Linda Lael - Montana Creeds - Tyler

“You like Kristy?” Tyler asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.

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

“Yeah,” Tyler said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He slid out of the booth and stood.

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

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

Now, he looked Tyler over with belligerent caution.

“Who are you?”

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

Tyler put out one hand to silence the boy.

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

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

Tyler folded his arms. Waited.

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

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

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

And that could make all the difference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the hell had happened to her?

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

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

Damned if that wasn’t depressing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She nodded. “Worse than bad.”

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

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

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

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