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.”
Dylan raised one eyebrow. “Need a ride?”
Tyler looked down at the mutt, resting watchfully at his feet, brown eyes rolling from one brother to the other. The poor critter looked as though he expected to be smashed between two giant cymbals at any moment.
“Yeah,” Tyler said, reluctantly agreeing to Dylan’s offer. “The tow truck’s out on another call, and I’m fifth in line, so it might be tomorrow before they can haul the Chevy in and fix it.”
After he’d told Vance Grant, the only mechanic on duty, that he’d check back in the morning, Tyler and Kit followed Dylan out into the afternoon heat. They made a stop at the supermarket, for dog kibble, coffee and a few other staples, and headed, by tacit agreement, for the ranch. In all that time, barely two words passed between them.
They were a good three miles out of town, in fact, Kit panting happily in the backseat of Dylan’s extended-cab pickup, before it occurred to Tyler to wonder how his brother had happened along at just the right—or wrong—time.
Reflecting on the question, Tyler idly rubbed his sore shoulder, where Dylan had slugged him. “Did you come into the shop looking for me?” he asked.
“Yup,” Dylan answered easily, without so much as glancing in his direction. The slight tilt of amusement at the corner of his mouth told Tyler he’d seen him nursing that arm, though. “Word gets around. Big news, when a Creed hits the old hometown.”
Tyler sighed. “Not much happens around here, if we’re news.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dylan said. “If you ever stuck around long enough to find out what’s going on around Stillwater Springs, that is.”
They’d run into each other a little over a week before, at the home of a mutual friend, Cassie Greencreek, but it hadn’t exactly been a family reunion. Tyler had met Dylan’s little girl, Bonnie, and taken a fierce liking to her, even fetched her some medicine when she was sick, but that was the extent of the brotherly bonding.
“Catch me up,” Tyler said, because Dylan was bent on talking, evidently. And when Dylan was bent on anything, it was easier to just ride it out.
“Well, I got married,” Dylan said. “To Kristy Madison.”
Tyler absorbed that. “Okay,” he said. “Congratulations.”
“Gee, thanks. Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.”
“She’s half again too good for you,” Tyler commented, at something of a loss. There was so much bad blood between him and his brothers that he didn’t know how to carry on a civil conversation with either of them. “Kristy, I mean.”
Dylan laughed. “True,” he answered. Then he proceeded to bring Tyler up to speed on all the latest doings in Stillwater Springs, Montana. “They dug up a couple of bodies on the old Madison place,” he went on. “And Sheriff Book retired early, a week before the special election. Mike Danvers was running against Jim Huntinghorse, but he dropped out of the race, so Jim’s The Man now.”
“Bodies?” Tyler echoed. He’d barely untangled himself from the shock of seeing Lily Ryder again, and that little girl of hers, and now Dylan was laying all this stuff on him.
“Murder victims,” Dylan confirmed.
“Holy shit,” Tyler said. “Anybody we knew?”
“Probably not,” Dylan answered, as they bumped off the main road onto one of the old cattle trails snaking through the ranch like a network of ancient tree roots. A muscle tightened in Dylan’s jaw. “A drifter who worked for Kristy’s dad for a while, and a young girl who went missing during a family camping trip a few years back.”
Tyler remembered the media frenzy surrounding the missing girl. Searchers had turned over every rock in that part of Montana, without success, and eventually the hoo-ha had died down and the parents had gone home, defeated and hollow-eyed with despair. “Did Floyd nab the killers?”
“Do you ever read a newspaper?” Dylan countered, sounding semi-irritated now. Now there was a tone Tyler understood.
“No,” he snapped back. “My lips move when I read, and that makes me testy.”
“Everything makes you testy, little brother.” Dylan paused, sighed. Went on. “Freida Turlow killed the girl—some kind of jealousy thing. And the drifter—well, that’s another story.”
“Those Turlows,” Tyler said, “are just plain loco.”
Dylan laughed again, but it was a raw, gruff sound, without a trace of humor. “Coming from a Creed, that’s saying something.”
In spite of himself, Tyler laughed, too.
“What brings you back to the home place, little brother?” Dylan asked. He was downright loquacious, old Dylan.
“Stop calling me ‘little brother,’” Tyler told him. “I’m a head taller than you are.”
“You’ll always be the baby of the family. Deal with it.” Dylan downshifted, with a grinding of gears, and they jostled up the lake road, toward Tyler’s cabin. “Answer my question. What are you doing here?”
Tyler let out a long sigh. “Damned if I know,” he admitted. “I guess I’m tired of the open road. I need some time to think a few things through.”
“What things?”
Again, Tyler’s temper, never far beneath the surface, stirred inside him. “What the fuck do you care?” he asked.
Kit Carson gave a fitful whimper from the backseat.
“I care,” Dylan said evenly. “And so does Logan.”
“Bullshit,” Tyler said flatly.
“Why is that so hard for you to believe?”
The cabin came in sight, nestled up close to the lake. It was more shack than house, his hind-tit inheritance from the old man, but Tyler loved the solitude and the way the light of the sun and moon played over that still water.
Logan, being the eldest, had scored the main ranch house when Jake Creed got himself killed up in the woods, logging, and Dylan, coming in second, got their uncle’s old dump on the other side of the orchard. That left Tyler in third place, as always.
Hind-tit.
Tyler unclamped his back molars, reached back to reassure the dog with a ruffling of the ears. Ignoring Dylan’s question, he asked about Bonnie instead.
“She’s fine,” Dylan answered.
He brought the truck to a stop in front of the log A-frame, and Tyler had the passenger-side door open before Dylan had shut off the engine. Kit Carson waited, shivering a little, with either anticipation or dread, until Tyler hoisted him down from the backseat.
“Thanks for the lift,” Tyler told his brother, reaching over the side of the truck bed for the kibble and the grub they’d picked up in town. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?
Dylan got out of the truck, slammed his door.
“Don’t you have things to do?” Tyler asked tersely. Kit Carson was sniffing around in the rich, high grass, making himself at home—and he was all the company Tyler wanted at the moment. Once inside, he’d prime the pump, build a fire in the antiquated wood cookstove and brew some coffee. Try to get a little perspective.
“I have all kinds of ‘things to do,’” Dylan answered, his mild tone in direct conflict with his go-to-hell manner. “I’m building a house, for one thing. Logan and I are back in the cattle business. But you’re at the top of my to-do list today, little brother. Like it or lump it.”
Tyler consulted an imaginary list, envisioning a little notebook, like the one his dad had always carried in the pocket of his work shirt, full of timber footage and married women’s phone numbers. “You’re at the top of mine, too,” he replied. “Trouble is, it’s a shit list.”
Dylan leaned against the hood of his truck, watching as Tyler started for the cabin, lugging the kibble under one arm and juggling two grocery bags with the other. Kit Carson hurried after him, though it was most likely the dog food he was after.
“Ty,” Dylan said, easy-like but with that steel undercurrent that was pure Creed orneriness, born and bred, “we’re brothers, remember? We’re blood. Logan and I, we’d like to mend some fences, and I’m not talking about the barbed-wire kind.”
“You’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody who gives a rat’s ass what you and Logan would like.”
Dylan stepped back from the truck, folded his arms. “Look,” he said, as Tyler passed him, headed for the front door of the cabin, “we were all messed up after Jake’s funeral—”
Messed up? They’d gotten into the mother of all brawls, he and Logan and Dylan, down at Skivvie’s Tavern. Wound up in jail, in fact, and gone their separate ways—after saying a lot of things that couldn’t be taken back.
Tyler shook his head, shifted to fumble with the doorknob. The thing was so rusted out, he’d never bothered with a lock, but that day, it whisked open and Kit Carson shot over the threshold, growling low, his hackles up.
Dylan was right at Tyler’s back, carrying his guitar case and duffel bag. “What the hell?” he muttered.
Somebody was inside the cabin, that was obvious, and Kit Carson had them cornered in the john.
“Whoa,” Tyler told the dog, setting aside the stuff he was carrying.
“Call him off!” a youthful voice squeaked from inside what passed as a bathroom. “Call him off!”
Tyler and Dylan exchanged curious glances, and Tyler eased the dog aside with one knee to stand in the doorway.
A kid huddled on the floor between the pull-chain toilet and the dry sink, staring up at Tyler with wild, rebellious, terrified eyes. Male, as near as Tyler could guess, wearing a long black coat, as if to defy the heat. Three silver rings pierced the boy’s right eyebrow, and both his ears and his lower lip sported hardware, too. The tattooed spider clinging to his neck added to the drama.
Tyler winced, just imagining all that needlework. Gripped the door frame with both hands, a human barrier filling the only route of escape, other than the tiny window three feet above the tank on the john. The kid glanced up, wisely ruled out that particular bolt-hole.
“I wasn’t hurting anything,” he said. His eyes skittered to Kit, who was still trying to squeeze past Tyler’s left knee and challenge the trespasser. “Does that dog bite?”
“Depends,” Tyler said. “What’s your name?”
The boy scowled. “Whether he bites me or not depends on what my name is?”
Tyler suppressed a grin. Aside from the piercings and the spider, he reckoned he and the kid were more alike than different. “No,” he said. “It depends on whether or not you stop being a smart-ass and tell me who you are and what the hell you’re doing in my house.”
“This is a house? Looks more like a chicken coop to me.”
Standing somewhere behind him, Dylan chuckled. He’d set Tyler’s guitar case and duffel bag down and, from the clanking and splashing, started working the pump at the main sink.
“Okay, Brutus,” Tyler said, looking down at the dog, “get him.”
Kit Carson looked up at him in confusion, probably wondering who the hell Brutus was.
“Davie McCullough!” the kid burst out, scrambling to his feet and, at the same time, trying to melt into the bathroom wall, which was papered with old catalog pages and peeling in a lot of places. “All right? My name is Davie McCullough!”
“Take a breath, Davie,” Tyler told him. “The dog won’t hurt you, and neither will I.”
Somebody had hurt him, though. Now that the kid was up off the floor, and dusty light from the high window illuminated his face, Tyler saw bruises along his jawline, fading to a yellowish purple.
Again, Tyler flinched. Either Davie McCullough had been in a tussle with some other kid recently, or an adult had beaten the hell out of him. Having had an alcoholic father himself, Tyler tended toward the latter theory.
“What happened to your face?” Dylan asked, poking wood into the stove to boil up some java, as soon as Davie edged out of the bathroom, past both Tyler and the dog.
Davie kept a careful distance from everybody. Quite a trick in a cabin roughly the size of one of those clown cars that spill bozos at the rodeo.
“You’re really going to build a fire on a day like this?” Davie countered.
“I asked my question first,” Dylan responded, setting the dented enamel coffeepot on the stove with a thump.
Davie scowled. With a temperament that prickly, Tyler thought with grim amusement, he should have been a Creed. “My mom’s boyfriend was in a mood,” he said, peevish even in an indefensible position. “Okay?”
Tyler felt another pang of sympathy—and an urge to find the boyfriend and see if he was inclined to take on a grown man instead of a skinny kid who’d probably never lifted anything heavier than a laptop computer.
“Okay,” Dylan answered affably. He reached right into one of Tyler’s grocery bags, pulled out a package of chocolate cookies and tossed it to Davie. Davie caught the bag and promptly tore into it.
“I ate that canned meat you had in the cupboard,” he told Tyler, spewing a few cookie crumbs in the process. “You don’t keep much food around here, do you?”
“McCullough,” Tyler said, and this time, he didn’t bother trying to hold back a grin. “I don’t think I’ve run across that name around Stillwater Springs. You new in town?”
Clearly torn between bolting for the door, which Dylan had opened to let out some of the stove heat, and staying because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, Davie hesitated, not sure how to answer, then drew back one of the four rickety chairs at the table in the center of the cabin and plunked down to scarf up cookies in earnest.
He’d obviously been hiding out at the lake for a while, if he’d run through the several dozen cans of congealed “ham” Tyler kept on hand for intermittent visits.
“My mom lived here a long time ago,” Davie said, after considerable cookie-noshing. “Before I was born.”
“Who is your mom?” Dylan asked mildly. Mr. Subtle. Like an idiot wouldn’t know he was planning to find the woman and give her some grief for letting the boyfriend pound on her kid.
“You a social worker or something?” Davie asked suspiciously.
“No,” Dylan replied, finding mugs on the shelf, peering into them and frowning at whatever was crawling around inside. “Just trying to be neighborly, that’s all. Your mom must be pretty worried, though.”
“She’s too busy schlepping drinks out at the casino to be worried,” Davie scoffed. “Roy’s been out of work for a year, so she’s been pulling double shifts, trying to save up enough to get us our own place.”
Another look passed between Dylan and Tyler. Neither of them spoke. Now that the kid had some sugar and preservatives under his belt, he’d turned talkative.
“We live out at the Shady Grove trailer park, with Roy’s grandma. It’s pretty crowded, especially when he’s on the peck.”
Jake Creed had been known to throw a punch or two, when he was guzzling down a paycheck, and both Dylan and Tyler had been in Davie’s shoes more often than either of them would admit. They’d taken refuge at Cassie’s place, sleeping on her living room floor or in the teepee out in her yard. Only Logan had been immune to Jake’s temper, maybe because he’d always been the old man’s favorite—the one who might “amount to something.”
The coffee started to perk.
Kit Carson ambled out onto the porch and lay there letting the sun bake his bones, like an old dog ought to be allowed to do.
“I’ll give you a ride back to town,” Dylan told Davie, once some time had gone by. “The new sheriff’s a friend of mine. There might be something he can do about Roy.”
Davie’s face seized with fear, quickly controlled, but not quickly enough. “Nothing short of a shotgun blast to the belly is going to fix what’s wrong with Roy Fifer,” he said. “Why can’t I just stay here? I can sleep outside, and I’ll work off the food I ate, chopping wood or something.”
Tyler knew he couldn’t keep the boy; he was a loner, for one thing. And for another, Davie was a minor child, no older than thirteen or fourteen. For good or ill, his living arrangements were up to his mother. “That wouldn’t work,” he said, with some reluctance.
What would he and Dylan have done, all those nights, if Cassie had turned them away from her door? If she hadn’t faced Jake Creed down on her front porch and told him she’d call Sheriff Book and press charges if he didn’t go away and sober up?
“I’ll work,” Davie said, and the desperation in his voice made Tyler’s gut clench. “I could take care of the dog and chop firewood and catch all the fish we could eat. I’ll stay out of your way—won’t be any trouble at all—”
“I might not be around long,” Tyler said, his voice hoarse, unable to glance in Dylan’s direction. “And you can’t stay here alone. You’re just a kid.”
Davie looked as near tears as pride would allow. “Okay,” he said, shoulders sagging a little.
Dylan pushed back his chair, stood. Sighed. He had to be remembering all the things Tyler remembered, and maybe a few more, since he’d been the middle son, not the youngest, like Tyler, or the smart one, like Logan. No, Dylan had been wild, the son who mirrored all the things Jake Creed might have been, if he hadn’t been such a waste of skin.
“I’ll have a word with Jim,” he told Tyler.
Tyler merely nodded, numb with old sorrows. Shared sorrows.
As kids, he and Dylan and Logan had fought plenty, but they’d always had each other’s backs, too. Logan, mature beyond his years, had made sure he and Dylan had lunch money, and presents at Christmas.
When had things gone so wrong between the three of them?
Not at Jake’s funeral. No, the problem went back further than that.
Passing Tyler’s chair, Dylan laid a hand on his shoulder. “You know my cell number,” he said quietly. “When your truck’s ready to be picked up, give me a call and I’ll give you a lift to town.”
* * *
LILY AWAKENED at sunset, to the sound of familiar voices—her daughter’s and her father’s, a novel combination—chatting in the nearby kitchen. Outside somewhere, perhaps in a neighbor’s yard, a lawn sprinkler sang its summer evensong—ka-chucka-chucka-whoosh, ka-chucka-chucka-whoosh.
Sitting up on the narrow bed in what had once been her mother’s sewing room, Lily smiled, yawned, stretched. Slipped her feet into the sandals she’d kicked off before lying down. She’d intended to rest her eyes; instead, she’d zonked out completely, settling in deeper than even the most vivid dreams could reach.
For a little while, she’d been mercifully free of ordinary reality.
The guilt over Burke’s death.
The wide gulf between her and the man she had once called “Daddy.”
The gnawing loneliness.
She sat for a few moments, listening to the happy lilt in Tess’s voice as she told her grandfather all about story hour at the library. It had been too long since Lily had heard that sweet cadence—Tess was usually so solemn, a little lost soul, soldiering on.
Hal chuckled richly at one of Tess’s comments. He’d always been a good listener—until he’d simply decided to stop listening, at least to Lily. When she’d called him, after the divorce, desperate for some assurance that things would be all right again, he’d brushed her off, or so it had seemed to a heartbroken child, grieving for so many things she could barely name.
Lily stepped into the kitchen, found Tess and Hal setting the table for supper. Spaghetti casserole—the specialty, Lily recalled, of Janice Baylor, her dad’s longtime receptionist. Tess’s small face shone with the pleasure of the afternoon’s adventure at the library with Kristy.
Lily bit back a comment about the fat and cholesterol content of Janice’s casserole and smiled. “Something smells good,” she said.
“Mrs. Baylor brought us sketty for supper,” Tess said cheerfully.
Hal watched Lily, probably expecting a discourse on the wonders of tofu. “You look a little better,” he said. “Not so frazzled.”
Lily nodded. She needed a shower and more sleep—would she ever catch up?—but she needed a hot meal more, and her father and daughter’s company more still.
“How about you?” she asked Hal. “Did you rest this afternoon?”
Hal grinned. Here at home, he didn’t look so wan and gaunt as he had in the hospital. The expression of frenzied dismay in his eyes had subsided, too. He’d decided, Lily thought, to live.
“As much as I could, with half the town stopping by with food,” he answered. “The doorbell rang at least a dozen times.”
Lily was horrified. She hadn’t heard a thing. Hadn’t stirred on the hard twin bed in the sewing room. What kind of caretaker was she, anyway?
Her thoughts must have shown in her face; Hal winked and said quietly, “Sit down, Lily. You’re home now.”
You’re home now.
Kristy had said something similar, earlier that day.
It was a nice fantasy, Lily supposed, but once her father was well enough to carry on alone, she and Tess would be returning to their old lives in Chicago, to the condo, and Tess’s private school, and Lily’s job as a buyer for an online retailer of women’s clothes.
Burke’s mother, Eloise, who doted on Tess, would be lost without their weekly tea parties—just the two of them, if you didn’t count Eloise’s maid, Dolores. They used the best bone china, Eloise and Tess, and wore flowered hats and white gloves with pearl buttons. Eloise took Tess to museums, and bought her beautiful, hand-made dresses, and invited her for long weekends at the Kenyon “cottage” on Nantucket.
The place had three stories, fourteen rooms, each one graced with exquisitely shabby antique furniture. Priceless seascapes graced the walls, and even the rugs were either heirlooms or elegant finds from the finest auction houses in the world.
Tess, Eloise never hesitated to point out, was all she had left, with her husband gone and her only son killed in the prime of his life. The accusation went unspoken: if Lily had just been a little more tolerant of Burke’s “high spirits,” a little more patient—
Lily’s own mother seemed to have no time for her, or even for Tess, she was so busy gracing her powerful husband’s arm at swanky parties up and down the eastern seaboard.
Resolutely, she shook off the reverie, went to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. Then she sat down to a “sketty” supper with her family.
“I like that man with the dog,” Tess announced, midway through the meal.
Lily felt a little jolt at the mere reminder of Tyler.
“Where does he live?” Tess persisted, when neither Lily nor Hal offered a response.
Lily had no idea. Didn’t want to know. Everything would be easier if she could just pretend Tyler Creed didn’t exist, the way she had since the night he broke her heart, but that was bound to be a tall order in a town as small as Stillwater Springs.
“His family owns a ranch,” Hal explained, with a readiness that surprised Lily, given her father’s formerly low opinion of the Creeds in general and Tyler in particular. She flashed back to the friendly way he’d greeted Tyler when they found him walking along that lonely road. “It’s a big spread. Tyler’s cabin is on the lake—best fishing in the county.”
“I doubt if he’s around much,” Lily said moderately.
“He’s a busy man, all right,” Hal agreed, with quiet admiration. “He’s come a long way since he was a kid. So have Logan and Dylan. All of them went to college, with more hindrance than help from Jake, and made their mark in professional rodeo, too. Logan has a law degree, as a matter of fact.”
Lily widened her eyes at her father. “Since when are you such a fan of the Creeds?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light. Tess was so bright that she might pick up on the slightest nuance.
“Since one of them saved my life,” Hal said quietly. “And, anyway, I admire gumption. They’ve got it in spades, all three of them.”
“Is he married?” Tess asked, just a mite too cagily for Lily’s comfort. “Does he have a little girl?”
Lily nearly choked on a forkful of spaghetti casserole.
“Far as I know,” Hal said, looking at Lily instead of Tess, “he’s single. No children.”
“Do you think he’d like a little girl?” Tess persisted, with such a note of hope in her voice that Lily’s eyes filled with sudden, scalding tears. “One like me?”
“Honey—” Lily began, but words failed her.
Hal reached over to pat his granddaughter’s hand, his smile fond and full of tender understanding. “I think any man would be proud to have you for a daughter, cupcake.”
“Don’t,” Lily whispered.
And just then, the wall phone rang.
Lily rushed to answer it, partly because she needed the distraction, and partly because she didn’t want Hal rushing off to take care of somebody’s sick cow and compromising his fragile health.
“Hello?” she chimed.
“Lily? This is Tyler.”
The floor went soft beneath Lily’s feet, just the way it had when she was a teenager, and just the sound of Tyler Creed’s voice had the power to melt her knees.
“Er—hello—” Lily fumbled.
“I want to see you,” Tyler said. I want to see you. Just like that.
As if he hadn’t sold her out to sleep with a tattooed waitress. As if he hadn’t shattered her most cherished dreams, and fostered a cold distance at the center of her marriage that she and Burke had never been able to overcome.
Damn him, he had his nerve. Because he wanted to see her, he expected it to happen. It probably hadn’t even occurred to him, in his arrogance, that she might refuse.
“Lily?” he prompted, when she was silent too long.
Her face burned, her stomach did flip-flops and she turned her back on Hal and Tess, in a fruitless attempt to hide what she was feeling.
“Lily?” Tyler repeated. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“Okay,” Lily said, though she’d meant to say no instead.
When it came to Tyler Creed, she had no backbone at all.