“Forget the bull,” Tyler told Davie, in case the kid had any ideas about practicing up for the rodeo on that ornery old white-hided devil. “Cimarron’s a mean one, famous for stomping in cowboys’ rib cages, among other things. Even Dylan couldn’t ride him.”
“But I could sign up for the rodeo? Try my hand at it?”
Tyler was touched by the boy’s eagerness, and worried because he knew from bitter experience that cowboying was a rough life. If a man wasn’t among the top riders on the circuit, he’d have a hard time scratching out a living. It was a winner’s game, and losing was the order of the day for most cowboys.
“Not with that tattoo and all those little silver rings in your hide,” Tyler said, hedging.
“There’s a rule against tattoos?” Davie sounded hesitant now. Which might be a good thing.
“No,” Tyler answered. “There’s no rule against tattoos, or piercings, either. But the other cowboys would josh you right out of the arena, most places.”
“The tattoo’s temporary,” Davie said. “Good for six months if I don’t wash my neck too often.”
Again, Tyler laughed.
“And I guess I could quit wearing these rings.”
“Guess so,” Tyler said moderately. He didn’t know a lot about kids, except for what he’d gathered by being one once, but he figured if he showed too much enthusiasm for scrubbing off the spider and letting all those little holes grow shut, Davie would dig in his heels.
Especially if he really was a Creed.
“If I do it—go cowboy, I mean—will you get a satellite hookup so I can watch some decent TV?”
Tyler grinned, shaking his head in mingled admiration and amazement. The kid definitely didn’t lack for gall. “That depends on what you mean by ‘go cowboy,’ I guess,” he said.
“Getting rid of the tattoo and the rings and ditching all my Goth gear,” Davie said. Mischief danced in his eyes. “Wearing jeans and boots and learning to talk like a hick. That’s what it means to go cowboy.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” Tyler said dryly, realizing how much he liked this kid, and how much he’d have missed him if Doreen had made him go back home.
That was what happened when a man let himself care, Tyler supposed—about a lost dog, a thirteen-year-old boy…or a woman. It made him vulnerable, open to the kind of pain he hadn’t had to risk when he’d kept his heart closed for business.
Davie was peering at him. “You all right?” he asked.
Tyler realized some of what he felt must have been showing on the outside. That was a new phenomenon, too.
Part of being home again, most likely. And being home meant more than just living on the ranch and getting his mail at the hole-in-the-wall post office in Stillwater Springs.
It meant being Tyler Creed, and nobody else, and taking the good with the bad.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“If you’re worried about telling me my mom signed me over for a chunk of money, it’s okay,” Davie volunteered. “I know it makes her look bad, but she’s really just trying to put as much distance between me and Roy as she can.”
Tyler stared at Davie, stunned. “You knew?”
“Mom told me,” Davie said. “I called her at the casino last night, on your cell phone. She said she and Roy would be leaving town soon—she’s giving her two-weeks’ notice today—but she’ll write to me and e-mail, too, once she gets a computer.”
Tyler took all that in, and still didn’t know how to sort it out. “And this doesn’t bother you?”
“I’ve been through worse,” Davie said. In Tyler’s opinion, he was way too philosophical for a thirteen-year-old. “Your cabin is pretty much a dump, but you’ve got Kit Carson, and that lake, and Logan said I can ride his horses anytime as long as there’s somebody around to make sure I don’t break my neck. So far, I haven’t gone hungry. And living with you is one hell of a lot better than living with Roy.”
“What kind of ‘worse’ have you been through, Davie?” Tyler asked, after a little silence.
Davie shrugged. “Before Roy, there was Marty. He was a world-class jerk. Used to get me by the hair and throw me out the front door when Mom was working. Said just looking at me pissed him off. He died of a heart attack or something—had some kind of fit at supper one night and just keeled over. Boo-hoo.”
There was no compassion in Davie’s voice, but there was no self-pity, either. He was simply stating the facts of his life, grim as they were.
“Before Marty, Mom shacked up with some old coot with a sheep ranch down in Wyoming. Bill didn’t hit me or anything, but he was so cheap he rationed out the food, and when he got tired of buying grub, he said I stole money from his wallet and kicked us out.”
“Did you steal money from his wallet?” Tyler asked. Life with Jake Creed was beginning to look like a picnic compared to all Davie had experienced.
“Yeah,” Davie said, in a no-big-deal tone of voice. “But only enough to get Mom and me some bus tickets after we hitchhiked to the next town. And to get us kicked out in the first place, of course.”
“Of course,” Tyler said dryly. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told,” Davie replied lightly. He checked the position of the sun, like he was John Wayne leading the thirsty survivors of an Indian attack out of the desert or something. “We ought to get these horses back to the barn,” he said. “And I promised Josh and Alec they could watch me take out my eyebrow ring.”
“You were already planning that?”
“Not unless you agreed to the satellite-TV thing, I wasn’t.” Davie stretched his legs again, smiled. “Do we have a deal or not?”
Tyler sighed. “We have a deal,” he said. “And if I ever catch you going through my wallet—”
Davie nudged his horse into motion, passed Tyler on the narrow trail leading down onto the plain. “You’ll do what?” he asked casually. “Go postal? Beat me up? Drag me behind your truck for a few miles?”
“Ground you until you’re thirty-seven,” Tyler answered. “And throw that damn TV of yours in the lake for good measure.”
Turning to look back at Tyler, Davie whistled in exclamation. He was still grinning, but he looked like what he should have been allowed to be all along: a kid. “Damn,” he said. “You play hardball. You’d really throw a perfectly good TV in the lake?”
“In a heartbeat,” Tyler said. “Satellite dish and all.”
“Can I sign up for the rodeo?”
“One thing at a time, kid. You got the TV. You got the satellite dish. Whether or not you can rodeo will depend on how you do in school this fall, and your general attitude between now and then.”
“Oh, here we go with the ‘attitude’ thing,” Davie scoffed good-naturedly. He and Tyler rode side by side then, since the trail was wider. “What’s wrong with my attitude?”
“Beyond being a smart-ass, you’re doing okay in that department,” Tyler allowed.
“You’d be a smart-ass, too, if you’d had a childhood like mine.”
“Save it, Davie. I did have a childhood like yours, except for all the road trips.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No, Dr. Phil, I do not want to talk about it. Not right now, anyway.”
“Because you’ve got a hot date?”
“Attitude alert,” Tyler warned.
“Excuse me,” Davie replied.
Tyler gave him a look.
Davie was undaunted. “If you’re going to marry Miss Lily, Marshal,” he drawled, doing a pretty good imitation of a character in a late-night Western, “you’d better fancy up the ole homestead. The lady’s a class act. The kind who likes indoor plumbing.”
“I have indoor plumbing.”
“Which is why you bathe in the lake.”
“Do you ever shut up?”
“Not unless I’m asleep. Even then, I probably talk. It’s a wonder I don’t sleepwalk, too, the way I’ve been abused.”
> Tyler wrapped the reins loosely around his saddle horn just long enough to play a few notes on an invisible violin.
Davie laughed. “I guess the old sympathy ploy won’t work with you.”
“Guess not,” Tyler said.
They rode the rest of the way in cordial silence, and when they got back to Logan’s place, two little boys—Josh and Alec, Tyler presumed—were perched on the top rail of the corral fence, waiting.
“Is he going to get satellite TV?” the smaller one called to Davie.
“Yep,” Davie answered, pretending to take a bow, even though he was still in the saddle. “I told you I was the master.”
“So we get to watch you take the hardware out of your face, like you said?” the bigger boy asked, sounding both thrilled and wary.
“Yeah,” Davie responded, happily generous, leaning from his horse to work the latch on the corral gate. “And it’s only going to cost you five bucks. Apiece.”
“It’ll be a free show,” Tyler interceded.
“Good,” the younger boy crowed, lighting up. “Because we’re broke.”
Tyler chuckled, swung down off his horse and led it into the barn.
Both boys followed, though whether they were tagging after him or Davie he didn’t know.
“I guess you’re sort of our uncle,” the little one said eagerly, “since Logan’s our stepdad and you’re his brother.”
“Guess so,” Tyler said, amused. “Are you Josh or Alec?”
“I’m Alec,” the kid said, jutting a thumb toward the other kid. “And he’s Josh.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Tyler said, hauling the saddle off the horse he’d ridden and handing it to Davie to put away.
“My mom said you’d come around eventually,” Josh informed him. The shyer of the two, apparently, he’d taken his time closing the distance.
“But Logan said hell would freeze over first,” Alec supplied.
Tyler grinned to himself. Ruffled the boy’s hair. “Did he, now?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
WAS SHECRAZY?
Lily stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, at her carefully applied makeup and just-washed hair, tumbling in loose curls around her face the way it always did if she didn’t tame it with gel. In the kitchen, Hal and Tess were chatting happily as they cleared away the supper dishes.
Neither one of them had murmured a word of complaint when she’d served them tacos made with soybean crumbles, a meat substitute she’d bought on a quick run to the store after Tyler left.
She’d pressed the red polka-dot sundress as soon as she got back from shopping, and told her father and Tess she was meeting Tyler for a drink over at Skivvie’s and might be home late.
Now here she was, all dolled-up and hot to trot.
Again.
She was crazy, she decided. She’d basically thrown herself at Tyler Creed, invited him to have his way with her in the old cemetery, of all places, and pregnancy was an issue.
Along with the soybean crumbles, she’d picked up a box of condoms, blushing as she paid for them at the checkout counter, praying the clerk wouldn’t hold the box up for everybody to see and loudly ask for a price-check.
The woman who had the spontaneous orgasm in aisle two the other day needs condoms, she’d imagined the woman bellowing into the PA system.
None of that had happened, of course. The clerk, a nice middle-aged lady with thick glasses and the name Connie stitched onto her vest, had simply rung up Lily’s purchases and told her to have a good day.
The condoms, Lily reminded herself firmly, as she left the bathroom to face her family, were proof that she still had a few tattered shreds of sanity left.
“You look pretty, Mom,” Tess said innocently, admiring the dress.
“Yes,” Hal agreed, and though his expression indicated that he’d like to add to that brief comment, he refrained.
Bless him.
“Thanks.” Lily took her purse and the keys to her rental car from the counter. That afternoon, she’d made plans to drop the Taurus off in Missoula and then fly on to Chicago from there. Tess would be able to spend a few days with Eloise, while Lily emptied her desk at work, made arrangements to lease or sell the condo and packed up some things she’d need when they all returned to Stillwater Springs.
Hal had agreed to make the trip, too, probably well aware that Lily had asked him along so she could keep an eye on his food intake and make sure he took his medicine on time. Of course the idea would have to be cleared with his doctors first, but he didn’t seem to anticipate any problem there.
The flight out would be easy enough, barring the always-possible airline snafus, and if the drive back to Montana proved too tiring for him, they could always stop somewhere along the way and buy him a plane ticket.
He and Tess had immediately high-fived each other and shouted, in comical unison, “Road trip!”
“One way,” Lily reminded them.
They’d be gone two weeks at the longest, allowing time to do all the things that needed doing and drive home again at a sensible pace.
Maybe by going away, she could get some perspective where Tyler was concerned. Stop wanting to jump the man’s bones every time she got within a five-mile radius of him.
Fat chance. After being away from him that long, she’d probably be doing well just to slow down long enough to drop Tess and Hal off at the house before she raced off over several bumpy country roads to find Tyler and screw him silly on the spot.
The prospect flooded her face with heat all over again, heat her dad clearly noticed, though thank God, Tess didn’t.
“I’ll just walk your mom out to her car,” Hal told Tess mildly. “You finish loading the dishwasher, and then I’ll beat you at a game of checkers.”
“You mean I’ll beat you,” Tess responded. “Just like the last time we played.”
Hal chuckled at that, and even though Lily gave him a look that said she could get to the Taurus just fine on her own, thank you very much, he put a fatherly hand to the small of her back and steered her out onto the porch and over the grass to the car. He didn’t say anything at all until Lily had unlocked the Taurus and he’d opened the driver’s-side door for her.
“Try to keep the dress clean, Lily,” he said, with kindly amusement. “It’ll be pretty obvious what you’ve been up to if you have to wash it and hang it on the clothesline again so soon.”
Lily plunked herself into the car seat, took a couple of jabs at the ignition with the key before she managed to hit her mark. “Thanks for bringing that up, Dad,” she said. “As if I’m not embarrassed enough already.”
“You’re a grown woman,” Hal reminded her. “If you want to spend the night with Tyler Creed, or anybody else, that’s your business. No need to be embarrassed.”
“Now you’re going to warn me to be careful, right?”
“Already did that,” Hal answered lightly. “And, anyway, I think maybe you’ve been a little too careful, up to now.” He paused, leaned in when she buzzed the window down. “What I’m trying to say, Lily, in my own awkward way, is that it’s okay to cut loose a little. Stay out all night if you want to. Tess and I will be just fine.”
Lily swallowed. Nodded.
Hal smiled. “And thanks for calling me ‘Dad’ just now. I like the sound of that.”
“I’ve got my cell phone,” Lily said, wanting to look away from the earnest love she saw in her father’s eyes, but unable to do so. “It’s all charged, and I wrote the number on a sticky-note—”
“Lily, just go.”
“If you need anything—anything at all—”
“Go.”
A nervous little chuckle erupted from Lily’s throat. “We’re not really going to Skivvie’s,” she confessed, in a near whisper. “I just said that to throw you off.”
Hal grinned again. “Didn’t work,” he said. Then he stepped back, so she could drive away into the waiting night, headed for a rendezvous a smarter woman would have
avoided.
*
TYLER WAITED near the cemetery gate, leaning back against his truck with his arms folded. He was going for casual, appearance-wise, but when Lily zoomed in, the headlights of her car splashing over him as she parked, his heart pounded and his mouth went dry and he nearly lost what little cool he’d been able to muster up.
He realized, as he pushed off from the truck, that he hadn’t really expected her to show up at all. One of these days, she was bound to come to her senses, remember that he was a Creed and upload all the memories of that summer when he’d broken her heart.
“This is kind of kinky,” he said, referring to the location, when Lily got out of the car and started toward him.
She stopped instantly, and since her face was in shadow, he couldn’t gauge her reaction to the dumb-ass thing he’d just said. Like as not, she’d bolt for the Taurus now, and lay rubber getting out of there.
Smooth, Creed, he told himself. Real smooth.
Lily didn’t move, either to flee or come any closer.
“I don’t think it’s kinky,” she said tentatively. “I’ve always liked this place.”
Tyler walked toward her, looked down into her face. Up close, he could see that she’d taken some trouble with her appearance, not that she wouldn’t have looked good covered in coal dust from head to foot, and he took the effort she’d made as a favorable omen.
“Me, too,” he said. “Never thought it was spooky, like most graveyards would be, especially at night.”
Keep on diggin’, Creed. You’ll run her off yet.
The moonlight touched her face and he saw that she was smiling, though just a little, and kind of cautiously. The faint scent of her perfume made him dizzy.
“I brought you a present,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes. She reached into her handbag and brought out a box, extended it to him.
Condoms.
Tyler laughed. “Thanks,” he said. “But I brought some along myself.” He had blankets, too, old but clean, in case the ground was too cold for her, or too hard, or a little damp.
She took the box back, dropped it into her purse again. Swallowed visibly. The motion of her neck muscles made him want to nibble at the hollow of her throat, make his way to her earlobe—
Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler Page 76
