Montana Creeds: Dylan. Linda Miller Lael

out of his back pocket and flipped it open to the discount-store photo of the one person in the entire world he was absolutely, positively sure he loved. “Sharlene’s grandmother sent me this,” he finished, confounded by his own fury. After all, none of this was Kristy’s fault—not directly, anyway. “Along with a bill for Sharlene’s boob job. It seemed they both thought she’d have a better chance of landing a husband with a big set of knockers.”

      Kristy blushed.

      Dylan didn’t care. If she wanted to play hardball, so be it.

      “Did you pay it?”

      For a moment, Dylan wasn’t sure he’d heard the question correctly. “What?”

      A smile teased at the corner of Kristy’s lush and highly kissable mouth. “Did you pay the bill for the boob job?”

      “No,” he said.

      She laughed.

      And then, remarkably, he laughed, too. “Your coffee is still awful,” he said.

      “And you still get your back up too easily.”

      “Do I?”

      “Yes.”

      He needed to leave, pick Bonnie up at Cassie’s and get her settled out at the ranch. But first he had to know for sure that Kristy was going to be all right.

      Spotting a small blackboard on the wall next to the back door—Kristy’s grocery list was on it, in her precise librarian’s handwriting, all loopy and firm—he crossed to it, picked up a stubby piece of blue chalk and scrawled his cell number below broccoli.

      “Call me,” he told Kristy, turning to see her clearing their cups from the table with brisk, efficient motions, “if you need anything.”

      “I won’t,” she said. “Need anything, I mean.”

      Her stubbornness. Her pride. It was all coming back to him now.

      “Why didn’t you marry Mike?” he asked. He felt entitled to ask that question; turnabout was fair play, after all.

      She sighed, turned to face him. He could tell that holding his gaze was an effort, but she managed it. “I came to my senses,” she said.

      Now, what the hell did that mean?

      “Mike is a nice man,” she went on, when Dylan didn’t speak. Although he’d come in through the front door, he was at the back now, with one hand on the knob. “He deserved to be happy.”

      “He looked pretty happy to me, that night I ran into the two of you in Skivvie’s Tavern.” The vision filled his mind’s eye; he might as well have been in that darkened bar again, watching Mike and Kristy dancing to a slow song playing on the jukebox, Kristy making sure Dylan got a good look at the diamond glittering on her left hand. He could feel the sawdust and peanut shells under the soles of his boots, smell cigarette smoke and draft beer.

      “I was using him,” Kristy said forthrightly. “When I realized that, I broke our engagement. A few months later, he married Julie. End of story.”

      End of story? After that night at Skivvie’s, Dylan had left Stillwater Springs, his tires flinging up gravel, swearing he’d never set foot in his hometown again. He’d spent the better part of a year drowning his sorrows in cheap whiskey, dodging bill collectors and backing down from the one thing he was really good at—bull-riding.

      He’d probably have drunk himself to death, in fact, if an old friend, a retired rodeo clown named Wiley Spence, hadn’t gotten him by the shirt collar one night in Cheyenne, after bailing him out of jail, and threatened to call Logan if he didn’t get his act together pronto.

      Kristy wasn’t the only one with pride. Although he and Logan had been estranged back then, he’d known his big brother would track him down and probably throw him into the nearest treatment center. He hadn’t wanted Logan to see him down and out. So he’d laid off the booze, except for an occasional beer, cleaned up and gotten back into the rodeo as soon as he’d scraped together an entry fee.

      None of which was Kristy’s concern.

      “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. And then he left.

      DYLAN WAS GOOD AT LEAVING. Very good at leaving.

      Kristy banged the mugs around in the sink for a few moments, then decided to wash them later, when she wasn’t apt to break off the handles.

      What had she expected?

      Well, she certainly hadn’t expected him to show up at her front door that evening, that was for sure. And if anyone had told her she’d—well, throw herself at him the way she had, she’d have called them crazy.

      The hardest thing to face was the knowledge that if he’d kissed her, she’d have let him make love to her right there in the front hallway.

      The thought made her cringe.

      And yearn.

      It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten pregnant, back when they were still together, as often as they’d made love.

      Things would have been so different if she’d been the one to conceive Dylan Creed’s child, not this Sharlene person with the breast implants.

      Her gaze swung to the blackboard, and Dylan’s number, written hard and fast and slanting to the right. Like she would call him, even if there were ten muggers in the house and the place was on fire to boot.

      She marched over and resolutely wiped away the blue chalk with the palm of her hand, leaving a streaky smudge.

      But erasing the number hadn’t helped.

      It was already burned into her memory, like the letters on the old sign over the gate out at Stillwater Springs Ranch.

      She let her forehead rest against the blackboard.

      And tears came. Again.

      She’d lost so much—her parents, Sugarfoot, Madison Ranch, the home and family she and Dylan might have shared, if they hadn’t been such hotheads.

      Winston curled around her ankles, meowing uncertainly, and a tear plopped onto the top of his head. He looked up, in a curious way, as though wondering if it was raining.

      His expression made Kristy laugh.

      And laughing made her square her shoulders, dry her cheeks with the back of one hand and pull herself together.

      Maybe all hell would break loose when Sheriff Book and his crew opened Sugarfoot’s grave.

      Maybe Dylan Creed was back in town for good, with his child and his wicked smile and his death-to-women body.

      She was no gutless wonder, and no stranger to trouble.

      Whatever came her way, she’d handle it.

      Somehow.

      THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE ranch house was a sleepless one for Dylan, and not just because he spent half of it trying to comfort Bonnie, who’d taken to calling for her mother during their fast-food supper and hadn’t quit until she’d fallen asleep against his chest, after one last, hiccoughy sigh.

      Sitting on the beat-up old couch that, like the bed and the kitchen table, had been in the place since the last Creed had lived and died there—his great-uncle, Mick—his chin propped on top of Bonnie’s sweat-dampened head, Dylan felt real despair.

      He hadn’t expected raising a child to be easy; it wasn’t that. Now that the novelty of being with him was wearing off, Bonnie was missing Sharlene, and it was likely to get worse.

      You’re a real tough guy, Creed, he told himself silently. When Bonnie had cried, and then wailed, he’d felt like crying right along with her. Almost called Cassie in a panic, ready to beg her for help.

      Cassie? Who was he kidding?

      It