DYLAN HAD AGREED to have dinner out with Logan and Briana while Cassie looked after Bonnie and Briana’s boys, Alec and Josh, at the main ranch house. He’d wanted a distraction from all that was weighing on his mind—the truth about Jake’s death, filing for permanent custody of his daughter, and all the rest.
Instead, he got Kristy sitting with a movie star. People’s Sexiest Man Alive a year or so ago, if he remembered correctly.
Dylan had no claim on her, of course, no right to say who she had dinner with and who she didn’t, but he bristled just the same. And Logan knew it, prodded him from behind, murmuring, “Move it, lover boy. I’m hungry.”
With more effort than he liked, Dylan tore his attention from Kristy. Waited while the hostess found a table for him and Logan and Briana.
“Cool it with the ‘lover boy’ stuff, all right?” he snapped to Logan. “I don’t give a damn who Kristy goes out with.”
Logan chuckled, and his dark eyes danced as he pulled back a chair for Briana, his beautiful, glowing bride. “Is Kristy here?” he asked, pretending surprise. “I wouldn’t have known that by the way you stopped cold in the doorway when you caught sight of her.”
“Logan,” Briana said sweetly, used to governing two rambunctious young sons and therefore highly diplomatic, “leave your brother alone.”
Before sitting down, Dylan leaned to kiss his sister-in-law resoundingly on top of the head. “Thanks, beautiful,” he said, glaring at Logan.
Logan simply grinned. Sat himself down beside Briana and took her hand.
They looked good together, Logan and Briana, Dylan thought grudgingly. Better than good. Obviously, the sex was beyond excellent, the energy of it crackled around the two of them like a live wire sparking blue on a rain-wet road, but there was more to the marriage than that.
Damned if his brother hadn’t fallen in love for real this time, and Briana loved him, too.
Lucky bastard, Dylan reflected, still glaring at Logan.
Logan ignored him, reached for a menu. He and Briana sat with their heads close together, reading it.
“What looks good to you?” Briana asked her husband.
Logan, a husband. Incomprehensible.
Logan kissed her lightly. “What looks good to me isn’t on the menu,” he said.
“Please,” Dylan said.
Logan grinned across the table at him. “Eat your heart out, little brother,” he said.
Briana elbowed him playfully. “Stop it.”
“Don’t call me ‘little brother.’” In Dylan’s mind, that salutation belonged to Tyler.
“Touchy,” Logan replied.
“I can still whip your ass,” Dylan asserted.
“You’re welcome to try,” Logan said happily. Even the big shiner on his right eye didn’t seem to dampen his spirits. It was disgusting, that was what it was. The man was almost high.
“Enough,” Briana interjected, smiling. “We came here to have a nice meal and for Dylan to sign the custody petition you spent the whole afternoon writing up, Logan Creed. And if either of you think I’m going to referee a brawl just because the two of you are on testosterone overload, you’d better think again.”
“You’ve already drawn up the papers?” Dylan asked, watching Logan.
“I told you I was the best,” Logan said, as Briana pulled a legal-size manila folder out of her big purse. “I’ll file them in the courthouse tomorrow, if you approve them.”
Dylan all but snatched the documents out of Briana’s hand. Read them quickly, then read them again, this time slowly, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. It was a habit he’d acquired because of his early struggle with dyslexia—when he’d told Kristy, the other day at the library, that he’d read Lonesome Dove five times, he’d been telling the truth. It had taken that many passes for the whole story to sink in.
He tapped the blank spot on the third page, where Logan had left room for a settlement amount. “You think I should pay Sharlene off?” he asked.
“I’m giving you the option,” Logan said. “The amount—if there is one—is up to you.”
Logan probably thought he was poor. A rodeo bum, a gambler and sometime stunt man. Dylan had never seen any reason to disabuse either of his brothers of the notion.
Now, it gave him a kick to say, “A million ought to do it.”
Logan arched one eyebrow. “You have a million dollars?”
“A lot more than that,” Dylan answered. “Thanks to the stock I bought in your company way back when I was winning buckles at the big rodeo. It split four times before you sold the outfit last year, and twice since.”
Amusement—and respect—flickered in Logan’s brown eyes. “I went over the stockholders’ list a hundred times. I never saw your name on it.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Dylan allowed. “I didn’t use it.”
“Clever,” Logan said.
The waitress came, flirted a little, took their orders and left again. Five seconds after she’d gone, Dylan couldn’t remember what he’d chosen to eat. He was too conscious of Kristy, over yonder charming that movie star.
“Why keep it a secret?” Logan asked.
For a moment, Dylan didn’t know what Logan was talking about. Then he realized what his brother was referring to—the stock purchases he’d made while the boy wonder, Logan Creed, was wowing the financial community with his user-friendly legal-services Web site.
It came back to him, too, that he’d ordered the meat-loaf special. Maybe he wasn’t losing his mind after all.
“Should I have let you find out I was impressed by your success?” Dylan grinned. “That would never have done.”
Briana shook her head. “Testosterone,” she said.
“I’m not sure,” Logan said, musing, “but I think I’m flattered.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Dylan advised. “I still think you’re an asshole ninety percent of the time.” He turned to Briana. “Sorry, sis.”
“I like the sound of that,” Briana said, moving the custody papers out of gravy-range. “‘Sis,’ I mean. Not ‘asshole.’”
The food came. They ate.
The meat loaf was probably good, but Dylan couldn’t have sworn to it. What were Kristy and that actor talking about over there at that table on the far side of the café, anyway? Their heads were too close together to suit Dylan.
“Go over and say hello to her,” Logan said, midway through the meal. “Do you realize you’ve salted those mashed potatoes four times? Your arteries are probably hardening as we speak.”
Briana giggled. “Go,” she urged Dylan. She was a looker, Briana was, with her red-blond hair pulled back into a French braid, her emerald-green eyes, and that knockout figure of hers. Why hadn’t he noticed that, that long-ago night in front of the Stillwater Springs Wal-Mart, when her jerk of a first husband had ditched her in the parking lot with two boys and an old dog and nowhere to go?
He’d given her the keys to his house, since he wasn’t using it anyhow, and the use of the old beater he’d driven in high school. He might have been able to win her over, if he’d stuck around and tried. Instead, he’d gone back to the rodeo circuit.
But even then his mind had been full of Kristy. He’d come back to settle his bull, Cimarron, at the ranch, and once he’d made all the arrangements for the animal’s care by a neighbor, he’d shot out of that town like a greased bullet.
Briana excused herself and left the table, probably headed for the ladies’ room.
“If I didn’t know better,” Logan remarked mildly, “I’d think you were lusting after my wife.”
“She’s primo,” Dylan admitted.
“But you’re still hung up on Kristy Madison.”
Dylan felt a hot flush climb his neck. He pushed his plate away, his appetite gone. “Are you trying to pick a fight, Logan? Because I’m game, even if you are my lawyer.”
“I’ve already got one black eye,” Logan said. “I don’t need another.”
“Did you hit Tyler back?” Dylan asked. This was ground he knew how to navigate. The things he might have told Logan, if it hadn’t been for their rocky history, were too raw to uncover.
“No,” Logan said. That desolate look was back in his eyes.
Dylan was surprised. What Jake Creed hadn’t taught him and Tyler about fighting, Logan had. “You just let him knock you down and get away with it? Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”
“There’s been enough brawling, don’t you think?”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Believe it. I came back to Stillwater Springs to make the Creed name mean something good again, and punching Tyler’s lights out, however badly I wanted to do just that, isn’t on my to-do list.”
“You have changed.”
Logan watched with something like adoration radiating from his face as Briana approached the table, Venus in blue jeans. “Oh, yeah,” he replied huskily, “I’ve changed, all right.”
“Are you going to be insulted if I tell you I think that’s a good thing?”
Logan chuckled, stood to pull back Briana’s chair. “No,” he answered. “You’re going to find it a lot harder to insult me these days, little brother.”
Dylan felt a muscle bunch in his jaw, but he didn’t protest the moniker.
“I stopped to say hello to Kristy on my way back from the restroom,” Briana announced brightly, as she sat down. “She introduced me to Zachary Spencer, and it seemed like a business dinner to me.”
So, Dylan thought, Logan had told Briana the star-crossed-teenage-lovers story. He caught his brother’s gaze and narrowed his eyes.
Logan grinned, unfazed. “I’d stroll right over there and say howdy, if I were you,” he told Dylan. “That guy looks way too much like George Clooney to be safe around women.”
“Well,” Dylan answered, “you’re not me.”
Logan shrugged one shoulder. “If you want Kristy to think you’re chickenshit, that’s your business,” he said.
Briana jabbed him with her elbow again, harder this time. “Logan!”
Dylan shoved back his chair and stood. Nobody knew which of his buttons to push better than Logan did, and he’d just pushed the one that opened half a dozen psychological missile silos. The thing none of the Creeds could abide—Dylan included—was being seen as a coward.
A gutless wonder, as Jake used to put it.
Logan’s smile was self-satisfied to the max.
Briana looked worried. Like most women—with the standout exception of Sharlene—she probably hated public scenes.
“Remember,” Logan said quietly, with a lawyer’s moderation, “everything you do and say will find its way straight to the judge if Sharlene decides to counter your custody petition.”
Inwardly, Dylan sighed. Nodded.
As he made his way toward Kristy’s table, he drummed up his laid-back-cowboy smile. By the time he got there, he must have looked downright amiable, though his guts were churning. Was it possible to sweat on the inside of your skin?
“Hello, Kristy,” he said, in a hat-in-hand voice. Actually, he’d left his hat in his truck, but he wished he had it then, so he could turn it idly in his hands.
“D-Dylan,” she said. “Hello.”
The movie star stood up, put out a hand. “Zachary Spencer,” he said.
Dylan shook his hand. “Dylan Creed,” he replied. “Good to meet you.”
Spencer looked thoughtful. “That name sounds familiar,” he said.
“I had a run-in with your boy, Caleb, over a horse,” Dylan said.
Kristy’s gaze flickered from him to Spencer and back again.
“I heard about that,” the movie star said, without apparent ill will. “Caleb’s too used to getting what he wants. Do him good to get a taste of the real world.”
Recalling the kid, and the way he’d been set on taking a lunge-whip to Sundance, Dylan’s jawline tightened.
Kristy, being privy to what had happened on the road the day before between Dylan and Caleb, made the connection, the realization plain in her face. After all, there weren’t that many movie stars, or movie star’s sons, knocking around Stillwater Springs, even with the run on real estate.
“He was about to hit that poor horse,” she said to Spencer. “Your son, I mean.”
“I talked to him about it,” Spencer said. To his credit, he looked sincere about that, at least. “Join us?” he asked Dylan.
“I’m here with my brother and sister-in-law,” Dylan said, unable to keep his gaze off Kristy. She was looking down at the remains of a big salad, which she’d hardly dented, and the color was high in her cheeks. “I just wanted to say hello to an old friend.”
The movie star nodded, smiled affably and sat down.
Before he could give in to a primal and completely unreasonable urge to grab Mr. Hollywood by the front of his fancy shirt and pitch him head-first into the pie counter, Dylan turned and walked away.
* * *
“THAT WENT WELL.” Kristy sighed ruefully, as soon as Dylan was out of earshot. She knew what he was thinking—that she was starstruck over Zachary Spencer, dazzled by his money and fame and all the rest, like practically every other woman in town.
“I know when I’m beaten,” Zachary said quietly.
Kristy’s eyes shot to his face. “Beaten?”
“Let’s just say,” Zachary went on, his tone gentle and full of resignation, “that if we’d been standing on dry grass when all those sparks were flying between you and the cowboy, we couldn’t have outrun the wildfire.”
Kristy opened her mouth, closed it again.
Zachary reached across the table and patted her hand. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re probably too young for me, anyway.”
Kristy heard herself laugh, and the sound caught her off guard. “Your last wife,” she said, “was in her twenties.”
“So you have been reading up on me.” Zachary grinned.
“I’ve seen most of your movies,” Kristy admitted lightly. Now that Dylan was out of her personal space, she could breathe again, and the heat was subsiding. “And I might have read an article or two.”
“But you’re not one bit taken with me, are you?”
“Not one bit,” Kristy said, smiling.
“The cowboy?”
“I knew him when,” Kristy answered, her smile fading.
“He’s jealous as hell, you know. Because you’re here with me.”
Kristy sighed, annoyed with herself. She wanted to go to Dylan, tell him straight out that this wasn’t a repeat of the Mike Danvers situation. At the same time, she was too stubborn to do something so openly codependent. Yes, there was something powerful happening between her and Dylan, but they hadn’t made any commitments. They weren’t even at the dating stage—and might never get there, the way things were going.
“He’ll leave town,” she said, and then could have bitten off her tongue. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“He’s a rover, our Dylan Creed?”
“He’s a rodeo cowboy,” Kristy answered. “Same thing.”
Zachary snapped his fingers. “Now I know where I’ve seen him before,” he said. “He’s done stunt work in a couple of my movies. He’s one of the best in the business—absolutely fearless.”
Absolutely fearless.
That was Dylan, all right.
And the only thing worse than loving a rodeo cowboy was loving a stuntman. Dylan might claim he wanted to settle down, make a real home in Stillwater Springs, but when he got bored, or ran low on money, he’d park sweet little Bonnie somewhere safe and be off again.
Remember that, she told herself.
Not that she’d ever taken her own good advice, at least where Dylan was concerned.
An hour later, the option agreement signed, Kristy let herself in through the kitchen door at home, and the instant she stepped into the darkened house, Winston shot past her in a white blur.
She paused, alarm prickling the pit of her stomach.
Was someone in the house?
It wasn’t like Winston to dart out like that. His usual M.O. was to scrabble at the legs of her jeans with his forepaws until she picked him up for a nuzzle and some cuddling.
“Hello?” Kristy called.
Nothing.
She was being silly, that’s all. She was on edge because of the extra bodies in Sugarfoot’s grave, and the story that was about to break over her life like a tsunami. And Dylan.
She turned, after setting her purse aside on the counter, and called to Winston.
He ignored her, though she heard a snarly meow out there in the gloom.
What was the matter with that cat?
She closed the door, flipped on the lights, filled the coffeemaker and set the timer for morning. The house still felt strange, as though it had drawn in a breath and held it.
She was really stressed out.
As a matter of principle, Kristy forced herself to venture into the dining room, then the living room beyond. She switched on the lamps at either end of her chintz couch, listened.
Her imagination took off, despite her determination to behave like a rational person.
Suppose Sheriff Book was hiding somewhere, behind a door, or in the pool of dark at the top of the stairs, planning to finish her off before she told anybody what she suspected?
Ultrasilly, she thought. She’d already told someone—Dylan—and Sheriff Book knew that, because she’d put her cell phone on speaker at Dylan’s house that day, and the two men had talked to each other.
Besides, Floyd had been her father’s best friend.
He’d come to her college graduation, stuffed into a suit he probably hadn’t worn since his own college days.
He was kind to animals.
He fetched books to and from the library on a regular basis, because his invalid wife loved to read.
He was not a monster.
Kristy had just come to all these perfectly sensible conclusions when she heard a footstep directly overhead, in one of the guest rooms.
Get out now, her practical side warned.
But Kristy had another side—the stubborn one. This was her house, damn it, and she was more angry than she was afraid.
“Who’s there?” she called, moving to the foot of the main stairway.
Still nothing.
“Hello?”
More footsteps, running ones, clattering down the hall, headed for the back stairs, leading to the kitchen.
She bounded in that direction.
There was a shout, followed by a crash, and then a figure in a black running suit landed in a heap at Kristy’s feet.
Freida Turlow.
Stunned, Kristy nonetheless bent over Freida’s huddled form. “Are you all right?”
Freida sat up. “I’m—I’m okay, I think,” she said sheepishly.
Kristy put her hands to her hips. “Next question—what the hell are you doing, prowling around in my house?”
Tears streaked Freida’s dusty cheeks.
Kristy bent to help her up.
“You never changed the locks,” Freida said.
“Don’t try to make this about me,” Kristy replied, taking the woman by the arm and leading her to a chair at the kitchen table.
Freida hobbled a little. “I think I sprained my ankle,” she said.
“Sit down,” Kristy ordered.
The other woman sank into a chair. “I know this seems weird—”
“Seems weird?” Kristy countered, though now that the fine hairs on the back of her neck had lain down again, she was a little calmer. “Freida, you scared me half to death!”
“I’m sorry.” Freida sniffled. “I was just—”
“Just what?”
“Homesick, I guess. I wanted to see my old room.”
“You could have knocked on the door and said that, instead of creeping around like some—some burglar.”
Freida’s smile was dreamy, and singularly odd. “You’ve changed it,” she said. “My room, I mean. Taken out the window seat, pulled up the carpet—”
To keep herself busy, since she wasn’t, it turned out, as calm as she’d thought a moment earlier, Kristy filled the electric teakettle and plugged it in, got tea bags and cups down from a cupboard. “You knew I was remodeling, Freida,” she said. “I would have given you the tour if you’d just asked.”
Freida sniffled again. Her strong shoulders stooped a little, under her sweat jacket. She’d always been athletic, running in marathons, lifting weights. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Oh, Kristy, I don’t know what possessed me to—to trespass—”
Kristy softened a little. Her heart had stopped pounding, and she was breathing at a normal rate again. “I guess you’ve been under a lot of stress,” she said kindly. “What with Brett getting into trouble and everything.”
Freida’s face tightened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Brett. My baby brother. He’s in treatment in Billings, you know.”
“I knew he was in treatment,” Kristy said. “It must be a relief, knowing he’s getting the help he needs.”
“I shouldn’t have treated Briana Creed the way I did,” Freida muttered, though her expression belied her words. “At the reading-group meeting, I mean.”
Kristy didn’t speak. She plopped tea bags into the cups and waited for the kettle to whistle out steam.
“You like her, don’t you?” Freida prodded.
“Yes,” Kristy said, peering out the window over the sink, hoping to catch a glimpse of Winston. She prayed he hadn’t run away, or gotten hit by a car.
“Do you like me?”
It was such a strange question that Kristy turned to look at Freida, frowning. Did she like Freida Turlow? The answer was no, but she didn’t dislike her, either. They had little in common, and there was a big difference in their ages.
“I’ve known you all my life, Freida,” she hedged.
Freida seemed mollified. “Everything’s changing,” she remarked. “Mama and Daddy are gone. I don’t live in this house anymore—and Brett—”
The kettle shrilled. Relieved, Kristy poured water into the two cups she’d set out and brought one to Freida. Sat down across the table from her.
“I hear there’s someone else interested in the ranch,” Kristy ventured. “Besides Zachary Spencer, that is.”
For a moment, Freida’s expression hardened, and Kristy didn’t think she’d answer.
But she did, in her own good time. “It’s a money game, real estate,” Freida said, with a verbal shrug. “Some outfit called the Tri-Star Cattle Company put in a bid.”
“Tri-Star Cattle Company,” Kristy echoed. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“I hadn’t, either, before some lawyer called from Las Vegas and doubled Zack’s last offer.”
Of course. Zachary Spencer.
Evidently, Freida and the movie star were chums, as well as business associates. Probably neither here nor there, Kristy concluded, but she filed the tidbit away in the back of her brain anyway.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Freida sighed. “Because I regretted being so mean about it before,” she said. “Okay, I lost my parents, and my home. But so did you, Kristy. I shouldn’t have taken my own emotional problems out on you.”
This was either the new Freida or a clone from outer space. “Did the bank accept Tri-Star’s offer?” Kristy asked.
“They will if Zack doesn’t top it within twenty-four hours,” she said. “And I don’t think he’s going to. He said something about a place on the other side of Missoula, one that wouldn’t need so much work.”
“How much are these Tri-Star people willing to pay?”
Freida finally bristled. “Why should I tell you that?”
“Because I caught you sneaking around in my house, and I could have called the sheriff, but I didn’t. You owe me a favor, Freida.”
“Fair enough,” Freida agreed, but only after mulling it over for a few moments. “Madison Ranch is a big chunk of land, with a lot of water and good grass for grazing. Tri-Star offered eight figures.”
Eight figures. Even if she sold her family’s story to Zachary Spencer, she wouldn’t have enough to top an offer like that, and if she had, Tri-Star would probably just keep bidding.
The ranch was lost for good, and she might as well face it.
Freida stood, her tea untouched. “I’d better be going,” she said. The strange tone was back.
A little shiver ran down Kristy’s spine. “You’re not yourself, Freida. Should I call someone?”
Freida gave a bitter little laugh. “Like whom? I’m all alone in the world, Kristy. Just like you.”
Just like you.
Kristy took the high road, though it was hard. “Let me drive you home,” she said, starting to rise.
“I’d rather walk,” Freida said.
Kristy wasn’t going to argue. She saw Freida to the back door, watched the other woman head for the gate in the garden fence, step onto the sidewalk beyond.
“Winston?” Kristy called, when she was sure Freida was gone.
He came then, rushing at her, winding himself around her ankles, purring apologetically. Kristy scooped the neutered tom up in her arms, nuzzled his neck.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “You’re safe.”
He answered with a doubtful and rather plaintive meow, and wriggled out of her grasp, landing on the floor with a graceful thump. Then he stood looking back at her, with his blue Persian eyes, oddly reminiscent, for a fraction of a second, of Dylan’s.
The cat walked a little way, then stopped, looked back at her.
Kristy fumbled to fasten the dead bolt. Since Freida obviously still had a key, she’d get the locks changed first thing in the morning.
“Meow,” Winston said, waiting.
He led the way up the rear steps, skirting the crumpled painting tarp Kristy had forgotten there. She gathered it up, grateful Freida hadn’t broken her neck when she tripped over the thing.
At the top of the stairs, she folded the tarp, set it aside.
Winston stood in the shadow-draped hallway, as if waiting for her again.
Was he trying to lead her somewhere?
“Way too Disney,” Kristy told herself, primarily because she needed to hear another human voice, even if it was her own.
“Meoooow,” Winston repeated insistently.
“All right,” Kristy said. “I’m coming.”
He proceeded straight into the room that must have been Freida’s once—it was the only one where she’d torn out the window seat, and her visitor had definitely mentioned that.
An eerie feeling came over Kristy as she switched on the light in that empty room, its fine hardwood floor bare of the ugly lavender shag carpet she’d torn up even before tackling the master bedroom.
Winston sat, tail switching, in the center of the room.
“What?” Kristy asked, irritable now, and still on edge.
Winston got to all fours again and strolled toward the closet.
Kristy followed, frowning. Turned on the single bulb dangling inside the walk-in.
And gasped.
The drywall at the back had been torn out, to reveal the framework and insulation behind it. The crowbar Freida had used to do the damage was still lying on the floor, covered in a layer of fine gray dust.
A picture came into Kristy’s mind—Freida, man-strong, wielding that crowbar. Her stomach pitched; she imagined waking up in the night, seeing the woman standing over her bed, ready to bash her to a pulp with the heavy iron tool.
“Oh my God,” Kristy whispered, dropping to her knees, suddenly unable to stand. “Oh my God.”
Winston brushed against her again, meowing softly now, as though to comfort her.
Call the sheriff, she thought.
Clearly, Freida had been looking for something. Why else would she rip out a wall?
But what could it have been? Kristy would have gladly turned over any forgotten possession.
Gripping the closet doorjamb, Kristy pulled herself to her feet. Swayed slightly.
She couldn’t call Sheriff Book, she decided belatedly—she was afraid to be alone with the man.
She waited, leaning against the woodwork, until she could trust her legs to support her. Then, every motion deliberate, she made her way into her own room, sat down on the edge of the bed, reached for the phone and dialed a number she’d tried to forget.
And when he answered, all she could get out was, “D-Dylan?”