Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Looks to me like he did plenty of damage,” Tyler said, after unclamping his jaw. He was almost as angry with Doreen for putting up with that kind of treatment as he was with Roy for dishing it out. “When are you going to leave that bastard, Doreen? When are you going to stand up for yourself—and for Davie?”

  “You don’t understand,” Doreen said, shrinking in on herself in that way she’d developed in the years since Tyler had first known her. In that way she’d passed on to Davie.

  Tyler let his hand drop from her chin. Shook his head. “Oh, I understand, all right,” he told her grimly. “You’re going to let him do this again and again until he kills you.”

  Doreen took a step back, rummaged in her big shoulder bag, brought out a sheaf of papers. Thrust them at Tyler.

  “What’s this?” Tyler asked, even as he took the documents.

  Evidently, this was his day for heavy-duty paperwork.

  “I lied before,” Doreen said, her voice quivering a little. “Davie is yours. Roy says if he’s going to live with you, we’ll need some kind of compensation. So he had a friend of his draw up these papers, over in Choteau, at one of those legal places.”

  “Compensation?” Tyler echoed, still absorbing the news that he was a father after all. He hadn’t completely believed Doreen before, when she’d said Davie’s father was a truck driver she’d “cheered up” one night after a shift at Skivvie’s. Contradictory though it was, he didn’t believe her this time, either.

  “We want a hundred thousand dollars,” Doreen said, with all the bravado she could drum up. She was red at the jawline, and tears stood in her eyes. “Roy looked you up on the Internet. You’ve done real well for yourself, it seems, between the rodeoing and the movie work and all that. In fact, you’re flat-out rich.”

  “And Davie’s suddenly mine, because I have money?” Tyler asked dangerously.

  Doreen’s wet eyes widened, and she retreated another step or two. Kit Carson made that worried sound again, a low whine, far down in his throat. “You can spare a hundred thousand dollars,” she insisted.

  “And you, obviously,” Tyler countered coldly, “can spare Davie. Provided the ‘compensation’ is right.”

  Doreen swallowed visibly. “You can get blood tests, or whatever they do nowadays, you and Davie both. You’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”

  Doreen wasn’t telling the truth; Tyler had played a lot of poker, with a lot of amateurs as well as pros, and he knew a stone-desperate bluff when he saw one.

  “You don’t know who Davie’s real father is, do you, Doreen? Roy put you up to this because he smelled money.”

  “You won’t miss it,” Doreen said, but for all the attitude she was projecting, she still looked as if she wished the ground would open up at her feet and swallow her whole.

  “That isn’t the point,” Tyler argued. “The point is, Doreen, you’re basically offering to sell me your child.”

  “He’d be better off with you.”

  “He’d be better off with just about anybody,” Tyler replied, feeling sick to his stomach. “I know you’ve had it tough, Doreen, and I’m not discounting that. I’m really not. But how can you sell your own child?”

  “Like I said, Davie would have a chance if you kept him,” Doreen said, though she was still the personification of misery. “I’d know Roy wouldn’t hurt him again, and, well, me and Roy, we could make a new start someplace else. Someplace far away.”

  “You’d just leave Davie? ‘So long, good luck, it’s been real’?” Tyler knew the exchange was pushing a lot of old buttons that had nothing to do with the kid and everything to do with the way he’d been raised, but knowing that didn’t change a damn thing. “Doreen, how can you do a thing like this?”

  “Read those papers,” Doreen said, her chin high, but wobbling. “You sign them, and write me a check, and that’s the end of it. Davie’s your son, from that day forward.” With that, she turned and started to walk away, toward the battered old car she’d left running in the driveway.

  Tyler stopped her, grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. This time, he didn’t try to be as gentle as before.

  “You don’t even know me, Doreen,” he rasped. “How can you be sure I won’t ditch Davie, or knock him around like Roy has? I’m a Creed, remember? You’ve been around Stillwater Springs long enough to figure out what that means.”

  Doreen pulled free of his grip on her arm. Raised her chin again and looked him straight in the eye. He realized then that, bruised and broken though she was, jaded and disillusioned and barely holding on to the frayed ends of the proverbial rope, she was trying to save Davie. Oh, she wouldn’t mind taking the hundred grand she’d asked him for, but this wasn’t about the money. Like some wild, cornered animal, she was trying to lure the main threat—Roy—as far from her child as she could.

  “Doreen,” Tyler said gruffly. “Don’t do this. We’ll figure out some other way.”

  “There is no other way, Tyler. Don’t you think I’ve tried to come up with one?” She paused, swallowed again. “I’ve got to have an answer by tomorrow,” she finished, sliding behind the wheel of her car.

  Tyler folded the documents, stuck them into his hip pocket, gripped the edge of her open car window as he leaned in to look at her. “Suppose I agreed to this—and I’m not saying I will. What would you tell Davie?”

  A tear slipped down Doreen’s cheek, leaving a jagged trail through the goop she’d hoped would cover up the marks Roy’s fist had left. “‘Goodbye,’” she croaked. “I’d say, ‘Goodbye.’”

  With that, she threw the car into Reverse and backed up, and Tyler was left with a choice between jumping back out of the way or losing some or all of his toes.

  He jumped.

  The rear wheels of that Buick threw up a lot of dust and gravel as she backed up, turned around and gunned the engine.

  He stood there for a long time after she’d gone, watching the dust settle and trying to figure out what the hell he ought to do next.

  Call Logan? His eldest brother was a lawyer, and a good one. In addition to winning several world championships during his bronc-busting days, Logan had founded a legal-services Web site that had made him a rich man.

  It had fattened Tyler’s bank account, too, since he’d invested all the cash he could scrape together, way back when, before the stock-splits and the big sale to some multinational conglomerate. He knew Dylan had done the same thing.

  Yep, a sensible man would call his big brother, the legal eagle, and ask for advice.

  But where Logan was concerned, Tyler wasn’t a sensible man.

  He finally turned and started back toward the house. Sat down on what was left of the porch and took Doreen’s papers from his back pocket and read them—once, twice, a third time.

  It was all there, cut-and-dried. There were no loopholes; as far as he could tell, the agreement was ironclad—and he’d always had a good head for contracts. No hidden clauses, no ifs, ands or buts that would come back and bite him in the ass in a week or a month or a year.

  The plain, sad truth was, a fat check would buy him permanent custody of a troubled, pierced, tattooed kid who might or might not be his. Until Davie turned eighteen, he would be Tyler’s ward, at least in the eyes of the law.

  His first instinct was to say yes, write the check and never investigate the paternity issue at all. He knew that would sound crazy to anybody who hadn’t been raised under Jake Creed’s roof, and it probably was crazy. He also knew he couldn’t change his own childhood by making things easier for Davie.

  He just wanted to make a difference to one kid in trouble, that was all.

  A week before, even a couple of days ago, he could have made the decision, for or against, without considering anyone else’s opinion. But now there was one person in his life whose opinion mattered a lot, and that was Lily.

  Davie was Doreen’s son, whether he was genetically a Creed or not. And Lily had been badly hurt by that affair, all those
years ago. Once she learned who Davie actually was, or might be, and that was only a matter of time, she’d probably decide to cut her losses and run.

  Could he handle that, especially after the night before?

  He’d have to—he didn’t have a choice. He’d handled his mother’s suicide, Jake’s abuse and the bad blood between him and the two older brothers he’d once nearly worshipped. He’d handled Shawna’s death, and a whole lot of other things.

  And he’d handle whatever Lily decided, too.

  Which didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell, if she walked.

  In some ways, now that he knew how things could be between him and Lily, losing her would be the worst loss of all.

  There was nothing to do but tell her, face-to-face, that he might have fathered Davie that long-ago summer, before someone else did. After that, it would be her call: try to make whatever they had work, or call it quits, for good.

  Tyler had been thrown from, and chased by, the meanest broncs on the rodeo circuit. He’d been in brawls where the other guy’s intention wasn’t just to win, it was to kill. Being a Creed, he’d never had the God-given good sense to be scared in any of those situations.

  But he was scared now.

  He was scared as hell.

  Of one little woman.

  He sighed, got out his cell phone and called Doc Ryder’s house. If Lily had a cell, she hadn’t given him the number.

  The phone at the Ryder place rang six times before voice mail picked up, and a recorded message rattled off numbers for the veterinary clinic and Doc’s cell phone.

  Since it was Lily Tyler wanted to talk to, not Doc, he didn’t follow up on either of the alternate numbers.

  He put the phone away, went inside the house, made a bologna sandwich for supper, since it was getting on toward evening by then and he’d forgotten all about lunch. He fed Kit Carson, and when the dog had finished munching his kibble, Tyler rustled up a towel and a bar of soap and, instead of showering inside, headed for the lake.

  He was in bed reading a book, Kit Carson curled up beside him, when he heard Davie come in. Switch on that little TV he’d talked Tyler into buying for him the day before.

  Since there was no cable and no satellite dish, he’d get mostly static and disembodied voices, but that didn’t seem to bother the kid. He banged around downstairs for a while, and finally came up the stairs, just far enough for his head to show above the landing.

  Tyler felt a pang, seeing how happy Davie looked. He didn’t have a clue that his own mother had just put him on the block with a price tag hanging from around his neck.

  “Hey,” Tyler said.

  “Hey,” Davie said. “You should have come along today. We had a lot of fun. And your hot date spent the whole afternoon at the ranch, her and her little girl. We had meat loaf and homemade bread for supper, too.”

  “Is that right?” Tyler asked, deliberately casual. What he was really thinking was, Don’t call her a “hot date.” Her name is Lily. “How’d you get home?”

  The word home sort of hung in the air for a moment or so, unsettling and not quite right. But not wrong, either.

  “Dylan and Kristy dropped me off,” Davie replied, with a slight shrugging motion of one shoulder. “Is that your truck parked outside? If it is, it’s a sorry piece of crap, and you were better off driving Kristy’s Blazer.”

  “Thanks,” Tyler said dryly, opening his book again. The kid had shattered his concentration—now he’d have to go back to the beginning of the chapter, since he couldn’t remember a word of what he’d read so far.

  Davie hung around. “Dylan and Logan are rich. How come you’re so poor?”

  Tyler stifled a grin. “How come you’re so damn nosy?” he countered.

  Davie laughed. “Guess I’ll shut up before I dig myself in any deeper.”

  “Good idea,” Tyler said. “And turn that TV down a little. Static isn’t my favorite sound.”

  Davie, turning away, turned back. “No, you like Andrea Bocelli. I saw all those CDs you have. But I won’t tell anybody, if you pay me.”

  That time, Tyler had to laugh. He also flung the spare pillow, the one he’d tucked under Lily’s delectable backside the night before, to intensify her pleasure as well as his own, and Davie ducked.

  Kit Carson barked for joy and leaped right off the bed, probably thinking there was a game on.

  “Come on, boy,” Davie told the dog. “We’ll play tug-of-war for a while and watch some TV.”

  When the boy and the dog were both gone, Tyler didn’t have to hide what he felt—a peculiar combination of dread and hope, faith and fury.

  Tomorrow, he would have that talk with Lily.

  He’d sign the documents, like Doreen wanted, and write the check.

  Doreen might say goodbye to her son, like she’d said she would, or she might just hit the road, with good ole Roy. Either way, Tyler would have some explaining to do; young as he was, Davie had a right to know the truth.

  Whatever that was.

  Downstairs, Davie and Kit Carson were evidently wrestling, the boy laughing, the dog barking for all he was worth.

  It sounded so—well—normal.

  Too bad it wasn’t.

  Resigned, Tyler gave up on his book, stretched to switch off the light and lay down on those Lily-scented sheets.

  Sleep was a long time coming.

  *

  LILY SAT, IMMOBILIZED, in the spare room bed, staring at the wall. Trying to absorb what her motherin-law had told her on the telephone just a few minutes before.

  Burke had had a vasectomy. A secret vasectomy.

  He’d only pretended to want more children after Tess—obviously, he hadn’t. Why hadn’t he just told her, though, instead of letting her get her hopes up, over and over again, only to have them shattered every month when her period came?

  He’d always acted so sympathetic.

  I’m sorry, honey. Maybe next month.

  Dazed, Lily heard her father’s voice in the kitchen, and Tess’s, both of them sounding worried, though she couldn’t make out their actual words. They might as well have been speaking some obscure dialect as English.

  Presently, Hal opened her door a crack and popped his head in. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  For all practical intents and purposes, she’d lost her job.

  She’d just learned that Burke’s deceit had gone well beyond breaking their marriage vows.

  Night before last, she’d engaged in an unprotected sex marathon with a man who was about as likely to be sterile as a jackrabbit.

  Oh, yeah. Everything was okay. It was just peachy.

  And none of it, Lily reminded herself with an inward sigh, was her father’s fault.

  She worked up a smile. “I’m just feeling a little lazy this morning,” she lied.

  “Breakfast is cooking,” Hal said. Whether he believed her or not, she couldn’t tell.

  “Not toaster waffles, I hope,” Lily responded.

  “Oatmeal,” he said, raising both eyebrows and wriggling them a little.

  He’d always been able to make Lily laugh by doing that, for as long as she could remember. And that morning was no exception.

  In spite of everything, Lily giggled.

  And it felt good.

  *

  WHEN TYLER PULLED INTO Doc Ryder’s driveway, around ten o’clock that morning, Doc and Tess were in the backyard, on their knees, digging dead plants out of a flower bed and tossing them into a wheelbarrow.

  Seeing him, they both looked pleased, and Doc hauled himself to his feet. Dusted off his hands on the legs of his tattered khaki pants.

  “Can your dog get out of the truck and play with me?” Tess immediately asked, fairly jumping up and down beside her grandfather while she waited for a yes.

  Tyler looked to Doc for the answer.

  Doc nodded. Smiled. “I could use a little canine company myself,” he said.

  Tyler hesitated. Kit Carson had jumped into the driver’s s
eat to paw at the window and yip, wanting to socialize. For a shy dog, he was sure coming out of his shell.

  “Is Lily around?” Tyler asked, like he should have done in the first place.

  “She’s in the kitchen, talking on the phone,” Tess volunteered, drawing in close to wait for Tyler to lift the dog down out of the truck.

  “Quitting her job and demanding severance pay,” Doc elaborated.

  As wound up as he was inside, Tyler’s spirits lifted a little. Lily was quitting her job? Did that mean she planned to stay on in Stillwater Springs instead of heading back to Chicago?

  Tyler’s mood took another dive. Considering what he had to say, it might not matter whether Lily stayed in town or not. She might understand—after all, he’d been a kid when he was sneaking around with Doreen, and the whole thing was way back there in the past. But she might tell him to take a flying leap, too, if only because she didn’t want to get involved with him or Davie’s raising.

  “I think this dog needs a walk,” Doc announced, after surveying Kit Carson ponderously. “Tess, there’s a leash in the pantry, hanging on a hook. Would you mind getting it, please?”

  Tess rushed into the house, and Kit Carson bounded after her.

  Tyler started to call the dog back, and Doc stopped him.

  “It’s all right, Tyler,” he said. “I’m a veterinarian, you know. I allow dogs in my house.”

  Tyler wanted to avoid Doc’s gaze—but he didn’t.

  “Is something wrong?” Doc asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” Tyler answered awkwardly.

  “But you need to have a private conversation with Lily, and right away, apparently. Which is why Tess and I are taking the dog for a long walk.”

  “I appreciate that,” Tyler said. He felt as nervous around Doc as he had back when he was walking the razor’s edge, dating Lily, saying good-night and then heading straight for Doreen’s bed.

  Just then, Tess burst out of the house with the looped leash, Kit Carson close on her heels. Lily followed, standing on the porch, shading her eyes with one hand and looking way too good in her jeans and a little yellow blouse with no sleeves.

  She had good arms.