Linda Miller - Montana Creeds - Tyler

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.

“Thirteen,” Doreen admitted, after some lip-biting and some hand-wringing.

“The math works,” Tyler said.

Doreen gave a rueful little laugh. Raised and lowered her stooped shoulders. “Yeah,” she said. “For a lot of guys, Ty. Not just you. Davie belongs to a trucker who stopped by Skivvie’s one summer night, crying in his beer because his wife didn’t understand him. I cheered him up. And Davie looks just like him.”

“Okay,” Tyler said. “So why do you let the boyfriend bounce Davie off walls?”

Tears filled Doreen’s eyes. “I’ve been fighting things all my life,” she said. “One day, I just ran out of fight.”

“Tough break for Davie,” Tyler said evenly.

“You think I don’t hate myself for that? For all of it?” Doreen straightened her spine a little—though not enough, unfortunately. “I never expected to end up like this. I could have had an abortion—Davie’s father offered to pay for one—but I had this crazy idea that I’d find a good man someday. Davie and I and the prince.” She laughed again. “What a fairy tale.”

“Let me take Davie home with me. Just for a while. Until you can get things under control.”

Doreen stared at him, clearly amazed. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because I was a kid once, with a crazy father,” Tyler said, as surprised to say what he did as Doreen probably was to hear him admit it. He’d been in denial about Jake Creed all his life, even written songs about him, for Christ’s sake. “What you’re doing now isn’t working, Doreen. Time to try something different.”

“You don’t understand,” Doreen whispered, in a teary rush of words and breath. “Davie’s a handful. He has problems, Tyler. And Roy—well, you don’t know what Roy’s like. He’ll lay for you. He’ll never forget the run-in you and him had tonight. If he has to wait the rest of his life, he’ll find a way to pay you back, and when he does, it won’t be pretty.”