“INCOMING,” JOSH intoned, peering over the top of his menu.
Logan had already spotted Briana out of the corner of his eye, steaming toward them like a freight train on a downhill grade. He grinned a little, anticipating the inevitable collision, complete with sparks. “Think I’ll have the beef enchilada-tamale combo,” he said.
Alec shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Mom looks pissed,” he whispered.
“You’re not supposed to say ‘pissed,’” Josh told him. “Pissed,” Alec repeated, jutting out his chin. “Pissed, pissed, pissed.”
Briana strode through the wide doorway in the long glass wall separating the Mexican restaurant from the rest of the casino.
Logan calmly closed his menu.
Stood.
Briana glared at him, then, hands on her hips, turned to the boys, both of whom were cowering behind the giant menus, their eyes wide with both alarm and defiance.
“What,” she began, “did I tell you about riding in cars with strangers?”
“Logan isn’t a stranger,” Josh said. “He’s our neighbor.”
A waitress approached, cautiously, hovering at a safe distance.
“Join us for lunch?” Logan asked Briana.
Color surged into her cheeks. She always looked good, but being mad gave her a fiery quality that made Logan want to take her to bed, ASAP.
That would probably happen later, rather than sooner.
If at all.
“I’m working,” she said.
“And that means you can’t eat?”
Clearly flustered, she turned to her sons again. “You’re supposed to be at home,” she said. “You know the rules.”
“We got lonesome,” Josh said.
“It’s hard being a latchkey kid,” Alec added. He’d have a big future in any business involving manipulationby-bullshit, that one. Probably make a good lawyer—or a politician.
“So we went over to Logan’s place to see what he was doing,” Josh went on, as though Alec hadn’t spoken.
“We stayed completely away from Cimarron and the orchard,” Alec added, his tone and expression earnest. “We took the county road.”
Briana consulted her watch, the motion of her arm slight but jerky. She started to say something, then stopped herself. Sighed.
“Guilt won’t work with me,” she told Alec, a little late.
On the contrary, Logan thought, Alec’s latchkey remark had struck the bull’s-eye.
She looked up into Logan’s face, and he saw pain in her eyes. Pain and fear and a kind of weariness that even a long vacation couldn’t cure. “I have to work,” she said.
And Logan wanted to draw her into his arms, hold her. Tell her everything would be all right.
He had no business doing any of those things, so he just stood there. “No harm done,” he said quietly. “When the boys showed up at my place, I figured the best thing I could do was bring them here. To you.”
She let out her breath, and her stiff shoulders slackened a little. “Thanks,” she said, without much conviction. And then she looked at her watch again. “I’d better get back on the floor,” she said. Pride had replaced the pain in her eyes. “I don’t get off work until five. Alec and Josh can wait in the coffee shop until my shift is over.”
Logan nodded, registering that she didn’t trust him to hang out with her children for the rest of the day, and reconciling himself to that. He was a stranger to her; caution was more than reasonable.
“Can’t we go back to the ranch with Logan?” Josh asked. “It’s no fun sitting in a casino all day.”
“I guess you should have thought of that,” Briana told her son, “before you broke rule number one—when I’m not home, you don’t go any farther than the yard.” A pause. “And where, pray tell, is Wanda?”
Alec grinned broadly. “She’s home. We dropped her off before we came to town, but Sidekick is out in the truck. He’s even got a water dish.”
“Can’t you just have lunch with us?” Josh’s voice held a pleading note.
“I owe you a meal,” Logan said, referring to last night’s supper.
But Briana just shook her head. Then, after fixing each of them with a warning glance—first Josh, then Alec, then Logan—she turned and went back to work.
The boys were a little subdued after that, but they ordered the beef enchilada-tamale combo, as Logan did, and ate as if they’d been locked away someplace and starved for a week.
They’d almost finished their lunch, and Logan was gearing up to leave the boys behind at the casino—a thing he would find hard to do—when he spotted Brett Turlow watching him from a table on the far side of the restaurant.
Turlow immediately looked away.
He was sitting alone, a smaller man than Logan remembered. In his midforties, old Brett wasn’t aging well. He’d evidently done some hard living since taking over the family logging business, running it into the ground and declaring bankruptcy.
Logan knew all that because he’d kept up a subscription to the Stillwater Springs Courier after he left home the first time, and because he had several good reasons to dislike Brett Turlow.
They went way back, he and Brett, though there was a decade’s difference in their ages.
Way, way back.
Logan paid the lunch check, left a tip for the waitress and walked Alec and Josh to the coffee shop to wait out the rest of Briana’s shift. Mindful of Sidekick out in the truck with a partially rolled-down window and a limited supply of water, Logan took the time to backtrack for a word with Brett.
Somewhat to Logan’s surprise, Turlow was still sitting at his table, the remains of an order of nachos in front of him, along with a glass of beer.
Turlow looked up at him, and the old mean streak coiled in his eyes. Back in the day, he’d been a hard-ass and a bully, the boss’s son. Now, his skin didn’t fit his face, but hung loose on his bones.
He’d beaten the hell out of Logan once. And then Jake had beaten the hell—and then some—out of him.
Turlow had wanted his dad to fire Jake, on the spot.
But whatever else he might have been, Jake Creed was the best logger in the woods. He felled three trees to everybody else’s one, and he wasn’t afraid of anything. Not the giant pines they called widow-makers, because they had a way of splitting from tip to trunk and crushing any man setting chain somewhere along their length, and certainly not Deke Turlow’s son. Ever mindful of his profits, Deke had ordered Brett out of the woods instead of Jake.
He hadn’t come back until after Deke turned a bulldozer over on himself and died, and even then, the old man’s will prevented him from getting rid of Jake. That must have been hard to swallow, working day after day with a man who’d kicked his ass in front of half of Stillwater Springs.
“You come over here to gloat?” Brett asked wearily.
“Now why would I want to do that?” Logan countered.
“You know I lost the logging outfit. All that competition from overseas, and the environmentalists always making a fuss over some owl—”
“Bad things happen,” Logan said. Like that chain snapping at the wrong time, he thought, and spilling a few tons of logs off the truck bed to crush Jake to a pulp.
“You and your brothers got the insurance money,” Brett said, as though that made it all right, the way Jake had died. He’d been alive under all that timber when the other loggers got to him, according to the sheriff. The pain must have consumed him like a fire, but he’d laughed. He’d looked up at old Floyd Book, bloody as a chunk of raw hamburger, and laughed.
“This is how it ends, old buddy,” he’d told Floyd. “This is how it ends.”
They’d settled Jake’s personal debts with the insurance check, he and Dylan and Tyler, and divided what was left. Logan had used his to pay off the loans he’d taken out to go to college.
“You were there that day, weren’t you, Brett?” Logan asked. “The day that logging chain broke?”
Turlow squirmed a little, then pushed back his chair and stood.
Logan stood a head taller, and he didn’t move to let the other man pass.
“I was there,” Turlow said. “So what? So were the other eight men on the crew.”
“They were still in the woods.”
Turlow flushed a dull, sickly red. His breath smelled rancid, and he seemed to exude the sour stink of yesterday’s beer from every pore. “There was an investigation,” he spat. “I was cleared.”
“He was sleeping with your girlfriend,” Logan said. “Jake, I mean.”
Turlow’s flush deepened to dark crimson. “She was a tramp.”
Logan shrugged one shoulder and stood solid as a totem pole. “Maybe so,” he allowed. “But it must have made you mad, just the same. Your girl, pounding a mattress with a man twice your age—”
“Logan?”
Distracted, he turned. Saw Sheriff Floyd Book standing behind him. Speak of the devil.
Turlow skittered past him and beat feet for the outside door.
“If I thought it would do a damn bit of good,” Book said, hooking his thumbs in his service belt, “I’d tell you to stay away from Brett Turlow for the sake of the peace.” Floyd had always had a belly—now it hung lower and strained the buttons on his brown uniform shirt. His badge was as shiny as ever, though, and when he took off his round-brimmed hat, Logan saw that he still had a thick head of iron-gray hair.
“No worries, Sheriff,” Logan said. “I’ve said what I wanted to say.”
“I don’t want any trouble around here,” Book went on, sounding tired to the marrow. “Things have been relatively calm in Stillwater Springs since your daddy was killed—God rest his obnoxious soul—and you and your brothers lit out for parts unknown. At the risk of sounding like a character in a corny black-and-white western, I’d like to keep it that way.”
Logan smiled. He’d always liked Floyd Book, thought he was a fair man. Now, though, he was mindful of Sidekick, alone in the truck. Brett Turlow probably wouldn’t bother his dog, but Logan didn’t want to take the chance. “I’ll mind my manners,” he said, starting to walk away.
Book sat down at a nearby table, nodded a goodbye. “Stop by my office when you get the chance,” he said. “We’ll jaw awhile.”
Logan nodded back and left.
Out in the parking lot, Sidekick greeted him eagerly, sticking his nose through the opening in the window and barking in ecstatic welcome.
Logan felt a rush of relief as he unlocked the truck, shouldered the dog back off the driver’s seat and climbed behind the wheel. He supposed running into Brett Turlow had been inevitable, given the size of Stillwater Springs, but the experience had nettled him, just the same. Brought back a lot of gut-grinding memories.
He’d rushed back to Montana when word of his dad’s accident had reached him, and found Jake in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Missoula, veritably holding on to life by the tips of his fingers.
There had been no part of Jake that wasn’t bruised a pinkish-purple. His legs and ribs had been smashed by the weight of those rolling logs, and the distortion was visible even under the blankets. Tubes and wires snaked from him in every direction—he’d seemed tangled in them, like a fly caught in a spider’s web.
Only Jake’s eyes, fiercely blue and snapping with obstinate pride, had been the same.
Jake hadn’t been able to talk—his voice box and virtually every bone and organ in his body had been broken or ruptured—but those eyes had said plenty.
You’re too late.
I’m disappointed in you. Always was.
Yes, I’m going to die.
Shake it off.
“Shake it off,” Logan repeated aloud.
Jake had kept his unspoken promise. He’d died before Dylan and Tyler could get there, and that was when the blaming had started. They’d both been furious with Logan for being in that hospital room when Jake breathed his last—maybe because it wouldn’t have seemed right to turn that fury on a dead man.
Especially when that dead man was their father.
Sidekick whimpered.
Logan reached out to tousle his ears.
And then they headed back to Stillwater Springs Ranch, where they belonged.
Or did they?
Just then, Logan wasn’t sure where he belonged.
* * *
THE REST OF Briana’s day crawled by.
She made brief but regular visits to the coffee shop, to make sure the boys were still there, and Jim even offered to let her leave early. Since she was about to make a purchase she hadn’t budgeted for, getting docked on her pay didn’t seem like the best idea in the world. Besides, with every other child-support check bouncing to the ceiling, she was barely making it as it was.
At ten minutes after five, Briana collected her boys, now sheepish and cranky from cooling their jets in the coffee shop for several hours, got into the dented, primer-splotched extended-cab pickup truck Dylan had left behind at the ranch, and started the engine while she waited for Alec and Josh to buckle themselves in. She could drive the old rig if she could get it running, Dylan had said, and she had, with most of her first paycheck from the casino and a lot of help from a mechanic in town, but after two years, keeping it running was the challenge.
Briana had been saving up to buy a decent used car, but it was three steps forward, two steps back. Every time she got a little ahead, some unexpected expense came up—medicine and veterinary bills when Wanda tore a ligament in one hind leg; the window Josh had broken out, playing baseball with Alec in the side yard; a donation at work when one of the other employees lost everything in a house fire.
It never stopped.
And now she had to get a cell phone. Josh and Alec would be able to call her directly, instead of going through the casino switchboard. They were good boys, and they probably would have contacted her before striking out for Logan’s place via the county road, where they could have been run over, kidnapped or attacked by a wild animal.
They probably would have contacted her.
“What you did today was not cool,” she said, speaking for the first time since they’d left the casino as she pulled into the parking lot at Wal-Mart. She shopped there a lot, but every visit brought back stinging memories of the night Vance had bailed on her and the kids and Wanda.
“We’re sorry, Mom,” Alec said.
“It was no big deal,” Josh argued.
She turned in the seat, looked back at them. “It was a big deal, Josh,” she said. “And, Alec, ‘sorry’ comes cheap. You guys are both grounded until further notice.”
“Like that’s going to change our lives,” Josh said. “We’re grounded all the time, because you make us stay in the house if you’re not with us. It’s like we’re babies or something.”
He had a point, but short of putting them in child care, which would not only finish off the car fund but also make them both severely unhappy, she didn’t know what else to do.
Alec eyed her, then agreed with his brother, a rare occurrence in itself. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re already grounded. When Dad gets here, I bet he takes us places.”
Vance. He would be in town Saturday, he’d said, and that was tomorrow. Briana’s mood, already low, plummeted.
“Wait in the car,” she said. “I won’t be long.”
“Mom, we’re always waiting,” Josh protested. “We just got through waiting all afternoon in the coffee shop!”
Briana sighed, and relented. “All right, but no wandering off. If I have to hunt all over the store for you guys, I’m not going to be a happy camper.”
“What else is new?” Josh asked, pushing open his door and jumping to the ground before she could change her mind. “You’re never a happy camper.”
“Yeah,” Alec agreed, though cautiously.
Briana rolled her eyes. “Let’s just do this, so we can go home and feed Wanda, all right?”
“All right,” Josh agreed, as though he had any say in the matter. “What is it we’re going to do, exactly?”
“I’m getting a cell phone,” Briana said. They were in the crosswalk now, the very spot where Vance had told her to get out of the car and take the kids and the damn dog with her because he had better things to do than listen to a nagging woman.
She’d wanted to stop and buy fried chicken in the deli, because it would be cheaper than going to a restaurant, and she and the boys were sick of drive-through hamburgers. Did that qualify as nagging?
Alec wrenched her back to the present moment with a yelp of delight. “We’re getting a cell phone?”
“I’m getting a cell phone,” Briana corrected. “And you two are going to call me on it and ask for permission before you go hiking off down the road.”
When they were younger, she would have held their hands until they were safely inside, but they both kept a manly distance now.
“All the kids at swimming lessons have their own cell phones,” Josh told her.
Briana swallowed her stock response—we can’t afford it—because she was tired to the bone of that answer, and so were the boys.
Inside the store, she headed straight back to the electronics department. Josh and Alec didn’t agitate to head off on their own, probably because they were fascinated by the array of flat-screen TVs, laptops, DVD players and the like.
All that stuff was out of Briana’s financial reach—she’d bought their computer from one of those lowmonthly-payment mail-order outfits, because it was necessary for the boys’ schooling, and it was a turkey—and today, being perennially poor got her down more than usual.
Alec and Josh lobbied for the newest phenomenon, with a camera, MP3 capability, video games and a touch screen.
Briana chose the supereconomical model—all it did was make and receive phone calls. No walking the dog. No wallpapering the living room. Just phone calls.
It did have one redeeming feature, though. It came with a free companion phone, and that mollified the boys a little. They promised to share, but she knew they’d probably come to blows over the thing before they pulled into the driveway at home.
With her umpteenth sigh of the day, Briana wheeled a cart to the grocery section to buy a bag of kibble for Wanda and a gallon of milk—she’d forgotten both the day before, when she stopped after work to pick up the ingredients of Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza—and after waiting in line to pay, they were on their way out.
Miraculously, they made it all the way home with no hostilities breaking out in the backseat. After carrying in the kibble and the milk, and letting Wanda out for a few minutes, Briana put the leftover casserole into the oven to warm up, Alec checked the answering machine and Josh settled down at the table with the new cell phones and accompanying instructions.
“We have to charge them first,” he said. “That will take hours.”
“We’ll survive,” Briana said, washing her hands at the sink.
“You said we could picnic in the cemetery tonight,” Alec reminded her. “Last night, when you were making the casserole, you said that.”
“I did not,” she retorted. “I said sometime.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Sorry. That’s the way it is.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“That so isn’t fair. How come kids always have to do stuff because grown-ups say so?”
Briana laughed, starting to feel better now that they were home, doing normal things, like feeding Wanda and heating up leftovers. “Because most of us are bigger than you are,” she said.
“Someday,” Alec vowed, “I’ll be bigger than you are.”
“No doubt about it,” Briana agreed. “But by then you’ll be too much of a gentleman to argue with me.”
“Fat chance,” Josh contributed.
“Get ready for supper, both of you,” Briana said.
“I’m not hungry,” Alec retorted.
“You’re just mad because there weren’t any messages from Dad,” Josh told his brother.
“Hold it right there!” Briana interrupted, gliding between the boys like a referee in a hockey game. “If this argument goes any further, neither of you get to use the extra cell phone. Ever.”
“It would be more effective,” Josh remarked, looking up at her in solemn certainty, “if you could whistle like Logan does. That really shuts us up.”
“What are you talking about?” Briana asked, baffled.
“Today in the Mexican place at the casino,” Josh answered importantly, “me and Alec got into it, and Logan whistled. Through his front teeth. It was really loud.”
“And that’s good?”
“It worked,” Alec said, with a verbal shrug. “If I didn’t already have a dad, it would be cool to be Logan’s kid.”
Briana slumped into a chair, forestalled Josh’s inevitably sarcastic comment before he could get it out of his mouth with a pointed look.
“Do you think Logan has kids, Mom?”
She needed a few moments to recover. Why had Alec’s words thrown her like that? If I didn’t already have a dad, it would be cool to be Logan’s kid.
“Huh?”
“Do you think Logan has kids?” Alec repeated patiently. He’d probably use that same tone when she was an old woman, forgetting things. She hoped she’d live long enough to be a problem.
“I have no idea,” Briana said.
“Next time he comes to supper, I’ll ask him,” Josh said.
“There might not be a next time,” Briana replied. “I only invited Logan over last night because it was the neighborly thing to do.”
Alec’s face clouded. “You’re mad at him because he brought us to town today. You should be mad at us, not him.”
That earned Alec an elbow jab from Josh.
“You’re right. I should be mad at you.” She kept a straight face. “But I’m not.”
“Really?” Alec looked astounded.
It wasn’t as if she lost her temper on a regular basis, Briana thought indignantly. If anything, she was overindulgent, letting them get away with too much. So what was with all the surprise?
“Really,” Briana said.
“Don’t push it, geek-face,” Josh counseled.
Briana skewered her elder son with another look.
“Sorry,” Josh said meekly.
The phone rang while they were having supper, and Alec knocked over his chair getting to the receiver.
His whole face shone when he said, “Dad! Hi!”
Briana waited uneasily, as did Josh. If past history was anything to go by, Vance was about to burst the bubble, make some excuse for not coming to visit. She’d be relieved, Alec would be devastated. The jury was still out on how Josh would react.
“You’re almost to Stillwater Springs right now?” Alec nearly shouted.
“Sure, sure, I’ll put her on—Mom! He wants directions!”
Briana rose slowly from her chair, crossed the room, took the telephone receiver and put it to her ear. She had to clear her throat once before she could say anything.
“So—you’re almost here.”
“We are,” Vance answered.
We?
“Tell me how to get to your place, Bree. I’m real anxious to see my boys.”
Alec was jumping around the kitchen.
Josh had probably ducked into his room. He’d have had to pass her to use the back door.
Calmly, Briana told her ex-husband which turns to take on which roads.
She was numb when she hung up.
She went straight to the boys’ bedroom.
Sure enough, Josh was on his bed, a lump under the bump-chenille spread he hated because it had a teddy bear on it and that was babyish.
“Josh?” Briana sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress, laid a tentative hand on her son’s back. “Wanna come out and talk to me for a minute?”
“No.” The word was muffled. “Can I go live with Logan until Dad leaves?”
“Honey, he is your father.”
Josh yanked the spread down and scowled at Briana, nose and forehead crinkled in disgust. “He’s a jerk! He left us at Wal-Mart, Mom!”
“We’ve done okay since then, haven’t we?” Briana asked, very softly.
“What if he stays?”
“I won’t let him stay, Josh. Your dad and I are divorced.”
“He should have just kept going. He wants something, Mom. That’s why he’s coming here.” Josh’s lower lip trembled. “What if he decides to take Alec and me away with him?”
“He’s not going to do that, Josh,” Briana said, as a piece of her heart quivered and then fell off. How long had Josh been worrying about this? “I have legal custody. That means you and Alec stay right here with me until you’re old enough to be on your own.”
Just then, Josh did something he hadn’t done since the night Vance deserted them. He threw both arms around her neck and clung for dear life.
Briana held him tight. Kissed the top of his head. His buzz cut felt prickly against her lips, and that made her smile, even though her eyes were full of tears.
“It was scary, getting left like that,” she said, after a long time. “I’m really sorry that happened. But we’re all right now, you and me and Alec and Wanda. We have a nice place to live, and I have a job and—”
Josh reared back. “Don’t let him take us away, Mom,” he begged. “He might get mad and leave us someplace, like he did before, only you wouldn’t be there to take care of us—”
Briana was near tears herself, but she didn’t dare let it show. She had to be strong for Josh, and Alec, too. She couldn’t afford to cry any more than she could afford a big-screen TV or fancy computer or a cell phone with all the latest bells and whistles. “I promise that won’t happen, Josh.”
He sniffled, wanting to believe her. Struggling to believe her.
“Swear?”
“Swear.”
“What do we do now?”
Briana smiled, risked a forehead kiss, was glad when Josh didn’t pull away to avoid it. “I go back to the kitchen and make coffee, and you go to the bathroom and wash your face.”
Josh nodded glumly.
Briana started a pot of coffee and found clean sheets, a blanket and pillows for the fold-out couch. Vance had said we, which probably meant he was bringing one of his rodeo-bum buddies along to run interference, keep the little ex-wife from getting on his case. Well, he could just share the thin couch mattress with his pal, because there was nowhere else to put him.
Vance rolled in in the same old van; Briana recognized the belching sound the muffler made.
“He’s here!” Alec whooped, flinging open the back door and darting out of the house with Wanda right behind him, barking her brains out.
Fickle dog.
“Yippee,” Josh murmured miserably, slumped in front of the computer.
Briana tossed him a sympathetic glance and made herself go to the door.
It was almost dark, but not so dark that she couldn’t see Vance climbing out of the van, stepping down with that patented grin on his face to scoop Alec up and swing him around once.
When the other door opened, though, Briana’s breath caught.
A woman—more of a girl, really—rounded the front of the van, smiling nervously. She was superskinny, wearing one of those clingy tops that don’t quite cover the territory, tight jeans and boots. A little silver hoop glinted from her naval, and her hair was bleached, yanked up into something resembling a ponytail, seeming to sprout from the top of her head.
Vance setAlec on his feet, looked up to meet Briana’s gaze. At the same time, he stretched out an arm in the girl’s direction, and she hurried to him, snuggled close against his side. Stared at Briana with enormous, frightened eyes.
“You look good, Bree,” Vance said.
She couldn’t speak. It didn’t bother her to know that Vance had a girlfriend—that was old news. It did make her want to bite through a nail that he’d brought the squeeze-du-jour to the house, that he obviously intended to sleep with her under the same roof with their sons.
“This is Heather,” Vance said. “Heather, my ex-wife, Briana. That’s my boy Alec.” He frowned, idly stooping to pet Wanda’s head. “Where’s Josh?”
“Inside,” Briana managed to say.
“Hi, Briana,” Heather chimed. She sounded so desperate to please that Briana felt sorry for her. The poor kid probably had no clue what she was in for with Vance.
They all went into the kitchen, and the next few moments were awkward in the extreme. Josh didn’t make a move to greet Vance, and both he and Alec gaped at Heather as though she were a curiosity on display at one of those roadside places where they sell dusty, dog-eared postcards and plastic paperweights with dead snakes coiled inside.
“This is Heather,” Vance said, for the second time. Heather blushed, looking as though she wished the floor would open under her feet.
Briana’s sympathy deepened to pity. “Would you like some coffee, Heather?” Then, belatedly, added, “Sit down. Please. Sit down.”
In the light of the kitchen, she could see that Heather was older than she’d seemed outside. Over twenty-one, anyway, which was good, because Briana would have called the sheriff if she wasn’t.
“Thanks,” Heather said, sort of collapsing into a chair.
She patted her hair, and that was when Briana noticed the slim gold wedding band on her left hand.
Vance puffed up like a rooster. “Heather,” he announced to Alec and Josh, “is your new stepmother.”