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

by Linda Lael Miller

  “This is funny?” Dylan asked, sounding put out, but then he raised his head and saw the tears, and his tone shifted to one of concern. “Kristy?”

  “It’s—nothing,” she said, trying to turn her head away.

  But he turned it back, wiped away her tears with the side of one thumb. “What is it?” he pressed.

  “I was just remembering something my mother used to say.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “‘Why should a man buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?’” The cliché was so ridiculous—and so true—that she laughed again.

  Cried again.

  Dylan kissed her forehead, splayed his fingers and buried them in her hair. Rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She stroked his back. “We’d better live at my place,” she said.

  He lifted his head, searched her eyes. “Huh?”

  “It’s closer to the library,” Kristy said reasonably. “It’s bigger, too. And the gossips will find it a lot more entertaining, if we’re right in town.”

  He wanted to smile, she could see that, but it fizzled. “You mean—”

  “I mean,” Kristy said, smiling and smoothing his hair back from his forehead, “if we’re going to live together, it’s going to be on my terms. I have a perfectly good house, and I intend to stay there—for the time being.”

  “What if it works?” Dylan countered. “Us, that is.”

  “What if it doesn’t?” Kristy asked softly.

  “Then you won’t have to be the one who packs up and leaves.”

  Kristy merely arched an eyebrow. It went without saying that leaving was Dylan’s specialty, not hers. If things fell apart, she wanted to be home when it happened. That way, she could lick her wounds in familiar surroundings.

  “I’m still planning to build a house and a barn, Kristy, and to raise Bonnie right here on Creed land.”

  “Fine,” Kristy said, with a lot more confidence than she felt. “If we’re still together when your new place is finished, we’ll talk about it again.”

  He smiled, tasted her mouth. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said.

  “You drive a hard—bargain, too,” Kristy quipped. The tears had stopped, but she was still afraid, still hopeful, all a-tangle inside.

  She wasn’t sure if she was ready to live with Dylan, and risk her heart. But she was sure of what she wanted, right then, in that bed, in that moment.

  And he gave it to her, holding nothing back.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, Dylan dropped Kristy off at the library—she was hell-bent on putting in her shift, reporters or no reporters. Since there were no news-hawks in sight when they arrived, he decided he and Bonnie would go on to the hardware store for new locks. In the bright light of day, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea, he and Bonnie and Sam moving in with Kristy and Winston, instead of vice versa, but Kristy was adamant. So he’d give it a try.

  At a dusty little shop on Main Street, where locks and hammers and a variety of other things were sold, Dylan unbuckled Bonnie from her car seat and took her inside with him, leaving Winston and Sam there in the rig, with a window cracked. Choosing tools and supplies and wrestling a rambunctious two-year-old was a challenge, but he managed. Recalling that there were several sets of stairs at Kristy’s, he bought baby gates, too. And a playpen in a time-battered box.

  Bonnie would hate being tossed into a portable hoosegow, he knew, but he needed some way to corral the little bugger while he swapped out the locks.

  Later on, when Kristy got home from work, he planned to go back to the ranch, disassemble Bonnie’s fancy bed and commandeer Logan into helping him load it for the trip to town. Then the two of them could put the thing together in the small room next to Kristy’s.

  Of course, the plan meant revealing to Logan that he was moving in with Kristy, and he was bound to take some ribbing over that. Might as well get in practice—by nightfall, word of the arrangement would be all over Stillwater Springs anyhow, with no help from Logan. Folks would have plenty to say, right to his face and behind his back.

  At Kristy’s, Dylan used the key she’d given him at breakfast to get inside. He spent the next several minutes herding Sam over the threshold, along with Bonnie, and letting Winston out of his crate.

  Disgruntled, the cat gave a snippy meow and disappeared into some other part of the house, no doubt bound for a private hiding place.

  Sam invited himself along, much to Winston’s annoyance.

  Setting up the playpen took half an hour—the instructions were in Sanskrit, as near as Dylan could guess, and there must have been a hundred different washers and bolts and screws—and Bonnie raised hell when he put her in the thing, immediately tried to scramble over the side.

  He filled her sippy cup from the jug of milk in Kristy’s fridge, and the kid settled down. With luck, she’d go to sleep.

  Without luck, she’d scream until his eardrums imploded or the neighbors called the cops.

  The latter possibility didn’t bother him; he wouldn’t mind a word with Floyd Book, anyway. To his mind, the old man turning out to be a murderer would be about as likely as lasting peace in the Middle East, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a feel for the guy’s energy. Dylan had long since learned to trust the vibes he picked up from people and situations—he’d ignored them with Sharlene, but he’d come out of the deal with a daughter, too.

  By noon, he’d set up all the baby gates and replaced all the locks. Mercifully, Bonnie slept through the whole thing.

  He’d left his .45 locked up in the glove compartment of the truck, and he was just fetching it when Kristy showed up, carrying a bag from the Marigold Café.

  “Lunch,” she said, smiling.

  But her face changed when she saw the gun.

  “Do you intend to bring that thing into my house?” she bristled, opening the side gate in her tidy picket fence with a force that made the metal latch clink when it swung shut again behind her.

  “In a word,” he said, “yes.”

  “Must I remind you that there is a two-year-old living under this roof?”

  Dylan grinned. “No,” he said. “I’m up to speed on that one. She yelled like a banshee walking over hot coals for the first hour we were here.” He let his gaze fall to the sack in Kristy’s right hand. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”

  “Dylan, the gun…?”

  “Could come in handy,” he finished for her. “You’ve already had one intruder, remember?”

  “Yes,” Kristy retorted, “and if that thing had been in the house, I might have shot a woman I’ve known all my life.”

  “You’re way too smart to do a dumb thing like that,” Dylan reasoned. Where he went, the .45 went. He’d never had to use it, hoped he never would, but if the need arose, he meant to be ready. “I’d forgotten how you talk in italics so much of the time. It must be practically aerobic, not to mention exhausting.”

  Kristy stood at the base of the porch steps, still uncertain, looking downright delicious in her well-fitting black jeans and pink long-sleeved top. Letting his comment pass, she kept her attention on the .45. “Are there bullets in it?”

  “No,” Dylan said.

  “Would you really shoot a human being?”

  “If necessary, yes.” Oh, yes, he’d pull the trigger under the right circumstances, with no compunction whatsoever and in a heartbeat.

  For a long moment, he and Kristy just stared at each other.

  Then Kristy asked quietly, “Define ‘necessary,’ if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t mind at all. Any threat to you or Bonnie—or my brothers.” He looked down at Sam, panting at his side. “Anybody or anything in need of looking out for.”

  A visible shudder went through Kristy’s fine, responsive body. She was almost certainly remembering the night her father had shot that drifter and then hidden the body. “You’ll put it up somewhere?”

  “I wasn’t planning to store it in
the playpen,” Dylan pointed out, “or on the coffee table.”

  Kristy stiffened, bit her lower lip and finally relented. “Okay,” she said. “But I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like it, either,” Dylan agreed moderately, “but the reality is, it’s a mean world out there, and shit happens. I’ll show you how to handle the gun, how to load and unload it, all of that.” At the look of rising resistance on her face, he added, “It wouldn’t be safe otherwise.”

  Slowly, Kristy nodded, and they went inside. Dylan put the .45 on the highest shelf in the pantry, with the safety on, then went to wash up while Kristy unpacked the takeout grub she’d picked up on the way home. Bonnie woke up and gave a squall from the playpen in the living room, and Kristy hurried to fetch her. The kid was all smiles when they got back to the kitchen, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Dylan, who had to hold Bonnie on his lap the whole time they were eating, made a mental note to bring her high chair to town, along with the little bed.

  Once lunch was over, Dylan showed Kristy the shining new door handles, with their corresponding dead bolts, and gave her copies of the keys. She seemed pleased, and when she got in the Blazer and went back to the library to finish out her workday, she left a hole in the fabric of the day that Dylan had no idea how to weave back together.

  He tried to interest Bonnie in cartoons, having positioned her playpen a safe distance from the TV in Kristy’s study, but she was having none of that. So he loaded her and Sam up, leaving Winston to his own devices, and headed out to the main ranch.

  Briana met him and Bonnie at the front door, immediately reaching out for the child, who went to her readily.

  “Logan’s out riding the range,” Briana told Dylan with a smile, after planting a resounding kiss on Bonnie’s cheek. “The auction people brought the new cattle this morning. Why don’t you saddle up and find him?”

  Dylan looked at his daughter, who was gazing at Briana with the kind of adoration she usually reserved for Kristy. Felt a momentary pang. A child needed a mother, and in the long run, shacking up wouldn’t pack it.

  “Bonnie will be fine, here with me,” Briana said.

  Dylan pondered, then nodded and grinned. “Thanks,” he told Briana. Then he chucked Bonnie under the chin. “Behave yourself, monkey,” he said.

  She barely noticed when he left, half sprinting for the barn.

  There, he threw the spare saddle and a bridle on Sundance, who was fussing inside his stall, and mounted up.

  Except for making love to Kristy, there was no feeling like being on the back of a horse. Together, Sundance and Dylan made for the bawling and churning dust-cloud indicating the approximate location of the herd.

  The gelding was a little skittish, but eager to run, so Dylan let him.

  The rush of wind felt as sweet as if somebody had left a window open between earth and heaven. Dylan bent low over the horse’s neck, grinning wide and dust be damned.

  The crack of the rifle shot came as a stunning affront, as such things always do. Instantly, the world went into slow-mo—the gelding stumbled and pitched forward, nearly landing on its knees, and Dylan rolled end over end above the animal’s head. It seemed those somersaults went on forever, and when he finally hit the ground, he waited for the horse to land right on top of him, just as those logs had rolled down onto Jake and crushed the life out of his tough lumberjack’s body.

  It didn’t happen.

  Dylan passed out briefly, woke blinking. Stars sparked and whizzed around his head.

  Sundance came slowly into focus, standing next to him, nuzzling the side of his face with a cold, wet nose. Dylan, with the wind knocked clean out of him, couldn’t figure out if he’d actually taken a bullet or not. Nothing ached or burned. On the other hand, he might as well have been a puddle of consciousness, disembodied there on the hard Montana ground, for all the sensation he felt.

  At least the horse was probably all right, he thought, still dazed, though the stars receded. Sundance wouldn’t be on his feet if he’d been shot, or fallen hard enough to get hurt.

  Dylan gulped in a breath, tried to make contact with his physical self, but it seemed as if all lines of communication had been cut. Nothing to do but wait, and hope to God the feeling came back to his arms and legs, though he’d hurt like hell when it did.

  Logan rode up, seemed to slide to Dylan’s side on his knees, like a baseball player trying to steal home plate without messing up the front of his shirt.

  “Are you hit?” he gasped.

  “I—don’t know—” Dylan managed.

  Logan looked him over hastily, shook his head. “You’re not bleeding. Can you move?”

  Dylan tried again, felt tentative messages beginning to pass between his brain and his body. He was relieved, but he braced himself for the inevitable pain, too. He knew from experience that a spill like that one, even if he hadn’t broken or ruptured anything, would call for a lot of aspirin. “Somebody—There was a shot—”

  “I know,” Logan said. “I heard it.”

  “Sundance—?”

  “He’s okay.” Saying this, Logan looked around, scanning, no doubt, for the shooter, who might try again, seeing as he—or she—had missed the first time.

  “Who the hell would want to shoot me?” Dylan asked. Actually, there was a long list, but most of those guys were far away and probably wouldn’t carry a grudge this far anyhow. By now, they’d have gotten themselves new girlfriends.

  “I don’t know,” Logan replied. “Tyler?”

  “He’s pissed off,” Dylan said, mildly disgusted, as Logan helped him sit up. “But trying to kill me? I think that’s a little over-the-top, don’t you?”

  Logan’s jaw tightened. “The shot must have come from the orchard,” he said, after a few moments spent grinding away his back molars. Dylan knew his brother wanted more than anything to go racing off into those gnarled old apple trees, looking for the assailant—so did he.

  And it would be a damn good way to get themselves shot for real.

  Dylan assessed his arms and legs and back. Nothing was broken, but the all-over ache, so familiar from his rodeo days, was settling in for sure. Forget aspirin; he’d need to fill a horse trough with liniment and submerge himself to the eyeballs.

  “Let’s get you back to the house,” Logan said. “Can you ride?”

  “Hell, yes, I can ride,” Dylan snapped, his pride stung.

  Gaining his feet, with more help than he liked taking from Logan, he limped over to Sundance, soothed the horse and hauled himself back up into the saddle. For the first second or two, his head swam, and he half expected that second bullet.

  Fortunately, it didn’t come.

  Back at the main house, a panicked Briana wanted to call an ambulance—after the sheriff.

  Logan silenced her with a look.

  Alec, Briana’s youngest, stood beside the chair Dylan sank into in the living room.

  “Did you get thrown off a horse?” the boy asked, wide-eyed.

  Dylan bit back a testy Hell, no, I didn’t get thrown. Alec was a kid, after all, and the question was an innocent one. No call to take his head off. “Not exactly,” he said, measuring out the words.

  Logan was already on the line to Sheriff Book.

  “I’m going out there,” he said, as soon as he’d snapped his cell phone shut.

  “No, you’re not!” Briana and Dylan chorused.

  Bonnie, eyes wide with worry, clambered up onto Dylan’s lap.

  He mussed her hair, gave her a squeeze. It made his ribs hurt.

  Some of them were probably cracked.

  “Let Floyd handle this,” Briana argued, frowning at her husband. “You need to take your stubborn brother to the emergency room.”

  “I’m not leaving you and the kids here alone,” Logan said, but he was wavering. Dylan saw worry in his brother’s dark eyes when he turned them on him. “There’s some nut out there with a gun.”

  “Wow,” Josh said, impressed. Briana’s firstborn, h
e’d been at the computer when Logan and Dylan came in, and he still hadn’t moved.

  Dylan flashed briefly, in his distraction, on the IM from Gravesitter that had unnerved Kristy so much. Of course the boy hadn’t sent it, but he might know how to find out who had.

  In the next instant, the thought spun off his mind.

  “Let me look into your eyes,” Briana demanded, stepping up to him, cupping her hands around his face and cranking upward. “Just as I thought—” She turned back to her husband. “Logan, there’s a good chance your brother has a concussion.”

  Dylan set his jaw. “I’m all right,” he insisted.

  “I’m calling Kristy,” Briana decided. “And what’s taking Sheriff Book so long?”

  “Don’t call Kristy,” Dylan said.

  “It hasn’t been five minutes since I called Floyd,” Logan added.

  “Maybe you’ll have to have a cast, like I did,” young Alec put in solemnly. “My stepmother hit me with a car.”

  “It was a van,” Josh corrected.

  “Enough, both of you,” Briana interjected. Her gaze shifted from Logan to Dylan and back again. Then she sighed and hoisted Bonnie off Dylan’s lap.

  Bonnie’s lower lip wobbled, then she jammed in the thumb.

  “Kristy will be furious if I don’t call her,” Briana said. Then, with Bonnie riding on her hip, she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Do something,” Dylan said to Logan. “About your wife.”

  Logan spread his hands. “Like what?”

  If every bone and muscle in his body hadn’t been throbbing, Dylan would have laughed at the bewildered look on his brother’s face.

  “Talk Briana out of calling Kristy,” he replied, practically through his teeth. “This is going to freak her out.”

  “Yeah,” Logan agreed. “But not like it will if she hears it through the grapevine.”

  Dylan sighed. Briana came out of the kitchen again, holding out a cordless phone and looking intractable.

  “What happened?” Kristy demanded, before he got all the way through “hello.”

  He explained, though not in any great detail. First of all, he wasn’t that much of a talker any time, let alone when his head was pounding, and second, he didn’t remember much beyond hearing the shot and tumbling above Sundance’s head like a lone shirt in a clothes dryer.