Montana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  Lily looked so deeply into him then that she must have seen all his secrets, even the ones he kept from himself. “Are you still involved with Doreen, Tyler?” she asked. “Because if you are, we’re not going any further.”

  “That’s been over since the summer it happened,” Tyler answered. “And it was never anything but sex, anyway.”

  “What is it with us, Tyler?” Lily asked, very quietly. “Is it nothing but sex with us, too?”

  “It’s more and you know it,” Tyler heard himself say. He grinned. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the sex.”

  Lily laughed and bumped him hard with her shoulder. “Nope,” she agreed. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the sex.”

  “Does that mean we can have more?” Tyler asked.

  And that made her laugh again, and cry again, and the combination of the two carved out places in Tyler and filled them with emotions so new to him they didn’t have names.

  “First chance we get,” she said.

  “I’m free right about now,” Tyler said, and he was only half kidding.

  “Tyler,” Lily pointed out primly, “we are sitting on my father’s back porch. He and my six-year-old daughter will be back any minute. I don’t know about you, but I see that as a logistical problem.”

  “We probably have time for a quickie,” Tyler suggested, without much hope. He’d have thrown her over one shoulder and carried her back to his place caveman-style, but he’d promised Davie a horseback ride, after backing out the first time, and the kid had taken off for Logan’s place right after breakfast, on foot, he was so eager to ride.

  Lily traced his jawline with one fingertip, sending flames searing through him. “No quickies, Tyler,” she said, almost purring. “Not yet, anyway. I want it slow and hot and wet. And I want hours and hours of it.”

  Tyler groaned. Now he had a hard-on the size of a totem pole, and no way to make it better. “That was a dirty trick, Lily Ryder,” he growled. “How am I supposed to face your dad with a boner shoving against the front of my pants?”

  She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. And she didn’t, he noticed, distracted though he was, correct him by saying she was Lily Kenyon. “I guess you’d better wait in the truck,” she teased. “That way, he won’t see.”

  “You’re sure about that quickie?”

  “I’m sure. When I have a climax, Tyler, I glow for hours afterward. In case you haven’t noticed.”

  He groaned again. “Oh, I’ve noticed, all right,” he said miserably, shifting on the porch. He eyed the lawn sprinkler, actually considered unscrewing it and drenching himself with the hose, right there in Doc Ryder’s backyard, just to cool off.

  “Tell you what,” Lily said, close to his ear. “I’ll slip out later, and we’ll meet somewhere.”

  “Like where?”

  “That old cemetery on your ranch?” Lily suggested. “I’ve always thought that was such a peaceful place, and there’s a lot of deep, soft grass—”

  Tyler was in genuine pain by then. Make that agony. He got to his feet, tried in vain to right himself without putting one hand down the front of his jeans. Doc and Tess and Kit Carson were on their way back—he caught the sound of their voices, at the vague periphery of his hearing.

  “Eight o’clock?” Lily asked.

  “Eight o’clock,” Tyler agreed, wondering how the hell he’d wait that long. As it was, he’d have to jump off the end of his dock into the lake before he went to meet Davie for that horseback ride.

  “You’re going to be thinking about this all day, aren’t you?” Lily murmured.

  “Yes,” Tyler answered. “And you’re going to pay, once I lay you down in the grass tonight, lady.”

  Having said that, he went to the truck, got behind the wheel, half in and half out, because Doc and Tess and the dog were almost to the side gate by then. Doc opened the passenger-side door of the truck, and Kit Carson jumped in on his own, scrambled from the floorboards to the seat and sat there panting and grinning, very pleased with himself.

  Tyler was doing a little panting of his own, at least on the inside.

  “I hope we were gone long enough,” Doc remarked casually, with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Not nearly long enough, Tyler thought. He supposed it was all for the best, though. He’d have had Lily bent over the nearest waist-high surface by then, if she’d agreed to the quickie, and she’d have shone like a lighthouse on a dark night after she came. And came.

  Lily was a multiple-orgasm kind of gal.

  And even an old fogy like Doc, who probably hadn’t had sex since the first Bush administration, would have known exactly what had happened.

  “Thanks for walking my dog, Doc,” Tyler said, amazed at how normal he sounded, starting up the truck. Waving to Tess as he backed out of the driveway.

  Conscious that Davie was waiting, and probably impatiently, Tyler meant to make one more stop, nevertheless. Fortunately, by the time he pulled in at the casino on the edge of town, he was no longer at full mast, so he wouldn’t have to stop off at home for the planned dip in the lake. Unfortunately, he was still damn uncomfortable.

  He’d scanned the custody documents Doreen had given him the day before into his laptop at home, and tucked them into a secondhand manila envelope he’d found in a drawer. Now, sitting in the parking lot, he signed them at all the little x’s, pulled his checkbook from the glove compartment and wrote a draft for one hell of a lot of money. Finally, he jammed it into the envelope, along with the documents, and scrawled Doreen’s name across the front.

  Leaving Kit Carson fretting in the truck, he sprinted toward the side entrance, made his way to the employees’ lounge and left the packet with the security guard. When Doreen came in to work her shift, her blood-money would be waiting.

  Now, he just had to think of a way to break the news to Davie. The trail ride, just the two of them up in the foothills on horseback, would be a good chance to talk, but Tyler had already decided that he’d wait. Davie would be shook up afterward, of course, and need some putting back together, and that would make meeting Lily at the cemetery all but impossible.

  Tyler had just paid a shitload of money to basically adopt a kid who might not even be his, and he’d do right by Davie if it killed him, but there were limits to his nobility—and they were just this side of a deep-grass tryst with Lily Ryder under a summer moon.

  Since neither he nor Dylan had any horses, though Dylan was in the process of building a real fancy barn, to hear him tell it, Tyler had had no choice but to borrow a couple from Logan. With luck, his brother wouldn’t be around when he got there.

  As it turned out, he’d used up his quota of luck for the day when he’d leveled with Lily about Davie and she hadn’t told him to hit the road. Logan was in the corral with Davie when he pulled in at the home place, with one horse already saddled and a second just fitted with a bridle.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it,” Lawyer-man said lightly, “if I hadn’t seen you pull in here with my own eyes.”

  “I told you we needed to borrow a couple of horses for a trail ride,” Davie reminded Logan, already mounted on the saddled gelding, a pinto who looked like he’d move about as fast as cold honey flowing uphill.

  Logan didn’t look at the boy. He was too busy assessing Tyler. “There’s something we need to talk about, little brother,” he said. “If you can work me into your busy schedule.”

  T
yler climbed over the corral fence, threw a saddle blanket onto the second horse and the saddle after it. “I’m free next August,” he said. “Maybe we could do lunch.”

  “Very funny,” Logan replied, and though he was smiling a little, his eyes were solemn. “It’s important, Ty.”

  Tyler tightened the cinch, unhooked the stirrup from the saddle horn and mounted the black gelding. When Tyler leaned to grab the dangling reins, Logan caught hold of them first and handed them up.

  “Then why didn’t you get around to it when you were at my place before?” Tyler chided, anxious to be gone.

  But it was good to have a horse under him again.

  Not half so good as it would be to have Lily in the same position, but one pleasure at a time.

  Logan ran a hand along the gelding’s neck before looking up into Tyler’s face. “Because it’s not an easy thing to say,” he replied quietly. “Especially to somebody who likes to make things as hard as possible, the way you do.”

  Tyler felt a stab of regret at that, and some dread, too.

  Was Logan dying of some disease?

  Was the ranch about to go on the auction block for back taxes?

  Neither question was answered. Logan had turned, walked away to open the corral gate. Davie rode through first. Tyler hesitated in the gap, looking down at his brother.

  “You’re okay, right?” he asked Logan. “The ranch is okay?”

  Logan tilted up one corner of his mouth, but as grins went, that one was a real bust. “Nothing like that,” he said. “It can wait until tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow it is,” Tyler said. “My place or yours?”

  “I’ll stop by around six, like before,” Logan answered. Then he turned to the boy, waiting to head for the foothills. “Maybe you’d like to spend the night here with us,” he added.

  Davie rolled his eyes, then gave a long, low whistle after cutting a sly look in Tyler’s direction. “Another hot date?”

  Tyler felt his neck go red and knew Logan had noticed, even before he grinned.

  “Better yet,” Logan said.

  And they left it at that. He and Logan did, at least.

  “I’d appreciate it,” Tyler told Davie, catching up as they eased their horses into an easy trot across the pasture, “if you’d stop referring to Lily as a ‘hot date.’”

  “Well, she’s hot,” Davie reasoned cheerfully. “And she’s a date. Therefore—”

  “Therefore, nothing. You’re thirteen,” Tyler reminded the kid. “Try to keep that in mind, will you?”

  Davie was in a chatty mood. He also sat a horse like he’d been born on one—a Creed trait, whether he had the right DNA or not. “Oh, believe me, I never forget. It’s a royal pain in the ass, being thirteen, and from what I’ve seen at school, the only thing worse is being fourteen .”

  In spite of his worries, which were considerable, Tyler had to laugh. He remembered a lot about those ages, and Davie was right. Both of them sucked—they didn’t call them the ’tween years for nothing.

  For a while, they rode in companionable silence, Davie thinking his own thoughts, Tyler doing the same. Part of him was right there, in the moment, but his mind did some wandering, too. He couldn’t help wondering what Logan was about to lay on him, and the anticipation of meeting Lily later was hard to keep under wraps.

  They’d reached the lower hills when they stopped, by tacit agreement, to rest the horses.

  Davie stood in the stirrups to stretch his legs, and if it hadn’t been for that damned spider tattoo and all those piercings, he’d have looked like a regular cowboy.

  “You’re mighty comfortable on a horse,” Tyler observed, looking out over the ranch and enjoying the panorama. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been riding all your life.” He could see the main house, with its fancy new barn, and the beginnings of Dylan’s construction project, too. There were cattle grazing in the pastures, and sunlight sparkled on the wind-rippled grass, and the way Tyler felt, he might have slipped through a time warp and gone back a hundred years.

  Before Jake.

  Before his mother.

  Before that summer with Doreen.

  “Guess I’m just a natural,” Davie bragged. “In fact, I’ve been thinking I might take up rodeoing. Dylan says I could qualify for the junior divisions. I just have to pick my event. Did you know he’s got a bull?”

  Tyler sat easy in the saddle, glad to be back. While he was away, chasing women and money, he’d come dangerously close to forgetting who he was.

  Now, he was settled in his own hide, where he belonged. His hair was a little too long, he was driving an old truck and he had a good dog. He liked all that just fine.

  And then there was Lily.

  “Forget the bull,” Tyler told Davie, in case the kid had any ideas about practicing up for the rodeo on that ornery old white-hided devil. “Cimarron’s a mean one, famous for stomping in cowboys’ rib cages, among other things. Even Dylan couldn’t ride him.”

  “But I could sign up for the rodeo? Try my hand at it?”

  Tyler was touched by the boy’s eagerness, and worried because he knew from bitter experience that cowboying was a rough life. If a man wasn’t among the top riders on the circuit, he’d have a hard time scratching out a living. It was a winner’s game, and losing was the order of the day for most cowboys.

  “Not with that tattoo and all those little silver rings in your hide,” Tyler said, hedging.

  “There’s a rule against tattoos?” Davie sounded hesitant now. Which might be a good thing.

  “No,” Tyler answered. “There’s no rule against tattoos, or piercings, either. But the other cowboys would josh you right out of the arena, most places.”

  “The tattoo’s temporary,” Davie said. “Good for six months if I don’t wash my neck too often.”

  Again, Tyler laughed.

  “And I guess I could quit wearing these rings.”

  “Guess so,” Tyler said moderately. He didn’t know a lot about kids, except for what he’d gathered by being one once, but he figured if he showed too much enthusiasm for scrubbing off the spider and letting all those little holes grow shut, Davie would dig in his heels.

  Especially if he really was a Creed.

  “If I do it—go cowboy, I mean—will you get a satellite hookup so I can watch some decent TV?”

  Tyler grinned, shaking his head in mingled admiration and amazement. The kid definitely didn’t lack for gall. “That depends on what you mean by ‘go cowboy,’ I guess,” he said.

  “Getting rid of the tattoo and the rings and ditching all my Goth gear,” Davie said. Mischief danced in his eyes. “Wearing jeans and boots and learning to talk like a hick. That’s what it means to go cowboy.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” Tyler said dryly, realizing how much he liked this kid, and how much he’d have missed him if Doreen had made him go back home.

  That was what happened when a man let himself care, Tyler supposed—about a lost dog, a thirteen-year-old boy…or a woman. It made him vulnerable, open to the kind of pain he hadn’t had to risk when he’d kept his heart closed for business.

  Davie was peering at him. “You all right?” he asked.

  Tyler realized some of what he felt must have been showing on the outside. That was a new phenomenon, too.

  Part of being home again, most likely. And b
eing home meant more than just living on the ranch and getting his mail at the hole-in-the-wall post office in Stillwater Springs.

  It meant being Tyler Creed, and nobody else, and taking the good with the bad.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  “If you’re worried about telling me my mom signed me over for a chunk of money, it’s okay,” Davie volunteered. “I know it makes her look bad, but she’s really just trying to put as much distance between me and Roy as she can.”

  Tyler stared at Davie, stunned. “You knew? ”

  “Mom told me,” Davie said. “I called her at the casino last night, on your cell phone. She said she and Roy would be leaving town soon—she’s giving her two-weeks’ notice today—but she’ll write to me and e-mail, too, once she gets a computer.”

  Tyler took all that in, and still didn’t know how to sort it out. “And this doesn’t bother you?”

  “I’ve been through worse,” Davie said. In Tyler’s opinion, he was way too philosophical for a thirteen-year-old. “Your cabin is pretty much a dump, but you’ve got Kit Carson, and that lake, and Logan said I can ride his horses anytime as long as there’s somebody around to make sure I don’t break my neck. So far, I haven’t gone hungry. And living with you is one hell of a lot better than living with Roy.”

  “What kind of ‘worse’ have you been through, Davie?” Tyler asked, after a little silence.

  Davie shrugged. “Before Roy, there was Marty. He was a world-class jerk. Used to get me by the hair and throw me out the front door when Mom was working. Said just looking at me pissed him off. He died of a heart attack or something—had some kind of fit at supper one night and just keeled over. Boo-hoo.”

  There was no compassion in Davie’s voice, but there was no self-pity, either. He was simply stating the facts of his life, grim as they were.

  “Before Marty, Mom shacked up with some old coot with a sheep ranch down in Wyoming. Bill didn’t hit me or anything, but he was so cheap he rationed out the food, and when he got tired of buying grub, he said I stole money from his wallet and kicked us out.”