Linda Miller - Montana Creeds - Dylan

Tears filled her eyes, and all the old wounds opened at once.

“I’m sorry,” Sheriff Book said.

“When he died,” Kristy murmured, “Sugarfoot, I mean—I wanted to die, too. Crawl right into that grave with him and let them cover me with dirt.”

“You’d just lost your mother then,” Floyd reminded her. “And your dad was already sick. It was a lot for one young girl to bear up under. But you did bear up, Kristy. You kept going, kept living, like you were supposed to.”

A long, difficult silence fell. Kristy broke it with, “You do realize what an uproar this is going to cause, if you find—find something.”

Grimly, Floyd nodded. “Might be I’m wrong. There’s no need to get the community all riled up if there’s really a dog sharing that grave with Sugarfoot. I can keep the whole thing quiet, Kristy, at least for a while. But this is Stillwater Springs, and folks are always flapping their jaws. Word could get out, and that’s why I came over here to talk to you first. So you’d know ahead of time, in case—well, you know.”

Kristy nodded.

The sheriff stood to go. “You going to be all right?” he asked. “I could call somebody, if you want.”

“Call somebody?” Kristy echoed stupidly. Who? Who in the whole wide, upside-down, messed-up world would drop everything and rush over to hold the librarian’s hand?

Dylan, she thought.

“Maybe you oughtn’t to be alone.”

“I’m fine,” Kristy said. Stock answer.

Major lie.

“Lock up behind me,” Floyd said.

Kristy nodded.

But he’d been gone a long time before she even got out of her chair.

THE HOUSE WAS HABITABLE, as it turned out, if sparsely furnished. Dylan figured he and Bonnie could live there, in comfort if not style, but he’d need to rig up some kind of bed for her, get her a dresser.

More shopping, he thought unhappily.

And with a two-year-old.

“Whoopee,” he muttered.

“Potty,” Bonnie said.

“Learn another word,” Dylan replied. The little pink toilet was still at Cassie’s place, so he had to lift Bonnie onto the john again, bare-assed, and wait it out.

In the end, Cassie offered to babysit at her place while he laid in grub and the other necessities.

He bought Bonnie a miniature bed, one step up from a crib, with side rails that could be raised and lowered. It was white, with gold trim—French provincial, the saleswoman at the only furniture store in Stillwater Springs called it. The piece, she said, was designed to grow with the child.

Dylan paid cash and the woman promised an early-morning delivery. He still needed some other stuff, but since he meant to tear down the house anyway, he couldn’t see torturing himself by buying a decent couch and a new dinette set right then. He could get all that later—or maybe the trailer he meant to lease and set up on the property as temporary digs would have some rigging in it.

But the kid would need milk in the morning, to put in her sippy-thing, and cereal, too.

So he braved the grocery store in town.

Once he’d carted everything back out to the ranch and put it away, he headed back to Cassie’s to pick up Bonnie. She could sleep on the bed that night—it had been there when Briana moved in—and he’d take the lumpy old couch.

At least they’d be in their own place, he and Bonnie. It was a start.

As he drove past the casino, his truck wanted to pull in, but for the time being, he was out of the poker business. He was, after all, a father.

He had responsibilities now.

And strange as it seemed, he liked the feeling.

It was all good—except for the potty thing and the flying spaghetti.

He definitely needed a wife, if he was going to pull this thing off.

He immediately thought of Kristy.

“Oh, sure,” he told himself out loud. “Just walk right into the library, one fine day, and suggest letting bygones be bygones because, lo and behold, you’ve got a two-year-old daughter and you could sure use a hand raising her.”

Put like that, it sounded pretty damn lame.

And Kristy would probably bash him over the head with the nearest heavy book.

Still, Bonnie needed a mother, and he couldn’t think of a better candidate than Kristy Madison, with her soft storyteller’s voice and her calm practicality. If he’d had to get somebody pregnant, why couldn’t it have been her, instead of Sharlene?

Now there was a useless question.

After what had gone down the day of Jake’s funeral, Kristy had crossed him off her list, gotten herself engaged to Mike Danvers. Good old solid Mike, student body president, Boy Scout and future owner of his dad’s Chevrolet dealership.

He wouldn’t get arrested for fighting with his own brothers after a family funeral, not Mike. No sir, he was the original solid citizen, not a hell-raising Creed. One word from Kristy and he’d probably beat feet down to the jewelry store to make a down payment on that honking diamond he’d given her.

Since Dylan was thinking these thoughts, and some that were even worse, when he pulled into Cassie’s yard, it took him an extra second or two to realize that the big white Cadillac SUV parked next to the teepee probably belonged to Tyler.

The rodeo insignia in the back window clenched it. Only champions had those silver-buckle decals, and Tyler had been a world-class bronc-buster, among other things.

He did TV commercials, too, and posed for cowboy calendars, half-naked. Taking a page from Dylan’s book, he’d done some stunt work, too, though mercifully they’d never wound up on the same movie set.

Dylan was flat-out not ready to deal with his younger brother just then, but leaving wasn’t an option, either. For one thing, he didn’t run from confrontations, unless they were with women. He’d come for Bonnie, and he wasn’t leaving without her.

So he got out of the truck and walked toward Cassie’s front door.

Best get it over with. He’d pass the word to Tyler, if Cassie hadn’t done it already, that Logan had been trying to get in touch with him, get Bonnie and all her assorted gear, and leave.

Tyler was on the floor when Dylan walked in, on his hands and knees, with Bonnie on his back, one hand gripping the back of his shirt collar, the other raised in the air, bronc-buster style.

And she was laughing as he bucked, careful not to throw her.

She was a Creed, all right. Thank God she was a girl, or she’d probably end up on the circuit, risking life and limb for a rush of adrenaline and some elusive prize money.

Of the three Creed brothers, Tyler was the youngest, and the tallest, and the one with the hottest temper. His hair was as dark as Cassie’s, and he wore it long enough to brush his collar.

He turned his head, saw Dylan and stopped bucking. Eased Bonnie off his back and got to his feet.

His deep blue eyes were arctic as he straightened to his full height.

As a kid, he’d had music in him, so much that it flowed out through the strings of his cheap guitar and just about everything he did. Between Jake’s drunken escapades and his mother’s suicide when he was still young, though, something had shut down inside him and never started up again.

“Logan wants to talk to you,” Dylan said, because with Tyler, even “hello” was shaky ground.

“So I hear,” Tyler answered. “Of course, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

Cassie wooed Bonnie into the kitchen, promising her a cookie, after casting worried glances from one Creed brother to the other.

“If you’re trying to get my back up, Ty, you’re going to have to do better than that. What brings you back to Stillwater Springs?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Tyler answered, turning to look when Bonnie’s giggle chimed from the kitchen. “Cute kid,” he added, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes warmed. “Bonnie, isn’t it?”