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

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Make the same choices he did,” Logan said quietly, “and you will be.”

  “Is that enough?” Dylan asked doubtfully. “Just making different choices, I mean? This hell-raising thing runs deep with the Creeds—all the way back to old Josiah’s day. Even further, for all I know. Suppose it’s genetic?”

  One side of Logan’s mouth quirked up in what looked like rueful amusement. “It’s about time somebody tried to find out, don’t you think? Dug in their heels and said, ‘By God, this is it, it stops here, in this generation’?”

  “You’re really serious about this.”

  “You sound surprised,” Logan said mildly.

  The food came. The conversational din surrounding them had long since faded to a buzz, like distant bees droning in the orchard out home.

  Logan, clearly hungry, tucked into a short stack with a side of ham. Dylan stared down at his own plateful of bacon and eggs and couldn’t recall ordering it. He left his knife and fork where they were—wrapped up in a paper napkin.

  “I don’t mind admitting,” Dylan said, at some length, “that I have my doubts. After all, you’ve been married twice already, and I’ve never known you to stay in one place long.”

  Logan chortled at that, chewed and swallowed. Took a sip of his coffee. “I guess I can’t blame you.”

  “What happened, Logan? What made you even want to change?”

  Logan mulled his answer over for a while before giving it, which was like him. “I got curious about our distant cousins, the McKettricks, after one of them—Meg—sent an e-mail via a half-assed Web site Cassie set up one time, when she was on a ‘save the Creed heritage’ kick. There are McKettricks all over the place, but the main bunch lives outside a little town in Arizona, called Indian Rock, on the Triple M Ranch. They’re a rowdy crew—a lot like us in some ways—but they’re a family. With all their differences, and their disagreements, they’ll stand back-to-back to defend each other, when trouble comes. It struck a chord in me—I wanted that for the Creeds.”

  “We’re related to the McKettricks?” Dylan marveled. “I knew a Jesse McKettrick on the rodeo circuit.”

  Logan grinned. Nodded. “Yup,” he said.

  Dylan shoved a hand through his hair, dared to dream, if only for a moment, that Logan’s vision—a thriving ranch, a solid family, a new course for future generations of Creeds to follow—could be fulfilled.

  Bonnie, growing up proud of her name, secure on a piece of ground she could always call home, no matter where she wound up living as an adult. Folks there, ready to take her part if she needed help.

  The thought made Dylan’s eyes burn. Suddenly, he wanted to print out that disk full of pictures Logan had given him a couple of weeks back. He wanted to see the people he came from—misguided, yes, but tough as hell. What were their stories? What had they hoped for, dreamed of? Who had they loved—and hated? Was there nothing left of them, save the dusty skeletons moldering in the old cemetery on the other side of the orchard, out there on the once-famous Stillwater Springs Ranch?

  Logan seemed to read Dylan’s mind, though most likely everything he was feeling in that moment showed plainly in his face. “There are letters, Dylan. Pictures. Even a few diaries. And because Josiah published a newspaper, there’s microfilm, too, at the library. Kristy can help you access it.”

  All his life, Dylan had felt like a lone link from a rusty, broken chain. Now, he knew he was connected, not only to Logan and Tyler, and to the land itself, but to all those Creeds who had gone before and, more important, to those who would come after—starting with Bonnie.

  And for Bonnie alone, whatever his misgivings, he knew he had to try.

  “I’m in,” he said quietly.

  Logan smiled, nodded. “Good.”

  That was all. Just “good.”

  But it was enough.

  *

  THE REPORTERS WERE WAITING on the library lawn when Kristy, wan with dread and lack of sleep, showed up for work that morning. They were crushing the grass, trampling the flower beds, blocking the sidewalk.

  Kristy thought about turning her Blazer around and simply driving off, but sooner or later, she’d have to face the music, and the longer she waited, the harder it would be.

  A man with a slick hairstyle and capped teeth immediately shoved a microphone into her face. “Did you know all along that your father had murdered a man, Ms. Madison? Were you a witness?”

  Kristy squared her shoulders, shifted her handbag from right to left, flipping through her key ring for the one that would open the library’s front doors.

  Business as usual, Madison, she told herself.

  “There is no proof that my father murdered anyone,” she said, with freezing dignity, pushing past him.

  A woman she recognized from a morning show out of Missoula stepped directly into her path. “Can you confirm that there was a second body found on your family’s property? That of Ellie Clarkston, the missing teenager?”

  “I think that’s a question you should ask the sheriff, not me,” Kristy said. She and the newswoman engaged in a brief glaring match, and Lois Lane finally stepped aside.

  Kristy got as far as the steps in front of the entry doors before another question hit her, striking from behind, with the impact of a stone.

  “Is it true that you’ve sold the rights to the story to a major movie studio?”

  Kristy didn’t turn around. Her keys felt slippery in her numb fingers. “Nothing definite has been decided,” she said. If she could just get inside, among the books—she always felt safe, surrounded by books.

  The reporters would follow, of course. The library was a public building; she couldn’t keep them out.

  Her stomach rolled. She managed to open the door, cross the threshold. White-teeth and Lois Lane were right behind her.

  She turned to face them. “I have a library to open,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Just give us a statement,” Lois pleaded. “Anything.”

  White-teeth watched her eagerly, ready to thrust the microphone at her again.

  “I’m not at liberty to comment,” Kristy answered, because that was what people always said on the TV news. “Sheriff Book is conducting the investigation. Why don’t you ask him about the case?”

  A figure appeared in the doorway behind them, rimmed in sunlight, too bright to identify.

  Another reporter, no doubt.

  Kristy’s heart skittered. She felt trapped, cornered—in this, her sanctuary, of all places.

  “But you did sell movie rights to Zachary Spencer,” White-teeth persisted.

  And then, blessedly, the figure in the doorway solidified into Dylan. Wearing a deceptively easygoing grin, he came to Kristy’s side, slipped an arm around her. She blinked at the whiteness of his shirt, fresh out of the package if the creases were anything to go by.

  “The library’s closed today, folks,” Dylan said.

  Before Kristy could protest, he’d shuffled her back through the library and onto the porch. Left with the choice of following or being locked in—since Dylan had taken the keys from Kristy’s hand and given them an eloquent jingle—Lois Lane and White-teeth trailed after them, blended in with their colleagues waiting on the lawn.

  Dylan locked the doors, nodded affably to the startled throng and squired Kristy to his truck.

  “Dylan Creed,” she sputtered, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “We’re going to a cattle auction,” he said.

  “To a what?” Kristy gasped when he opened the passenger-side door, gripped her around the waist with both hands and hoisted her into the seat. “I’m supposed to be working—”

  “You really think you can work with that rat pack hanging around?”

  Kristy sighed, settled back in the seat, closed her eyes. “Running away never solved anything,” she said.

  “Sometimes,” Dylan replied, snapping her seat belt into place, “it’s the better part of valor.”

  “Th
at’s discretion,” Kristy said. “Discretion is the better part of valor.”

  “Gosh,” Dylan teased. “Thanks for clearing that up.” With another grin, he shut the truck door, rounded the front end and got behind the wheel.

  “They’ll only come back, and back again, until they get whatever it is they want.”

  “No sense in making it easy for them,” Dylan replied, gunning the engine and giving the horn a merry farewell toot as they sped away.

  “I can’t just go to a—a cattle auction.”

  “Sure you can.” Dylan grinned. He didn’t speak again, until they were past the city limits, headed toward Missoula. Then, his expression changed. “I’m sorry about last night, Kristy.”

  Great. The best sex of my life, and he’s sorry.

  “Still worried I might be pregnant?” Kristy asked, with a little tartness to her tone. “Forget it. I checked the calendar. Not ovulating.”

  She had checked the calendar, so that part, at least, was the truth. Whether she was ovulating or not was anybody’s guess.

  “Too bad,” Dylan said. “I think we’d make a great baby together.”

  Kristy stared straight ahead, because if she looked at Dylan, he might see what she was feeling in her face. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t mess with my head. I’m on overload as it is.”

  “Which is why you need a distraction. And a cattle auction is nothing if not distracting.”

  “A cattle auction,” Kristy said, a little less tartly, because deep down, she was glad Dylan had decided to play white knight back there at the library, “is dusty, loud and boring.” She paused. “And where is Bonnie?”

  “With Briana,” Dylan answered easily. “Logan and I had breakfast together this morning, after we filed the custody papers, and we got to talking about bringing the ranch back to its former glory. The next logical step is to buy more cattle. He’s meeting us at the auction, after he changes out of the monkey suit.”

  “The monkey suit?”

  Dylan grinned. “The one he wore to the courthouse. Said it made him feel more like a lawyer.”

  “Oh,” Kristy said. One of her exchanges with Freida Turlow came to mind. “Have you ever heard of a company called Tri-Star? They made an offer on my folks’ place, and Freida’s sure the bank will accept it.”

  Dylan shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.

  She studied him, out of the corner of her eye, still too proud to look directly at him. “Something’s different about you,” she remarked, at some length.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, it’s so. What are you up to?”

  “Besides kidnapping the town librarian?”

  “Stop it.”

  Dylan laughed, and buzzed down his window, and the wind danced in his golden hair. He had changed, and just since the night before, too. He seemed more substantial somehow, less transient, more of a reality and less of a dream. “I’m still me, Kristy. The guy who’d like to get you naked, right now, if we weren’t on a public road, and unwind some of that tension coiled up inside you with a good old-fashioned—”

  “Dylan, stop.”

  “Orgasm,” he finished. “Damn, if I hadn’t promised Logan I’d meet him at the stockyards in Missoula—”

  Kristy squirmed. She felt hot and achy—and wet. Now, she’d be on the ragged edge, all day, anticipating another round of lovemaking with Dylan. Exactly as he’d intended.

  She sighed again. Rolled down her own window. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t,” Dylan repeated.

  “Stop.”

  “Don’t stop,” he said. “Where have I heard that phrase before?” He cocked his head to one side, pretending to think hard. “Oh, yeah. It was last night. I went down on you, and you said, ‘Don’t stop—oh, please, Dylan, don’t stop.’”

  The reminder made Kristy blush—and want him to go down on her again, right there in the truck, in the broad light of day.

  She groaned.

  Dylan laughed.

  By the time they reached the stockyards, where the cattle sale was to be held, he had her so riled up that if he’d pulled into a motel parking lot instead, or even into the bushes alongside the road, she’d have been begging before he got her jeans unsnapped.

  Dylan signed up for a bidding number and examined the livestock as calmly as if he hadn’t been seducing her with words all the way from Stillwater Springs. When Logan arrived, wearing jeans, boots and a T-shirt, he didn’t seem at all surprised to see Kristy there on a day when the library should have been open for business. After studying her face for a few moments, Logan grinned in a way that made her blush even harder.

  Then he laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you, Kristy,” he said quietly. “Briana’s frying up a couple of chickens for supper, after the Great Debate, and we’re both hoping you and Dylan will join us. Jim Huntinghorse will be there, too.”

  It sounded nice. An ordinary, sane, country thing to do.

  Sure, Kristy imagined herself saying. As soon as Dylan finishes what he’s started, and gets me off, we’ll be right over.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  Dylan, busy checking out cattle until then, spotted Logan and started in their direction.

  “Have you ever heard of a company called Tri-Star?” Kristy asked Logan, as an afterthought.

  She saw something in his face, so subtle and quickly gone that she immediately concluded she’d imagined it. Without replying, he turned to greet Dylan with a handshake, and the moment passed.

  Attending a cattle auction brought back a lot of memories for Kristy—as a child, she’d been to dozens of them with her dad. They’d sat in the bleacherlike seats, Kristy sipping a soda, Tim drinking coffee, with the hard Montana sun beating down on their heads, even through straw cowboy hats. In the early years, Tim Madison mainly bought calves. Later on, when things started going sour, he’d begun selling off his small herd—the heifers, the yearlings, and finally the bulls.

  The bidding was brisk, once it got under way, but Logan and Dylan, sitting on either side of Kristy, held their own. By the time the auction was over, they’d bought some fifty head of cattle, between them.

  Checks were written. Arrangements were made to transport the animals to Stillwater Springs Ranch.

  “Want to stop someplace and have lunch?” Logan asked, when the three of them stood in the gravel parking lot, preparing to leave.

  “We’ll hold out for Briana’s fried chicken,” Dylan answered easily.

  Amusement glinted in Logan’s eyes. “See you at the debate,” he said. “Jim needs all the support he can get.”

  Dylan nodded. “See you there.”

  Kristy waited until Logan had walked away, headed toward his truck, before giving Dylan an elbow in the ribs. “You might as well have told him straight out that we’re going somewhere to screw our brains out!” she whispered.

  Dylan laughed, but his eyes were solemn as he looked down at her. “Aren’t we?”

  “Aren’t we what?”

  “Going somewhere to screw our brains out?”

  Kristy gave a strangled scream of frustration.

  Dylan laughed again. “My place or yours?” He folded his arms to await her answer, eyes dancing. “Your place is closer, but mine is more private,” he finally added.

  “You are impossible!” Kristy stormed over to the truck and got in, after Dylan opened the locks with the fob on his key ring. It was mostly bluster, though, and he surely knew that.

  Dylan nodded to a passing acquaintance, then climbed in to start the engine.

  “Your place,” Kristy relented, stubborn to the end.

  Dylan leaned toward her, widened his eyes and exuded innocence. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you. What did you say?”

  “Your place,” Kristy repeated, through her teeth.

  Dylan chuckled and put the truck in gear. “That’s what I thought you said. My place it is.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

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nbsp; THERE WAS SOMETHING Kristy wanted to tell him, Dylan decided, watching her moving fitfully around his bedroom dressed only in one of his western shirts, her hair moist from the shower they’d taken together, after making love until they were both too spent to do it even one more time.

  Dylan, wearing misbuttoned jeans and nothing else, lay on his side on the rumpled bed, head propped in one hand, just drinking her in through his eyes, through the pores of his skin. Even in the fading sunshine slipping dust-sparkled between the slats of the window-blinds, Kristy seemed to glow as if she were translucent, formed of ever-shifting light in soft, iridescent shades.

  The dog, Sam, who had jumped onto the bed at a critical moment and made them both laugh even as they were sharing a noisy climax, had been trying to keep up with her. Now, the poor mutt sank to the floor with a low whine of dismay.

  “Talk to me, Kristy,” Dylan said, at long last.

  She stopped, gazed at him in pained reluctance. Then she gave an oh-well-what-the-hell kind of shrug and came to sit gingerly on the edge of the mattress. Realizing she’d bolt if he touched her, Dylan withdrew his hand just before it would have spanned the small of her back.

  Kristy bit her lower lip and stared down at the floor, which was still littered with all of her clothes and a few of his.

  “Somebody knows,” she finally said, her voice so soft that he barely heard her.

  “Knows what?” he asked.

  “About us,” she answered miserably.

  He chuckled. “Kristy, this is Stillwater Springs, not New York or L.A. Small-town people pick up on things like this pretty quickly.”

  She swallowed visibly, nodded, as though begrudging him the point. “But this is somebody mean,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  Suddenly, Kristy was on her feet again, pacing again.

  Sam gave a halfhearted whimper of protest, worn-out.

  “I keep running to you with this stuff, like some frightened child!”