He looked at the retro wall clock, a green plastic teapot-shaped gizmo. Eight-thirty.
“Shouldn’t you be on your way to the library?” he asked.
Kristy smiled. “I took a vacation day,” she said. “Or half of one, anyway. Susan will open for me. I’ll go in after lunch. It’s story day.”
“Oh,” he said. Given the profoundly inexplicable way he felt, it was a wonder that mundane things kept rolling off his tongue.
“Sit down, Dylan,” she coaxed, a patient smile curving one side of her mouth, though her eyes still looked as though she couldn’t decide between sadness or hope.
He drew back a chair at the table, next to Bonnie, and sank into it. Sam clickety-clicked it across the kitchen to lay his muzzle on Dylan’s thigh, as if in sympathy for his plight. If this could be called a plight.
“How do you feel about stopping by the courthouse to pick up a marriage license?” he asked, and then held his breath while she poured him a cup of coffee, brought it to the table, set it down and leaned to kiss the top of his head.
The gesture both stirred his groin and gave him that little-boy-listening-for-a-song sensation he’d had the night before, when she was singing to Bonnie.
“Ready,” she answered. “I feel ready.”
The relief was so overwhelming that Dylan closed his eyes for a long moment. Kristy had had all night to think, after all. There was a lot going on in her life. She could have changed her mind about the wedding, wanted to forget the whole thing.
“Where did you sleep last night?” he asked, when she went to dish up the omelet. It sure as hell hadn’t been with him.
“With Bonnie,” Kristy answered lightly. “I was up late, though.”
He risked a grin. “And here I thought you were down at Skivvie’s, dancing topless on the bar.”
She laughed. Inclined her head toward Bonnie. “Little pitchers,” she chimed.
“Right,” he said, with a sigh. Reality was already nipping at the edges of the bright morning, tarnishing them a little. Sharlene was expecting a wire, probably already hovering in some Western Union office, cursing his name. She might just blow the money and save the whole mother-daughter reunion for another time—but she might hop on a plane, too.
“Dylan?” Kristy stopped when she spoke, rimmed in sunshine from the window behind her.
He waited.
“I understand about Sharlene, if that matters. I know you have to deal with her. Just be honest with me where she’s concerned, that’s all.”
Dylan’s eyes stung. Maybe it was that golden aura shimmering around Kristy like a full-body halo. Maybe it was that she really did understand.
“Come here,” he said gruffly, easing Sam aside with one hand.
Kristy approached, her features gradually becoming visible as she left the halo behind. He took her hand, pulled her down onto his lap.
Bonnie seemed to find that hysterically funny, and chortled with baby laughter.
“What?” Kristy asked, sort of fidgety and nervous.
“Thanks,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose.
“Thanks?”
“For being Kristy.”
She still seemed a little rattled. “That’s the easy part,” she said.
“Yeah, well, not everybody has a handle on being who they are,” Dylan answered. He’d have loved to take her upstairs, right then, peel off those sexy jeans, strip away the light blue pullover shirt and pleasure her until she melted, but it was morning, and Bonnie was awake, and the world was already in gear for the day, humming along beyond the walls of that cheerful house.
“Is it so confusing, being Dylan Creed?” Kristy asked softly, the expression in her eyes tender and concerned.
“I suppose I’m making it harder than it has to be,” he admitted.
The omelet was probably getting cold, and so was his coffee. Bonnie was beating out a drum-song on the metal tray of the high chair with the base of her sippy cup. And Dylan didn’t want anything to change. He wanted to be right where he was, with Bonnie and Kristy and the dog and that snooty Persian cat, forever.
Kristy smiled, kissed his cheek with a smack and got back to her feet. “Breakfast is ready,” she said.
So much for forever.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THINGS SEEMED UTTERLY SURREAL to Kristy that morning—getting the required blood tests, applying for the marriage license at Stillwater Springs’ courthouse and giving the jewelry store a wide berth because of the norings pact. In three short days, she kept thinking, she and Dylan would be husband and wife. Married.
This had been her dream, on some level, since childhood, when she was a knobby-kneed little ranch kid in homemade clothes and he was the town drunk’s middle son, never actually looking for a brawl, but ready to tie in if one got started.
Even as a teenager, Dylan had been a formidably good lover. Now, as a full-grown man, comfortable in his skin and operating on a full complement of testosterone, he was lethal. Marriage to him meant soul-rending sex, on a regular basis. Bonnie was the proverbial icing on the cake—custody issues with Sharlene notwithstanding, Kristy was about to become a stepmother, and she knew she would excel at it. Knew she would love Dylan’s child as dearly as any they might conceive together.
So why wasn’t she happier?
The question was rhetorical, of course; Dylan wouldn’t say he loved her until he was sure it was bone-true, and she couldn’t tell him how she felt because, damn it, she still had some pride.
Okay, she had a lot of pride. Maybe too much.
Bonnie was nodding off on Dylan’s shoulder by the time the three of them arrived at the Marigold Café for an early lunch.
“Let me have her,” Kristy said, from her side of the booth.
Dylan complied, and Bonnie came willingly to Kristy, stretched out on the vinyl seat, her head resting on Kristy’s lap, and immediately fell asleep.
They ordered food—Kristy her customary salad, Dylan a club sandwich—and shared a chocolate milk shake because it was a celebration.
Sort of.
“If you don’t want a ring,” Dylan ventured mildly, once the waitress had scribbled down the info and retreated behind the counter to slap down the little bell on the pass-through to the kitchen in the time-honored “order up” tradition of greasy spoons everywhere, “I guess it follows that you won’t go for a gown and veil and a cake, either.”
Kristy looked wistfully down at Bonnie, entwining a gentle finger in one of the child’s sweat-moistened curls. “Tell you what,” she answered softly. “If we make it to our first anniversary, we can throw a church wedding with all the trimmings, renew our vows, the whole bit.”
“You,” Dylan said thoughtfully, “are a remarkable woman.”
Kristy sighed, met Dylan’s gaze across the table. “Is that a compliment?”
He grinned. “Mostly.”
“‘Mostly’?” Kristy echoed archly. “In what ways am I ‘remarkable,’ Dylan Creed?”
“You’re remarkably sexy, remarkably beautiful and remarkably stubborn.” He paused, drew a breath, huffed it out. “I can take or leave the church wedding and all of that,” he went on, his voice low and gruff. He reached across the tabletop, took her hand and played idly with her fingers, sending little thrill-flames up her arm, from nerve-ending to nerve-ending. “I even get the part about not wearing rings. But there is one thing that’s really important to me.”
Kristy simply raised one eyebrow and waited.
“I know it’s getting to be old-fashioned—that a lot of women don’t change their names—but I’d like you to be Kristy Creed after we’re married.”
He looked so hopeful, so quietly worried, that Kristy’s heart teetered behind her ribs, like a circus performer on a frayed high wire. Maybe Dylan didn’t love her, in the romantic, white-lace-and-promises sense of the word, but he cared deeply. He cared what she thought, what she felt, what she wanted.
“Kristy Madison Creed,” she recited, her own voice a
little husky. “I like it.”
Dylan’s smile was as dazzling as a sudden burst of sunshine on a murky day. “Good,” he said.
The food arrived.
They ate, making plans for the remains of the day. Kristy would go to the library, and Dylan intended to draw up sketches of the house he intended to build. They’d look the drawings over that night, together, and incorporate Kristy’s suggestions, then have the actual blueprints drawn up. Dylan had already spoken to Dan Phillips by cell phone that morning, and he’d scheduled a bulldozer to raze the old place to the ground.
They’d just about finished their meal when Sheriff Book walked into the café, moving directly toward their table like a man with a purpose.
Kristy felt a little frisson of fear and chagrin. This was Floyd, for heaven’s sake. Her late father’s best friend.
It was just plain crazy to be afraid of him.
But she was.
She worked up a smile.
Sheriff Book pulled off his mirrored sunglasses, nodded to her, without smiling in return, and turned to Dylan. “It was Caleb Spencer,” he said immediately. “The movie star’s kid? He’s the one who took a potshot at you out there in the field yesterday. His father brought him into my office by the shirt collar this morning and we just got through writing him up.”
Kristy’s stomach clenched. She opened her mouth, found herself incapable of uttering a single word and pressed her lips together.
“Pull up a chair if you’ve got time,” Dylan said, as casually as if officers of the law came by his table in restaurants to share such news as a regular thing.
Floyd found a chair, dragged it over and sat down.
The waitress brought him “the usual”—diet cola.
“The kid swears he fired the shot by accident,” Floyd said wearily. He took a long sip of his cola and closed his eyes as it went down, like a man drinking ambrosia from a chalice. “The father is beside himself, but at least he made young Caleb turn himself in. Gotta hand it to him for that.”
“Maybe it was an accident,” Dylan speculated, surprising Kristy as much as Sheriff Book. “How old is he, anyway? Sixteen? Seventeen?”
“Sixteen, but we can try him as an adult.”
“Whoa,” Dylan said. “Don’t I have to press charges first?”
Floyd developed a unibrow, he was frowning so hard. “He shot at you, Dylan. With a rifle.”
“He’s a city kid,” Dylan reminded the sheriff, still acting as though people tried to blast him out of the saddle all the time. “He probably couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, even if he tried.”
“All right,” Floyd said testily, pausing to chafe the back of his neck with one hand, “let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the rifle went off accidentally, just the way he said it did. That still begs the question—two questions, actually—what the hell was a sixteen-year-old kid doing with a deadly weapon in the first place, and why was he prowling around on private property?”
Dylan grinned, raised his eyebrows. “You must have asked him that and a lot more.”
Floyd sighed so deeply that Kristy half expected him to unpin that badge of his, then and there, and set it right down on the table. Just walk away from being sheriff, and let either Jim Huntinghorse or Mike Danvers have the job and the headaches and frustrations that went with it.
“Of course I did,” the older man ground out. “The rifle belongs to Spencer, Sr.—we were able to verify that—and the kid claims he thought it was a dummy, the kind extras carry in movies.”
“And Caleb was on the ranch because…?” Kristy finally managed to ask.
“Said he was thinking of making a movie himself, with a few of his friends from L.A. He was interested in the cemetery—didn’t actually realize it was on Creed property. That’s what he says, anyway.”
“And you don’t believe it?” Dylan asked moderately.
“Kids make movies these days. Especially rich ones, with access to all kinds of fancy camera equipment. They’re fascinated with cemeteries, God knows why, so I can even buy that Junior didn’t realize he was trespassing. But there’s still one mighty big hole in his story, obviously.”
“Why the gun?” Dylan mused. Kristy, the sheriff and the whole Marigold Café might have disappeared—he’d tuned out of his immediate surroundings, Dylan had, to ponder the problem.
“Hell, yes, ‘why the gun,’” Floyd grumbled.
Bonnie stirred, sat up and crawled into Kristy’s lap.
“You’ve got to press charges, Dylan,” the sheriff insisted, while Dylan went right on drifting amid his own thoughts. “You let a kid get away with something like this, and the next thing you know, he’s taking out a dozen people in a high school cafeteria because one of them beat him to the last piece of pizza.”
Kristy soothed Bonnie by giving her some of Dylan’s French fries and what was left of the chocolate shake.
“Maybe,” Dylan agreed, slowly coming back to himself. His gaze lit on Bonnie, and another grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll want a word with young Caleb Spencer before I decide one way or the other, though.”
“You’re just going to let him walk,” Floyd accused, disgusted. “Why, Dylan? Because you were a wild kid once and you turned out okay?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t press charges, Floyd,” Dylan answered patiently. “I said I wanted to talk to the boy first.”
“You’re a damn fool even to go that far, in my opinion.”
“Hell, Floyd, you can come up with a more imaginative insult than that,” Dylan remarked. “I trust you’ve got Billy the Kid locked up in the local hoosegow?”
Floyd snorted at that, scraped back his chair with a noise that made Bonnie’s eyes widen, and Kristy’s, too.
“I wish,” the sheriff growled, looming over all of them like a bear risen onto its haunches to bat at bees with both paws. “Bail’s already been set and paid, thanks to Mr. Hollywood and you’ll-never-guess-who.”
Dylan chuckled, shook his head. “Logan?”
“Logan,” Floyd confirmed grimly. “Lawyers! The kid shoots at his own brother, on his own ranch, and Logan Creed signs up to defend the little bastard without a qualm!”
Kristy was a little thrown by this news, but Dylan took it in stride.
“Everybody deserves defense counsel,” he said.
“You Creeds,” Floyd said, in parting. “You’re all crazy.”
“So I’m told,” Dylan agreed, apparently amused.
Kristy, on the other hand, felt a hot flush of indignation suffuse her face. After all, Bonnie was a Creed, and in three days, she would be one, too. She started to protest Floyd’s remark, albeit belatedly and with no particular retaliatory phrase in mind, but stopped at a slight shake of Dylan’s head.
He’d shoved aside what was left of his food, as Kristy had, and was turning a ballpoint pen he’d found by the napkin holder end over end, pressing the clicker down on the tabletop with each rotation, then snapping it up again with a rhythmic motion of his thumb. Judging by his expression, one, Dylan was unconcerned that there was indeed a hole in Caleb’s story, and two, he didn’t see Logan’s willingness to defend the boy as any sort of brotherly betrayal.
Kristy, quite the contrary, wanted to stand toe-to-toe with her future brother-in-law and demand to know what he could possibly be thinking, accepting Caleb’s case.
Sheriff Book cleared his throat, signaling a change in subject and an imminent departure. “Kristy,” he said. “You doing okay? Seems like the majority of those reporters have moved on, but there are a few still lurking around.”
“I’m doing fine,” Kristy replied, a little stiffly.
“I spoke to Doc last night,” Floyd went on, replacing his bad-ass country sheriff sunglasses. “He’s off the critical list, but he won’t be coming home for a week or two. Asked me to keep an eye on his place while he’s in the hospital.”
At the mention of Doc, Kristy softened a little. “Is Lily with him?”
>
Floyd nodded. “She and the granddaughter,” he answered. “Once Doc gets his walking papers, Lily and the little girl will be moving here to look after him until he’s a hundred percent.” A spare grin rested on Floyd’s mouth for a fraction of a second, then vanished. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that old coot had himself a heart attack just to get Lily back home.”
“Can Doc have visitors yet?” Dylan wanted to know. The waitress appeared with a check, and he handed it back with money to cover both the meal and the tip.
“Just immediate family,” Floyd said. “Since the granddaughter is underage, Lily’s the only one who can get in.”
Dylan nodded.
Kristy made a mental note to contact Doc’s part-time secretary, Donna, and ask if there was anything she could do to help get the Ryder house ready for Lily, her child and a certain gossipy but loveable old veterinarian.
The sheriff offered a few quiet words and left.
Dylan dropped Kristy off at the library, along with Bonnie, her diaper bag and the ever-present sippy cup. He’d protested the idea at first, but Kristy maintained that Bonnie would enjoy story hour and, anyway, she’d be taking the child to work with her a lot, in the near future.
Once Dylan had gone, and Kristy had dropped Bonnie’s gear off in her office and herded the toddler into the play area, within easy sight of the main desk, Kristy listened to an update on the morning’s events from Susan with half an ear. Later, she broke up a minor scuffle between two very young brothers over a toy, and she kept an eye on the line of public computers along the wall, too.
The users were a real cross-section of the town’s population.
Ranchers scanned agricultural publications online.
Teenagers surfed and chatted.
Housewives printed out grocery coupons.
Kristy, mainly focused on watching over Bonnie and doing her job at the same time, thought distractedly of Gravesitter, and wondered once more if she’d seen the mystery person time and time again, right there in the Stillwater Springs Public Library.
Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler Page 53
