Montana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  More emotion welled up inside Lily, so much that she couldn’t speak. She’d felt alone for so long, even before Burke died, and the afternoon on the ranch had been wonderful—like being part of a large, caring family.

  Dylan smiled, turned and walked away.

  Lily stood on the porch, watching until he drove away, and nearly collided with Hal when she turned to go inside.

  “Tess is sleeping in her clothes,” Hal reported, with a smile. “She’s absolutely worn-out, but she promised to tell me all about her day at breakfast.”

  Lily swallowed hard, laughed. “I’d better go in and help her change into pajamas at least,” she said.

  Hal shook his head, urged her toward the rocking chairs at the other end of the porch. “I took her shoes off,” he replied, “and one night sleeping in her clothes won’t do any harm.”

  Lily let her father guide her to a chair, and sat down somewhat heavily.

  “You’re pretty tired, too,” Hal observed gently.

  Lily nodded. “It was quite a day.”

  “Especially after such a late night,” her dad agreed.

  Lily let the remark pass.

  “I brought your dress in from the clothesline after I got back from visiting the clinic,” Hal told her affably, settling into the second rocking chair. In happier days, before and after the divorce, the two of them had sat on the porch lots of nights, talking about everything in general and nothing in particular. “It was dry and I figured it might fade or something if I left it out there.”

  Lily nodded her thanks but let the comment pass. “How are things going at the clinic?” she asked. Hal looked rested, as though he might have had a recent nap, so it seemed safe to assume he hadn’t overextended himself by visiting his office.

  “Great,” Hal answered, with a gruff little chuckle. “It’s almost as if they don’t need me down there at all.”

  “Have you thought about retiring? Selling the practice and just taking it easy?”

  “I’d be dead inside of six months,” Hal wasted no time in saying. He wasn’t looking at Lily, but out into the spill of light pooling beneath the nearest streetlamp. “Nothing like a heart attack to make a man take stock of his life. My veterinary practice—well—it’s about the only thing I’ve done right in a long, long time.”

  Don’t, Lily pleaded silently. Now that the day on Stillwater Springs Ranch was over, and the fantasy of being a Creed wife had passed—all the things she’d imagined seemed silly now—her emotions were raw, and much too close to the surface for comfort.

  It was sinking in now, Dylan’s warning.

  Tyler was indeed still Tyler, always ready to take chances, tangle with fate, face whatever came his way.

  And she was still Lily Ryder Kenyon, basically shy, overly cautious, terrified of so many things.

  Hal took her hand, unaware of her thoughts, of course. Chafed her knuckles with his thumb. “I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sorry for the way your mother and I handled the divorce. Sorry for sending you away. I should have had more faith in you—let you live your life, with or without Tyler Creed.”

  Lily was glad of the relative darkness shrouding that porch, because her eyes filled with tears.

  I should have had more faith in you.

  Her father had been trying to protect her, just as she tried to protect her own child. Would there be a gulf between her and Tess someday, like the one she and her father were trying to bridge now? Did she have the courage to allow Tess to grow up in confidence instead of the continual fear that something bad would happen? Could she allow Tess to make her own mistakes, and suffer the consequences?

  “You did your best,” Lily managed to say, though her voice was hardly more than a murmur. “And maybe you were right. Maybe Tyler would have sweet-talked me into forgiving him, way back when—”

  “And maybe you would have been happy with him, Lily,” Hal broke in quietly.

  “I wouldn’t have had Tess, then. And I can’t imagine that.”

  “I know. But you wouldn’t have known the difference, would you, if your life had taken a different course?” He paused, gave a ragged chortle. “You might have had a son or a daughter with Tyler—maybe several. And then you wouldn’t be able to imagine not being the mother of those children, either.”

  As convoluted as it was, Lily got her father’s point. And a certain sadness possessed her; for a moment or two, she was struck breathless with the loss of the children who had never been born to her and Tyler. It was as if they’d actually existed somewhere, all this time, just out of reach.

  Rowdy, rough-and-tumble boys.

  Sweet, spirited girls.

  She shook off the strange yearnings her father’s words had aroused in her. She had Tess, and Tess was the greatest blessing in her life. It was wrong to want more.

  “I guess it’s making me crazy,” Hal reflected apologetically, after a long, pensive silence. “Recovering from that damn heart attack, that is. I’ve got too much time to think.”

  Lily could identify. Before her return to Stillwater Springs, she’d been too busy with Tess and her very demanding job and, until two years ago, Burke, to think about Tyler, and the children and home they might have had together. Except, of course, during those moments when memories would ambush her…

  Stop, she told herself.

  There was no reason to believe that, even if she and Tyler had gotten back together, even if she’d married him instead of Burke, things would be all sunshine and roses now.

  Like as not, Tyler would have gotten restless and left her alone to go on the rodeo circuit. And he probably would have found himself another waitress, eventually, too. Maybe a whole bunch of them.

  “Are you planning to see Tyler again, Lily?” Hal asked.

  Lily rose slowly out of her chair. Stretched. She was tired to the bone, and she ached, though whether that was because of that afternoon’s brief horseback ride or Tyler’s lovemaking, she didn’t know.

  “He hasn’t asked,” she said.

  “He will,” Hal said, standing up. “And that isn’t an answer.”

  If Tyler set out to seduce her again, Lily knew, she wouldn’t put up much resistance. Where he was concerned, she seemed to have no willpower at all, which was a scary thing, since she was so independent in every other way. But it went deeper than physical need, beyond desire, into something basic and sacred and mostly inexplicable.

  She knew this much: There was a certain spectacular freedom in letting herself go, the way she had with Tyler. She’d felt powerful, even in surrender, strong, even in weakness. In Tyler’s company, in his arms, in his bed, she was a different person. A person who wasn’t afraid to feel .

  She’d swaddled herself in pretended indifference, not long after Burke’s first affair. And in the rare instances when that apathy had given way, she’d hated herself for not having the backbone to leave him, right then, and start over somewhere else, just her and Tess.

  “Lily?” Hal prompted, rising out of his chair, too. It rocked rhythmically with the motion, as though, in some parallel universe, another Hal was still sitting there.

  She sighed. Her father wasn’t the only one losing his mind. “I’d go,” she admitted, to herself as well as to Hal. “If Tyler asked me out again, I’d say yes.”

  He patted her shoulder. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

 
They went into the house then, father and daughter, and Lily noticed that her dad paused to lock the front door and turn the dead bolt. It hurt, knowing the town she remembered as such a safe place had changed enough to make such measures necessary.

  Hal switched off various lights, and Lily went on to the kitchen, to take his pill bottles down from one of the cupboards and carefully count out the night’s dose.

  Reluctantly, he swallowed the medicine, said good-night, disappeared into his room.

  Lily remained in the kitchen for a few minutes, puttering. Setting up the coffeemaker for morning, checking her cell phone, which she’d forgotten to charge the night before.

  She plugged it into the cord, switched it on to check for messages.

  To her surprise, there were two.

  Vaguely unsettled, since no one had called her on the cell phone since the day she left Chicago to rush to her father’s bedside in that Missoula hospital, Lily punched in the voice-mail codes.

  The first call was from Eloise. She missed Tess—and, oh, yes, Lily, too, of course—and some storage-unit place had called about an overdue bill. Evidently, Burke had stashed some of his belongings there, and did Lily want to go through all that stuff, or should she, Eloise, have it hauled away?

  Lily frowned. She’d paid all of Burke’s bills after he died, as they came in. If there had been one from this “storage-unit place,” as Eloise put it, she would have paid that, too.

  Her first instinct was to call her mother-in-law back, as late as it was, and ask her to have some charity haul away whatever Burke had been storing, promising to reimburse her for the storage rental and any other expenses involved. But something besides common courtesy stopped her from dialing the familiar number.

  Suppose there were things in that storage unit that Tess would want someday?

  That didn’t seem likely, once Lily reflected on it for a few moments. If Eloise Kenyon was willing to have “that stuff” hauled away, that meant she had all the important mementos from her son’s younger days safely in her possession.

  It was all too complicated to think about that night. She’d decide what to do in the morning, when she was rested.

  Lily saved her mother-in-law’s message and listened to the second one.

  Her boss had called.

  They were sorry, and they hoped her father was getting better with every passing day, but they couldn’t hold her job open for the requested six weeks after all.

  If Lily couldn’t return to Chicago by the beginning of the following week, they would have to replace her.

  Numbed by the knowledge that she could be replaced so easily, Lily saved that message, too.

  She couldn’t go back to Chicago so soon.

  Hal wasn’t out of the woods yet, couldn’t be left to fend for himself. He’d be back at work full-time and living on greasy cheeseburgers before she and Tess hit the city limits. And he’d said some things that worried her, while they were talking on the porch earlier.

  Nothing like a heart attack to make a man take stock of his life. My veterinary practice—well—it’s about the only thing I’ve done right in a long, long time.

  I’d be dead in six months .

  Chilled, Lily realized with a wallop how very much she wanted to get to know her father, get back to the place where she could comfortably call him “Dad” again.

  As she prepared for bed, taking a long bath, pulling on the oversize T-shirt she’d always worn when she needed to feel cosseted and cozy, brushing her teeth, she reviewed her financial situation.

  She wasn’t rich, but she was a good saver and she had no debt to burden her. The cost of living in a small town like Stillwater Springs was certainly lower than in the Windy City, and if push came to shove, she could always sell her condo.

  Maybe it was time to consider starting her own business, as Tess, of all people, had suggested. She’d always wanted to construct a Web site and sell “outsider art” online—clothing, jewelry, collages and paintings, the work of regular people.

  “Regular people,” in Lily’s experience, were incredibly talented, and their creations were unique. In a world of mass manufacturing, handmade items had more appeal.

  Of course, she reasoned, throwing back the covers to get into bed, it might be years before the Web site actually showed a profit—if it ever did.

  On the other hand, her own needs were simple, and thanks to the trust fund Burke had set up before his death, Tess would never want for anything, even if Lily never worked another day in her life.

  After switching off the bedside lamp, Lily lay in the dark, her tired mind whirling.

  Eloise Kenyon would raise hell if she brought Tess to live in Stillwater Springs.

  She recalled Tess’s remark about the trust fund and the insurance settlement—an inadvertent relaying of some observation Eloise had made. Lying there in the spare room bed, Lily felt a surge of anger. Damn, she hated that kind of passive-aggressive crap.

  And Tess was her child, not Eloise’s.

  Where Lily chose to live, and raise her daughter, was flat-out none of her mother-in-law’s business. Eloise could damn well lower herself to visit rural Montana if she wanted to see her grandchild, and of course there would always be the short jaunts to Nantucket and the Kenyon mansion in Oak Park. Whatever her own issues might be with Burke’s mother, Lily knew that Eloise took very good care of Tess when the two of them were together, subtle make-sure-your-mother-hears-this comments to the little girl aside.

  The first order of business, come morning, Lily decided, would be to call Eloise Kenyon and decide what to do with the contents of Burke’s secret storage unit. Once that had been determined, Lily would break the news that she and Tess might be staying on in Stillwater Springs longer than they’d originally planned.

  And when that conversation was finished, she would give her soon-to-be-former employer a ring. She knew her boss expected her to rush back to Chicago, flushed with chagrin over her absence and desperate to please, and get right back into the old harness.

  Surprise, she thought, with a smile.

  It was a new day.

  And she was a new Lily.

  She closed her eyes, relaxing into exhaustion, and when she opened them again, it was morning, and Tess was standing over her with the cordless phone from the kitchen in one hand.

  “It’s Nana,” she said, in a stage whisper. “I told her you were still sleeping, but she has to talk to you, right now. ”

  Exasperated, Lily struggled to wake up, raised herself to a sitting position with the pillows fluffed behind her and took the phone.

  Tess lingered, probably curious, but Lily sent her out of the room with a waving motion of one hand.

  Reluctantly, Tess left, closing the door behind her.

  Lily drew a very deep breath and released it slowly before saying pleasantly, “Hello, Eloise. What’s the big emergency?”

  Eloise was silent for a moment, and when she spoke, it was with wounded indignation. “Can’t I call my own daughter-in-law?” she asked. “Especially when she’s taken my only grandchild to some godforsaken burg in Montana? ”

  Lily’s temper surged. She tamped it down, forced a smile into her voice. “Tess told you I was sleeping,” she said moderately. “When you insisted on talking to me anyway,
I assumed it was urgent.”

  Clearly miffed, Eloise immediately snapped, “I need to know what you want me to do with Burke’s things. The ones he was keeping in that storage unit.”

  “Now?” Lily asked sweetly.

  She felt Eloise back off before she heard it in the other woman’s voice. “I’ve been through the stuff,” she admitted. “There’s nothing that would interest you or Tess—except possibly some medical records.”

  “Medical records?” Lily asked, sitting up straighter now. Feeling mildly alarmed. Had Burke been suffering from some hereditary disease—one that might have been passed down to Tess?

  Eloise let out a long, broken sigh. “He had a vasectomy, Lily,” she said. “Right after Tess was born.”

  Lily’s head spun. “What?”

  Eloise began to cry, very softly. “I know you always wanted more children. I wanted more grandchildren . Apparently, Burke deceived us both.”

  Burke had had a vasectomy—without telling her.

  He’d let her go on hoping, go on trying to conceive, knowing all the while that he’d already made that impossible .

  “Lily?” Eloise prompted, when Lily didn’t respond. “Are you still there, dear?”

  Dazed, Lily struggled to find her voice. When she did, she stammered out something incoherent and hung up. She dropped the receiver onto the bed beside her, laid both hands to her abdomen.

  Tyler had asked if she could be pregnant.

  And she’d said no.

  A combination of exultation and fear roiled inside her.

  Surprise, she thought. But this time, she wasn’t smiling.

  CHAPTER TEN

  L OGAN’S UNSCHEDULED MORNING visit had been brief and to the point, and it stuck in Tyler’s mind long after his brother had left the cabin. Soon afterward, Dylan had stopped by, ostensibly to drop Davie off.