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“I don’t have legal custody,” Dylan answered. “Until I do, I’m keeping a low profile, in case Sharlene changes her mind. I’ll tell you the rest in the morning.”
Cassie stared into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded again. “All right,” she said, making for the spare bedroom. “I’m putting this child to bed. There’s cold chicken in the refrigerator if you’re hungry.”
Grateful, Dylan let himself drop onto the couch, and before he knew it, the sun was up and Bonnie was standing beside him, tugging playfully at his hair.
He grinned, glad to see her. She was wearing one of Cassie’s massive T-shirts, tucked up here and there with safety pins, to make it fit, and she was clean.
God bless Cassie. Despite her obvious misgivings, she’d given Bonnie a much-needed bath, and probably fed her, too.
“Daddy,” Bonnie said angelically, stroking his beard-stubbled cheek with one very small hand.
And if Dylan hadn’t known before that he’d do anything to keep and raise this child—his child—he knew it then.
“DDYLAN’S OUT AT CASSIE’S place,” Kristy’s hairdresser, Mavis Bradley, told her, when she came in for a lunch-hour trim. “I saw his truck parked in her driveway when I came in to work.”
A thrill went through Kristy, part dread, part anticipation. She waited it out. If Dylan was in town, he’d soon be gone. That was his pattern. Come in, stomp somebody’s heart to bits under his boot heel and leave again.
“And Cassie was at the store, not an hour later, buying training diapers and toddler’s food in those plastic cartons that cost the earth,” Mavis rattled on, before Kristy could come up with a response. “That’s what Julie Danvers told me, when she came in to have her nails done.”
Kristy took a moment to be glad she’d missed Julie. There was some bad blood between them, at least on Julie’s side, because Kristy had been briefly engaged to her husband, Mike, and he hadn’t taken the breakup well. Now they had two children, a big house and a thriving business, and Mike was a candidate for sheriff. It was a mystery to Kristy why that particular water hadn’t gone under the proverbial bridge.
“Interesting,” Kristy said, because she’d known Mavis since first grade, and she’d just keep prattling on until she got some kind of reaction. Everybody for miles around knew Kristy and Dylan had been passionately in love, once upon a time, and Mavis certainly wouldn’t be the last person eager to tell her Dylan was back.
“Now what would Cassie need with stuff for a little kid unless—”
“Mavis,” Kristy broke in. “I have no idea.”
“Think you’ll see him?”
Kristy actually shrugged. No use pretending she didn’t know who Mavis was asking about. “Maybe around town,” she said, with a nonchalance she certainly didn’t feel. “We’re old news, Dylan and I.”
“So are you and Mike Danvers,” Mavis parried coyly, “but Julie gets her panties in a wad every time he mentions your name. Which, apparently, is quite often.”
Kristy had to be careful how she answered that one. Everything she said would go out over Mavis’s extensive network within five minutes after she’d paid for the haircut and left. “That’s silly. Mike and Julie have been married for a long time. They have two beautiful children and a great life. So Mike mentions my name once in a while? Stillwater Springs is a small town. He probably mentions a lot of people’s names.”
“Well,” Mavis said doggedly, “I’d think you’d at least wonder about why Cassie might buy diapers, and there’s Dylan Creed’s truck parked in front of her house so early in the day that he must have rolled in during the night—”
“I don’t wonder,” Kristy lied, and very pointedly. If Dylan had a child, it would be the height of unfairness on the part of the universe. She was the one who longed for a houseful of kids. Dylan had never wanted to settle down—he’d just pretended he did, for obvious reasons. “What Dylan Creed does—or doesn’t do—is simply none of my concern.”
“Hogwash,” Mavis said. “Your ears are red around the edges.”
“That’s because you’ve been poking me with the scissors at regular intervals. Are we nearly done here? I need to get back to the library.”
Mavis blew out a breath. “The library,” she scoffed. “You were a cheerleader in high school. You were a prom queen. And Miss Rodeo Montana, first runner-up for Miss Rodeo America. Who’d have thought Kristy Madison, of all people, would end up with a spinster-job? It reminds me of that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, when Donna Reed is this miserable old biddy because George Bailey was never born—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mavis!” Kristy was ready to leap out of the chair by that point. Tear off the plastic cape and march right out into the street with her hair sectioned off in those stupid little metal clips. “Some of us have moved beyond high school, you know. And what’s so terrible about being a librarian?”
Mavis softened. In the mirror facing the chair, her pointy little face looked sad. “Nothing,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Kristy said, immediately regretting her outburst. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that—”
“It’s just that,” Mavis continued kindly, “when anybody mentions Dylan Creed, you get peevish.”
“Then why mention him?” Kristy asked wearily.
Mavis squeezed her shoulder with one manicured hand. “I didn’t mean any harm. I was just thinking you might be glad Dylan was back. I know you’ve had a hard time, Kristy—losing your folks the way you did, and the ranch and Sugarfoot, practically all at once. I’d like to see you happy again—and you were happy with Dylan, until that blowup the day of his dad’s funeral. So would everybody else in Stillwater Springs—like to see you happy, I mean.”
Kristy fought back tears, not because of the sad memories, but because she was touched. Mavis, in her own clumsy way, did care about her, and so did a lot of other people. “I am happy, Mavis,” she said. “I have my job, my house, my cat—”
“Well, I’ve got a job and a house and four cats,” Mavis argued cheerfully, “but it’s my Bill that makes my heart go pitter-pat.”
“You’re lucky,” Kristy said. And she meant it. Mavis had been married to the same man since the day after her high school graduation and though she and Bill had never had children, it was common knowledge that they were still as deeply in love as ever.
Mavis finished the haircut without mentioning Dylan again, which was a mercy, and Kristy rushed back to the library to grab a sandwich in her tiny office behind the information desk. It was Wednesday, and business was slow enough that her two volunteer helpers, Susan and Peggy, could handle the traffic.
Story hour was coming up at three, though, and it was Kristy’s baby. She still hadn’t chosen a book, and that stressed her a little. She was a detail person, and few details were more important to her than doing her job well.
So she finished her sandwich and went out into the main part of the library, headed for the children’s section. It was always tricky, deciding what story to read, because the kids who gathered in a circle under the mock totem pole in the tiny play area ranged in age from as young as three to as old as twelve. The rowdy ones came, after swimming lessons over at the community pool, still smelling of chlorine and sunshine and always a little soggy around the edges, and the ones with working mothers invariably arrived early.
Harried, Kristy went from book to book, shelf to shelf.
Finally, she fell back on an old standby, one of the Nancy Drew mysteries she’d loved in her own youth. The boys would snicker, and the little ones wouldn’t understand a word, but she knew just listening was part of the magic.
Yes, today, it would be The Secret in the Old Clock.
It would do the girls good to hear about smart, proactive Nancy and her lively sidekicks, George and Bess. And it wouldn’t hurt the boys, either. Call it consciousness raising.
The time passed quickly, since Kristy stayed busy logging in a pile of returned books, and when she looked up from her work, she saw at least a dozen kids gathered in the play area, waiting.
“Showtime,” Susan whispered, smiling. “I’ll finish the returns. And I can stay right up till closing time tonight, too. Jim’s off to Choteau with his bowling league.”
Susan, in her midfifties, was supercompetent. Her staying meant Kristy could leave at five o’clock, instead of nine, like a normal person, and paint at least part of her kitchen before she nuked something for supper and tumbled into bed with Winston to read awhile and then sleep.
“Thanks,” Kristy said, giving her friend a shoulder squeeze.
Carrying The Secret in the Old Clock, she made her way to the play area, took exaggerated bows when the kids clapped and cheered. They always did that, mainly because they liked to make noise in the library, where it was normally forbidden, but Kristy got a kick out of the whole routine anyway.
She settled down on the floor, cross-legged. “Today,” she announced, “Nancy Drew.”
True to form, the boys groaned.
The girls giggled.
The latch-key kids were just happy to see an adult.
Kristy made a production of opening the book. That, too, was part of the show. Always a flourish—kids liked that. Her own mother had made reading—and being read to—so much fun, using a different voice for each character and sometimes even acting out parts of the story.
And when she looked up, ready to begin, her heart jammed itself into the back of her throat and she couldn’t say a single word.
Dylan Creed had appeared out of nowhere. He was sitting, cross-legged like Kristy, at the edge of the crowd, holding positively the cutest little girl Kristy had ever seen within the easy circle of his arms.
Kristy swallowed.
There was no doubt the child was his—the resemblance made Kristy’s breath catch.
Dylan’s blue eyes danced with mischief as he watched her.
She cleared her throat. “Chapter One,” she began.
And then she froze up again.
One of the bigger boys started a chant. “Nan-cy! Nan-cy!”
All the other kids picked it up. Even the angelic being in Dylan’s lap clapped her plump little hands together and tried to join in.
Dylan let out a sudden, piercing whistle.
Silence fell.
The little girl turned and looked up at him curiously.
“The lady,” Dylan said, “is trying to read a story. So you yahoos better settle down and listen.”
Somehow, Kristy managed to get through three chapters of the book, but it was a lackluster performance, for sure. Her gaze kept straying to Dylan and the little girl, and every time that happened, she felt her neck heat up.
At last, mothers started wandering in and collecting their charges. Kristy tried to look busy, but that was hard, given that she was still sitting on the floor with nothing but a book to fiddle with. Worse, her legs had gone to sleep, and she knew if she stood up too suddenly, she’d probably fall on her face.
In front of Dylan Creed.
Why didn’t he just leave, like everybody else?
“Nice job,” he said, and Kristy was startled to realize he was sitting right beside her. The little girl was playing with the large plastic blocks the Friends of the Library had provided for the play area.
Was he making fun of her?
Kristy swallowed again. Gulped, was more like it.
“She’s beautiful,” she croaked, inclining her head toward the child.
Dylan nodded. “Her name is Bonnie,” he said.
What do you want? That was what Kristy would have asked if she hadn’t been too chicken, but what tumbled out of her mouth was, “I heard you were passing through.”
Great.
Now he’d think she’d been panting for any Dylan Creed news that might come her way.
“I’m not passing through,” Dylan replied, watching Bonnie with a soft light in his wicked china-blue eyes. “I’m planning to stay on—tear down that old house of mine, now that Briana and her boys don’t need it anymore, and build a new one. I’m going to have a barn, too, and some horses. Maybe even run some cattle with Logan’s herd.”
Why was he telling her all this? Did he think she cared?
Did she care?
No, no, a thousand times no.
Get a grip, she told herself.
Okay, so Bonnie could have been her little girl, as well as Dylan’s, if things had turned out differently. But they hadn’t, and that was that.
She had a house and a job and a perfectly good cat.
An excellent life, damn it.
“That’s nice,” she said, easing her legs out straight and giving them subtle shakes to get the circulation going again so she could stand up and walk away with some degree of dignity. Go about her business. Tell Susan she had a headache and wasn’t staying until five.
But that would be a lie.
It was her heart that ached, not her head.
“How have you been, Kristy?” Dylan asked.
What was this, Be Kind to Former Lovers Week? “Fine,” she said.
One corner of his mouth tilted upward in a sad little grin. “Up until the last time I talked to Logan, I thought you were married to Mike Danvers.”
The name fell between them like a lead weight.
Kristy recovered quickly, but not quickly enough. Something moved in Dylan’s eyes while she was coming up with her response, even though it only took a split second. “It wouldn’t have worked out for Mike and me,” she said.
“Like it didn’t work out for us,” Dylan said, and try though she might, Kristy couldn’t get a bead on his tone.
“We were young,” she heard herself say. “The world was falling apart. Your dad had just been killed in that logging accident, and both my folks—”
“Daddy!” Bonnie whooped suddenly, shrill with joy. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
She ran at Dylan and he scooped her up in his arms.
“Potty!” Bonnie yelled triumphantly.
Dylan sighed. “Would you mind taking her to the women’s room?” he asked Kristy.
Glad of an excuse to break out of his orbit, if only for a few minutes, and hoping to God her legs had woken up, Kristy got to her feet, took Bonnie by the hand and escorted her to the bathroom.
Because so many of the children who came to the library were small, Kristy was used to that particular duty. But this was Dylan’s little girl. He’d conceived this beautiful moppet with some nameless, faceless woman—not with her.
Damn it. When they’d made love all those times, before the rodeo and death and a lot of other things came between them, they’d always ended up choosing names afterward. They’d call a boy Timothy Jacob, for their fathers. A girl, Maggie Louise, for their mothers …
When she and Bonnie stepped out of the restroom, Dylan was waiting in the corridor, leaning against the wall with that indolent grace that seemed to emanate from his very DNA.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” she replied.
He hoisted Bonnie up into his arms. “Good to see you again, Kristy,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.
“You, too,” Kristy said. Fortunately, he left before the tears sprang to her eyes.
Thanks.
You’re welcome.
Good to see you again …
You, too.
Kristy ducked back into the women’s restroom, turned on the cold-water faucet and stood splashing her face until the burning stopped. But she still heard the voices, hers and Dylan’s, though this time, they came from the long ago.
When the moon strays off into space, Dylan Creed, and the last star winks out forever, I will still love you.
He’d smiled, and stroked her hair, and kissed her, sending fire skittering along her veins all over again. You read too much, he’d teased. I love that about you. Our kids will have a chance at being smart, with you for a mother.
You’re smart, too, Dylan, she’d protested, meaning it.
Not book-smart, he’d replied. I can’t talk in poetry the way you do.
Does it matter? she’d asked, her heart brimming with tenderness.
Nothing matters but you and me, Kristy.
Nothing matters but you and me.
CHAPTER THREE
DROPPING BY THE LIBRARY had probably been a tactical error, Dylan admitted to himself; it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, a sudden compulsion to see Kristy again, if only from a distance.
As it happened, though, she’d just rounded up a herd of kids for story-time when he and Bonnie came through the front door, and he’d been drawn into her circle immediately. There might as well have been beating drums and a fire pit, like the one in Cassie’s teepee—the gathering had that same kind of elemental, visceral attraction.
Kristy was still beautiful—five years of living without him to complicate her life had only made her more so. She seemed more centered and serene than before, though it had pleased him to notice that his unexpected presence had thrown her a little.
The only bad part was the hurt he’d glimpsed in her eyes when she’d registered Bonnie’s identity.
He glanced over at his daughter, buckled into her car seat and hugging her inky doll. By rights, the toy should probably be burned, since it had to be germ-central, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it away. Maybe later, when Bonnie was asleep, he’d douse the thing in Lysol or something.
In the meantime, cruising through the shady streets of Stillwater Springs, he was careful to keep to the speed limit. All he needed was Floyd Book or one of his deputies pulling him over and asking for some kind of proof that he hadn’t committed parental kidnapping. He had the note from Sharlene, found in his truck with Bonnie and the duffel bag, but who knew how much weight that would carry?
Logan would, of course. Logan could draw up papers, get everything on the up-and-up.
He headed for the ranch, partly in the vain hope that Logan would be there, and partly because it was home.
“This is where I grew up,” he told Bonnie, as they drove under the newly repaired Stillwater Springs Ranch sign hanging over the main gate.
“No,” Bonnie said cheerfully, chewing on the doll’s punk-rocker hair.
Four words, now. The kid was developing an impressive vocabulary, all right.
The work on the barn was almost finished—new timbers supported it, and the roof had been replaced.
Dylan parked the truck, rolled down his window as one of the workmen came toward him, grinning.
He recognized Dan Phillips, a guy who’d graduated a few years ahead of him, at Stillwater Springs High.
“Logan around?” Dylan asked, though he knew the answer.
Dan shook his head. “Off to Las Vegas to get married.”
“The barn’s looking good,” Dylan said.
Dan stooped for a glimpse at Bonnie. “Didn’t know you were a family man, Dylan,” he commented, with a twinkle.
“I’m full of surprises,” Dylan replied. “You happen to know if Logan arranged to have my house fixed up after that last break-in?”
“Took a crew over there and did it myself. Logan asked me to have Briana’s and the boys’ stuff picked up and moved here, and I did that, too.”
That was something, anyhow, Dylan thought, still unaccountably disappointed that Logan wasn’t home. He and Bonnie could get some groceries and move right in. Cassie had made them welcome, but her place was small and he didn’t want to impose any longer than necessary.
“This must be old home week,” Dan went on, just as Dylan was about to shift gears and drive overland to his place to figure out what he and Bonnie would need besides groceries. “I just saw Tyler. He’s holed up in that old cabin of his, out there by the lake, and he asked me not to tell anybody he’s around. Don’t figure he’d mind your knowing, though.”
Dan figured wrong, but Dylan saw no reason to say so. “I’ll stop by and say howdy,” he answered easily. If I’m lucky, little brother won’t run me off with a shotgun.
“Starting on the house next,” Dan said, with a nod toward the venerable old place. “Putting in some pretty fancy rigging—new master bathroom and a state-of-the-art kitchen to start.”
Dylan grinned. Logan still expected to stay on, settle down, raise a pack of kids with Briana.
He’d believe it when the last of the bunch grew up and got married.
But, then, considering how he felt about his own child, it was possible Logan really had set his mind to “making the Creed name mean something,” as he put it.
“Be seeing you,” Dylan told Dan, because that was what you said, in the boonies, when you wanted to make a polite but speedy exit.
Dan nodded, executed a half salute and went back to work.
Dylan headed for his own place.
“Potty,” Bonnie said solemnly, as they bumped and jostled across the field, going around the orchard and the cemetery.
Sooner or later, he’d have to visit Jake’s grave, but that was way down on the list.
“Hold your horses,” Dylan answered, his tone affable. “We’re almost home.”
“IT’S JUST PLAIN SILLY to get all bent out of shape just because Dylan Creed showed up at story hour with absolutely the most gorgeous child in the universe,” Kristy told Winston, long about sundown as, standing on the top rung of a folding ladder, she swabbed sunshine-yellow paint around the framework of the archway between the kitchen and dining room.
Winston, having just devoured his usual feast, groomed one of his forepaws meticulously and offered no comment.
“I mean, it isn’t as if he’s ever had any trouble attracting women,” Kristy went on, wiping a splotch of paint from her nose with the sleeve of the oversize men’s shirt she’d bought at Goodwill for messy jobs.
“Meow,” Winston said, halfheartedly.
“It’s just that it was sort of a shock, that’s all.”
Bored, Winston turned, fluffed out his bushy tail and hied himself to the living room. He liked to curl up on the antique bureau in front of the bay windows and watch the world go by. Slow going, in Stillwater Springs. Hours could pass before a car putted past.
“Typical,” Kristy said to the empty kitchen. “Nobody listens to me.”
In the next instant, somebody rapped at her back door, and Kristy nearly fell off the ladder, she was so startled. What was the matter with her, anyway?
“Come in!” she called, because that was what you did in Stillwater Springs.
When Sheriff Book opened the door and stepped across the threshold, she was surprised, though not enough to take a header to the linoleum.
“You shouldn’t just call out ‘come in’ like that,” Floyd said, taking off his sheriff hat and setting it aside on the counter. “I could have been some drifter, bent on murder and mayhem.” A little grin twitched at the corner of his mouth, softening his otherwise stern expression. “This isn’t the old days, Kristy.”
Kristy set her wet paintbrush in the aluminum tray of sunshine-yellow and climbed down the ladder, smiling. “Coffee?” she asked.
Floyd shook his head, sighed. “Trying to cut down,” he said. “Keeps me awake at night.”
Kristy stood there, waiting for him to get to the reason for his visit.
“You mind sitting down?” the sheriff asked, sounding tired.
Uh-oh, Kristy thought. Here comes the whammy.
Once she was seated at the table, Floyd took a chair across from her. “I guess you know the bank finally untangled that probate mess over the ranch,” he said quietly. “And Freida’s got that movie-star fella all set to buy it.”
Kristy’s throat thickened. She nodded. “She told me it was going up for sale now that all the legal processes are complete.” She was curious as to why Floyd had dropped in to tell her something like that.
“It’s an old ranch,” Floyd went on, his expression downright grim. “A lot happened out there, over the years.”