Big brother had hit the ground running—hadn’t even shut off his pickup or closed the door behind him. But the scene brought him to a standstill. He shook it off, climbed up to join Tyler. “Holy shit,” he said, looking around.
It said something about Logan, and the kind of brother he was, Tyler figured, that he got right in and started flinging away shingles, without even asking what they were digging for.
Davie, meanwhile, was trying to round up a very freaked-out Kit Carson, shouting his name, whistling.
Finally, the boy called out exuberantly, “Kit’s all right! I caught him!”
Tyler kept pawing at the debris of the cabin roof, hurling chunks of wood aside. He was pretty sure who he’d find behind the wheel of that buried semi, once he and Logan finally got down to it, but not so sure what condition Roy Fifer would be in by then.
In the distance, sirens tore slashes in the otherwise silent country night.
Jim and his crew were on their way, in response to Tyler’s 911 call, and since Logan had called Dylan soon before he left his place, brother number two was probably right behind them. If not ahead by a lap or two.
“Do you want to tell me what happened here?” Logan asked, a little breathless from the exertion of trying to move a house with his bare hands.
“I think that’s kind of obvious, don’t you?” Tyler countered, and he started to laugh. It started as a low, rumbling chuckle and gathered force until it was a roar. Sweat running down his face, covered in dirt, his house a wreck and his new truck a goner after one day in his possession, he didn’t know what else to do but laugh.
The sirens grew louder.
Briana pulled in, driving her BMW and wearing jeans under her nightgown, Alec and Josh in tow.
“I think I heard something,” Logan said, after noting his wife’s arrival and giving a slight shake of his head. “From down there—”
Tyler stopped laughing to listen.
Sure enough, there was a voice rising from the depths of all that wreckage, like a faint curl of smoke, unintelligible but definitely human in origin.
They dug a little farther, and the words came clear.
“Somebody—help me—”
Logan and Tyler dug harder.
“What’s going on here?” Briana called up, from the yard.
Logan chuckled and even in the darkness, Tyler saw the look of tender amusement move in his brother’s eyes. “Briana,” he called back, “get that flashlight out of my truck and throw it up here. Then go home! And take Davie and the dog with you.”
“But I want to know—” Briana’s protest was cut off by the arrival of all three of Stillwater Springs’ squad cars and an ambulance. The din was deafening.
Dylan was there, too—he took the flashlight from Briana’s hands and scrambled up onto the pile. Handed the light to Logan and started moving timber.
“What happened?” Briana insisted, when some of the noise had subsided.
Jim and two of his deputies were on the roof now, while the EMTs prepared for whatever the night might bring. Within a few minutes, the roof of the semi was in sight—the beam of the flashlight bounced off it.
“Davie will tell you all about it,” Logan shouted down to his wife, in belated reply, “on the way home!”
Briana finally gave up and left, taking the three boys and Kit Carson with her.
“She’ll be waiting up with hot coffee and a lot of questions when we get to the other house,” Logan said, pausing to drag an arm across his forehead and wipe some of the sweat away.
“I’d rather have whiskey,” Dylan put in.
“There won’t be any shortage of questions,” Jim huffed. “I’ve got about a thousand of them.”
They’d created an opening, but the timbers weren’t stable and now that they’d done enough digging to get down to the truck, Jim ordered everybody off the roof.
The deputies left, but Logan, Dylan and Tyler stayed put, along with Jim.
Tyler started for the hole. This was his house and his truck, after all. He’d be the one to climb down there and see if the crazy man was alive.
Dylan stopped him by taking hold of his left arm. “I’m the bull-rider in this crew,” he said. The rodeo reference wasn’t lost on the other three men—bull-riders tended to be leaner, shorter and more agile than their counterparts in the other events, though of course there were always exceptions. Dylan was by no means a small man, but Logan, Tyler and Jim were all taller, heavier and broader through the shoulders.
And that hole was going to be a tight fit.
“Be careful,” Logan said, with a sigh.
Dylan nodded, glanced Tyler’s way.
Reluctantly, Tyler nodded back.
Nimble, like he’d always been, Dylan made his way down some ten feet, easing himself from beam to beam, going still when the timbers groaned and shimmied.
“Everybody down,” Jim ordered, for the second time, when the quake subsided.
“Not a chance,” Logan said flatly.
“That’s our brother down there,” Tyler added.
“Did it ever occur to either of you knot-heads,” Jim bit out, crescents of sweat staining the underarms of his once-spiffy uniform shirt, dust dulling his badge, “that you might be putting Dylan in more danger, standing up here arguing with me?” He paused, swallowed hard. “I am the sheriff of this county, you know. I expect my orders to be obeyed.”
“Expect away,” Logan said.
“Give it your best shot,” Tyler put in.
“It’s Roy Fifer,” Dylan called up from the hole.
“Now there’s news,” Jim said sarcastically.
“The cab seems pretty sturdy,” Dylan told them. They heard him talking to Roy in a low, easy tone, though the words weren’t clear. Then he started back up through the network of shaky beams. “I think he’s all right,” he said, popping his head into view like a gopher out of a tunnel. “Shaken up, that’s all.”
Although a big part of him wanted to shinny down that shaft and get Roy Fifer by the throat, Tyler was relieved. Determining Roy’s condition had been paramount, but lifting him out of there was going to be a challenge.
“You said the cab of that truck was sturdy,” Jim said, watching Dylan. “You think it will hold until we can get Dan Phillips over here with some heavy equipment to move these beams out of the way?”
“It’ll hold,” Dylan said, his filthy face breaking into a grin. “Now, what do you say we all get our asses down off this roof before we get ourselves killed?”
*
IT TOOK DAN the better part of an hour to get out to the ranch, pick up the bulldozer he’d left at Dylan’s building site, and drive it over the fields, through the woods and up Tyler’s driveway.
Dawn was breaking before they got close enough to the driver’s-side door to see Roy staring pitifully out at them through a web of broken window glass.
“I think he might have sobered up,” Jim quipped. “First stop, the emergency room. Second stop, my jail.”
Dylan let out a long, low whistle of exclamation when what was left of the blue Chevy pickup came into view.
“It had eight cylinders,” Tyler lamented. “Leather seats and a sound system like you wouldn’t believe.”
Logan slapped him on the back. “Easy come, easy go,” he said, in big-brother speak.
“Gee,” Tyler said. “Thanks.”
“You want to come along to the clinic and sit in while I question Roy?” Jim asked Tyler, already starting the careful climb down to the ground.
“Fill me in tomorrow,” Tyler answered. “Right now, I need some of my sister-in-law’s coffee.”
The main ranch house was all lit up when they pulled in, fifteen minutes later, Tyler riding with Logan, Dylan following in his truck.
“Quite a night,” Logan remarked, like it had been a party or something.
Easy for him to be cheerful—Dylan, too. They still had their trucks.
Stepping over the threshold into the kit
chen, Tyler once again marveled at how much the place had changed. It was the love, he supposed. Logan and Briana were happy in that house, and their feelings for each other and the kids had somehow seeped into the walls, the floors, the ceilings.
If houses could be healed, that one had.
Reflecting on all this, Tyler figured he must be in shock or something, since he didn’t usually think in lines from greeting cards.
Nevertheless, the bad mojo was gone.
The old man had been exorcised—for good.
Naturally, Davie had already told Briana what he knew about the one-man demolition derby, before he and Kit bedded down in Tyler’s old room for the night. He’d guessed, being a sharp kid, that they’d find Roy Fifer at the wheel when they uncovered the truck.
Half rummy from the night’s adventures, Tyler ate the fried eggs, potatoes and ham Briana cooked up for all of them. He swilled coffee, but it didn’t wake him up. Finally, he accepted the loan of some sweatpants and a T-shirt from Logan, took a hot shower and crashed on the living room couch.
Even under these circumstances, it was good to be home.
*
“IS HE DEAD?” a young voice asked, breathless. Alec, no doubt.
Sunlight glowed, orange, through Tyler’s eyelids.
“No, dumb-ass, he’s just sleeping like he is.” That would be Josh, the older and more serious of the two. “If you’d pay attention once in a while, you’d know that Logan said he was sleeping like a dead man, not that he is one!”
It struck Tyler then that he could have been a dead man, with Davie lying on the next slab and Kit Carson a goner, too, if he’d been able to shut his mind off last night and drift off. He and Davie would have heard the truck coming, given the god-awful racket it was making, but as for getting out of the cabin before the crash—probably not.
Tyler opened his eyes, glad he still had the option.
Josh and Alec were standing next to him, like mourners at a viewing, while Davie sat in a big leather chair nearby, looking a little the worse for the busy night just past but grinning that trademark Creed grin.
“Miss Lily called,” he said, nodding toward Tyler’s jeans, which lay in a heap at the other end of the couch. “Hope you don’t mind, but when your pants pocket rang, I answered.”
Lily. Sweet, chronically orgasmic Lily.
He hoped the gap in her schedule hadn’t closed, because he’d been looking forward to that phone sex he’d promised her.
“What did she say?”
“That you’re a hunka-hunka burnin’ love,” Davie joked.
At least, Tyler hoped he was joking.
“Woooowwww,” Josh and Alec chorused, in unison, their eyes wide with admiration.
Davie made a smoochy sound, and the younger boys broke up laughing.
Tyler, not quite as amused as his nephews, scowled a warning at Davie.
Briana popped her head in from the kitchen, smiled at Tyler with sisterly fondness and said, “Boys. Chores. Now.”
Alec and Josh left, groaning.
Briana ducked back into the kitchen.
“What,” Tyler repeated, sitting up and pinning Davie with a look, “did Lily say?”
“Before or after I told her what happened to the cabin?”
Tyler closed his eyes.
“Just kidding,” Davie said cheerfully. “Basically, she said don’t call her, she’ll call you. Oh, and she’s cutting the trip short, too. Because her car is boring.”
“What?” Tyler asked.
Davie grinned, and he grinned Creed. “She’s going to sell it there and fly home. Because it’s boring, and she wants to buy another one when she gets back here. Something snazzy. She has a severance check, and it’s burning a hole in her pocket.”
Tyler liked the change in plans—a lot. He’d wait until Lily called if it killed him, and do his damnedest to be alone when she did. Get her all hot and bothered and send her right over the edge.
When she flew in from Chicago, he’d be there to meet the plane. As soon as they’d dropped Tess and Hal off at the house in town, he’d take her somewhere private and make love to her for real.
Then, and only then, he’d break the news that they had to postpone the wedding.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE PHONE SEX HADN’T HAPPENED, and Lily was feeling the loss of it, a sort of vague, disjointed ache, centered more in her heart than in her body, as she drove alone toward the mansion in Oak Park. She’d put off the meeting with the real estate agent until the next day, after packing the surprisingly few things she wanted to take back to Stillwater Springs with her, and sent her dad and Tess off to a matinee at the neighborhood cinema.
Getting squared away with Eloise, she figured, was more important than sorting books and dishes, sheets and towels, deciding what to give away and what to keep. There had always been a wide breach between her and Eloise, although they’d managed it better than they were now, but Lily didn’t want the problem to become Tess’s.
Pulling up to the massive iron gates at the bottom of Eloise’s long, crushed-clamshell driveway, a lot of old memories, accompanied by a rush of corresponding emotions, welled up inside Lily.
She remembered her first visit to her late husband’s ancestral home, after someone she’d gone to high school with in Stillwater Springs e-mailed her about Tyler’s marriage to a pretty blond barrel-racer named Shawna. In a fit of frantic optimism, and because Burke had been shoving his great-grandmother’s diamond engagement ring under her nose at regular intervals and telling her how happy they’d be together, she’d accepted his proposal.
He’d brought her here, excited to tell his mother the good news.
The big gates whirred open, just as they’d done that long-ago day.
Lily had been beyond intimidated back then, and nothing in Eloise’s coolly polite reception had helped the situation. It had been all she could do not to run across those Italian marble floors, out through the eighteen-foot hand-painted front doors, and scramble over the high stone walls to jump on the first bus out of the neighborhood.
Do not pass go.
Do not collect $200.
She’d have done that, headed straight for Stillwater Springs and taken a job at Skivvie’s if the new Wal-Mart wasn’t hiring, except that Burke had held tightly to her hand, and whispered that his mother would come around if they just gave her a little time. But that, Lily saw in grim retrospect, was only part of the problem—she hadn’t gone home, let herself be the small-town girl she really was, because she wasn’t getting along with her dad and because she was terrified that she’d run into Tyler and the barrel-racer once she got there.
She’d really believed, deep down, that she didn’t have a home anymore.
Why not try to make one, with Burke?
The clamshells crunched under the wheels of Lily’s sedate sedan—Burke had chosen it for her—with its hand-lettered For Sale sign in the back window.
She smiled as the latest in a long line of gardeners stopped to watch her go past. Turnover was high at Chez Eloise, and he was a stranger—probably thinking she’d come to apply for a job. Maid? Social secretary? Personal assistant?
Emotional punching bag?
Pulling up in front of the Grecian portico, Lily shut off the engine and unclamped her fingers from the steering wheel. It was silly to feel so much dread, she told herself sternly. She’d been to this house a thousand times with Burke, and later, after his death, dropping Tess off for visits, picking her up again when some long, lonely weekend or foray to Nantucket finally ended.
It wasn’t the house, of course—Lily was way past feeling like an out-of-place country kid mistakenly invited to high tea at the garden club. She and Eloise were about to have a confrontation, that was the fact of the matter, and it probably wouldn’t end well.
Lily got out of the car, drew a deep breath and marched up the beautifully chiseled limestone steps to the front door. The place was a far cry from the trailer she and Tyler would be living i
n after the wedding, that was for sure.
Oddly comforted by that contrast, Lily relaxed enough to ring the doorbell.
Stately chimes sounded within the hallowed halls, and one of the doors swung open. Eloise herself stood in the entryway, pale and stiff-shouldered.
Either it was the maid’s day off, Lily concluded, or Eloise had been watching for her through one of the tall mullioned windows at the front of the house. Quite possibly, after Lily had called an hour before and asked if she could stop in, Eloise had dismissed the staff for the duration.
“Come in,” Eloise said stonily, stepping back to admit Lily.
The place was mausoleum-silent, and ridiculously grand.
Lily paused to take in the frescoed ceilings of the two-story entry hall, the graceful curves of the twin staircases, the elaborate grandfather clock, handmade in Switzerland for one of Eloise’s distant ancestors. No quartz-movement there—the thing had been tick-tick-ticking for over a hundred years.
“I thought you’d bring Tess,” Eloise said, standing there in yet another pair of high heels, yet another suit. This one was funeral-black.
“We agreed that I wouldn’t,” Lily reminded her motherin-law. Eloise had the home-court advantage, but that didn’t mean Lily was going to be backed into any corners.
Eloise let the comment pass. Led the way into the “parlor”—which would have been the living room in a regular house. A silver tea service gleamed on the elegant antique table situated between two snow-white suede couches, set to face each other, perpendicular to the imposing fireplace.
“Please sit down,” Eloise said.
Lily took her usual seat.
Eloise perched across from her, on the other couch, leaned a little to pour tea. Someone—definitely not Eloise—had prepared small, crustless sandwiches, scones and tiny bowls of diced fruit.
As if.
“Your Tyler,” Eloise said, cutting right to the chase, “has quite a family history.”
Lily straightened her backbone. “Yes,” she answered. If Eloise had expected to take her by surprise, she was bound to be disappointed. “Did you use a search engine to check him out, Eloise, or just hire a detective?”
Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler Page 85