, while she and Dylan and Bonnie remained where they were, like the stunned survivors of a meteoric impact. About as mobile as Stonehenge, Kristy couldn’t even swallow, let alone speak.

  Dylan broke the spell, stepped forward, put his arms out for Bonnie.

  Visceral, mother-wolf resistance flared through Kristy, almost painful in its intensity, but Bonnie was Dylan’s daughter, not hers. She was still rational enough to know that, anyway.

  So she surrendered the little girl. It felt as though some vital part of her was being torn away.

  Dylan murmured to the child, now nodding against his shoulder, and carried her back to the bedroom. As if pulled along behind by an invisible tether, Kristy followed.

  Miraculously, Bonnie fell into an immediate sleep, most likely exhausted from all that shrieking.

  Kristy, slowly returning to a state that resembled normalcy, found the bathroom, stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. A great splotch of blue chalk stained her forehead, from when she’d rested it against the blackboard in her own kitchen, earlier that evening, like the mark of some primitive initiation rite.

  She cranked on the water tap, lathered her hands and then her face with soap, and washed the chalk away.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Dylan was there, pouring coffee.

  He looked exhausted—and grim.

  “I was only trying to help,” Kristy said, without apology, remembering the strain she’d seen in his face when he reached for Bonnie a few minutes before.

  He smiled wanly, raised a coffee mug in a halfhearted toast. “I know,” he said, husky-voiced. “And I appreciate it.”

  Kristy longed to ask if he’d felt what she had, when she was holding Bonnie in her arms, but she didn’t quite dare. Why would he have felt it, standing several feet away?

  “You seemed pretty angry,” she ventured, after working up her courage for several moments. “When Bonnie called me ‘Mommy.’”

  “Not angry,” Dylan said, extending a cup to Kristy. “Frustrated. Scared as hell. I’m not very good at this parental thing, it seems.”

  Kristy saw his vulnerability in his eyes, and in his countenance, and she was touched by it. She’d never known Dylan Creed to be afraid of anything, or to doubt himself in any way. But one very little girl had changed all that.

  “Give yourself a chance,” she said, accepting the offered coffee. “You’re new at this.”

  “When she screams for Sharlene like that—” Dylan began, turning away from her then, to gaze out the night-darkened window above the sink. “It tears me apart.”

  Kristy wanted to cross that room and lay a hand on Dylan’s taut, muscular back, but she refrained. Things were too crazy; she felt too dazed and wrung out. She was standing on the brink of something huge and dangerous, and one wrong move would send her tumbling over the precipice.

  He turned then, and faced her, and she felt another shift, almost as staggering as the first. What was happening here?

  If she stepped outside, would she find the world changed, the stars in different places, the moon filling most of the horizon instead of riding like a small round balloon above the starkly etched rim of mountains?

  It seemed alarmingly possible.

  “What do I do, Kristy, the next time Bonnie calls for her mother? And the time after that? What’s worse, what do I do if Sharlene wants her back?”

  She set the coffee aside on the table then, and went to Dylan, regardless of that incendiary something pulsing in the atmosphere, ready to explode at the slightest spark. Laid her hands to his upper arms, tilted her head back to look into his troubled face.

  “You can do this, Dylan,” she said quietly. “You’re just tired and a little overwhelmed, that’s all.”

  He kissed her forehead, lightly, briefly.

  Spark #1.

  Despite the danger, Kristy laid her head against his shoulder, slipped her arms around his lean cowboy waist, but loosely. Sighed, because it felt so good, being close to Dylan again. He was solid and warm, hard and strong, and when he embraced her, it was a homecoming for Kristy. The healing of broken things inside her, the righting of ancient, forgotten wrongs, a sweet, soft benediction.

  She finally got it then.

  She still loved Dylan Creed, had probably never stopped.

  The realization seized her throat closed and brought stinging tears of despair to her eyes. And she simply leaned into him, all her strength gone. All her willpower, evaporated.

  He felt her shudder, hooked a finger under her chin and lifted, so she had to look at him.

  “I think we’re in big trouble here,” he murmured.

  “Me, too,” she replied. “Me, too.”

  She watched a variety of emotions move in his face, like reflections on water. Then his embrace slackened, and he set her a little way apart from him, his hands resting on her shoulders.

  “Go home, Kristy,” Dylan said. “If you stay much longer, we’ll wind up in bed. I don’t think you’re ready for that, and maybe I’m not, either.”

  As hard as it was, Kristy knew he was right on all counts. Her own emotions were at a fever pitch, and any decisions she made in that state of mind might have extreme consequences.

  So she bit her lower lip, nodded slowly.

  She wanted to look in on Bonnie, just once before she left, but she might not be able to leave if she did. So she headed for the back door, Dylan walking behind her, and descended the porch steps. Half sprinted toward her Blazer, waiting in the dark, her purse still in the backseat, along with the cat litter she’d gone out to buy earlier, the keys still dangling in the ignition.

  She’d probably left the engine running when she arrived—Tyler must have shut it off when he left.

  Just as she moved to open the driver’s-side door, Dylan caught hold of her arm and turned her around.

  And he kissed her, deeply, suddenly, and so thoroughly that she nearly melted. When it was over, she looked up and aside, too stricken to meet his gaze. Overhead, stars seemed to collide in blurry rushes of silver.

  Dylan cupped his hands on either side of Kristy’s face, made her look at him.

  “Wh-what was that?” she asked shakily, once she caught her breath.

  “I asked you to leave,” he answered, his voice rough as dry gravel on a sun-baked country road. “And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I still think it’s right, but that doesn’t mean it’s what I want. I need you to know that, Kristy.”

  Convoluted as the explanation was, Kristy understood it, because she felt the same way. She longed to stay, give herself up to Dylan completely, and devil take the morning after.

  “You’ll—you’ll call, if Bonnie needs—”

  The voice in Kristy’s mind interrupted. If Bonnie needs you? Get a grip, Madison. You’re not her mother, and nothing is going to change that.

  “I’ll call,” Dylan promised gruffly. “Go now, Kristy. I want you real bad, and I can’t hold out much longer.”

  At once exhilarated by his words and profoundly aware that she was on very dangerous ground, Kristy climbed behind the wheel of her Blazer. Oddly, she was struck by the pristine new-car emptiness of the vehicle—no baby seat strapped in the back, no toys scattered on the floorboards, no sippy cup in the console. No grocery lis
ts or unopened mail—nothing but her purse.

  It was definitely the conveyance of a spinster librarian.

  Oh, for a glorious mess, the detritus of a busy, happy life.

  Dylan slowly closed the door, stepped back, waved as she glanced his way once more before starting up the Blazer to go home.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her job, or the broad painter’s canvas that was her house. Until Dylan—until Bonnie—Kristy had been able to convince herself that it was enough.

  Now, she knew for sure that it wasn’t.

  She wanted to be a wife and a mother as well as a librarian. She wanted a sex life, damn it.

  Driving through the sultry night, Kristy rolled down her window.

  She wasn’t ready to go back to town, even though she knew Winston would be watching for her. So she took the familiar turn when she came to the tilting red mailbox with the name Madison faded to near-invisibility on its side. She bumped over the rutted driveway, drew in a breath when her headlights swept across the old, long-abandoned house she’d grown up in.

  The barn had finally fallen in on itself, and the yard and flower beds—once her mother’s pride—were hopelessly overgrown.

  The loss swept over Kristy, undiluted, as fresh as if it had just happened.

  She drove on past the house, jostling overland toward the copse of trees where Sugarfoot, and perhaps a murder victim, were buried.

  The faintest, most disturbing memory niggled at the back of her mind, locked away, but struggling to break free.

  Had she seen something, heard something, that long-ago night?

  The thought made her stomach churn, and a migraine threatened. She took deep breaths until the ominous feeling subsided a little.

  Shutting off the Blazer, she sat for a few moments with her eyes closed, trying to remember. Trying not to.

  The old house was small. If there had been a ruckus between her father and that hired hand, how could she have missed it? How could her mother not have known?

  Still, nothing came to her.

  She got out of the SUV, walked toward Sugarfoot’s grave.

  It was a pilgrimage she’d made often, during the last several years, at all hours of the day and night. The fact was not lost on her that she seldom visited her parents’ graves, except on their separate birthdays, on Memorial Day and sometime during Christmas week.

  She’d come to terms with their passing, at least consciously—knew the essence of Tim and Louise Madison could not be confined to a coffin. But with Sugarfoot, it was different—as if not only her horse, but her life were buried here. All her dreams, all her hopes, all her faith that things could change for the better.

  Sheriff Book, she soon discovered, had already been here. The grave itself seemed undisturbed, but the sunken mound was surrounded by yellow tape, supported by stakes driven into the ground.

  It was actually going to happen, she realized, dazed.

  They were going to dig up Sugarfoot’s grave.

  And they were going to find a human body.

  Kristy put a hand to her mouth, fearing she was about to be sick. She didn’t know how she knew Sheriff Book’s suspicions were correct, but she knew.

  She took deep breaths until the nausea subsided.

  Her eyes were dry—tears couldn’t reach the gouge of bleak certainty piercing her very soul.

  “I’m sorry, Sugarfoot,” she whispered, before turning to go. “I’m sorry.”

  She got back into the Blazer, drove toward Stillwater Springs, not looking at the old house as she passed it. At home, she soothed a disgruntled Winston and poured fresh litter into his box.

  She took a long, hot shower, put on one of her oft-washed, oversize Tshirts, as she did every night.

  She crawled into her huge and profoundly empty bed, intending to read for a while, in hopes of quieting her racing brain. But the words wouldn’t stay put on the pages.

  Leaning, Kristy switched off the bedside lamp.

  Winston leaped onto the bed, snuggled close to her.

  Cat-comfort.

  She smiled at his devotion, stroked his silken back with one hand.

  Sleep was probably out of the question, but she had to try. She had to open the library promptly at nine the next morning, no matter what else was going on in her life.

  But sleep came, and when it did, the dream pounced on her, smothering and heavy.

  It was dark, and quiet, in the way only a country night can be, except for the rapid thump of her heart and the strange, shallow breathing of the man standing beside her bed. Although her eyes were tightly closed, a child’s only real defense against monsters creeping out of the closet, she was aware of his gaze on her.

  Daddy! she cried silently. Daddy, help me!

  And then the door of her room crashed open.

  There was a violent scuffle, swearwords exchanged in raspy voices.

  Kristy didn’t open her eyes until she heard her mother’s voice, felt herself gathered tightly against her soft chest.

  “Did he hurt you, Kristy? Are you all right?”

  Horrendous noises, farther away now, coming from the dark kitchen.

  The back door opening with a loud creak and a slam against the porch wall.

  More swearing, sharp-edged and ugly.

  Kristy clung to her mother, terrified.

  They were fighting, her father and the man.

  When would it stop?

  What if her daddy got hurt?

  It came then, the deafening blast.

  The shotgun her father kept on the highest shelf in the pantry. A country kid, Kristy recognized the sound.

  Kristy’s mother screamed, a high, quivering wail of fear.

  The sound sent Kristy surging to the surface of consciousness, shaking. She ran for the bathroom and retched into the toilet until there was nothing left to throw up.

  *

  SHE WAITED UNTIL DAWN to call Sheriff Book.

  “I know what happened,” she said woodenly, when he answered his home phone with a sleepy hello.

  “Kristy?” Floyd asked. “Is that you?”

  “I know what happened,” she repeated.

  “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head, realized he couldn’t see her. “No,” she said.

  Floyd was knocking at her back door within fifteen minutes, wearing civilian clothes and looking rumpled. She hadn’t changed out of her T-shirt, but she had put on a bra and sweatpants, for the sake of decency.

  Kristy had a strange, disembodied feeling as she described her dream to the sheriff, standing there in her cheery kitchen, with its fresh yellow walls and the first rays of sunlight streaming through the windows. This must be what it’s like, she thought distractedly, to be beside yourself.

  “I figured it had to be something like that,” Floyd said, when she’d finished. At some point, he must have ushered her to a chair—Kristy was surprised to find herself sitting down instead of standing up, and she had no memory whatsoever of the transition.

  “What now?” she asked, barely recognizing her own voice. “What happens now?”

  Floyd sighed. Drew back a chair and sat down across the table from her. “We’ll dig today,” he said quietly. “Then the M.E. will have the body—if there is a body—picked up and examined for evidence. There’ll be some newspeople in town, most likely, asking questions and taking pictures. It’ll be rough for a while, Kristy, I won’t lie to you.” He paused, blushed, looked away for a moment, before facing her squarely again. “But things will die down in time—get back to normal.”

  “And my father will be remembered as a murderer,” she said.

  “Tim Madison,” the sheriff argued firmly, “will be remembered as a man protecting his daughter and his wife. He wouldn’t have been convicted, Kristy, even if he’d confessed to the whole thing.”

  “This is what gave them cancer, you know,” Kristy heard herself say, her voice drifting right over the top of Floyd’s words like some slow-moving river. �
�Mom and Dad, I mean. Knowing what really happened that night. Keeping it in. They must have been so afraid—”

  Sheriff Book reached out, squeezed her hand. “There’s no way to be sure of that,” he said gently. Then, after a long pause, “Did he hurt you, honey? That drifter?”

  She shook her head. There were so many things she wasn’t sure of, but she knew that much. She must have called out to her dad aloud that night, not just in the panicked silence of her mind. He’d gotten there in time.

  “No,” she said, but she gave a cold shudder as the full extent of the danger she’d been in crashed over her.

  “You want me to call Dylan?” Floyd asked.

  Kristy started slightly. She’d erased Dylan’s cell number from the blackboard. Why had his name been the one to leap to Floyd’s mind?

  Floyd smiled, evidently reading her thoughts from the expression on her face. “I saw his truck parked out front last night,” he said. “While I was out making my rounds.”

  “Don’t call Dylan,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure? You don’t look too good, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I’ve got to open the library at nine,” she told him.

  “Hang the library,” Floyd answered. “History won’t stop if it’s closed for a day or two.”

  He didn’t understand. She couldn’t just pull the shades and wait for the sky to come down on her head in big blue chunks, for reporters to knock on her door and the phone to ring off the hook with crank calls and requests for interviews. She had to keep going, keep busy—or go completely insane.

  “I’ll be all right,” she insisted, but without enough conviction, apparently, to suit Sheriff Floyd Book.

  He leaned forward a little in his chair, studied her with worried eyes. “This could get rough before it’s done, Kristy. Why don’t you leave town for a week or two—or even a month? Lie low till the worst is over, anyhow?”

  Running away wasn’t in her. Tim and Louise Madison hadn’t raised her that way. And Stillwater Springs was home, the eye of the coming storm, yes, but also the place she most needed to be to weather it.

  And weather it she would, or die trying.

  *

  BONNIE’S BEDROOM FURNITURE was delivered first thing that morning, and, having passed a sleepless night, Dylan found himself grumbling a lot as he set things up.