Montana Creeds: Tyler. Linda Miller Lael

friends.

      “Anytime,” Lily lied.

      He walked away, without looking back.

      Just as he had that last summer, when Lily, high on teenage passion and exactly half a bottle of light beer, had proposed marriage to him. He’d said they were both too young, and ought to cool it for a while, before they got in too deep.

      Lily had been crushed, then mortified.

      Tyler had simply walked away. Later, she’d learned that while he was dating her, ending every evening with a chaste peck on the cheek and a “sleep tight,” he’d passed what remained of the night in bed with a divorced waitress twice his age.

      The memory of that discovery still stung Lily to the quick.

      He’d written songs for her, sung them to her in a low vibrato, aching with heart, played them on his guitar.

      He’d taken her to movies, and for long walks along moonlit country roads.

      He’d won three teddy bears and a four-foot stuffed giraffe at the county fair, and given them to her.

      And all the time, he’d been boinking a waitress with a hot body and a Harley-Davidson tattoo on her right forearm.

      Lily was a grown woman, a widow, with a young daughter, a sick father and a successful career in merchandising under her belt. And damn, it still hurt to remember that the songs and the movies and the romantic walks had meant nothing to him.

      Nothing to him, everything to her.

      “Water under the bridge,” her father commented quietly. “Let’s go home, Lily.”

       Let’s go home, Lily.

      Hal had said that the night she’d come to the clinic, where he was working late, after the breakup with Tyler, carrying her bleeding, broken heart in her hands. She’d cried, and said she never wanted to see Tyler Creed again as long as she lived. Hal’s jaw had tightened, and he’d put an arm around her shoulders, held her close for a few moments.

       He’s Jake Creed’s boy, honey, Hal had said. They’re poison, those Creeds. Every one of them. You’re better off without him.

      She’d sobbed, destroyed as only a betrayed seventeen-year-old can be. But I love him, Dad, she’d protested.

       Let’s go home, Lily, he’d repeated. You’ll get over Tyler. You’ll see.

      And she had gotten over Tyler Creed.

      Or at least, she’d thought so, until today.

      Now, she sucked it up, for Tess’s sake, and her own. Drove toward the house where she’d grown up, a happy kid—until her parents’ sudden and acrimonious divorce when she was eleven. Until Tyler shattered her heart, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, plus a certain dashing and very handsome airline pilot, had failed to put it back together again.

      The big Victorian hadn’t changed, either, except for a few drooping rain gutters and peeling paint on the wooden shutters.

      A blond woman in jeans stood on the wraparound porch, waving and smiling as they pulled up.

      “Kristy Madison,” Lily said aloud, cheered.

      “Creed, now,” Hal said. “She married Dylan a while back.”

      Kristy came down the porch steps, through the open gate in the picket fence, which sagged a little on its hinges. When Hal hauled himself slowly out of the car, Kristy greeted him with a hug.

      “We’ve all missed you,” she told him. “Welcome back.”

      Lily peeled herself off the car seat and got out to stand in the road, while Tess scrambled out of the back.

      “Hi, Lily,” Kristy said. “It’s good to see you again.” Her dark blue eyes drifted to Tess, who was just rounding the front of the car. “And you must be Tess.”

      Tess nodded eagerly, probably pleased that someone in this strange new place knew her. “My daddy died in a plane crash,” she said. “When I was four.”

      “I’m so sorry,” Kristy said gently.

      “Are there any kids my age in this town?” Tess asked. “I’d sure like to play with some of them, if there are.”

      Kristy smiled, and her gaze met Lily’s for a moment, then went immediately back to Tess’s upturned face. “I can think of several,” she said. “In the meantime, though, let’s get your grandfather inside. Lunch is on the table.”

      Weary gratitude swept through Lily. Just as she’d forgotten so much about Tyler, she’d also forgotten the nature of small towns like Stillwater Springs. When someone got sick or fell on hard times, people rallied. They aired out rooms and made beds up with clean sheets and set lunch out on the kitchen table.

      “I’m plum tuckered,” Hal said. “Believe I’ll take a nap on my own bed.”

      He went on inside, while Lily, Kristy and Tess followed at a slower pace.

      “I hope you don’t mind,” Kristy said to Lily. “Briana—that’s my sister-in-law, Logan’s wife—and I got the keys from your dad’s next-door neighbor and spiffed the house up a little.”

      Again, Lily’s eyes burned. In Chicago, she’d had millions of acquaintances and clients, but no close friends. Back in the day, she and Kristy had spent a lot of time together.

      “You must be worn-out,” Kristy said, reading her face. “After lunch, why don’t you lie down and rest for a while, and I’ll take Tess over to the library for story hour.”

      Lily had kept her guard up for so long, living in the big city, coping with all things hectic, that letting it down left her a little dizzy. “Would you like that?” she asked Tess. “To go to the library, I mean?”

       “Yes,” Tess answered. Not a major surprise; the child had taught herself to read at three.

      Lunch turned out to be fresh iced tea, tuna sandwiches and potato salad. Lily fixed a plate for her dad and took it to his room off the kitchen, and when she returned, she sat down with Tess and Kristy in that dearly familiar room and ate, actually tasting her food for the first time since she’d gotten the call about her father’s heart attack.

      Kristy, she remembered, had gotten in touch soon afterward. And Dylan, an old friend, had come on the line moments later, to reassure her and offer her the use of a private plane.

      “You look happy,” she told Kristy, when Tess had finished eating and rushed off to explore a little before washing up for the trip to the library.

      “I am,” Kristy said, glowing. Then she reached across and squeezed Lily’s hand briefly. “Things will get better,” she promised. “You’re home, among friends, and your dad’s going to be fine.”

      Lily laughed, but it was a halfhearted sound, weary and a little—no, a lot—skeptical. “If you say so,” she said. “Thanks for everything you did, Kristy. And thank Briana, too. Wherever she is.”

      Kristy smiled, pushed back her chair and stood to begin clearing the table. “You’ll meet her soon enough,” she assured Lily. “She and Logan are building on to their house, and she had to go home to talk to the contractor.”

      Logan was married, and building on to his house.

      Kristy was obviously happy with Dylan.

      And Tyler was probably still sleeping with waitresses—if he hadn’t graduated to sexy movie stars and supermodels.

      As if she cared.

       CHAPTER TWO