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

by Linda Lael Miller

  In the end, that love had destroyed her.

  “Tyler,” Doreen said, almost breathing the name.

  “Doreen,” Tyler replied, with a nod. Now that he was face-to-face with the woman who might have borne his child without bothering to let him know, all the things he’d planned to say, all the things he’d rehearsed on the way into town with Kit Carson riding shotgun, deserted him.

  “I could take a break in half an hour,” she said.

  Tyler merely nodded again. He’d left Kit Carson at Cassie’s to spare the dog a long wait in the Blazer, so he had time. He could cool his heels awhile.

  Doreen hesitated for a few moments, looking from Tyler to Davie and back again. Then she sighed and turned to walk away, take another order for another plate of nachos, another mug of beer.

  Everything about her, the way she moved, the way she spoke, said she was miserable. Hated her life, but didn’t know how to escape it.

  Unlike Angela Creed. She’d found a way out, and devil take the grief she’d left behind.

  Tyler approached Davie’s table.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Davie didn’t look up. Just shrugged.

  The cover of the graphic novel showed a woman being devoured by some hideous beast, and Davie seemed absorbed.

  Tyler sat down across from Davie, signaled another waitress, ordered coffee. He liked a beer once in a while, but with Jake Creed for a father and a wild youth not that far behind him, a man tended to moderate his alcohol intake. He wondered briefly if Logan and Dylan took the same care not to overdo the booze.

  “Good book?” he asked.

  “What do you care?” Davie shot back.

  “Do all those hooks and rings hurt?” Tyler persisted, frowning at the eyebrow piercings. The silver ring through Davie’s lower lip made him a little queasy, and after some of the bar brawls he’d been in, that was no small matter.

  “Hurt when they did it,” Davie allowed, sounding defiant and, at the same time, interested. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to your mother,” Tyler said.

  “About what?”

  Tyler wasn’t about to bring up the paternity question—not before a word with Doreen, anyway. “Just things. Dylan tells me Sheriff Huntinghorse wanted to send you to a foster home, and you said you’d run off if he did.”

  There was no humor in the smile Davie gave then, or in his eyes. “Small towns. Word really does travel like wildfire.”

  “Running away would be a bad idea.”

  “You don’t know my mom’s boyfriend. The sheriff said he was going to track Roy down and warn him not to hit me anymore.” Davie gave a bitter huff of a laugh. “That ought to make things real nice when Mom and I get back to the old trailer after her shift.”

  Tyler’s gut churned just to think of what the boy might be facing, later that night and afterward. And he suddenly knew he couldn’t stand it, whether Davie was his or not.

  “I’ve been thinking things over,” Tyler said carefully. “Maybe I could use somebody to help out around the cabin.”

  Davie couldn’t hide his interest then, though he tried. He closed the book, set it down with a little thump and frowned at Tyler. “What kind of help?” he asked, almost suspiciously.

  This from the kid who’d practically begged to stay.

  “You said it yourself, this afternoon. Taking care of Kit Carson, cutting grass, stuff like that.”

  “That place is small. Where would I sleep?”

  “We’d get you a cot and a sleeping bag.”

  “You don’t even have a TV.”

  Tyler grinned. “You’re mighty choosy, all of a sudden, for somebody who wanted to move right in before.”

  “Would you be a foster parent?” Davie asked, sounding like a lawyer now. “Maybe collect a little check from the county or the state?”

  Tyler chuckled, enjoyed a sip of bad casino coffee before answering. “Hell,” he said, “no amount of money would be enough to put up with your attitude. It’s a neighborly offer, that’s all. And your mom has to approve, of course.”

  From the looks of Doreen, she’d been running interference between good ole Roy, the boyfriend, and her son for too long. Letting Davie bunk in at Tyler’s for a while would probably be a relief, with all her problems.

  “What changed your mind?” Davie asked grudgingly, but with a little less attitude than before. He was afraid to hope—Tyler could see that—and it galled him. Brought back way too many memories.

  Life shouldn’t be the way it was for Davie, the way it was for a lot of kids.

  The way it had been for him.

  “I just needed some time to think, that’s all,” Tyler said. The words felt as lame coming off his tongue as they probably sounded to Davie. “Of course, you screw up and you’re out of there.”

  Davie’s eyes widened. They were Doreen’s eyes, not Tyler’s own, or those of any family member he could recall, but still.

  Still.

  “You mean it? I could stay at your place?”

  “I mean it. Long as you don’t cause trouble.”

  “You’ll get a TV?”

  Tyler chuckled. “I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “But once I see what kind of yard-bird you really are, I might let you use my laptop now and then.”

  “And all I have to do is take care of the dog and cut some grass?”

  “You’ve seen the grass. It’s waist-high. I think there’s a lawn under there someplace, but I can’t be sure.” Tyler paused, considered. “Fact is, I’m thinking of building on to the place.” Had he been thinking that? Not consciously, but now that the idea had presented itself, most likely prompted by Dylan’s mention of razing his old house to put up a new one, and what little he knew about the restorations going on at the main place, under Logan’s direction, he kind of cottoned to the prospect. “That would mean some carpentry. Maybe a little plumbing and electrical work, too.”

  Davie looked worried. Maybe all that hard work would be a deal-breaker. “I don’t know anything about construction,” he finally said.

  “That makes two of us,” Tyler said.

  Cautious relief replaced the consternation in Davie’s face. “I wouldn’t mind learning, though. I always thought it would be kind of cool to be able to make bookshelves and stuff like that.”

  Tyler glanced pointedly at the glorified comic book lying forgotten on the table. “You got a collection of those things?” he asked.

  Davie gave a snort of amusement, tinged with bitterness. “No,” he said. “I got this one at the library. I mostly go there to use the computers, but Kristy said I ought to give reading a shot, and she never chases me off when I’m just looking for a place to hang out, so I checked this out.”

  Tyler raised one eyebrow, intrigued. “I suppose she—Kristy, I mean—suggested something like White Fang or Ivanhoe,” he said.

  Davie laughed, and this time it sounded real. Almost normal. “Nope. She chose this one for me herself. Said it would be a good way to get my feet wet, find out how much fun reading can be.”

  Tyler thought back to Kristy’s predecessor, Miss Rooley. She’d been a spinster, tight-mouthed and generally disapproving. She’d allowed him to hide out in the library, too, as a kid, when Jake was having a particularly bad day and Logan and Dylan weren’t around to get between him and the old man’s fists, but she’d demanded her pound of flesh. He’d been forced to read what Miss Rooley reverently called “The Classics,” always capitalizing the term with her tone.

  At first, it was agony, slogging through tomes he barely understood. Then, he’d begun to enjoy it, though that was something he’d never wanted anybody to know, particularly his older brothers. Right up there with his secret penchant for Andrea Bocelli’s music. He liked the Big Band stuff, too—Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, that crowd.

  As secrets went, these were pretty tame, but they were secrets just the same. And they would be harder to hide, with a kid living under the same roof.r />
  “You like Kristy?” Tyler asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.

  “She’s all right,” Davie allowed. “I’m supposed to call her ‘Mrs. Creed’ at the library.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said.

  Mrs. Creed. There were two of them now, counting Logan’s bride.

  It just went to show that those who didn’t learn from history really were condemned to repeat it.

  Kristy had lived outside of Stillwater Springs all her life; she knew what it meant to marry a hell-raiser, which left her with no excuse for taking the risk. Briana, on the other hand, was an innocent victim, a stranger.

  Had anybody warned her that the Creeds were notoriously bad at marriage? Showed her the three graves in the old cemetery out beyond the orchard, the final resting places of the last generation of Creed wives—all of them dead long before their time?

  Watching Davie, Tyler thought the boy studied his face a little too intently, seeing too much. He looked as though he wanted to ask a question, but he gulped it back when they got unexpected company.

  A big man loomed over the table, beer-belly straining at his wife-beater shirt. His arms were tattooed from fingertips to shoulder, he needed a shave and the billed cap pulled low over his face looked as though it had been run over by a semitruck with a serious oil leak.

  Davie seemed to shrink in on himself, like he was trying to disappear.

  Roy’s presence had exactly the opposite effect on Tyler.

  He slid out of the booth and stood.

  Doreen had always liked tattoos. Maybe that explained why she’d taken up with three hundred pounds of ugly, though some things went beyond reasonable explanation, and this creep was one of them.

  Roy’s mean little pig eyes widened a little. Evidently, he’d been so focused on Davie, he hadn’t noticed that the boy wasn’t alone.

  Now, he looked Tyler over with belligerent caution.

  “Who are you?”

  “His name’s Tyler Creed, Roy,” Davie piped up, obviously terrified. “We were just talking. He wasn’t doing any harm—”

  Tyler put out one hand to silence the boy.

  Roy, being a head shorter but bulky, looked up into Tyler’s face.

  “A Creed, huh?” he said. “Know all about that outfit.”

  Tyler folded his arms. Waited.

  Roy pulled in his horns a little. “Look,” he said. “I just came to take the boy home. There’s no need for any trouble.”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Tyler answered. “Not at the moment, anyhow.”

  Roy clearly didn’t appreciate being thwarted; like all bullies, he was used to getting his way by acting tough. The trouble with acting tough was, as Jake had often said, the inevitability of running into somebody just a little tougher.

  And that could make all the difference.

  “I said I didn’t want any trouble,” Roy reiterated mildly. “I just want to take the boy home, where he belongs.”

  “We’re still figuring out where he belongs,” Tyler said, just as mildly but with an undercurrent of Creed steel. “Right now, all I’m sure of is, he’s staying right here, and you’re not going to lay a hand on him.”

  A dull crimson flush throbbed in what passed for Roy’s neck, though his head seemed to sit pretty much square with his shoulders. He tightened one grubby fist, too, wanting to hit somebody.

  “You lookin’ for a fight, cowboy?” he asked Tyler.

  “Nope,” Tyler said. “But I won’t run from one if the opportunity happens to present itself.”

  The flush spread into Roy’s hound-dog face.

  Evidently, Tyler reflected, Doreen had given up on teaching men how to treat a woman. This guy had no clue how to treat anybody.

  Roy rubbed his beard-stubbled chin, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. Thought, Tyler figured, was probably painful for him, and thus avoided except in the most dire circumstances.

  “You talked to Jim Huntinghorse,” Roy speculated peevishly. He glanced down at Davie, his expression so poisonous that the very atmosphere seemed polluted by it. “The kid lies. I never done nothin’ to him he didn’t deserve.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tyler spotted Doreen, peering around one of the slot machines edging the restaurant. On the one hand, he felt sorry for her. On the other, he was furious that she wouldn’t step up and protect her own child. She’d probably never had two nickels to rub together, but she’d had spirit once, she’d lived by her own rules, and she hadn’t just survived, she’d thrived. She’d had tattoos, for God’s sake, in an era when women simply didn’t do things like that. She’d traveled with biker gangs and rock bands. She’d taught him to use his fingers and his tongue in ways that bordered on sacred knowledge that had stood him in good stead ever since.

  What the hell had happened to her?

  The same thing that had happened to his mother, he supposed, in the next moment. Life had simply beaten her down. She’d taken one too many hard knocks, one too many disappointments.

  Roy must have seemed like the last train out of town.

  Damned if that wasn’t depressing.

  “Come on,” Roy barked, gesturing to Davie.

  Davie started to get out of the booth. Then, at a glance from Tyler, he stayed where he was.

  “He’s not going anyplace,” Tyler said.

  “I ought to knock your teeth down your throat,” Roy replied. It wasn’t clear whether he was addressing Tyler or Davie.

  “You’re welcome to try,” Tyler told him cordially. “You ever fight a man, Roy? Or just kids and women?”

  Roy looked apoplectic. “You ain’t heard the last of me,” he said.

  “Not only tough,” Tyler observed, “but original, too. What’s next? ‘This town ain’t big enough for both of us’?”

  Davie ducked his head at that, like he was expecting a blow.

  And that made Tyler want to tear Roy’s head off, right there in the restaurant. He’d end up as an overnight guest of the sheriff’s if he did, a prospect he didn’t relish after the last experience five years before, but the temptation was fierce just the same.

  Roy grunted, shook his head once, like a man plagued by a swarm of flies, and then turned and lumbered out.

  “He’ll get you, Tyler,” Davie said pragmatically. “He’ll get me, too. He’s like that.”

  “I know what he’s like,” Tyler said, watching Roy disappear.

  When he was gone, Doreen came out of hiding. She looked sheepish and scared as hell. Davie didn’t have to go home—Tyler would hand-deliver the kid to the child-protection people before he’d see that happen—but she did.

  “You go back and wait in the employees’ lounge,” she told Davie, showing a faint semblance of the old Doreen, the one who’d lived wild and free. “Roy won’t be able to get at you there.”

  Davie hesitated, nodded and left the table, then the restaurant.

  Tyler gestured for Doreen to sit down. Both of them could have wished for a more private place to hold the forthcoming conversation, but it wasn’t to be, and Tyler, for one, was resigned to that.

  Doreen slid into the booth, hunching in the same way Davie had.

  Tyler sat down across from her. Drew a deep breath.

  “Things are pretty bad, I guess,” he said, when Doreen didn’t speak.

  She nodded. “Worse than bad.”

  “Is he mine?” The words were out before Tyler had a chance to think them over. Not that thinking would have changed anything, but he might have been more diplomatic.

  For a few moments, Doreen pretended not to understand. Tyler simply stared her down.

  “No,” she finally said. “Davie isn’t yours. I wish he was, though. God, how I wish he was.”

  Tyler felt a combination of relief and disappointment, and he still wasn’t fully convinced that Doreen was telling the truth. “How old is Davie?” he asked quietly.

  “Thirteen,” Doreen admitted, after some lip-biting and some hand-wringing.

 
“The math works,” Tyler said.

  Doreen gave a rueful little laugh. Raised and lowered her stooped shoulders. “Yeah,” she said. “For a lot of guys, Ty. Not just you. Davie belongs to a trucker who stopped by Skivvie’s one summer night, crying in his beer because his wife didn’t understand him. I cheered him up. And Davie looks just like him.”

  “Okay,” Tyler said. “So why do you let the boyfriend bounce Davie off walls?”

  Tears filled Doreen’s eyes. “I’ve been fighting things all my life,” she said. “One day, I just ran out of fight.”

  “Tough break for Davie,” Tyler said evenly.

  “You think I don’t hate myself for that? For all of it?” Doreen straightened her spine a little—though not enough, unfortunately. “I never expected to end up like this. I could have had an abortion—Davie’s father offered to pay for one—but I had this crazy idea that I’d find a good man someday. Davie and I and the prince.” She laughed again. “What a fairy tale.”

  “Let me take Davie home with me. Just for a while. Until you can get things under control.”

  Doreen stared at him, clearly amazed. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I was a kid once, with a crazy father,” Tyler said, as surprised to say what he did as Doreen probably was to hear him admit it. He’d been in denial about Jake Creed all his life, even written songs about him, for Christ’s sake. “What you’re doing now isn’t working, Doreen. Time to try something different.”

  “You don’t understand,” Doreen whispered, in a teary rush of words and breath. “Davie’s a handful. He has problems, Tyler. And Roy—well, you don’t know what Roy’s like. He’ll lay for you. He’ll never forget the run-in you and him had tonight. If he has to wait the rest of his life, he’ll find a way to pay you back, and when he does, it won’t be pretty.”

  “I can handle Roy,” Tyler said. “Seems to me, the more immediate concern is what he might do to you, or to Davie. Let me drive you someplace, Doreen. Right now, tonight. There are shelters, or you could stay at Cassie’s place—”