Bonnie, on the other hand, had slept like the Angel of Purest Innocence, and she was full of the dickens as a result. While he turned the last screw in the bed frame, she managed to knock over the new mattress leaning against the wall and immediately started jumping up and down on it.
“Bonnie,” he said.
She ignored him. Healthy child suddenly turns deaf.
“Bonnie.”
She met his gaze, her eyes impish and wide. “Story,” she said.
“Story?” Where had that come from?
A little mulling solved the mystery. Bonnie had taken to Kristy in a big way, and she associated her with their visit to the library.
Hence: story.
“We don’t have any books,” he said.
“Story!” Bonnie insisted, jumping harder and higher.
Of course it was Kristy she wanted, not a chapter of Nancy Drew.
“Unless you want to hear an article from Western Horseman,” Dylan said, “you’re out of luck.” He’d found a moldering stack of his uncle’s favorite magazine on a shelf in the cellar, and that was the extent of the reading material on hand. “And stop jumping—now.”
Bonnie indulged in one more spring, then landed in a gleeful, giggling heap of wild-child in the middle of the mattress. If she was like this at two, what would she be like at sixteen?
It didn’t bear thinking about.
Dylan’s cell phone rang in his pocket, and he flipped it open without looking at caller ID. “Hello?”
“D-Dylan?”
Sharlene. And she was crying.
He handed Bonnie the pink unicorn, hoping that would keep her occupied, and strolled casually into the kitchen. His stomach was wedged into the back of his throat.
“What do you want?” he rasped, bracing one hand against the counter for support. He could hear Bonnie jumping on the mattress again.
“I made a mistake,” Sharlene blathered. “I want Aurora back.”
Dylan closed his eyes. He’d feared this moment, known it was coming, but it still caught him unprepared. “I call her Bonnie,” he said evenly. “And she’s staying with me.”
“Clint said he’d bring me to fetch her—all the way from Texas. You’ve got to give her back to me, Dylan. I can’t live without—Bonnie.”
Clint, of course, was the boyfriend. He’d certainly outlasted most of his predecessors—though for all Dylan knew, there had been a changing of the guard in the short interim since Sharlene had ditched Bonnie back in Vegas.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you abandoned her in my truck, Sharlene,” Dylan said. The jumping had stopped; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bonnie in the doorway, watching him curiously, with her lower lip plumped out in a pout. In went the thumb.
“You don’t know how it was,” Sharlene argued pitifully. “I lost all my money in a slot machine, and Clint was mad at me, and I knew you’d take care of—”
“Bonnie,” Dylan supplied tautly. “Look, we’re not going to talk about this right now. Little pitchers, and all that.”
“At least tell me she’s okay.”
Dylan seethed. All this concern—from a woman who’d left a two-year-old child to fend for herself in a parking lot behind one of the sleaziest bars in Vegas. At night.
“She’s fine,” he said.
Bonnie unplugged her thumb just long enough to say fretfully, “Story.”
Translation: Kristy. I want Kristy.
“If we can’t talk now, we’ll talk in a few days,” Sharlene went on, confident as hell, for somebody who would probably have trouble scraping up enough cash to cover the states between Texas and Montana, even by bus. “I know you’re in Stillwater Springs, Dylan. And we’re on our way, Clint and me.”
Figuring out where he was had been no great intellectual leap—he’d talked about his home town, his brothers and the ranch a lot when they were together. But maybe Sharlene was smarter than he’d given her credit for; she’d guessed, somehow, that he’d fight to keep Bonnie, do anything he had to do to protect her.
She wanted something.
Specifically money.
He hated being conned, but he’d hate losing his daughter more.
“Spill it, Sharlene,” he said.
“If we just had a few thousand to tide us over until Clint gets on with one of the oil companies—”
“You’d do what?” Dylan rasped.
“We could rent a little house. Get settled and everything. Then, in a couple of months, we’d bring Bonnie home—”
Bonnie is home, Dylan thought. And he’d be damned if he’d let Sharlene cart his baby girl off to Texas, to live under the same roof with this Clint yahoo, whoever he was. What would happen to the kid the next time Sharlene blew her child support and decided she couldn’t take care of Bonnie?
“How much, Sharlene?”
If Bonnie realized who he was talking to, she gave no sign of it. She just watched him, pulling hard on the thumb.
He listened while Sharlene consulted the boyfriend, her voice muffled. She probably had a hand over the receiver.
“Three thousand,” she said at last. “I’ll give you a number and you can wire it. Before the end of the day, Dylan.”
“And in return for this, I get—?”
“A few more months with Bonnie.”
The depraved bitch. She was willing to sell two or three months of her daughter’s life. He shouldn’t have been surprised, given Sharlene’s history, but he was.
“All right,” he said, after a long moment spent fighting for control. He found a pencil and an old envelope in one of the kitchen drawers. “Give me the information.”
She did, her voice sweet and lilting, now that she’d gotten what she wanted.
“Before the end of the day,” she repeated, in parting.
And hung up in his ear.
He scooped Bonnie up and the two of them headed for town.
He wired the money to Sharlene first thing.
It wasn’t that he’d miss a few thousand dollars; it was the proverbial drop in the bucket, compared to the shares he owned in Logan’s company, and it would buy him time to sue for permanent custody. Despite all of that, giving in to what amounted to gross extortion went against his grain, big-time.
He gravitated toward the library, once he’d sent the wire.
He needed to be near Kristy, if only for a little while, and besides, Bonnie wouldn’t let up on the “Story” thing.
Kristy was behind the front desk when they walked in, and she looked up immediately, as if an alarm had gone off or something.
Kristy looked like five miles of bad road, though she was clearly trying to put on a front for the library patrons. Dylan saw right through the act, and with unsettling clarity.
“I guess we need a few books,” he said lamely, when he got to the desk. “Bonnie keeps wanting a story.”
There were deep shadows under Kristy’s eyes, and she looked gaunt, as though she’d lost ten pounds overnight. With chagrin, Dylan remembered that the authorities were about to dig up her horse’s grave, and that they expected to find the body of a man her father had murdered in the process.
He’d been so wrapped up in his own worries—Sharlene’s call being at the top of the list—that he’d nearly forgotten what Kristy was going through.
“I think I can help you with that,” she said, with brisk good cheer. The words sounded hollow, though, and forced.
She rounded the desk, winked at Bonnie, who was clinging to Dylan’s neck like a kudzu vine, and led the way to the children’s section. She selected Curious George, Goodnight Moon and Everyone Poops.
Dylan did a double take at that last one.
Kristy gave a slight, slanted grin. “Well,” she said, “they do, you know.”
“I’m not reading that out loud,” Dylan said, feeling his neck heat up. “Anyhow, Bonnie knows how to do that, trust me.”
“Chicken,” Kristy responded. “It’s not about knowing how. It’s abou
t being comfortable with normal bodily functions.”
Why hadn’t he just stayed in the truck? Driven to Missoula or someplace, where they had actual bookstores, and bought the kid a stack of cheerful tales he wouldn’t be too embarrassed to read?
Resolutely, she carried the three selections to the desk and set them down to be checked out.
“Now, what can I get for you?”
So that was it. She remembered his dyslexia, and probably thought he was illiterate and needed all the reading practice he could get.
Dylan was both touched and insulted.
He leaned in close, whispered in her ear exactly what she could get for him and enjoyed the flood of pink spilling across her cheekbones. At least it gave her some color. Before, she’d been pale as milk.
“Dylan Creed,” she sputtered, casting anxious glances around, as though worried that one of the library patrons might have overheard. “I was talking about a book.”
He merely grinned. Gestured with his free arm for her to have at the shelves and find him a tome. Bonnie was straining in the curve of his other arm, wanting to go play by the totem pole with a bunch of other little kids.
“Is it story hour?” he asked, letting Bonnie down so she could join in.
“No,” Kristy said. “Their mothers are all getting their hair done, or at the dentist, or buying groceries.”
She walked purposefully into the stacks, and Dylan followed.
Reaching the M section, she extracted Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
“Already read it,” Dylan said. “Five times. Didn’t even have to move my lips. Want to quiz me on the story line?”
Irritation flared in her eyes, quickly followed by pain. “You could have watched the miniseries,” she said.
“Did that, too,” Dylan admitted, nodding toward the book in her hands. “It opens with two pigs trying to kill a snake. I don’t remember if the TV version did or not.”
Kristy looked both ways. “I need to talk to you. In private.”
He’d been waiting for that, he realized, since he’d walked into the library and caught sight of her face. “What time do you get off work?” he asked, watching Bonnie at the periphery of his vision, wondering if he’d be afraid, his whole life, of someone stealing her when he wasn’t looking.
“Five,” she said. “Susan is going to cover for me.”
“I’ll pick up some steaks, and we’ll have supper at my place, then,” he replied. “Once Bonnie is asleep, we’ll talk.”
She looked hesitant, then nodded. “Can I bring anything?”
He shook his head. It was just a steak dinner, not a night of wild abandon between the sheets, but he was exhilarated at the prospect.
“I have to bring something,” she said.
Dylan didn’t bother to protest again. It was what country folks did, when they were invited to somebody’s place for supper. They showed up with a cake pan covered in foil, or a cold salad in a sealed plastic bowl.
He’d been away far too long. “Knock yourself out, then,” he said.
After that, they were all business. He signed up for a library card—the first he’d ever had—and checked out the books for Bonnie, including the one about poop.
Bonnie didn’t want to leave, but she lightened up when she saw the books. “Story,” she said.
“Story,” Dylan confirmed.
The next stop was the grocery section at Wal-Mart. The mom-and-pop place had long since closed down, and Dylan missed it, even though he’d been caught shoplifting a package of gum there when he was seven, and Jake had whipped his butt all the way back to the truck.
He picked out steaks, potatoes for baking, salad makings and assorted trimmings. Got more milk for Bonnie’s sippy cup, and a roasted chicken for lunch.
Once they’d settled up at one of the checkout counters, he loaded Bonnie and the groceries into the truck and started for home, taking a different route just because they had the time.
Which was how he ended up with the horse.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS THE SORRIEST-LOOKING critter Dylan had ever seen, that horse, standing in the middle of the road, lead-rope dangling from its old rope halter. Its ribs showed, and it was so coated in mud that he couldn’t tell what color it was.
“Horsie,” Bonnie said, pleased.
“Sit tight,” Dylan told his daughter, though there was no danger of her breaking out of the car seat rigging—not yet, at least. Give her a few weeks, and she’d figure out how to spring herself, for sure.
After pulling to the side of the road and shutting off the truck, he got out and walked slowly toward the horse, careful not to look the animal directly in the eye. That would have been nonverbal predator-speak. “Hey, buddy,” he said soothingly. “Bad place to stand. I almost hit you.”
Up close, he saw scars in the animal’s dirty hide, but it was the hopeless resignation in its eyes that made his gut grind. A thatch of cream-colored mane indicated that the gelding might be a palomino, but there was no telling for sure.
Dylan took a light hold on the halter with his left hand, stroked the horse’s quivering, slatted side with his right. “Easy now,” he said, leading the animal out of the road. “Easy.”
They’d no more than reached the shoulder when a blue pickup came tearing around the corner, horn blasting. The pricey new vehicle screeched to a dusty stop, and a teenage boy leaped out, a short lunge-whip in one hand, and started for the gelding, apparently unconcerned by Dylan’s presence.
The gelding shivered and backed up a few feet.
Dylan kept a loose hold on the lead-rope. “Hold it,” he told the kid.
The boy stopped, blinked, stared at Dylan as though he’d sprung up out of the ground. Contempt curled the young man’s lips—he was good-looking, and faintly familiar. “That’s my horse,” he said. “Step aside.”
“You’re not going to take that whip to him,” Dylan said, standing his ground. “Whether he’s yours or not.”
“Do you know who my father is?” the kid demanded, after a few moments of high dudgeon, during which he was apparently too indignant to speak.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass who your father is,” Dylan replied evenly.
The kid reeled off the name of an ultrafamous movie star.
“I’m still not impressed,” Dylan said. “Do you want to try again?”
“We’re here to buy a ranch for major bucks,” said the kid. “You cross me, and you’ll be sorry, cowboy. I promise you that.” He raised the lunge-whip.
Dylan caught hold of the boy’s wrist and squeezed until the whip dropped to the dirt. “You’re the one who’s going to be sorry,” he said, “if you so much as touch this horse.”
“I’m only trying to train him,” the boy whined, rubbing his wrist and flushing a little around the ears as he tried to get the circulation flowing back into his fingers.
“That’s no way to teach an animal anything but fear,” Dylan said. Even without the famous last name, he would have figured the kid for a city slicker, not a local. His clothes were too well-cut for rural Montana, his haircut too casually perfect. He’d had the best of everything—and too much of it—all his life, and it showed. “How’d you come by this fella, anyway?”
“I was test-driving him,” the boy said. “He belongs to some drunken old man. I agreed to pay five hundred dollars if I like the horse.”
It made sense to ride a horse before buying it—but whipping it was another thing entirely. “What’s your first name?”
The boy thrust his chin out. “What’s yours?”
Dylan simply waited, still holding the lead-rope.
“Caleb,” the kid finally admitted, flustered. “Caleb Spencer.”
“Dylan Creed,” Dylan said, but he didn’t put out a hand the way he normally did when he made somebody’s acquaintance. “Around these here parts, Caleb—” okay, so he was troweling on the rube act a little heavy, but the kid clearly thought he was a hick, so why disappoint him? “—we
don’t mistreat animals.” He paused, let the words sink in for a few moments. “So you just head on back to wherever it is you’re staying and I’ll look after the horse.”
“You can’t just take him,” Caleb complained. “He’s almost mine!”
“Watch me,” Dylan said. He took out his cell phone, glanced back toward the truck to make sure Bonnie was where he’d left her and speed-dialed Dan Phillips, the foreman of the construction crew at the main ranch house, with a quick jab of his thumb. “Dan? Dylan. Listen, I’m on old highway 14, near the Wilkenson place. Yeah, right by that big bend in the road. Could you send somebody over here, pronto, with Logan’s horse trailer?”
“Sure,” Dan said.
Caleb kicked the ground with the toe of one very expensive loafer. “I’m going to call the sheriff,” he threatened.
Dylan clicked off with Dan, poised to call Floyd next. “I’ll take care of that one for you,” he said affably.
At that, Caleb, finally getting it, turned on his heel and stormed back to his truck, a new, fancy rig too powerful for a kid his age to handle. Although the vehicle could have belonged to Caleb’s illustrious father, it was probably the brat’s very own.
“You’ll hear from my dad’s lawyers!” Caleb yelled in parting.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Dylan replied cheerfully.
“Stupid hillbilly!” Caleb climbed behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, gunned the engine to life.
Dylan grinned and waggled his fingers in a mocking farewell.
“Hell,” he told the horse, when the boy and the bad-ass truck were gone.
Dan showed up within twenty minutes, Logan’s trailer hooked up behind his work truck. Getting out of his rig, Dan approached, examined the horse with a thoughtful frown.
“He’s in bad shape,” he said.
Dylan forgave his friend for stating the painfully obvious. “From what I can figure, he belongs to old Gunnar Wilkenson,” he explained. “I thought the humane society had fixed it so Gunnar couldn’t keep horses anymore, gotten a court order or something, but I guess he just overlooked that little detail.”
“You know Gunnar,” Dan said. “He ‘don’t much cotton’ to outside interference, especially of the organizational variety.”
Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler Page 38
