Montana Creeds: Tyler. Linda Miller Lael

could just pretend Tyler Creed didn’t exist, the way she had since the night he broke her heart, but that was bound to be a tall order in a town as small as Stillwater Springs.

      “His family owns a ranch,” Hal explained, with a readiness that surprised Lily, given her father’s formerly low opinion of the Creeds in general and Tyler in particular. She flashed back to the friendly way he’d greeted Tyler when they found him walking along that lonely road. “It’s a big spread. Tyler’s cabin is on the lake—best fishing in the county.”

      “I doubt if he’s around much,” Lily said moderately.

      “He’s a busy man, all right,” Hal agreed, with quiet admiration. “He’s come a long way since he was a kid. So have Logan and Dylan. All of them went to college, with more hindrance than help from Jake, and made their mark in professional rodeo, too. Logan has a law degree, as a matter of fact.”

      Lily widened her eyes at her father. “Since when are you such a fan of the Creeds?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light. Tess was so bright that she might pick up on the slightest nuance.

      “Since one of them saved my life,” Hal said quietly. “And, anyway, I admire gumption. They’ve got it in spades, all three of them.”

      “Is he married?” Tess asked, just a mite too cagily for Lily’s comfort. “Does he have a little girl?”

      Lily nearly choked on a forkful of spaghetti casserole.

      “Far as I know,” Hal said, looking at Lily instead of Tess, “he’s single. No children.”

      “Do you think he’d like a little girl?” Tess persisted, with such a note of hope in her voice that Lily’s eyes filled with sudden, scalding tears. “One like me?”

      “Honey—” Lily began, but words failed her.

      Hal reached over to pat his granddaughter’s hand, his smile fond and full of tender understanding. “I think any man would be proud to have you for a daughter, cupcake.”

      “Don’t,” Lily whispered.

      And just then, the wall phone rang.

      Lily rushed to answer it, partly because she needed the distraction, and partly because she didn’t want Hal rushing off to take care of somebody’s sick cow and compromising his fragile health.

      “Hello?” she chimed.

      “Lily? This is Tyler.”

      The floor went soft beneath Lily’s feet, just the way it had when she was a teenager, and just the sound of Tyler Creed’s voice had the power to melt her knees.

      “Er—hello—” Lily fumbled.

      “I want to see you,” Tyler said. I want to see you. Just like that.

      As if he hadn’t sold her out to sleep with a tattooed waitress. As if he hadn’t shattered her most cherished dreams, and fostered a cold distance at the center of her marriage that she and Burke had never been able to overcome.

      Damn him, he had his nerve. Because he wanted to see her, he expected it to happen. It probably hadn’t even occurred to him, in his arrogance, that she might refuse.

      “Lily?” he prompted, when she was silent too long.

      Her face burned, her stomach did flip-flops and she turned her back on Hal and Tess, in a fruitless attempt to hide what she was feeling.

      “Lily?” Tyler repeated. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

      “Okay,” Lily said, though she’d meant to say no instead.

      When it came to Tyler Creed, she had no backbone at all.

       CHAPTER THREE

       I F T YLER HAD HAD to explain what made him call Lily and ask her out, he’d have been hard put to find the words. She’d been on his mind ever since they’d run into each other on the road, after his truck broke down, but there was more to it than that—a lot more.

      Maybe it was being alone at the cabin, with just Kit Carson for company—although, in truth, solitude had always been one of his favorite things in life. He was a loner for sure—more so than either of his brothers, and that was saying something.

      Maybe it was knowing only too well what it was like to be a kid like Davie McCullough—a player in a game of psychological dodgeball, always “it.” Never knowing which direction to jump, but always and forever ready to sidestep some missile.

      And maybe it was the brief time he’d spent with Dylan that day, reminding him that having brothers could be a good thing.

      For some people.

      People who weren’t Creeds, that is.

      In any case, he’d called Lily, without even stopping to think that she might be involved with some lucky bastard. She’d agreed to go out to dinner with him, though, and that was a start.

      The question was, of what?

      He was sitting on the porch step, looking at the lake, Kit Carson beside him, leaning slightly against his right shoulder as if to anchor him somehow, and sipping strong coffee when his cell phone rang.

      His first thought, as he set his cup down to take the phone from his shirt pocket, was that Lily had changed her mind. Come to her senses. She was calling back to tell him she’d thought it over, and thanks, but no thanks….

      But the caller, as it turned out, was Dylan.

      “The kid’s situation is pretty bad,” Dylan said. Typical. He never bothered with “hello” but, then, Tyler didn’t, either, most of the time. Or Logan. When Tyler got somebody on the horn, it was because he had business with them. He didn’t shoot the breeze—a family trait, he reflected, with some amusement. “Davie’s, I mean.”

      Tyler let out the sigh that had been hunkered down inside him, dark and heavy, ever since he’d found Davie McCullough cowering in his john that afternoon. “I figured that,” he said. “Did you talk to Jim?”

      “I did,” Dylan answered. “Our new sheriff is up to his ass in alligators right now. He wanted to call in social services and have the boy put into a foster home. Davie said he’d run away first, and I believe him—so I talked Jim into giving it a few days.”

      Tyler closed his eyes. “Where’s Davie now?”

      “I took him to the casino. He’s hanging out in one of the restaurants till his mother gets off work.” Dylan paused, cleared his throat, and Tyler, who had known something bigger was coming at him since the call began, braced himself. “Ty?” Dylan went on. “The kid’s mom—well—she’s somebody you know.” He stopped again. Tyler had a flash-vision of the bomb doors swaying open in the bay of a fighter jet, of ominous cylinders dropping with slow and deadly grace. “You knew her as Doreen Baron.”

      “Holy shit, ” Tyler rasped, when he’d absorbed the impact.

      Talk about your emotional mushroom cloud.

      Doreen had been a waitress when he knew her, back when Skivvie’s still had a lunch counter and a few tables. Fifteen years his senior, Doreen, with her network of tattoos and what-the-hell attitude, had taught him everything he needed to know about pleasing a woman—and then some.

      Still scrambling for some kind of inner foothold, Tyler did some frantic counting—backward, from the age he guessed Davie to be.

      “Shit,” he repeated.

       Davie could be his son. And some son of a bitch was beating on him, on a regular basis, it would seem.

      “You still there?” Dylan queried, somewhat cautiously, when the taut silence had finally stretched itself to the breaking point.

      “Yeah, I’m here,” Tyler answered, dizzy with a combination of dread and wild hope. On the one hand,