“Maybe my life has gotten too simple,” Tyler replied.
“Spoken like a true Creed,” Cassie retorted, but she was smiling—with her mouth, anyway. Her dark eyes were serious. “Folks have long memories, Tyler. Everybody—including Lily Ryder—is going to recall what happened between you and Doreen, and put two and two together.”
Tyler sighed. He hadn’t let on to anybody that Lily was on his mind, but Cassie knew him too well to be fooled by lies of omission. “Is she involved with anybody? Remarried maybe?” he asked, his voice sounding husky. He wouldn’t have put that particular question to anyone else on earth, not even Lily. His pride wouldn’t have allowed that. But Cassie, a wise middle-aged Native American with a teepee in her yard, was like a grandmother to him.
“No,” Cassie said. And she put a hand on his arm, a signal that she was about to say something he wouldn’t want to hear. “Her husband was a pilot. He killed himself two years ago.”
Suicide.
Tyler closed his eyes, thrust right back into the bad old days as surely and suddenly as if he’d stumbled into a time warp. He might have been a kid again, not a man standing on Cassie’s front porch, but a boy hiding on the other side of the kitchen door, out at the home place, listening as Sheriff Floyd Book, Jim Huntinghorse’s legendary predecessor, broke the news to Jake.
Angie’s dead. I’m so sorry. We found her at the Skylight Motel, on the old state highway. It was an overdose, Jake… .
Tyler had heard a wail, primitive and piercing, and thought it was Jake.
He’d only realized the sound was coming from his own throat when Dylan and Logan each took one of his arms and hauled him up off his knees, braced him between them.
Cassie squeezed his arm, hard, brought him back from the abyss, the place where the questions never stopped.
All of them started with the same word.
Why?
“What could be that bad?” he rasped. “A wife like Lily. A little girl like Tess. What would make a man throw them away?”
“You’re trying to understand again,” Cassie pointed out gently. “And there is no understanding, Tyler. People are fragile. They can break. It’s as simple—and as complicated—as that.”
Don’t try to understand.
How many times had he heard that advice, from how many people? Dylan, certainly. Logan, too. Even his late wife, Shawna, when she’d been trying to pull him out of some slump. And it wasn’t the first time Cassie had offered it, either.
The problem was, he couldn’t help going over the old ground, looking for clues. Analyzing. His mother’s suicide was the reason for so many things that had happened—and not happened—in his life. It drove him half-crazy sometimes, the need to know why she’d done it. Why she hadn’t been able to hold on, leave Jake, make a new start somewhere else.
“You’ll be seeing Lily, I suppose?” Cassie ventured.
“We’re having dinner tomorrow night,” Tyler answered, braced for more advice.
Leave it alone, Cassie had told him, after the breakup that summer, when he’d wanted to go back to Lily, beg her to forgive him for sleeping with Doreen, give him another chance.
Forget the girl, Jake had counseled. She’s too good for you, anyway .
Are you nuts? Logan had demanded, after bouncing him off the back wall of the barn a couple of times. Rolling in the hay with a waitress twice your age when Lily’s crazy about you?
Sometimes, the voices from the past crowded in like that, made Tyler want to put his hands over his ears. Not that that would have shut them out.
What had happened, had happened.
What was done, was done.
So why couldn’t he just let his poor mother rest in peace?
Why couldn’t he forgive her for breaking down that final time?
The realization hit him hard.
That was why he’d come home to Stillwater Springs, left the rodeo and the big-money stunt work and photo shoots behind, sold his big, empty house in L.A. and traded his Escalade for a junker that wouldn’t even run.
He’d come back to take on all the old ghosts, one by one or in a snarling pack, however they came at him. Win or lose, the fight was on.
Would he still be standing when it was all over?
There was only one way to find out.
And he was through running away.
CHAPTER FIVE
A FTER SERVING HER FATHER and daughter a healthy breakfast—grapefruit, whole-wheat toast and scrambled egg whites—Lily sneaked into her dad’s study to pick up the phone.
She’d call Tyler—she’d decided that while tossing and turning the night before. Tell him she couldn’t go out to dinner with him after all. Backpedal like crazy, tell an outright lie if she had to, say anything to get out of that hastily made date.
Except that she didn’t have his number.
She could get it from Kristy, of course. Call her or just walk over to the library and ask. Since Tyler was Kristy’s brother-in-law now, she’d surely know how to reach him.
Her eyes fell on her dad’s tattered address book. Hal had always disapproved of Tyler Creed, but now, after picking Ty up alongside the road the day before, it seemed the man was her dad’s new best friend. Maybe the number was right there, within easy reach.
It would be so much easier if she didn’t have to contact Kristy, either in person or over the telephone.
Lily had flipped to the C s—the book was jammed with tattered sticky notes, names and numbers scrawled helter-skelter on each one, all of them stuck in at odd and dizzying angles—and was scanning for Tyler’s contact information, when Hal walked in.
“Need something?” he asked, with a slight smile.
Lily swallowed hard. “Tyler’s number,” she said. There, it was out there. Let him make of it what he would.
“Don’t have it,” Hal said, still watching her, but more closely now. “By the way, Tess and I have taken a vote. It’s unanimous. Breakfast sucked.”
Lily closed the bulging address book, set it aside. Straightened her spine. “I suppose you would have preferred bacon and eggs?” she asked, sounding a little terse because she was embarrassed that he’d caught her going through his address book and gotten her to admit that she’d intended to call Tyler, of all people.
“ Preferred is not the word,” Hal said, grinning. “More like adored . Why do you want to call Tyler—as if I didn’t know?”
Lily’s face heated. He didn’t know. Hal probably thought she was jonesing to hear Tyler’s voice or something, like a besotted schoolgirl. Or hot to trot. “He asked me out to dinner,” she reminded him. “And I’ve decided not to go.”
Hal frowned. “Why?”
Lily countered with a question of her own. A stall tactic, for sure, and one that wouldn’t work for very long, if at all. “Weren’t you the one who always warned me that the Creeds were bad news, and taking up with them would lead to certain doom and destruction?”
“Lily, this is dinner, not an orgy.”
Lily bit back an instinctive response—being one-on-one with Tyler Creed, even in a public place, was the sexual equivalent of spontaneous combustion. The
man could probably bring her to orgasm without even touching her—and she’d be a fool to let herself in for that.
Or a fool not to.
“My,” she said instead, still hedging, “how things have changed.”
“I was wrong about Tyler,” Hal said, catching her completely off-guard. He’d never been quick to admit to a mistake but, then, neither had she, to be fair about it. “Wrong about a lot of things. Go out with him, Lily. Wear a pretty dress and some perfume and enjoy the evening.”
Enjoy the evening. People from her father’s generation were so innocent, so naive.
Or were they?
“What about Tess?” she asked.
“She’ll be just fine here with me. She’s a smart kid. If I go into cardiac arrest, she’ll call 911.”
“What’s cardiac arrest?” Tess asked, appearing in the doorway of the study. She was wearing expensive pink shorts, a flowered sun-top and flip-flops, all gifts acquired on her last visit to Nantucket, with Eloise. A little frown creased the space between her eyebrows. “Is somebody going to put Grampa in jail?”
Lily smiled, in spite of herself. “Nobody’s going to put your grandfather in jail,” she said, to reassure the child. It was so easy to forget how literal children were. “And you look very pretty today, by the way. Do you have plans?”
“There’s a kid playing in the backyard next door,” Tess answered, letting the subjects of incarceration and emergency medical intervention lapse, for the moment at least. “I think it’s a boy, but I’m going to introduce myself anyhow.”
“A nice couple lives there now,” Hal put in, at Lily’s look of concern. In Chicago, she didn’t know a single one of her neighbors, nor did Tess. “They bought the place after the Hendersons retired and moved to Florida.” He smiled down at Tess. “The child in question,” he added, “is a girl, and her name is Eleanor. She’s seven years old, and visiting her aunt and uncle for the summer.”
“Is she nice?” Tess asked seriously.
“Well,” Hal responded, just as seriously, “she’s never soaped my windows or set fire to the shrubbery or let the air out of my tires. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you. Guess you’ll just have to march on over there and find out for yourself.”
“Guess so,” Tess said, with one of those sudden, dazzling smiles of hers. Lily realized, with some chagrin, that she hadn’t seen her daughter light up like that since before Burke’s death. “Can I have money for the ice-cream truck? I heard the bell a few minutes ago—it’s about three streets over, I think, and headed our way.”
“No,” Lily said.
“Yes,” Hal answered, at exactly the same moment, already reaching into his pocket for the requested loot. His eyes, less weary than the day before, lingered on Lily’s face even as he handed Tess a few small bills. “It’s summer,” he told his daughter quietly. “Tess is six, pretty in pink and hoping to make a friend. Give her a break, Lily.”
A speech about processed food and preservatives and questionable hygiene conditions in ice-cream trucks and packaging plants rose into Lily’s throat, but she held it back. Her father was right. Surely one cone dipped in chocolate wouldn’t compromise the child’s health and well-being.
“Okay,” Lily agreed, with a smile.
Both Tess and Hal looked so surprised at her acquiescence that Lily wondered what they took her for. Some kind of natural-food fanatic, obviously.
“Have fun,” she told Tess. “And don’t go any farther than the neighbor’s yard or the front sidewalk.”
Tess beamed, thanked her grandfather for the cash and fled.
“I’ll need a dress,” Lily said, thinking aloud. Since she’d come back to Montana to look after her sick father, she hadn’t brought any special clothes along—just jeans, T-shirts, shorts and a few nightgowns.
She blushed, realizing how eager she must have sounded. How excited. Cinderella, going to the ball.
“You look good in red,” Hal told her, pleased. “There’s a little boutique downtown—it caters mostly to tourists, but you ought to be able to find something pretty there.”
Lily’s native good sense returned. Some of it, anyway. “I’m not leaving you alone. You just got out of the hospital.”
“I’m in no danger of keeling over, Lily,” Hal said. “In fact, I could use a little solitude, if you want the truth. I’m used to living alone.” He paused, looked comically inspired. “And think of the other possibilities. You could pick up something ghastly for lunch. Sprouts, maybe. Or something made of congealed soybeans.”
Lily laughed. And it felt strange and new and good—a forgotten skill, just rediscovered.
“I won’t be gone long,” she warned, “so don’t be seeing any four-legged patients or digging through the freezer for hot dogs or toaster waffles while I’m out. For all you know, one of those magnets on your fridge is really a nanny-cam in disguise.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Hal joked.
Lily went to him, on impulse, and kissed his craggy cheek.
Five minutes later, after skimming a glaze of lip gloss over her mouth and combing her hair, Lily was in her rental car, headed for Main Street.
The boutique Hal had told her about was tiny, and pitiful by Chicago standards, but she found a red sundress with white polka dots in her size, tried it on and liked what she saw in the dressing room mirror. She bought the dress, a lacy little over-sweater of gossamer white lace and a pair of strappy sandals to complete the outfit.
The next stop was the grocery section at Wal-Mart, since the mom-and-pop market had gone out of business years before, and there was no tofu to be found. She’d planned to prove to Hal that tofu could be delicious, but evidently, there wasn’t a big market for it in Stillwater Springs, Montana.
So she selected the ingredients for a seafood salad instead, all fresh and touted as organic, added a package of chicken breasts for Tess and Hal’s supper, and was rounding a corner, intent on getting to the checkout lines ahead of three women with copious purchases, when she nearly crashed her cart into Tyler’s.
Since when did he shop at Wal-Mart in the middle of the morning?
Damn, he looked good though, even at that hour. He wore a white T-shirt and battered jeans, and a lock of his raven-dark hair tumbled, bad-boy style, over his forehead.
His gaze drifted lazily over Lily, and her toes curled inside her sneakers. She even caught herself wishing she’d worn something sexier than jeans and a tank top.
Reality doused her like so much cold water, flung from a bucket.
In a matter of hours, she was going to be alone with this man.
In grave danger of spontaneous combustion—if it didn’t happen right there in Wal-Mart, in front of God and everybody.
Heat climbed Lily’s neck, pulsed in her cheeks.
She’d tried so hard to make things work with Burke, especially in bed. How many times, though, had she reached the pinnacle by imagining that Tyler Creed, not her husband, was the one fondling her, suckling her breasts, driving deep inside her? Had she cried out his name, at the height of her release, instead of Burke’s?
Probably.
The thought filled her with shame—and a dense, sultry kind of heat.
She’d never made love with Tyler, though they’d certainly engaged in some heavy petting while they were dating. For all she knew, he was a dud in bed. And why was she even debating such a question, anyway?
“How’s your da
d?” Tyler asked.
Lily bit her lower lip. Not such a tough thing to answer. It should be easy—as soon as she stopped fighting back the climax already building deep in her center.
“He’s—fine. Stubborn. I think he’ll be okay.”
“Good,” Tyler said.
Lily glanced at the contents of his cart. Power tools. Sheets and blankets. Sugary cereal and a big jug of whole milk. A small-screen TV.
Quite a combination.
He grinned, slow-heat style, watching her. Was he imagining her naked?
No, she was the one whose imagination was running wild.
Get a grip, she told herself.
He touched her hand, where she held on to the shopping-cart handle with a death grip. It was a simple, innocent brush of his fingertips, nothing more.
And Lily went over the top.
Smiled determinedly, broke out in a sweat. That special little muscle deep inside her flexed violently, then flexed again. It was all she could do not to groan aloud with the unexpected and purely inappropriate pleasure of it.
She’d just come in Wal-Mart, for God’s sake. Fully dressed. In the bright light of day.
Tyler didn’t know, did he? He couldn’t have guessed.
“The air-conditioning must be on the blink in here,” he said, but there was a look in his eyes that said he knew full well what had just happened, or at least suspected. That he’d set the whole thing in motion on purpose.
But that was impossible, of course.
Even for a Creed.
Wasn’t it?
“About tonight,” she choked out, when the aftershocks began to subside. She still sounded too breathless. “I really shouldn’t—”
“No getting out of it now,” Tyler broke in easily. “Your dad will be okay, and so will Tess, and it’s only dinner, Lily.”
Montana Creeds: Tyler Page 8