Hal Ryder had been doing what he pleased, at least since the divorce. Now, he needed her, a near stranger, to fix his meals, sort out his prescriptions, which were complicated, and see that he didn’t try to mow his lawn or fling himself back into his thriving practice before he was ready.
“Lily?” he prompted.
“No,” she said, after thumbing back through her thoughts for the original question. “There’s no man, Hal.”
“Mom’s a black widow,” Tess explained earnestly.
Hal chuckled. “I wouldn’t go that far, cupcake,” he told his granddaughter.
For a reason Lily couldn’t have explained, her eyes filled with sudden, scalding tears—and she blinked them away. Tears were dangerous on a busy freeway, and besides that, they never made things better. “I’m a widow,” Lily corrected her daughter calmly. “A black widow is a spider.”
“Oh,” Tess said, digesting the science lesson. She began to thump her sandaled heels against the front of her seat, something she did when she was impatient for the drive to be over.
“Stop,” Lily told her.
A few moments of silence passed. Then Tess went on. “My daddy died when I was four,” she announced.
“I know, sweetheart,” Hal said, his voice tender and a little gruff.
Lily’s throat ached. She’d filed for divorce, after a tearful call from Burke’s latest girlfriend, whom he’d apparently dropped. Would he still be alive if she’d waited, agreed to more marriage counseling, instead of calling a lawyer right after hanging up with the mistress? Would her child still have a father?
Tess had adored her dad.
“His plane hit a bridge,” Tess said.
“Tess,” Lily said gently, “could we talk about this later, please?”
“You always say that.” Tess sighed; she’d been born precocious, but since Burke’s death, she’d been wise beyond her years, an adult in a first-grader’s body. “But later never comes.”
“You can talk to Grampa,” Hal said, slanting another look at Lily. “I’ll listen.”
Helpless rage filled Lily; her hands, still damp with perspiration even though the air conditioner had finally kicked in, tightened on the steering wheel. I listen, she wanted to protest. I love my child, unlike some people I could name.
To her surprise, her dad reached across the console and patted her arm. “Maybe you ought to pull over for a few minutes,” he said. “Get a grip.”
“I have a grip,” Lily said stiffly, drawing a very deep breath, letting it out and purposely relaxing her shoulders.
“I’m hungry,” Tess said. She never whined, but she was teetering on the verge. No doubt she was picking up on the tension between the adults in the front seat.
Definitely not good.
“We’ll be in Stillwater Springs in under an hour,” Lily said, keeping her tone light. “Can you hold out till we get there?”
“I guess,” Tess said. “But then we’ll have to stop at a supermarket and everything. Grampa told me there’s no food in the house.”
Lily’s head began to pound. She glanced into the rearview mirror, to make eye contact with her daughter. “Okay, we’ll stop,” she said. “We’ll get off at the next exit, find one of those salad buffet places.”
“Rabbit food,” Hal murmured.
“One burger wouldn’t kill us,” Tess said.
Whose side was the child on, anyway?
“No burgers,” Lily said firmly. “Fast-food places don’t offer organic beef.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Hal said.
“Kindly stay out of this,” Lily told her father evenly. “My purse is on the seat beside you, Tess. There’s a package of crackers inside. Have some, and I’ll keep my eye out for a decent market.”
Sullenly—Tess was never sullen—the child rummaged through Lily’s handbag, found the crackers, tore open the package and munched.
After that, none of them spoke. They were twenty minutes outside Stillwater Springs when they spotted the man and the dog walking alongside the highway.
Something about the man jarred Lily—the set of his shoulders, the way he walked, something—tripping all sorts of inner alarms.
“Stop,” Hal commanded urgently. “That’s Tyler Creed.”
And I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.
Lily pulled over and put on the brakes, while her father buzzed the passenger-side window down.
“Tyler? Is that you?” he called.
The man turned, flashed that trademark grin, dazzling enough to put a heat mirage to shame. Damn it, it was Tyler.
All grown-up, and better-looking than ever.
And here she was, with her back and thighs glued to the car seat and her hair tugged up into a spiky mess.
He approached the car, the dog plodding patiently at his heels. Bent to look in at Hal. When his gaze caught on Lily, then Tess, the grin faded a little.
“Hey, Doc,” Tyler said. “I heard you went through a rough spell. You feeling better?”
“I’ll be all right, thanks to Dylan and Jim Huntinghorse,” Hal replied. “I went toes-up at Logan’s place, during a barbecue, and they gave me CPR. I’d be six feet under if it hadn’t been for those two.”
Tyler gave a low whistle. “Close call,” he said. In high school, he’d been cute. Now, he was drop-dead gorgeous. His eyes were the same clear blue, though, and his dark hair still glistened, sleek as a raven’s wings. “Lily,” he added, in grave greeting.
“Get in,” Hal said. “We’ll give you a lift to Stillwater Springs.”
“Don’t you have a car?” Tess ventured, fascinated, straining in the hated “baby seat” to get a look at the dog.
Tyler grinned again, and Lily’s stomach dipped like a roller coaster plunging down steep and very rickety tracks. “It broke down on a side road,” he explained. “No tow trucks available, so Kit Carson and I started hoofing it for home.”
“Hoofing it?” Tess echoed, confused.
“Walking,” Lily translated.
Tyler chuckled.
“Well, get in,” Hal said. “That sun’s hot enough to bake a man’s brain.”
Tyler opened the right rear door of the Taurus, and he and Kit Carson took their places alongside Tess, the dog in the middle. Delighted, Tess shared the last of her crackers with Kit.
“Obliged,” Tyler said.
“My daddy died when I was four,” Tess said. “In a plane crash.”
Lily tensed. Oddly, Tess often confided the great tragedy of her short life in strangers. With counselors and well-meaning friends, she tended to clam up.
“I’m sorry to hear that, shortstop,” Tyler told her.
“Is hoofing it the same as hitchhiking?” Tess asked. “Because hitchhiking is very dangerous. That’s what Mom says.”
Lily felt Tyler’s gaze on the back of her neck, practically branding her sweaty flesh.
“Your mom’s right,” Tyler answered. “But Kit and I didn’t have much choice, as it turned out.”
“You could have called Logan or Dylan,” Hal said.
Lily wondered at the note of caution in her father’s voice, but she was too busy merging back onto the highway to pursue the thought very far.
“Cold day in hell,” Tyler said.
Lily cleared her throat.
“Cold day in heck, then,” he amended wryly.
“Who are Logan and Dylan?” Tess asked.
“My half brothers,” Tyler replied, belatedly buckling his seat belt.
“Don’t you like them?” Tess wanted to know.
“We had a falling out,” Tyler said.
“What’s that?” Tess persisted.
Risking a glance in the rearview mirror, Lily saw him ruffle Tess’s dark blond hair. She had Burke’s green eyes, and his outgoing personality, too. Telling her not to talk to strangers was pretty much a waste of time—not that Tyler Creed was a stranger, strictly speaking.
“A fight,” Tyler said.
“Oh,�
� Tess said, sounding intrigued. “I like your dog.”
“Me, too.”
Lily sat ramrod-straight in the sticky vinyl seat. Concentrated on her driving. She’d thought a lot about Tyler Creed since she’d hurried out to Montana to keep a vigil at her father’s bedside, but she hadn’t expected to actually run into him. He was a famous rodeo cowboy, after all—a sometime stuntman and actor, and he did commercials, too.
People like that were, well, transitory. Weren’t they?
Wandering through her kitchen with a basket of laundry one day a few years before, she’d glimpsed him on the countertop TV, hawking boxer-briefs, and had to sit down because of heart palpitations. Burke, an airline pilot by profession, had been between flights, and asked her what was the matter.
She’d said she was getting her period, and felt woozy.
She’d felt woozy, all right, but it had nothing to do with her cycle.
“Grampa and I wanted hamburgers for lunch,” Tess informed her fellow passenger, “but she said it would clog our arterials, so now we have to wait and eat salad with tofu.”
“Ouch,” Tyler commented. “That bites.”
Lily pushed down harder on the accelerator.
“Where shall we drop you off?” she asked sunnily, when they finally, finally hit the outskirts of Stillwater Springs. The place looked pretty much the same—a little shabbier, a little smaller.
“The car-repair place,” Tyler replied.
Lily had forgotten how sparely he used words, never saying two when one would do. She’d also forgotten that he smelled like laundry dried in fresh air and sunlight, even after he’d been loading or unloading hay bales all day. Or walking along a highway under a blazing summer sun. That his mouth tilted up at one corner when he was amused, and his hair was always a shade too long. The way his clothes fit him, and how he seemed so comfortable in his own skin…
Do not think about skin, Lily told herself, aware that her father was watching her intently out of the corner of his eye, and that that eye was twinkling.
“Thanks for the ride,” Tyler said, when they pulled up to the only mechanic’s garage in town. Kit Carson jumped out after him.
“Bye!” Tess called, as though she and Tyler Creed were old friends.
“Anytime,” Lily lied.
He walked away, without looking back.
Just as he had that last summer, when Lily, high on teenage passion and exactly half a bottle of light beer, had proposed marriage to him. He’d said they were both too young, and ought to cool it for a while, before they got in too deep.
Lily had been crushed, then mortified.
Tyler had simply walked away. Later, she’d learned that while he was dating her, ending every evening with a chaste peck on the cheek and a “sleep tight,” he’d passed what remained of the night in bed with a divorced waitress twice his age.
The memory of that discovery still stung Lily to the quick.
He’d written songs for her, sung them to her in a low vibrato, aching with heart, played them on his guitar.
He’d taken her to movies, and for long walks along moonlit country roads.
He’d won three teddy bears and a four-foot stuffed giraffe at the county fair, and given them to her.
And all the time, he’d been boinking a waitress with a hot body and a Harley-Davidson tattoo on her right forearm.
Lily was a grown woman, a widow, with a young daughter, a sick father and a successful career in merchandising under her belt. And damn, it still hurt to remember that the songs and the movies and the romantic walks had meant nothing to him.
Nothing to him, everything to her.
“Water under the bridge,” her father commented quietly. “Let’s go home, Lily.”
Let’s go home, Lily.
Hal had said that the night she’d come to the clinic, where he was working late, after the breakup with Tyler, carrying her bleeding, broken heart in her hands. She’d cried, and said she never wanted to see Tyler Creed again as long as she lived. Hal’s jaw had tightened, and he’d put an arm around her shoulders, held her close for a few moments.
He’s Jake Creed’s boy, honey, Hal had said. They’re poison, those Creeds. Every one of them. You’re better off without him.
She’d sobbed, destroyed as only a betrayed seventeen-year-old can be. But I love him, Dad, she’d protested.
Let’s go home, Lily, he’d repeated. You’ll get over Tyler. You’ll see.
And she had gotten over Tyler Creed.
Or at least, she’d thought so, until today.
Now, she sucked it up, for Tess’s sake, and her own. Drove toward the house where she’d grown up, a happy kid—until her parents’ sudden and acrimonious divorce when she was eleven. Until Tyler shattered her heart, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, plus a certain dashing and very handsome airline pilot, had failed to put it back together again.
The big Victorian hadn’t changed, either, except for a few drooping rain gutters and peeling paint on the wooden shutters.
A blond woman in jeans stood on the wraparound porch, waving and smiling as they pulled up.
“Kristy Madison,” Lily said aloud, cheered.
“Creed, now,” Hal said. “She married Dylan a while back.”
Kristy came down the porch steps, through the open gate in the picket fence, which sagged a little on its hinges. When Hal hauled himself slowly out of the car, Kristy greeted him with a hug.
“We’ve all missed you,” she told him. “Welcome back.”
Lily peeled herself off the car seat and got out to stand in the road, while Tess scrambled out of the back.
“Hi, Lily,” Kristy said. “It’s good to see you again.” Her dark blue eyes drifted to Tess, who was just rounding the front of the car. “And you must be Tess.”
Tess nodded eagerly, probably pleased that someone in this strange new place knew her. “My daddy died in a plane crash,” she said. “When I was four.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kristy said gently.
“Are there any kids my age in this town?” Tess asked. “I’d sure like to play with some of them, if there are.”
Kristy smiled, and her gaze met Lily’s for a moment, then went immediately back to Tess’s upturned face. “I can think of several,” she said. “In the meantime, though, let’s get your grandfather inside. Lunch is on the table.”
Weary gratitude swept through Lily. Just as she’d forgotten so much about Tyler, she’d also forgotten the nature of small towns like Stillwater Springs. When someone got sick or fell on hard times, people rallied. They aired out rooms and made beds up with clean sheets and set lunch out on the kitchen table.
“I’m plum tuckered,” Hal said. “Believe I’ll take a nap on my own bed.”
He went on inside, while Lily, Kristy and Tess followed at a slower pace.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Kristy said to Lily. “Briana—that’s my sister-in-law, Logan’s wife—and I got the keys from your dad’s next-door neighbor and spiffed the house up a little.”
Again, Lily’s eyes burned. In Chicago, she’d had millions of acquaintances and clients, but no close friends. Back in the day, she and Kristy had spent a lot of time together.
“You must be worn-out,” Kristy said, reading her face. “After lunch, why don’t you lie down and rest for a while, and I’ll take Tess over to the library for story hour.”
Lily had kept her guard up for so long, living in the big city, coping with all things hectic, that letting it down left her a little dizzy. “Would you like that?” she asked Tess. “To go to the library, I mean?”
“Yes,” Tess answered. Not a major surprise; the child had taught herself to read at three.
Lunch turned out to be fresh iced tea, tuna sandwiches and potato salad. Lily fixed a plate for her dad and took it to his room off the kitchen, and when she returned, she sat down with Tess and Kristy in that dearly familiar room and ate, actually tasting her food for the first time since she’d go
tten the call about her father’s heart attack.
Kristy, she remembered, had gotten in touch soon afterward. And Dylan, an old friend, had come on the line moments later, to reassure her and offer her the use of a private plane.
“You look happy,” she told Kristy, when Tess had finished eating and rushed off to explore a little before washing up for the trip to the library.
“I am,” Kristy said, glowing. Then she reached across and squeezed Lily’s hand briefly. “Things will get better,” she promised. “You’re home, among friends, and your dad’s going to be fine.”
Lily laughed, but it was a halfhearted sound, weary and a little—no, a lot—skeptical. “If you say so,” she said. “Thanks for everything you did, Kristy. And thank Briana, too. Wherever she is.”
Kristy smiled, pushed back her chair and stood to begin clearing the table. “You’ll meet her soon enough,” she assured Lily. “She and Logan are building on to their house, and she had to go home to talk to the contractor.”
Logan was married, and building on to his house.
Kristy was obviously happy with Dylan.
And Tyler was probably still sleeping with waitresses—if he hadn’t graduated to sexy movie stars and supermodels.
As if she cared.
CHAPTER TWO
IF HIS BRAIN HADN’T SNAGGED on Lily Ryder and then gotten snarled like so much fishing line, Dylan wouldn’t have taken Tyler by surprise the way he did, there in the auto-repair shop. A hard slug to his right shoulder jerked him back to the here and now, pronto.
Tyler turned, ready to fight, but drew up when he saw Dylan’s side-slanted grin and the bring-it-on glint in his blue eyes.
“That city-slicker rig of yours break down someplace?” Dylan asked.
Tyler unclenched his right fist, let out a breath. Much as he would have liked to punch his middle brother, he figured it might scare Kit Carson, so he didn’t. The dog had been through enough. “I swapped it for a truck,” he heard himself say. “And that broke down.”
Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler Page 61
