Montana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  Briana’s attention was momentarily diverted to her sons. “Boys,” she said. “Settle down a little, and the dogs will, too. All that yapping and yowling is enough to give me a headache.”

  “We’ve got lots of horses,” Lily heard the older boy, Josh, say to Tess. “Want to see them?”

  Lily bit back an automatic be-careful. She didn’t know Briana Creed, but Kristy was an old friend, and a responsible person, and she didn’t seem one bit worried. Lily took a deep breath, let it out slowly and kept her fears to herself.

  Kristy hoisted Bonnie up onto one hip and offered a hand to Tess. “I’ll go along, too,” she said, and started for the barn.

  Lily didn’t know whether to follow the gaggle of woman, dogs and children, or stay behind with Briana.

  “She’s a regular pied piper,” Briana commented, smiling as she watched Kristy move away, with a trail of kids and canines straggling behind her. “Come inside, Lily. I just brewed a pitcher of iced tea.”

  Again, Lily hesitated—everything inside her was geared to watching over Tess in any and all situations—but there was something about Briana, about the very energy of that place, that reassured her.

  And she trusted Kristy.

  “Your dad gave us quite a scare,” Briana said, as she and Lily headed toward the house. “I guess you know the heart attack happened right here, on our patio, during a barbecue we held for Jim Huntinghorse, when he was running for sheriff.”

  Lily nodded, shuddering a little. The story could so easily have turned out differently—she and Tess might have come back to Stillwater Springs for a funeral, rather than a long summer visit.

  “Dylan and Jim did CPR,” Briana went on, as they stepped into a cool, old-fashioned kitchen. The room, like the rest of the house, was obviously being renovated.

  “I’d like to thank them both in person,” Lily said.

  “You’ll get your chance,” Briana told her, gesturing toward the large round table in the center of the kitchen and heading for the refrigerator. “Have a seat. I’ll pour that tea I promised you.”

  Lily sat down, looking around and trying not to be too obvious about it.

  The Creeds were a local legend, so she knew some of their history. According to Hal, except for the five years since Jake Creed’s death, that house had been continuously occupied for well over a century.

  What would it be like, to live in a place where so many of your ancestors had lived and died?

  “We’re replacing this god-awful flooring with pegged hardwood,” Briana said good-naturedly, arriving at the table with two ice-filled glasses and a pitcher of cold tea. “At the same time, Logan and I don’t want to change things too much.”

  Logan and I .

  Lily smiled. In high school, Logan had had the typical Creed reputation: hell-raiser, heartbreaker, fearless rebel. He’d been reckless to a fault. Now, apparently, he was a family man, concerned with things like pegged hardwood and the integrity of old houses. “I see you’re building on,” she said, mostly because it was her turn to contribute to the conversation.

  Briana smiled, poured tea for herself and then for Lily, and sat down across from her at the table. Schoolbooks and tablet paper had been gathered into a semineat pile and shunted over to one side. “We’re adding a master suite,” she told Lily. “Rooms for the boys, an office for Logan and a big family room.”

  A big family room implied the expectation of a big family. Clearly, Briana and Logan planned to have more children, and Lily felt a swift stab of generous envy. She’d wanted at least four herself, and she and Burke had tried, but after Tess, there had been no more pregnancies.

  She supposed it was for the best, but there was still that bruised place in her heart, where the disappointment lived.

  She must have made some inane comment, because Briana reacted as though she’d spoken.

  Nodding, Briana joked, “At least we’re not going to have a room with a mechanical bull in it, like Kristy and Dylan.”

  “A mechanical bull?” Lily echoed, confused.

  “You know.” Briana grinned. “Like the ones they have in cowboy bars? A bull-shaped machine that bucks?”

  Lily laughed. Toto, she said silently, we’re not in Chicago anymore.

  “I remember,” she told Briana. “Dylan rode bulls in the rodeo.”

  Again, Briana nodded. “Logan’s event was saddle-bronc riding, and Tyler rode bareback.”

  Tyler. For about five seconds, she’d forgotten about him.

  Silly to think the respite could have lasted. This was Tyler’s childhood home; he’d grown up in this house. And even when Lily was dating him, back when she’d barely gotten the braces off her teeth, he’d been entering every rodeo he could.

  “I guess they must still have the rodeo in their blood,” she said, referring to the mechanical bull Dylan and Kristy were installing.

  Briana smiled again. Or had she ever actually stopped smiling? She and Kristy were about the happiest women Lily had ever seen, and it wasn’t hard to figure out at least one of the reasons. They slept with Creed men, every night of their lives. It figured that they’d glow with perpetual satisfaction, if her own night with Tyler was any indication of what these fabled brothers could do in—or out of—bed.

  “They’re over it,” Briana said, with a note of relief in her voice. “Following the rodeo, I mean. But Logan and Dylan still ride like crazy men when they’re herding cattle.” She paused and, for the first time, her spirits seemed, if not dampened, not high, either. “Then there’s Tyler—”

  “Does he still follow the rodeo?” Lily ventured, hoping she sounded casual. The ice cubes in her tea glass rattled a little, though, as she lifted it to her mouth to take a sip.

  “I don’t think so,” Briana answered, after biting her lower lip and looking away for a moment. “He doesn’t come around, and Logan and Dylan don’t talk about him much, so I don’t know for sure.”

  “Oh,” Lily said, much relieved when Kristy, Bonnie, Tess, the boys and the two dogs all came in from outside.

  Kristy carried Bonnie into a nearby bathroom, and when the two of them came out, their faces and hands were scrubbed clean. Briana sent her boys to wash up, and that left Tess standing there in a strange kitchen, looking somewhat at a loss.

  The poignant hope in Tess’s little face struck Lily like a blow. She got up, went to the kitchen sink and moistened a length of paper towels under the faucet.

  “Let’s get you washed up, too,” she told Tess, as briskly as if she were a Creed wife, like Kristy and Briana, and Tess was as much a part of this boisterous household as Bonnie or Alec or Josh.

  Tess’s smile was so quick, and so bright, that Lily’s throat closed up again.

  For a little while, she told herself, she’d let Tess pretend that they both belonged with this family, on this land. And she’d allow herself to pretend a little, too.

  CHAPTER NINE

  W ITH K RISTY AND B RIANA laughing and chattering in that venerable old kitchen, and flour flying everywhere as the makings of bread dough were gathered and assembled, it was all too easy for Lily to go right on pretending.

  She imagined what it would be like to be married to Tyler.

  For starters, the sex would be cataclysmic.

  And Tyler would want her to let Tess t
ake more chances, urge Lily not to be overprotective, and they’d argue about that sometimes.

  She was a good cook, so she wouldn’t mind fixing the meals, but, like her dad, Tyler probably wouldn’t be all that crazy about the quantities of tofu she’d feed him.

  They’d probably have words about that, too.

  Heated ones, maybe.

  And then they’d make up in bed, in the sultry darkness of the room they shared, not just one night, but every night, as soon as they were sure Tess was sound asleep and wouldn’t overhear.

  Imagining the making-up process made Lily’s core turn molten and her face burn. She waited until neither Briana nor Kristy was looking, then held her iced tea glass, many times refilled by then, to the base of her throat.

  Her heart was beating too fast, and her breath was shallow. And still she couldn’t make herself put an end to the scenarios unfolding in her mind.

  Tyler would be good with kids—she knew that. He’d be a father to Tess, love her like his own. Teach her to ride and fish and fix things that were broken.

  And Tess would thrive under the warmth of his easy approval, in a way she might never do if it was just her and Lily against the world.

  You’re on dangerous ground, warned the voice in Lily’s head, the one that hadn’t wanted her to go out with Tyler the night before. The one that had scolded her for hanging her panties to dry on the side mirror of the Blazer he’d borrowed from Kristy. The one that would never, ever say the things Lily had not only said but shouted in the delicious, frenzied, slippery-naked heat of lovemaking.

  The iced tea wasn’t helping. And Lily couldn’t stop the fantasies.

  She imagined Tyler assembling things, late on Christmas Eve, to put under the tree for an ever-more Santa-skeptical Tess.

  She imagined washing his back in the shower, even ironing his shirts.

  All of it sounded good.

  Her practical side tried, yet again, to assert itself. And none of it is ever going to happen. You’re torturing yourself, that’s all.

  Her im practical side won out.

  When the bread dough was finally glimmering, buttery-topped and fragrant, in a row of pans on the counter, and they all trooped outside for the promised horseback ride, Lily pictured Tyler saddling a horse, lifting Tess onto the animal’s back, adjusting the stirrups for her, calmly instructing her to hold the reins this way….

  And once Tess was safely settled on some gentle creature, Tyler would give Lily a boost into another saddle, on another horse, and swing up behind her. Reach around her to take the reins, enclosing her in the steely circle of his arms.

  She could almost feel his erection pressing against her buttocks and lower back, hard with heat and promise.

  When we’re alone, he might whisper into her ear, this is what I’m going to do to you….

  “Are you all right?” Kristy asked, breaking into Lily’s reverie. “You look flushed. You’re not sick or scared or anything, are you?”

  Lily wasn’t sick or scared, mounted though she was on a real, live, sweaty, dusty horse. The creature was so old it hadn’t even moved yet, though all the other horses, Tess’s pony included, were moving happily around the grassy pasture just beyond the corral fence.

  Even little Bonnie was riding, safely tucked in front of Kristy, grinning and gripping the saddle horn with both her pudgy little hands.

  “I’m okay,” Lily lied, summoning up a smile. Just terminally horny, that’s all.

  Kristy smiled, believing her. “Good,” she said.

  They’d finished the ride, and put all the horses away by the time Logan and Dylan arrived, crossing the broad pasture on horses of their own. The boy Lily had seen with Tyler the day before, in Wal-Mart, was with them, riding behind Dylan.

  Lily had virtually grown up with Logan and Dylan, and they greeted her exuberantly. Logan sprang down off his horse, picked her up by the waist and spun her around in a circle before planting a smacking kiss on her cheek. She’d barely recovered her equilibrium before Dylan did the same thing.

  Logan and Dylan made short work of unsaddling their horses and turning them loose in the corral.

  “Where’s Tyler?” someone asked as the whole bunch of them headed toward the house. The bread was ready to go into the oven, according to Briana, and Lily knew she and Kristy had planned a huge ranch-style supper to go with it.

  By then, Lily had decided to give Tess, and herself, the gift of letting the pretending go on until the day was over and they were back in the real world.

  A look passed between Logan and Dylan, and the boy—Davie, if Lily recalled correctly, from their brief meeting at Wal-Mart—was the one who answered the question about Tyler’s whereabouts.

  “Maybe his truck is fixed,” Davie said, sounding a little sad. “And he’s gone to pick it up.”

  Dylan slapped the boy on the shoulder and then said something that made him smile tentatively, though Lily didn’t hear what it was.

  The bread turned out perfectly, and the meat loaf and several side dishes Briana had prepared tasted as good as anything Lily had ever eaten.

  But darkness was gathering outside the windows of that well-lit, noisy kitchen. It was the time of day that had always made her homesick after her mom and dad’s divorce; when she was with one, she’d missed the other.

  Now, perhaps because of the silly head games she’d been playing with herself all afternoon, it was Tyler she missed.

  His absence was a yawning ache inside her.

  And she suspected, for all the laughter and the teasing and the second helpings, that some of the others gathered in that enormous kitchen felt it, too.

  He should have been there.

  She and Tess didn’t belong—but he did.

  When the evening finally wound down, it was Dylan who drove Lily and Tess back to town. Tess, exhausted from all the fun, had practically fallen asleep on her plate, and Dylan had carried the child to his truck, buckled her in with the easy skill of a veteran father.

  Tess was out like the proverbial light before they’d even passed under the big sign over the gate.

  Dylan didn’t say much until they’d reached the main road. Then he cleared his throat, glanced into his rearview mirror to make sure Tess was down for the count, and said, just as her father had, “Be careful, Lily.”

  She stiffened, looked over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked lightly.

  “You know what it means,” Dylan told her patiently.

  Lily’s face heated again, but this time the phenomenon was rooted in mortification, not fantasy. “He told you?”

  “That the two of you spent the night together?” Dylan asked. “There was no need for that, Lily. He asked Kristy and me to keep Davie with us until this morning, and it wasn’t hard to figure out the rest.”

  “Dylan, you’re a good friend—you saved my father’s life and I’ll always be grateful—and I like you. I especially like your wife. But none of this is any of your business—I hope you know that.”

  He grinned that crooked-at-the-corner Creed grin that had probably been the ruination of more women than a Chinese merchant could tally up on an abacus. “Take it easy. I’m on your side. All I’m saying is, Tyler’s still—Tyler. Of the three of us, he was the wildest. He’s got a temper and a grudge against Logan and a few other people in this town, and
I don’t believe he’s thinking straight.”

  Tyler’s still Tyler.

  “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Lily,” Dylan said. “That’s all.”

  Lily bit her lower lip, looked away, changed the subject. Dylan might be satisfied that Tess was actually asleep, but she wasn’t. Like all children, Tess played possum when she wanted to listen in on a grown-up conversation.

  “I really appreciate what you and Jim Huntinghorse did for my dad,” she said. “When he had his heart attack, I mean.”

  Dylan resettled his hat, kept his gaze straight ahead, on the dark highway. The truck’s headlights shone like beacons, but country roads were treacherous—Tyler had barely missed a doe and a fawn early that morning, when he was bringing her home. “I guess the other conversation’s over?” he asked.

  Lily indicated Tess’s presence with a slight motion of her head. “For now,” she said.

  Dylan didn’t say much of anything after that. He delivered Lily and Tess to Hal’s house in town. By the time they arrived, Tess was awake, yawning and dusty and a little sun-burned.

  He walked both of them to the front door, but as soon as Tess had gone inside, calling for her grandfather and probably intending to give him a blow-by-blow account of the afternoon’s events, Dylan stopped Lily on the porch by taking a light grip on her elbow.

  “I can’t let you go in there thinking any of us—the Creeds, I mean—would be unhappy if you and Tyler got together,” he said. “We’d be thrilled, Lily. But he’s still got a lot of things to work through, and I don’t want you or Tess to be caught in the cross fire.”

  Lily nodded, touched by Dylan’s concern. It was almost as if they were already family. “Thank you, Dylan,” she said, and she meant it.

  He leaned forward, planted a light, brotherly kiss on her forehead. “Come back to the ranch again soon,” he told her. “It was real nice having you and Tess around.”