Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first of three books about the rowdy McKettrick cousins, the Creeds.

Logan Creed, the eldest of three estranged brothers, returns to the small town of Stillwater Springs, Montana, and the run-down ranch that has been in his family for well over a century. He’s determined to rebuild both the ranch and the Creed name. He soon meets his fiercely independent neighbour, Briana Grant, and her two spirited sons, and the term family takes on a whole new meaning.

I also wanted to write today to tell you about a special group of people with whom I’ve recently become involved. It is the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), specifically their Pets for Life programme.

The Pets for Life programme is one of the best ways to help your local shelter—that is, to help keep animals out of shelters in the first place. It offers tips as basic as keeping a collar and tag on your pet all the time, so if he gets out and gets lost, he can be returned home; being a responsible pet owner; spaying or neutering your pet; and not giving up when things don’t go perfectly. If your dog digs in the yard or your cat scratches the furniture, know that these are problems that can be addressed. You can find all the information about these and many other common problems at www.petsforlife.org. This campaign is focused on keeping pets and their people together for a lifetime.

As many of you know, my own household includes two dogs, two cats and four horses, so this is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I hope you’ll get involved along with me.

With love,

Praise for the novels of LINDA LAELMILLER

“As hot as the noontime desert.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Rustler

“This story creates lasting memories of soul-searing redemption and the belief in goodness and hope.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Rustler

“Loaded with hot lead, steamy sex and surprising plot twists.”

—Publishers Weekly on A Wanted Man

“Miller’s prose is smart, and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek

“[Miller] paints a brilliant portrait of the good, the bad and the ugly, the lost and the lonely, and the power of love to bring light into the darkest of souls. This is western romance at its finest.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Man from Stone Creek

“Sweet, homespun, and touched with angelic Christmas magic, this holiday romance reprises characters from Miller’s popular McKettrick series and is a perfect stocking stuffer for her fans.”

—Library Journal on A McKettrick Christmas

“An engrossing, contemporary western romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on McKettrick’s Pride (starred review)

“Linda Lael Miller creates vibrant characters and stories I defy you to forget.”

—No.1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

Also available fromLINDA LAEL MILLER

The Stone Creek series THE MAN FROM STONE CREEK A WANTED MAN THE RUSTLER

The McKettricks series

McKETTRICK’S CHOICE

McKETTRICK’S LUCK

McKETTRICK’S PRIDE

McKETTRICK’S HEART

A McKETTRICK CHRISTMAS

MONTANA CREEDS: LOGAN

LINDA LAEL MILLER

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Steve Miller—

gifted Western artist,

cherished friend and

incredibly generous spirit.

10,000 thanks for

showing a country girl and her

loved ones the

Big Rodeo, in style!

CHAPTER ONE

Stillwater Springs Ranch

THE WEATHERED wooden sign above the gate dangled from its posts by three links of rusty chain. The words, hand-carved by Josiah Creed himself more than 150 years earlier, and then burned in deeper still with the edge of an old branding iron, were faded now, hardly legible.

Logan Creed, half inside his secondhand Dodge pickup—“previously owned,” the dealer had called it—and half outside, with one booted foot on the running board, swore under his breath.

Startled, the bedraggled dog he’d picked up at a rest stop outside of Kalispell that morning gave a soft, fretful whine, low in his throat. Little wonder the poor critter was skittish; he’d clearly been from one end of lost-animal hell to the other.

“Sorry, ol’ fella,” Logan muttered, his throat constricted with a tangle of emotions, sharp as barbed wire. He’d known the family ranch—a legacy shared equally with his two younger brothers, Dylan and Tyler—would be in sad shape. The whole spread had been neglected for years, after all… ever since they’d had that falling out after their dad’s funeral. He and Dylan and Tyler had gone their stubborn, separate ways.

The dog forgave him readily, that being the way of dogs, and seemed sympathetic, sitting there on the other side of the gearshift, his brown eyes almost liquid as he regarded his rescuer.

Logan grinned, settled himself back into the driver’s seat. “If I were half the man you think I am,” he told the mutt, “I’d be a candidate for sainthood.”

The idea of any Creed being canonized made him chuckle.

The dog responded with a cheerful yip, as if offering to put in a good word with whoever made decisions like that.

“You’ll need a name,” Logan said. “Damned if I can think of one right off the top of my head, though.” He turned in the seat, facing forward, cataloging the fallen fences and disintegrating junk, and sighed again. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. Best get started, I guess.”

The sign bumped the truck’s roof as Logan drove beneath it, and the rungs of the nineteenth-century cattle guard under the tires all but rattled his teeth.

Weeds choked the long, winding driveway, but the ruts were still there, anyway, made by the first vehicles to travel that road—wagons. Mentally, Logan added several tons of gravel to the list of necessities.

There were three houses on various parts of the property and, because he was the eldest of the current Creed generation, the biggest one belonged to him. Some inheritance, he thought. He’d be lucky if the place was fit to inhabit.

“Good thing I’ve got a sleeping bag and camping gear,” he told the dog, leaning forward a little in the seat as they jostled up the grassy rise, peering grimly through the windshield. “You okay with sleeping under the stars if the roof’s gone, boy?”

The dog’s eyes said he was game for anything, as long as the two of them stuck together. He’d had enough of being alone, scrounging for food and shelter when the weather turned bad.

Logan told himself to buck up and reached across to pat the animal’s matted head. No telling what color the mutt was, under all that dirt and sorry luck. As for the mix of breed, he was probably part Lab, part setter and part a whole slew of other things. His ribs showed and a piece of his left ear was missing. Yep, he’d been nobody’s dog for too long.

When he’d pulled into the rest stop to stretch his legs after the long drive from Las Vegas, he hadn’t counted on picking up a four-legged hitchhiker, but when the dog slunk out of the bushes as he stepped down from the truck, Logan couldn’t ignore him. There was nobody else around, and if there had ever been a tag and collar, they were long gone.

Logan had known he was that dog’s last hope, and since he’d been in a similar position himself a time or two, he hadn’t been able to turn his back. He’d hoisted the critter into the pickup, and they’d shared a fastfood breakfast in the next town. The dog had horked his chow up, in short order, and looked so remorseful afterward that Logan hadn’t minded stopping at a car wash to scour out the rig.

Now, several hours later, as he steeled himself to lay eyes on the ranch house for the first time in a lot of eventful years, Logan was glad of the company, though the conversations were distinctly one-sided.

They finally crested the last hill, and Logan saw the barn first—still standing, but leaning distinctly to one side. He forced himself to swing his gaze to the house, and his spirits rose a little. Part of the roof was sagging, but the rambling one-story log structure, originally a one-room cabin smaller than most garden sheds, had managed to endure. None of the three stone chimneys had crumbled, and the front windows still had glass in them, the old-fashioned kind with a greenish cast to it and little bubbles here and there.

Home, Logan thought, with a mixture of determination and pure sorrow. Such as it was, Stillwater Springs Ranch was home.

It was probably too much to hope that the plumbing still worked, he decided, but he’d called ahead and had the lights and the telephone service turned on, anyhow. His sidekick was in sore need of a bath, and hiking back and forth to the springs for water would be taking the whole back-to-basics thing too far. His luxurious Vegas lifestyle hadn’t prepared him for roughing it.

“Sidekick,” Logan mused, as he climbed out of the truck. “Suppose you go by that for a while?”

Apparently overjoyed, Sidekick leaped across the gearshift and the console into the seat Logan had just vacated. Logan chuckled and lifted him gently to the ground. Soon as he got the chance, he’d take the animal to a vet for a checkup and some shots. There might be a microchip implanted somewhere under his hide, identifying him as someone’s lost pet, but Logan doubted it.

Most likely, Sidekick had been dumped, if he’d ever belonged to anybody in the first place.

The dog did some sniffing around, then lifted his leg against an old wagon wheel half-submerged in the ground. As Logan approached the house, with its drooping front porch, Sidekick trotted eagerly after him.

Any sensible person, Logan reflected ruefully, would bulldoze the once imposing shack to the ground and start over. But then, he wasn’t a sensible person—he had two failed marriages, a career in rodeo and a lot of heartache to prove it.

He shouldered open the front door, causing the hinges to squeal, and, after another deep breath, stepped over the threshold. The place was filthy, of course, littered with newspapers, beer cans and God knew what else, but the plank floors had held, and the big natural-rock fireplace looked as sturdy as if it had just been mortared together.

Standing in the middle of the ancestral pile—and pile was definitely the word—Logan wondered, not for the first time, if there weren’t as many rocks in his head as there were in that fireplace. Ever since he’d tracked down his distant cousins, the McKettricks, six months back, and visited the Triple M, down in northern Arizona, questions about the state of this ranch, and what was left of his family, had throbbed in the back of his mind like a giant bruise.

And that bruise had a name. Guilt.

He crossed the large room, sat down on the high ledge fronting the fireplace and sighed, his shoulders slackening a little under his plain white T-shirt. He shoved a hand through his dark hair and smiled sadly when Sidekick came and laid his muzzle on his knee.

“Some people,” Logan told Sidekick, “just can’t get enough of trouble and aggravation. And I, old buddy, am one of those people.”

Ranches in Montana, in whatever degree of disrepair, were golden on the real estate market. Especially if they had a rip-roaring history, like this one did. Movie stars liked to buy them for astronomical prices, put in tennis courts and soundstages and square-acre swimming pools. He and Dylan and Tyler could split a fortune if they sold the place. Cut the emotional losses and run.

Just about the last thing Logan needed, though, besides a dog and that old truck he’d bought because it would fit in in a place like Stillwater Springs, Montana, was more money. He had a shitload of that, thanks to the do-it-yourself legal services Web site he’d set up fresh out of law school and recently sold for a mega-chunk of change, and so far, all that dough had caused him nothing but grief.

But there was a deeper reason he couldn’t sell.

As run-down as the ranch was, seven or eight generations of Creeds had lived and died, loved and hated, cussed and prayed within its boundaries. Folks had gotten themselves born in the houses, run hell-bent for the closing bell through whatever years they’d been allotted and been laid to rest in the cemetery out beyond the apple orchard.

Logan just couldn’t leave them behind, any more than he’d been able to get into his truck back there at the rest stop and pull out without Sidekick.

They were his, that horde of cussed, unruly ghosts.

So was their reputation for chronic hell-raising.

Seeing the Triple M, something had shifted in Logan. He’d decided to stop running, plant his feet and put down roots so deep the tips might just pop up someplace in China. The Creed legacy wasn’t like the McKettrick one, though, there was no denying that.

The McKettricks had stayed together, the line unbroken all the way back to old Angus, the patriarch.

The Creeds had splintered.

The McKettrick name was synonymous with honor, integrity and grit.

The Creed name, on the other hand, meant tragedy, bad luck and misery.

Logan had come back to take a stand, turn things around. Build something new and durable and good, from the ground up. His own children, if he was ever fortunate enough to have any, would bear the Creed name proudly, and so would his nieces and nephews. Not that he had any of those, either—Dylan and Tyler, as far as he knew, were still following the rodeo, at least part of the time, chasing the kind of women a man didn’t want to impregnate, and brawling in redneck bars.

He had no illusions that it would be easy, changing the course the Creeds had taken, but at the brass-tacks level, wasn’t it a matter of making a choice, a decision, and sticking by it, no matter what?

Dylan wasn’t going to do any such thing, and neither was Tyler, and there wasn’t anybody else who gave a damn.

Which meant Logan was elected, by a one-vote landslide.

He stood and headed for the kitchen, which was in worse shape by half than the living room, but when he turned the faucet in the sink, good Montana well water flowed out of it, murky at first, then clear as light.

Cheered, Logan scouted up an old mixing bowl in a cupboard, washed it out and filled it with water for Sidekick, then set it on the grimy linoleum floor. The dog lapped loudly, and then belched like a cowboy after chugging a pint of beer.

They prowled through the rooms, dog and man, Logan making mental notes as they went. Once he’d bought out the local Home Depot and hired about a hundred carpenters and a plumber or two, they’d be good to go.

BRIANA DIDN’T GET to the cemetery until late afternoon, and once she arrived, she wondered why she’d come at all, just like she always did. While her sons, Alec, eight, and Josh, ten, ran between the teetering headstones and rotting wooden markers, she spread the picnic blanket on a soft piece of ground and got out the juice and sandwiches. Her old dog, Wanda, a portly black Lab, watched placidly as the boys raced through the last blazing sunlight of that warm June day.

“I don’t even know any of the people buried here,” Briana told Wanda. “So why do I break my back pulling weeds and planting flowers for a bunch of dead strangers?”

Wanda regarded her patiently.

For the past two years, since the night her now-ex husband, Vance, after a lengthy argument, had abandoned her, along with the boys and Wanda, in front of the Stillwater Springs Wal-Mart store, Briana had been busy surviving.

At the time, she’d thought Vance would circle the block a few times in their asthmatic old van, letting off steam, then come back for them. Instead, he’d left town. By the time he’d shown up again, three months later, magnanimously ready to let bygones be bygones, Briana had filed for a DIY divorce, found a place to live and landed a job at the tribal casino, serving free sodas and coffee for tips. At first, the few dollars she’d earned in an eight-hour shift had barely put food on the table, but she’d worked her way up to clerking in the players’ club, then dealing blackjack. Finally, she’d become a floor supervisor, making change and paying out the occasional jackpot.

Floor supervisors made a decent wage. They also had health benefits, sick leave and paid vacations.

She’d made it on her own, something Vance had had her convinced she couldn’t do.

Soon after they’d all moved into the house across the creek, Alec and Josh had come across the cemetery in their wanderings, and she’d come to check the place out, make sure it was safe for them to play there. Briana was big on safe places, though they’d proved pretty elusive so far. At thirty, she was still looking for one.

Nothing could have prepared her, she supposed, for the effect the first sight of that forgotten country graveyard had had on her. Lonely, overgrown with weeds, strung from end to end with the detritus of a thousand teenage beer-and-reefer parties, the place had somehow welcomed her, too.

Ever since, tending to the abandoned cemetery had been her mission. She and the boys had cleaned up the grounds, scythed the grass and then mowed it, planted flowers and straightened markers. The work parties always ended with the boys playing tag to run off their excess energy, then a picnic supper.

She hadn’t expected today to be different from any of the ones that had gone before it, which only went to show that she still had the capacity to be surprised.

A lean, shaggy-haired man in jeans, boots and a T-shirt came strolling out of the woods, a reddish-brown dog at his side, and stopped in his tracks when he saw Briana.

She felt an odd little frisson of alarm—and something else less easily defined—at the first glimpse of him.

His hair was dark, and though he was slender, he was powerfully built.

Wanda gave a low, uncertain growl, but didn’t move from her customary spot on the picnic blanket.

“Hush,” Briana said, aware that the boys had stopped their game and were gravitating toward her, curious and maybe a little worried.

The stranger smiled, spoke quietly to his dog and kept his distance.

Alec went straight to him. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Alec Grant. That’s my mom, Briana, and my brother, Josh, aka Ditz-butt. Who are you?”

“Logan Creed,” the man replied, with a slight smile. “Nice to meet you, Alec.” He was looking at Briana, though, his gaze speculative, but languid, too. He took in all five feet, seven inches of her, clad in worn blue jeans and a pink ruffly sun-top, with green eyes and freckles and her long, strawberry-blond hair pulled back, as always, in a French braid. Inspected her as if he might have to identify her in a lineup later on.

Briana hesitated, uncomfortable as she registered the familiar last name, then advanced, working up a neighborly smile. She put out a hand as she introduced herself. “Briana Grant.”

“We know somebody named Dylan Creed,” Alec said. Her younger son had never met a stranger, a fact that both pleased and troubled Briana. The don’t-talkto-people-you-don’t-know lecture was wasted on Alec. “Mom and Josh and me take care of his house. He’s got a bull, too. Cimarron.”

Up close, Logan Creed was even better-looking than he had been from a distance. His hair, a little too long, was ebony, and his eyes were a deep, searching brown, full of intelligence and a few secrets. His cheekbones were high, hinting that there might be native blood somewhere in his background. He looked nothing like his blue-eyed, fair-haired brother, Dylan, and yet there was a resemblance—something in his temperament, perhaps, though she knew little enough of that yet, admittedly, or the way he stood.

“So Dylan hired a caretaker, did he?” he asked lazily. “And he owns a bull?” His gaze moved past Briana to the graveyard. “Is my kid brother paying you to look after the cemetery, too? If so, he ought to give you a raise. The place looks a lot better than it did the last time I was here.”

Briana blushed a little, unsure how to answer, and still feeling oddly exposed under this man’s steady regard. Dylan hadn’t mentioned the cemetery when he’d hired her, outside of Wal-Mart on that fateful night. He’d been in town briefly, on some kind of personal business, and happened to see Vance toss a couple of twenty-dollar bills out of the truck window and speed off with his tires screeching.

Sizing up the situation, Dylan had probably felt sorry for Briana, the kids and the dog. He’d handed her a set of keys, given her directions to the place and strolled off without a backward glance. Warned her about Cimarron, a white bull recently retired from rodeo life; said a neighbor fed the animal and Briana ought to stay clear. She’d taken a cab to the ranch, furious with Vance and really hoping he’d come back after he’d cooled off and find them gone. Serve him right.

Instead, he’d kept right on going.

The next day, a load of groceries had arrived, via a delivery service, along with a note from Dylan saying there was an old Chevy truck parked in the barn and she could use it if she could get it running. Since then, they’d had no communication beyond the occasional e-mail or phone call. When something needed fixing and the job was beyond Briana’s limited home-repair skills, Dylan was quick to send a check, and Briana was careful to provide a receipt, though he’d never asked for one.

Now, Josh stepped up, stood close to her side. The polar opposite of Alec, Josh considered everyone a stranger and thus potential trouble, and proceeded accordingly until they’d proved themselves. “Nobody pays us to take care of the cemetery,” he said. “We do it because it needs doing.”

Logan’s smile came suddenly, and it set Briana back on her heels a little. She added very white teeth to the inventory she’d taken of him earlier, while he was taking her measure. “Well,” he said, “I appreciate it. And that’s as good a reason to do a thing as any.”

Cautiously mollified, Josh softened a little, but he didn’t quite smile. He was letting Briana know, by his stiff stance and knotted fists, that he’d protect her, and Alec and Wanda, too, if necessary. Thanks to Vance, Josh was half again too manly for a ten-year-old, too serious and too sad.

“Where do you live?” he asked Logan solemnly.

Logan cocked a thumb over one shoulder. “At the main ranch house,” he said.

“Nobody lives there,” Josh argued.

“Josh.” Briana sighed.

“Someone lives there now,” Logan replied affably. “Sidekick and I moved in today.”

Josh looked at the copper-colored dog. “He’s skinny. Don’t you feed him?”

“He and I just recently met up,” Logan answered. His voice was easy. “He’ll fill out as time goes by.”

Wanda bestirred her considerable bulk and ambled over to sniff at Sidekick’s nose. Sidekick sniffed back. Then both of them lost interest in each other.

“I still think he could use one of our bologna sandwiches,” Josh insisted sagely. Then, as a concession, he added, “He looks pretty clean.”

“Half drained the well getting that done,” Logan said. “About exhausted the soap supply, too.”

Josh broke down and grinned.

It finally occurred to Briana that Logan must have come to the cemetery to visit someone’s grave. And a pilgrimage like that, especially after a long absence, might require privacy.

“Maybe we should go,” she said.

But Logan shook his head. “Stay right here and carry on with your picnic,” he told her. Then, addressing Josh, he added, “Sidekick can have that sandwich if the offer’s still good, but it’s only right to warn you that he might hurl. Seems to have a delicate stomach.”

Hurling being serious business to a ten-year-old, Josh nodded. “Dog food would be better,” he said. “We could lend you some of Wanda’s kibble if you need it.”

Logan chuckled, looked as though he’d like to ruffle Josh’s hair, but didn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “But we made a run to town for grub earlier, and we’re all set.”

Briana smiled, herded Wanda and the boys back toward the picnic blanket. Sidekick stayed with Logan, who went to crouch beside one of the graves.

“Can I take Sidekick some bologna?” Alec whispered.

“No,” Briana said, watching Logan. “Not now.”

“It’s a private moment, doofus,” Josh told his brother.

“Dogs don’t have private moments, stink-breath!” Alec countered.

“Be quiet,” Briana said, wondering why her hands shook a little as she poured drinks and unwrapped sandwiches.

LOGAN’S EYES burned as he ran the tips of his fingers over the simple lettering chiseled into his mother’s headstone. Teresa Courtland Creed. Wife and Mother.

He’d been three years old when his mom lost her battle with breast cancer, and there’d been a gaping hole in his life ever since. His dad, Jake Creed, never a solid citizen in the first place, had gone on a ten-year bender starting the day of the funeral. His grief hadn’t kept him from marrying Dylan’s mother six months later, though. Poor, sweet Maggie had died in a car accident four days after her son’s seventh birthday. True to his pattern, Jake had married again before the year was out—this time to Angela, an idealistic young schoolteacher with no more sense than to marry a raging drunk with two wild kids. Doubtless, she’d thought all Jake needed was the love of a good woman. She’d been a fine stepmother to Logan and Dylan, and had soon given birth to Tyler.

She’d lasted a whole five years, Angela had.

But Jake’s carousing had just plain worn her out. One fine summer day, she’d made a batch of fried chicken, told Logan and Dylan and Tyler to be sure to do their chores and say their prayers, and left.

Jake had turned the whole countryside upside down looking for her. Enraged, he was convinced she’d left him for another man, and he meant to drag her home by the hair if it came to that.

Instead, Angela had had herself a first-class nervous breakdown. She’d checked into a motel on the outskirts of Missoula, swallowed a bottle of tranquilizers and died.

Such, Logan thought, was the proud history of the Creeds.

After that, Jake had given up on marriage. When Logan was a junior in college, the old man had gotten himself killed in a freak logging accident.

Remembering the funeral made Logan’s stomach roll. As ludicrous as it seemed in retrospect, considering the havoc Jake’s drinking had wreaked on all their lives, the three of them had swilled whiskey, then gotten into the mother of all fistfights and ended the night in separate jail cells, guests of Sheriff Floyd Book.

They hadn’t spoken since, though Logan kept track of his brothers, mostly via the Internet. Dylan, four-time world champion bull-rider, was apparently a professional celebrity, now that he’d hung up his rodeo gear for good. He’d even been in a couple of movies, though as far as Logan could tell, Dylan was famous for doing not much of anything in particular.

Only in America.

Tyler, whose event was bareback bronc busting, was still following the rodeo. He’d been involved in a few well-publicized romantic scrapes, invested his considerable winnings in real estate and signed on as a national spokesman for a designer boot company. Though he was the youngest, Tyler was also the wildest of Jake Creed’s three sons. He had issues aplenty, between the way Jake had raised them and his mother’s death.

But his brothers’ stories were just that—their stories. Logan knew he’d have his hands full straightening out his own life, and while he regretted it, the fact was, the Creed brothers were estranged. And the estrangement might well be permanent. Given the family pride, not to mention inborn stubbornness, “Sorry” just wasn’t enough.

Logan was about ready to leave—he had several other places to go. Briana and the kids were folding up their picnic blanket. The younger boy, Alec, approached with a slice of bologna for Sidekick.

“You a cowboy?” the kid asked, taking notice of Logan’s worn boots while the dog feasted on lunch meat, downing rind and all.

Logan thrust a hand through his hair. “I was, once,” he said, aware of Briana—now, where the devil had she gotten a name like that?—looking on.

“My dad’s a cowboy,” Alec said. “We don’t see him much.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Logan replied.

“He rodeos,” Alec explained. “Mom divorced him online after he left us off in front of Wal-Mart and didn’t come back to get us.”

Something bit into the pit of Logan’s stomach. He felt fury, certainly—what kind of man abandoned a woman and two little boys and a dog?—but a disturbing amount of relief, too. Once again, his gaze strayed to Briana, who was just opening her mouth to call Alec off. Damn, but she was delectable, all curves and bright hair and smooth, lightly freckled skin.

“Mom takes real good care of us, though,” Alec went on, when Logan didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Old Jake hadn’t been the father of the year, either, but for all his womanizing, all his drinking, all his brawling, he’d worked steadily and hard up there in the woods, felling trees. On his worst day, he wouldn’t have left his woman or his kids to fend for themselves.

“Bet she does,” Logan managed to respond, as Briana drew closer.

“She’s a supervisor over at the casino,” Alex stated, speeding up his words as his mother got nearer.

Briana arrived, placed a slender hand on Alec’s T-shirted shoulder. Both boys had dark hair and eyes, in contrast to their mother’s fair coloring. A picture of her ex-husband formed in Logan’s mind. He was probably a charmer, one of those gypsy types, with a good line and a sad story.

“That’s enough, Alec,” Briana said calmly. She kept her eyes averted from Logan’s face, as though she’d suddenly turned shy. “We have to go home now. You have chores to do, and lessons.”

Alec wrinkled his nose. “Mom home-schools us,” he told Logan. “We don’t even get a summer vacation.”

Logan arched an eyebrow, perched his hands on his hips. Resisted an urge to rub his beard-stubbled chin self-consciously.

“That,” Briana said, squeezing the boy’s shoulder gently, “is because you goof off so much, you have to put in extra time.”

“I wish we could go to school in Stillwater Springs, like the other kids,” Alec lamented. “They get to play baseball. They ride a bus and go on field trips and everything.”

Briana’s face tightened almost imperceptibly, and that flush rose again, along the undersides of her cheekbones. “Alec,” she said firmly, “Mr. Creed is not interested in our personal business. Let’s run along home before the mosquitoes come out, okay?”

“Mr. Creed” was, in fact, interested, and out of all proportion to good sense, too. “Logan,” he said.

Briana checked her watch, nodded. “Logan,” she repeated distractedly.

“Can Josh and me call you ‘Logan,’ too?” Alec asked, his voice hopeful.

A woman who home-schooled her children might have some pretty strict ideas about etiquette. Logan didn’t want to step on Briana’s toes, so he said, “If it’s all right with your mother.”

“We’ll see,” Briana said, still flustered. Then, like a hen, but without the clucking, she gathered her brood and herded them off toward the creek. Dylan’s place was just on the other side of a rickety little wooden bridge, hidden from sight by a copse of birch trees in full summer leaf. The black dog waddled after them.

Logan felt strangely bereft, watching them go. Sidekick must have, too, because he gave a little whimper of protest.

Logan bent, reassured the dog with a pat on the head. “Let’s go home, boy,” he said. “By now, word will have gotten around that I’m back, and we’re bound to get company.”

But neither of them moved until Briana, the boys and the dog disappeared from sight.

Logan paused, thinking he ought to stop by Jake’s grave before he left, but he was afraid he’d spit on it if he did. So he headed toward the orchard instead, Sidekick hurrying to keep up.

Sure enough, Cassie Greencreek’s eyesore of a car sat beside the house. It sort of classed up the place, which was a sad commentary by anybody’s standards.

Cassie was waiting for him. She’d settled herself on the top porch step, looking resplendent in a purple polyester dress big enough to hide a Volkswagen. Her waistlength black hair was streaked with silver now, and her brown eyes glinted with a combination of welcome and bad temper.

“Logan Creed,” she declared, receiving the dog graciously when he went to greet her. “I never thought you’d have the nerve to come back here, after all the goings-on at Jake’s funeral.”

Logan grinned sheepishly, pausing on the weedchoked walk. Spreading his hands in the time-honored here-I-am gesture.

“When was the last time you shaved?” Cassie demanded, making room for Sidekick on the step. “You look like some saddle-bum.”

Logan laughed at that, drew near and bent to kiss the old woman’s upturned face.

“I love you, too, Grandma,” he said.

CHAPTER TWO

THE HOUSE THAT had sheltered Briana Grant, her sons and her dog for just over two years looked the same as ever, in the gathering dusk, and yet it was different, too.

A strange little thrill, not in the least unpleasant, danced in the depths of her abdomen as she looked around.

Same noisy, dented refrigerator, its front all but hidden by Alec and Josh’s artwork.

Same worn-out linoleum floors.

Same old-fashioned harvest-gold wall phone with the twisty plastic cord. Beneath it, on the warped wooden counter, the red light on the answering machine winked steadily.

What had changed?

It wasn’t the house, of course. She was different, altered somehow, and on a quantum level, too, as if the very structure of her cells had been zapped with some dangerous new energy.

What the hell? she wondered, biting down hard on her lower lip as the boys engaged in their usual cominghome chaos—Josh logging on to the computer at the desk under the kitchen window, Wanda barking and turning in circles around her water dish, Alec diving for the answering machine when he saw that the tiny red light was blinking.

“Maybe Dad called!” Alec shouted, punching buttons.

“Maybe the president called,” Josh mocked bitterly.

“Shut up, poop face!”

“Shut up, both of you,” Briana said, drawing back a chair at the table and dropping onto its cracked red vinyl seat, feeling oddly displaced, as though she’d accidentally stumbled into some neighboring dimension.

Vance’s voice, rising out of the answering machine like a smoky genie promising three wishes—none of which would come true, of course—sounded throaty and cajoling.

Wanda stopped barking.

“Hello, family,” Vance said, and Briana glanced in Josh’s direction, saw his sturdy little back stiffen under his striped T-shirt. “Sorry about that child-support check, Bree. I figured I’d have the money in the bank before it cleared, but I didn’t make it.”

Briana closed her eyes. Vance loved to toss the word family around, as if just by using it, he could rewrite history and undo the truth—that he’d virtually thrown his wife and children away, like the candy-bar wrappers and burger cartons that collected on the floorboards of his van.

“I might be passing through Stillwater Springs in a week or so,” the disembodied voice drawled on. “I’ll bunk in on the couch, if it’s all right with you, and see what I can do about making that check good.” A slight pause. “The couch folds out, right?”

The graveyard supper of bologna and juice roiled in Briana’s stomach.

Alec erupted with joy, jumping all over the kitchen like one of those Mexican worms trapped inside a dry husk.

“If he’s coming here,” Josh huffed, fingers flying over the computer keyboard, “I’m running away from home!”

“See you soon,” Vance crooned. “Love you all.”

Click.

See you soon. Love you all.

Right.

Briana swore under her breath. The earlier, almost mystical sense of profound change receded into the background of her mind, instantly replaced by a tension headache, bouncing hard between her temples.

“Go ahead and run away,” Alec taunted his brother. “I’d like to have the bottom bunk, anyway!”

Briana sighed. “Enough,” she said, rising weakly from her chair, going through the motions. She filled Wanda’s water and kibble bowls, but her gaze kept straying to the answering machine. Vance hadn’t left a number, and she didn’t have caller ID, since the phone was vintage. “Do either of you have your dad’s cell number?”

Vance used cheap convenience-store phones, mostly. To him, everything was disposable—including people and a dog he’d raised from a pup.

“Like I’d call the jerk,” Josh muttered. He put up a good front, but there were tears under all that scorn. Briana could relate—she’d cried a literal river over Vance herself, though the waterworks had long since dried up, along with everything else she’d ever felt for him. She was so over him—in fact, she’d been looking for a way out long before the drop-off outside of Wal-Mart.

“Why do you want Dad’s number?” Alec asked, red behind his freckles, practically glaring at Briana. “You’re not going to call him and tell him not to come, are you?”

That was exactly what Briana had intended to do, but looking down into Alec’s earnest little face, she knew she couldn’t. Not while he and Josh were within earshot, anyhow.

“He probably won’t show up, anyhow,” Josh observed, still busily surfing the Web. What exactly was he doing on that computer? “With his word and one square of toilet paper, you could wipe your butt.”

“Joshua,” Briana said.

“I hate you!” Alec shrieked. “I hate both of you!”

Wanda whimpered and flopped down by her water dish in dog despondence. When Alec pounded into the bedroom just off the kitchen that he and Josh shared, Wanda didn’t pad after him, which was unusual.

Briana sighed again, pulled the carafe from the coffeemaker and went to the sink to fill it, glowering at the nearby answering machine. Damn you, Vance, she thought grimly. Why don’t you just leave us alone? That’s your specialty, isn’t it?

“He’s a cowboy, all right,” Josh said, sounding almost triumphant. The keyboard clicking had ceased, definitely a temporary phenomenon. Josh was online way too much, and he was way too skillful at covering his tracks for Briana’s comfort.

She frowned, still feeling disconnected, out of step. Went on making coffee, even though she didn’t need the caffeine. After the bomb Vance had just dropped, she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night anyway. “Your dad?” she asked.

Josh echoed the sigh she’d given earlier. “Logan Creed,” he said, with the exaggerated patience of a Rhodes scholar addressing a blathering idiot. “I ran a search on him. He’s been All-Around Cowboy twice. He’s been married twice, too, no kids, no visible means of support.”

“He’s a… cowboy?” Briana echoed stupidly. In a way, she found that news even more disconcerting than the threat of Vance’s imminent arrival.

“He does have a law degree,” Josh said, hunching his shoulders to peer at the monitor screen. “Maybe he’s rich or something.”

The Creeds were legendary in and around Stillwater Springs. Even as a comparative newcomer, Briana had heard plenty about their exploits, but if the state of the ranch was anything to go by, they not only weren’t rich, but they’d also been lucky to escape foreclosure.

“Now why would you run a search on Mr. Creed?” Briana asked, with an idleness she didn’t feel, as she took a mug down from the cupboard and dumped in artificial sweetener and fat-free cream.

Creed is a cowboy, said a voice in her head. Consider yourself warned.

“He said we could call him Logan,” Josh reminded her.

“Logan, then,” Briana said, filling her mug even though the pot wasn’t finished brewing. The stuff had that strong, bottom-of-the-pot taste, fit to curl her hair, but it steadied her a little. “Why check him out online?”

“It was the boots,” Josh reminisced, either hedging or ignoring Briana’s question entirely. “They weren’t fancy, like the ones that guy at the Ford dealership wears, with stars and cactuses and bears stitched on them—”

“Cacti,” Briana corrected automatically, ever the teacher.

“Whatever,” Josh said, turning to face her now. “Logan’s boots are beat-up. Anybody with boots like that probably rides horses and works hard for a living.”

Briana thought of Vance’s boots. He’d had them resoled several times, and they were always scuffed. “Maybe he’s just poor,” she suggested. “Logan, I mean.”

Josh shook his head. “He’s got a law degree,” he repeated.

“And ‘no visible means of support,’ as you put it. Stop evading my question, Josh. Why did you research our neighbor?”

“To make sure he isn’t a serial killer or something,” Josh answered.

Briana hid a smile. In a few minutes, she’d check on Alec. Right now, she suspected, he needed some alone time. “And what’s your assessment, detective? Is the neighborhood safe for decent people?”

Josh grinned. His smiles were so rare these days that even the most fleeting ones were cause for celebration. Some inner light had dimmed in Josh, after Vance’s desertion, and sometimes Briana feared that it would go out entirely.

“At least until Dad gets here, it is,” Josh said.

Ignoring that remark, Briana flipped on the overhead lights, sent the twilight shadows skittering. “You wouldn’t really run away, would you?” she asked carefully, making the artwork flutter like ruffled feathers on some big bird when she opened the refrigerator door again. Bologna sandwiches aside, the boys would need a real supper. “If your dad comes to visit, I mean?”

The silence stretched thin between her question and Josh’s answer.

Still in the chair in front of the computer, he looked down at the floor. “I’m ten, Mom,” he said. “Where would I go?”

Briana set aside the package of chicken drumsticks she’d just taken from the fridge and went to her son. Moved to lay a hand on his shoulder, then withdrew it. “Josh—”

“Why can’t he just leave us alone?” Josh broke in plaintively. “You’re divorced from him. I want to be divorced from him, too.”

Briana bent her knees, sat on her haunches, looking up into Josh’s face. He was one very worried little boy, trying so hard to be a man. “I know you’re angry,” she said, “but your dad will always be your dad. He’s not perfect, Josh, but neither are the rest of us.”

A tear slipped down Josh’s cheek, a little silvery trail coursing through an afternoon’s worth of happy dirt. “I still wish we could trade him in for somebody different,” he said.

Briana’s chuckle was part sob. Her vision blurred, and her smile must have looked brittle to Josh, even forced. “Cardinal cosmic rule number one,” she said. “You can’t change the past—or other people. And the truth is, while things were pretty hard a lot of the time, I don’t regret marrying your dad.”

Josh sniffled, perplexed. “You don’t?”

Briana shook her head.

“Why not? He’s chronically unemployed. When he does send a child-support check, it always bounces. Don’t you ever wish you’d married another kind of man? Or just stayed single?”

Briana reached up, ran a hand over Josh’s ultrashort summer haircut. “I never wish that,” she said. “Because if I hadn’t married your dad, I wouldn’t have you and Alec, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”

Josh ruminated. They’d had the conversation before, but he needed to be reminded, even more often than Alec did, that she was there for the duration, that she’d fight monsters for him, or walk through fire. For a year after Vance had left them, Josh had had nightmares, woke screaming for her. Alec had suffered, too, wetting the bed several times a week.

“We’re a lot of trouble,” Josh said finally. “Alec and me, I mean. Fighting all the time, and not doing our chores.”

“You’re the best things that ever happened to me,” Briana said truthfully, standing up straight. “It would be kind of nice if you and your brother got along better and did your chores, though.”

The door to the boys’ bedroom creaked partway open, and Alec stuck his head out.

“I’m done being mad now,” he said. His glance slid to Josh. “Mostly.”

Briana laughed. “Good,” she replied, getting out the electric skillet to fry up chicken legs. “Both of you need to clean up. Josh, you go first. Shut down that computer and hightail it for the bathroom. Alec, you can wash here at the kitchen sink, and then we’ll go over your multiplication tables.”

For once, Josh didn’t argue.

Alec dragged the step stool over to the sink, climbed up and scrubbed his face and hands. “It’s summer, Mom,” he protested. “I bet the kids who go to real school aren’t worrying about any dumb old multiplication tables.”

“Alec,” Briana said.

“One times one is—”

“Alec.”

Alec rattled through his sixes, sevens and eights, the sequences that usually gave him trouble, before he got down off the step stool. Then he stood facing Briana, hands and face dripping.

“I know Dad’s cell-phone number,” he said.

Briana’s heart pinched. Alec lived for any kind of contact with Vance, no matter how brief or limited. He probably expected her to shoot down the visit like a clay bird on a skeet-shooting range, but he was willing to give her the information anyway.

“That’s okay,” she said, a little choked up. Alec was only eight. Even after all the disappointments, and all Briana’s cautious attempts to explain, he simply didn’t understand why the four of them plus Wanda didn’t add up to a family anymore. “You know, of course, that your dad… changes his mind a lot? About visits and things like—”

Alec cut her off with a glum look and a nod. “I just want to see him, Mom. I know he might not come.”

Briana’s throat cinched tight. Vance was always chasing some big prize, some elusive victory, emotionally blindfolded, stumbling over rough ground, trying to catch fireflies in his bare hands. Their marriage was over for good, but he still had their sons. They were smart, wonderful boys. Why were they always at the bottom of his priority list?

“I know,” she said, at last. “I know.”

CASSIE STROKED the dog as she regarded Logan in her thoughtful way, seeing way inside. She looked completely at home in her skin, sitting there on the porch step. Unlike most of the women Logan knew, Cassie never seemed to fret about her weight—it was simply part of who she was. To him, she’d always been beautiful, a great and deep-rooted tree, sheltering him and his brothers under her leafy branches when they were young, along with half the other kids in the county. Giving them space to grow up in, within her constant, unruffled affection.

“You look so much like Teresa,” she said quietly. “Especially around the eyes.”

Logan didn’t answer. Cassie was thinking out loud, not making conversation. She never made conversation, not the small-talk variety, anyway.

Teresa, his mother, had been Cassie’s foster daughter, so they weren’t really related, he and this “grandmother” of his. Still, he loved her, and knew she loved him in return.

Cassie looked around, sighed. “The place is a shipwreck,” she said, still petting Sidekick, who was sucking up the attention, snuggling close against Cassie’s side. “You should come and stay in my guest room until the contractors are through.”

“Your guest room,” Logan said, “is a teepee.”

Cassie laughed. “You didn’t mind sleeping out there when you were a boy,” she reminded him. “You used to pretend you were Geronimo, and Dylan and Tyler always fussed at me because you wouldn’t let them be chief.”

The memory—and the mention of his brothers—ached in Logan’s rawest places. “You ever hear from them, Cassie?” he asked, very quietly and at a considerable amount of time.

“Do you?” Cassie immediately countered.

Logan shoved a hand through his hair. He still needed a trim, but there were only so many things a man could do on his first day home. “No,” he said. “And you knew that, so why did you ask?”

“Wanted to hear you say it aloud,” Cassie said. “Maybe it’ll sink in, that way. Dylan and Ty are your brothers, Logan. All the blood family you’ve got in the world. You play fast and loose with that, like you’ve got all the time there is to make things right between the three of you, and you’ll be sorry.”

Logan approached at last, found a perch on the bottom step. His first inclination was to get his back up, ask why it was his job to “make things right,” but the question would have been rhetorical bullshit.

He knew why it was up to him. Because he was the eldest. Because nobody else was going to open a dialogue. And because he’d been the one to start the fight, the day of their dad’s funeral, by speaking ill of the dead.

Okay, he’d been drunk.

But he’d meant the things he’d said about Jake—that he wouldn’t miss him, that the world would be a more peaceful place without him, if not a better one.

He’d meant them then, anyway.

Cassie reached out and mussed his hair. “Why did you come back here, Logan?” she asked. “I think I know, but, like before, I’d like to hear you say it.”

“To start over,” he said, after another hesitation.

“Sounds like a big job,” Cassie observed. “Getting on some kind of terms with your brothers—even slugging terms would be better than what you have now—that’ll be part of it.”

Logan nodded, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t trust his voice beyond the three-word sentence he’d offered up last.

“I’ll give you their numbers,” Cassie said, shifting enough to extract her purse from between her right thigh and the porch rail, taking out a notepad and a pen. “You call them.”

“What am I going to say?”

For all the figuring he’d done, all the planning and deciding, he’d never come up with a way to close the yawning gap between him and Dylan and Tyler.

Cassie chuckled. “Start with hello,” she said, “and see where it goes from there.”

“I shouldn’t need to tell you where it might ‘go from there,’” he replied.

“You’ll never know if you don’t try,” Cassie told him. She scrawled two numbers onto the notepad, quickly and from memory, Logan noted, and tore off the page to hand to him. Having done that, she stood with the elegant grace that always surprised him a little, given her size. She patted Sidekick once more and descended the steps with the slow and purposeful motion of a glacier, leaving Logan to step out of her way or get run over.

Sidekick remained behind on the porch step, but he gave a little snort-sigh, sorry to see Cassie go.

Logan opened the door of her car, like a gentleman. Why Cassie didn’t buy herself something decent to drive was beyond him—she received a chunk of the take from the local casino twice a year, as did the other forty-odd members of her tribe.

“Next time I see you,” she said, shaking a finger at him, “you’d better be able to tell me you’ve spoken to Dylan and Tyler. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to shave and put on something with a collar and buttons.” She paused to tug at his T-shirt. “In my day, these things were underwear.”

Logan laughed. “I’ve missed you, Cassie,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Sidekick and I will stop by tomorrow—I’m taking him to the vet and I have a meeting with my contractor. I can promise the shave and the button-down shirt, maybe even a haircut, but whether I’ll have called my brothers or not… well, that’s a crapshoot.”

“Longer you put it off, the harder it will be,” Cassie said, making no move to get into the car. “Are you going to stay, Logan, or are you just blowing through to spit on your father’s grave and sell your share of this land to some actor?”

“I hope you’re not going to stand there and pretend you were the president of Jake Creed’s fan club,” Logan said.

“We had our tussles, Jake and me,” Cassie admitted. “But he was your father, Logan. In his own crazy way, he loved you boys.”

“Yeah, it was right out of Leave it to Beaver, the way we lived,” Logan scoffed. There was a note of respect in his tone, but it was for Cassie, not Jake. “I guess you’ve forgotten the year he cut the Christmas tree in half with a chainsaw. And how about that wonderful Thanksgiving when he decided the turkey was overcooked and threw it through the kitchen window?”

Cassie sighed, laid a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “What about the time you and Dylan decided to run away from home and got lost up in the woods? It was November, and the weatherman was predicting record low temperatures. The sheriff gave up the search when the sun went down, but Jake…? He kept looking. Found you and brought you both home.”

“And hauled us both off to the woodshed.”

“If he’d given up, you’d have been hauled off to the morgue. I know he took a switch to you, and I’d have stopped him if I’d been here, but it wasn’t anger that made him paddle your hind end, Logan Creed. It was plain old ordinary fear.”

“Today, they call it child abuse,” Logan pointed out.

“Today,” Cassie argued, “they’ve got school shootings and kids who can’t be graded on a test because their self-esteem might be damaged. They call in the social workers if the screen on the TV in their bedroom is too small, or their personal computer isn’t fast enough. I’m not so sure a good switching wouldn’t be a favor to some of those young thugs who hang out behind the pool hall when they’re supposed to be in class.”

“That is so not politically correct,” Logan said, though secretly, he agreed.

“I don’t have to be politically correct,” Cassie retorted, with a sniff.

She was right about that. She didn’t. And she wasn’t.

She ducked behind the wheel of her car. “Welcome back, Logan,” she said, watching him through the open window. “See that you stay.”

He thought of Briana Grant, her lively sons and her fat black dog. The idea of sticking around didn’t seem quite so daunting as before.

“I guess Dylan’s been back,” he ventured. “Long enough to hire a caretaker, anyway.”

Cassie merely nodded, waiting.

“Is he… Are Dylan and Briana…?”

Cassie’s brown eyes warmed with humor and understanding. “Involved?” she said. “Is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” Logan grumbled, because he knew she was going to leave him hanging there if he didn’t respond. “That’s what I mean.”

She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “You know Dylan. When he goes after a woman…”

Logan’s knuckles ached where he gripped the lower edge of Cassie’s car window.

Cassie smiled and patted one of his hands. “If you want to know about Dylan and Briana,” she said sweetly, “you’d better ask one of them. I’m just an old lady, minding my own business. How would I know what is—or isn’t—going on between those two?”

“You know everything,” Logan said. If he hadn’t been wearing a T-shirt, he’d have been hot under the collar. “About everybody in Stillwater Springs and for fifty miles in all directions.”

Cassie sighed. Shifted the car into Reverse. “You’d better step back,” she said, “if you don’t want me to run over your toes.”

Logan, being no fool, stepped back.

He watched Cassie whip the little car around and chug back down the driveway at a good clip, exhaust pipe belching blue smoke, loose parts rattling. When she topped the rise, then dipped out of sight, he looked down at the paper she’d handed him earlier.

Dylan’s number.

Tyler’s.

Sidekick came down the porch steps to nudge Logan in one thigh, as if urging him to get it over with.

Cassie had been right, of course. It wasn’t going to get any easier.

He got out his cell phone, thumbed in Dylan’s number, half hoping he’d get voice mail.

“Yo,” Dylan said, live and in person. “Dylan Creed.”

Logan plunked down on the porch step, right where Cassie had been sitting earlier. Cleared his throat. “Did you check caller ID before you answered?” he asked.

Silence.

Then, “Logan?”

“It’s me,” Logan said, bracing himself. Prepared for either a backlash of profanity or an instant hang-up.

Neither one came. Dylan seemed stunned, as much at a loss for words as Logan was.

“I’ll be damned,” Dylan said finally. “Where are you?”

“On the ranch,” Logan replied, relieved.

“What are you doing there?” Now there was an edge to Dylan’s tone; he sounded vaguely suspicious.

“Not much of anything, right at the moment,” Logan said, scratching Sidekick’s ears. “The place is going to hell in a wheelbarrow. Thought I’d fix it up a little—my part of it, anyway.”

Another silence followed, pulsing with all the things neither one of them dared say.

“What’ve you been up to, Logan?”

Was it brotherly interest, that question, or an accusation? Logan decided to give Dylan the benefit of the doubt. “Quit the rodeo, got married and divorced a couple of times, started a business. What about you?”

“There are similarities,” Dylan said quietly. “I’m not rodeoing anymore, either. No wives, current or ex, but I do have a two-year-old daughter. Her name’s Bonnie—or it was the last time I heard. Her mother’s changed it half a dozen times since the kid was born.”

Logan closed his eyes. His own brother had a child, his niece, and he hadn’t known the little girl existed. “The last time you heard? Don’t you see Bonnie, Dylan?”

For a moment, the connection seemed to crackle, then Dylan took a breath. “Not much,” he admitted. “Sharlene’s supposed to share custody, but she doesn’t.”

“Maybe I could help you with that,” Logan heard himself say.

“Yeah,” Dylan retorted, and the edge was back in his voice. “You’re a lawyer. I keep forgetting.”

I’m also your brother.

“Look, if you decide you need legal advice, give me a call. If not, that’s okay, too. I just called because—”

“Why did you call, Logan?” A challenge. That was like Dylan—to assume Logan must be up to something, if he’d made contact after all this time.

“I guess being back home made me a little nostalgic, that’s all,” Logan said.

“Home?” Dylan echoed, downright testy now. “Where’s that?”

Logan said nothing.

“What do you want?”

The words hurt Logan a lot more than he would have admitted. “Nothing,” he said. “I just thought we could talk.”

“You’re planning to sell your share of the ranch, aren’t you? That’s why you’re hiring contractors and buying lumber. So you can nick some Hollywood type for a few million?”

Ah, the grapevine, Logan thought. Dylan knew he was fixing up the ranch house, because he still had sources in town. Asking where he was had been a formality.

“I’m not selling,” he said evenly. “I’m here to stay. And if you’re thinking of liquidating your share of the place, I’ll match anybody else’s offer.” That train of thought led to Briana Grant, since she was living in Dylan’s house, and following it got Logan into trouble. He was a beat late realizing he’d said the wrong thing.

“If I was going to sell my ten thousand acres—and I’m not—I sure as hell wouldn’t let you buy me out.”

Here we go, Logan thought. “Why’s that?”

“You know why. Because of the things you said about Dad.”

“I was wrong, okay? I should have been more respectful—kept my opinions to myself. I’m sorry, Dylan.”

More silence. Dylan would have been prepared for a counterattack, but the left-field apology probably threw him a little.

“Dylan? Are you still there?”

Dylan sighed audibly. “I’m here.”

“And ‘here’ is where?”

“L.A.,” Dylan said. “I had a meeting with my agent and a few studio people—I’m doing some stunt work for a movie. They’re filming up in Alberta, starting next week.”

“You like that kind of work?” Logan asked. He couldn’t imagine why anybody would, but then it couldn’t be any more dangerous than rodeo, and they’d both taken a turn at that.

“It’s a living,” Dylan answered. “Pays my child support.”

Logan took the plunge, though he knew the water would be cold. “I’m thinking of running some cattle on the ranch. Buying some horses, too. Maybe you’d like to be a partner?”

“We wouldn’t get along for ten minutes,” Dylan said, but there was something wistful in the way he said the words.

Logan laughed. “We never did,” he replied. “But we had a lot of fun in between brawls.”

More silence.

Then Dylan laughed, too. “Yeah,” he said.

It was the first thing they’d agreed on in a decade.

“You going to call Ty?” Dylan asked.

“At some point.”

“Well, tread lightly when you do. And don’t give my name as a reference—he’s seriously pissed at me right now.”

“Why?” Logan asked, though he could imagine a thousand reasons—not the least of which was Tyler’s tendency to be a hothead.

But Dylan shut him down. “Too personal,” he said coolly. This is between Ty and me. You’re on the outside,

looking in. “Look, Logan, it was good to hear from you, but I’ve gotta go. Big date.”

“Right,” Logan replied. He and Dylan had been civil to each other. When he saw Cassie the next morning, he could honestly say he’d tried. “Good luck with the movie.”

Dylan said thanks and hung up.

Logan looked down at Sidekick, who was gazing soulfully into his eyes.

“One down, one to go,” he told the dog.

Sidekick whimpered.

Logan consulted Cassie’s note again, then dialed the number scrawled next to Tyler’s name.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

Then, the recording. “This is Tyler Creed. I’m busy right now, but I’ll call you back unless you’re selling something. In that case, you’re SOL. Wait for the beep, and spill it.”

Logan chuckled, waited for the beep.

“This is Logan,” he said. He recited both his cell number and the new one for the ranch phone. “Call me. I’m not selling anything.”

Like hell he wasn’t.

CHAPTER THREE

SOLEMNLY, Alec presented Briana with a tattered piece of notebook paper. The pencil marks forming Vance’s number were pressed in hard, as though Alec had been afraid they would fade if he didn’t copy them down with all his might.

The sorrow Briana felt in that moment weighed down her heart. Even Alec, Vance’s most loyal supporter, knew that the precious digits in that phone number were elusive. Like his father.

Tears scalded the backs of her eyes, and she touched the pendant she always wore—she’d made it herself, scanning an old photo of her dad, resizing it, setting it in resin. He’d been a rambler, too, Bill McIntyre had, a well-known rodeo clown following the circuit during the season, parking his camper in his sister’s backyard in Boise when there were no rodeos to perform in. The difference was, he’d taken Briana on the road with him, after her mother died. She’d been Alec’s age then.

Her aunt Barbara had objected, of course, to all the travel and Briana doing her schoolwork by correspondence instead of attending a real school. A young girl needed friends, Barbara had argued. Needed dance lessons and Sunday school and security.

Every time they’d returned to Boise, Briana’s bossy but beloved aunt had hustled her off to the school for tests; every time, Briana had proved to be far above her grade level. In fact, she’d completed high school by the time she was fifteen. Bill had immediately signed her up for college-level courses, and she’d aced those, too, with his help.

She treasured the recollection of the two of them sitting at the little fold-down table in the camper, lamplight casting a golden benediction from over their heads, bent over one textbook or another.

Now, with her son standing hopefully before her, she missed her dad more poignantly than ever. Sure, he’d dragged her all over the United States in that old camper, but he’d been rock-solid, too. There for her, no matter what.

Her greatest regret, where her children were concerned, was that she hadn’t given them the kind of father Bill had been to her. Instead, she’d been swept away by Vance’s good looks, charm and easy drawl.

“Are you going to call Dad?” Alec asked, his voice small.

Briana smiled. “Yes,” she said. “But only to ask how long he’ll be staying.”

Alec looked desperately relieved. His gaze slipped to the pendant, on its simple leather cord, and the image of Bill “Wild Man” McIntyre, clad in full clown regalia. “You miss Grampa, huh?”

“Lots,” Briana admitted. Her dad had retired from rodeo soon after she married Vance, giving up his beloved camper for a modest house a few blocks from Barbara and her family, saying he was all set to fish every day and wait for his grandchildren to come along.

A month later, he’d passed away very suddenly, after a particularly nasty case of the flu had turned to pneumonia.

The irony of that still bothered Briana. Her dad had been gored by bulls and trampled by broncs in his long career as a rodeo clown, and in the end, he’d died of an ailment a simple injection might have prevented.

Alec leaned in, planted a kiss on Briana’s cheek. “’Night, Mom,” he said. “And thanks.”

Briana waited until Alec and Josh had both settled in for the night, keeping herself busy by puttering around the kitchen, washing up dishes she’d left in the sink that morning, making up a grocery list, checking and rechecking her work schedule for the coming week. Finally, sweaty-palmed, she took the phone receiver off the hook on the wall and called Vance.

“That number,” an automated operator responded, after three rings, “is no longer in service.”

Of course it wasn’t, Briana thought, hanging up with a slight bang, feeling both relieved and annoyed. Vance would have had to buy more minutes to keep that particular line of communication open; instead, he’d simply gotten another phone, in another convenience store, with a new number he hadn’t troubled himself to share with her.

She rarely had anything to say to Vance, but suppose one of the boys were sick or hurt? How would she reach him?

Resigned, Briana sighed and checked the clock on the stove. Too early to turn in, especially with all that caffeine coursing through her system, and she didn’t feel like watching television or cruising the Internet.

Wandering into the living room, she peered through the lace curtains toward the main ranch house. Saw its lights shining through the trees in the orchard for the first time since she’d moved into Dylan’s place as caretaker-in-residence. The sight was comforting, made her feel less isolated and alone. Not that she meant to get too friendly with Logan Creed—he was easy on the eyes, and she’d liked him right away, even if he did make her nervous, but he was a cowboy.

Like Vance.

He’d blown in on a stray wind, like some tumbleweed, Logan had, and he was likely to blow right out again, when the right breeze came along.

Biting her lower lip, Briana turned away from the window.

In the distance, the phone jangled.

She ran to answer, smacking her shin on one of the kitchen chairs as she passed. Wincing, she grabbed up the receiver and said, “Hello? Vance?”

Silence.

“Hello?” Briana repeated.

“It’s Logan,” her neighbor said quietly.

“Oh,” Briana said.

“I’ll make this quick, since you’re expecting another call,” Logan replied affably. “I checked out Dylan’s pasture fence, and I don’t think it would hold that bull if he decided to charge. Since I’m planning to do a lot of work around the place anyway, I’m having new posts and rails put in. Just thought I’d let you know before the work crews showed up.”

I’m not expecting another call. That was what Briana wanted to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to let on that she was glad he’d phoned, glad to hear another adult human voice on a dark summer night. He’d think she was needy if she did. In the market for a man.

“Did you clear that with Dylan?” she said instead, rubbing her bruised shin, and then wished she’d gone the needy route anyway. That would have been better than the unintentionally snippy way she’d put the question.

Logan waited a beat before answering, to let her know he’d registered the tone. “I don’t imagine he’d object, since I’m footing the bill. If that bull got out and did some damage, it would be Dylan’s hide the lawyers nailed to the barn wall, not mine.”

The thought of Cimarron running amok, with Josh or Alec in his path, pushed all concerns about how she might have sounded to Logan right out of Briana’s mind. Having watched hundreds of rodeos in her time, she’d seen bulls send cowboys and clowns into midair somersaults and, once or twice, cave in their rib cages when they landed.

“You really think he could get loose? Cimarron, I mean?”

“Yeah,” Logan replied. She heard Isn’t that what I just said? in his intonation, though that part went unspoken.

“Oh my God,” Briana murmured, closing her eyes. Child care was hard to find in Stillwater Springs, so when she couldn’t take the boys to work with her, leaving them to study or play handheld video games in the casino’s coffee shop, she left them home to play, study or do chores. They had strict orders to call at any sign of a problem, and stay close to the house while she was away, but they were boys, after all. Lively and adventurous. She knew they probably ranged over most of the ranch when she wasn’t around.

“Is something wrong?” Logan asked moderately.

“I was just worrying,” Briana said, trying to smile, though she couldn’t think why, since she was alone in the kitchen and Logan couldn’t see her. “It’s a mother thing.”

“I’ll take care of the fence,” Logan assured her. “In the meantime, see that the boys stay clear of Cimarron.” A pause. “Dylan did warn you about the bears, didn’t he?”

Briana gulped. “Bears?”

“They like to raid the orchard every now and then,” Logan said.

“In two years,” Briana said, her stomach doing a slow backward roll, “I haven’t seen a single bear.”

“They’re around,” Logan replied. “Mostly browns and blacks, but there is the occasional grizzly, too, and they’re bad news.”

“G-Grizzlies?” Briana echoed stupidly.

Logan sighed. “Dylan should have told you,” he said.

Briana barely knew Dylan Creed, but she had every reason to be grateful to him since he’d given her a place to stay when she needed it most, along with a generous supply of groceries and an old pickup to drive, and the faintly critical note in Logan’s voice put her on the defensive. “I guess the subject never came up,” she said stiffly.

“With Dylan,” Logan countered dryly, “the most important subjects often don’t come up.”

“I’ll watch out for Cimarron and the bears,” Briana said.

There was more Logan wanted to say—she could sense that—but he must have quelled the urge. “Good,” he said, after several seconds had ticked by. Nothing more, just Good.

A man of few words, then.

Call-waiting clicked in. Since Briana didn’t have caller ID, and since her better angels whispered that Logan had warned her and she had no cause to be hostile, she ignored the beeps. “Maybe you’d like to join us for supper tomorrow night,” she said, to make up for her bad manners.

A flush climbed her neck while she waited for Logan’s reply.

“Can I bring anything?” he asked presently.

“No need,” she said, strangely jubilant at his tacit acceptance. It was only supper, a simple neighbor-toneighbor courtesy. Mustn’t make a big fat deal of it. “Sidekick’s welcome, too, of course. Six-thirty? I get home from work at about five-fifteen, and I’ll need time to shower and cook and everything.”

More information than he needed, Briana reflected, blushing even harder. What was the matter with her?

“Six-thirty,” he agreed, with a smile in his voice. It was almost as if he knew she was red from her throat to the roots of her hair.

They said goodbye and hung up, and the instant the connection was broken, the phone rang again.

“Hello?” Briana said. Had Logan changed his mind about supper already? Remembered a previous commitment?

“Hey,” Vance said. “I just tried to call and—”

Briana let out a long breath. “I was on the other line.”

“Did you get my message?”

“Yes. You’re thinking of dropping in for a visit.” She lowered her voice, since the boys’ room was nearby and she wouldn’t put it past either or both of her sons to be glued to the other side of the door with their ears on broadband. “Alec is going to be seriously disappointed if you don’t show up.”

“How about you, hon?” Vance drawled, playing up the cowboy routine that had sucked her into his orbit the first time. “Would you be disappointed if I didn’t show up?”

Briana’s blood pressure surged. She waited for it to peak and go into a decline before she answered. “Not in the least,” she said. “We’re divorced, Vance. D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D.”

Atypically, he backed off. He was playing it cool, which meant he wanted something.

“What’s up, Vance?” she asked, as calmly as she could. If she came on too strong, he’d simply hang up on her, but she wasn’t going to roll over, either. “You didn’t make it to Stillwater Springs when Josh had his tonsils out last fall. You were a no-show at Christmas, Thanksgiving and both the boys’ birthdays. What’s so important that you’re willing to swing this far off the circuit to sleep on my couch?”

Vance’s answer was underlaid with one big, silent sigh of long-suffering patience. He was so misunderstood. “I just want to talk to you face-to-face, that’s all. And see the boys.”

And see the boys.

Always the afterthought.

“About what?” Briana demanded, still struggling to keep her voice down. “So help me, Vance, if it’s about wriggling out of paying your child support again—”

“It isn’t,” he interrupted, sounding put-upon. “Why does everything always come down to money with you, Bree?”

“If everything ‘came down to money’ with me, Vance Grant, you’d be in jail right now. Josh and Alec are your sons. Don’t you feel any responsibility toward them at all?”

“I love them,” Vance said, going from put-upon to downright wounded.

“Talk is cheap,” Briana said.

“Do you want me to come or not? I can be there Saturday.”

“I work on Saturday.”

“That’s okay,” Vance responded, magnanimous now. “I can hang out with the boys until you get home.”

Briana thought of Alec, his face so full of hope, and then of Josh, who’d threatened to run away if Vance made good on the visit. “Alec will be thrilled,” she said, in all truth. “Good luck with Josh, though.”

“What’s up with my buddy Josh?”

“I’d say he sees right through you, Vance,” Briana said. Josh didn’t need a buddy, he needed a dad—a concept well beyond Vance’s capacity to grasp.

“And that’s supposed to mean what?” Vance asked furiously.

True colors, Briana thought. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Stop baiting him, said the better angel.

Sometimes she’d like to throttle that better angel.

“You figure it out,” she said.

“Look, I don’t need this. Maybe it would be better if I just stayed clear.”

Briana closed her eyes, but Alec’s image was still there, yearning for a visit from the father he adored. She had to stop thinking about what she wanted—never to lay eyes on Vance Grant again—and consider her children’s needs. Right or wrong, Vance was their dad, and as much as Josh protested, he wanted a relationship with him as badly as Alec did.

“I’m sorry,” she said, nearly choking on the words.

“You know what’s wrong with you?” Vance countered. He’d changed tactics again, turned the dial to “charm.” “You need sex.”

Instantly, Logan Creed came to mind. Would his chest be hairy or smooth, when he took off his shirt?

Briana gave herself an inward shake. “Maybe I do,” she admitted. “But not with you, so don’t get any ideas. You are sleeping on the couch.”

“I’d planned on that anyhow,” Vance said. “Which reminds me—does it fold out?”

He’d asked that same question in the message he’d left on the answering machine. Briana was puzzled, and a little alarmed.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

Vance’s chuckle sounded false. “I’ve been thrown from a lot of broncs in my time,” he replied. “Have to think about my back, now that I’m getting older.”

“Right,” Briana said, still curious, but unwilling to pursue the subject any further. She’d been talking to Vance too long as it was. Twenty minutes out of her life, and she’d never get them back.

“See you Saturday,” Vance said cheerfully, like she was looking forward to his arrival instead of dreading it with every fiber of her being.

“See you Saturday,” she confirmed glumly.

And then she hung up.

“I OUGHT TO PUNCH you in the mouth,” Jim Huntinghorse said, the next morning, when Logan tracked him down at the Council Fire Casino.

Logan grinned. “I’m real glad to see you again, too, old buddy,” he said, drawing back a chair at one of the tables in the coffee shop and signaling the waitress for a cup of coffee. Since Sidekick was out in the truck, he didn’t plan to stay long. He’d get the java to go. He ran his gaze over Jim’s fine black suit. “You’ve come up in the world,” he said. “General manager. Who would have thought?”

“Who would have thought,” Jim retorted, softening a little, but not much, “that you’d leave town without saying goodbye to your best friend? No calls. No e-mails. No nothing.”

“When the judge let me out of jail after that brawl with Tyler and Dylan, he told me not to show my face in Stillwater Springs until I’d cooled down.”

“It took you twelve years to cool down?”

“Chip off the old block,” Logan said as he nodded his approval when the coffee arrived in a take-out cup and reached for his wallet.

Jim waved both the waitress and the money away.

“You can say that again.” Jim scowled, still glowering. He stood beside the table, showing no signs of sitting down, his big fists bunched at his sides as though he might carry out the original threat. “You’re as crazy as your dad was.”

“I’m back,” Logan announced, after taking a cautious sip of the steaming brew. “And except for buying grub at the supermarket and taking my dog to the vet for a checkup, this is my first stop.”

“Is there a compliment lurking in there somewhere?” Jim frowned.

“Sit down. You cast a shadow like a mountain with the sun behind it.”

“I’m working,” Jim pointed out. But he pulled back a chair and sat.

“You’re a priority. There’s your compliment.”

“Gee, thanks. I get married. No best buddy since kindergarten to stand up with me. I get divorced. Nobody to drown my sorrows with. But I’m a ‘priority’?”

“Take it or leave it,” Logan said. “Best I can do.”

At last, Jim relented. A grudging grin flashed across his chiseled Native-American face. “You just passing through—looking for a fight with one or both of your brothers maybe? Or did you finally come to your senses and decide that somebody ought to come back here and look after that ranch?”

Logan put a tip on the table for the waitress, who was ogling them from the other side of the service counter. During the millisecond it took to lay the money down, Jim’s face changed. Went dark again.

“You’re not going to sell out to some movie yahoo, are you?”

Logan shook his head. “I’m staying for good.” That refrain was becoming familiar, like a commercial heard once too often on the radio or the TV.

Again, the dazzling smile. All those white teeth and all that handsome-savage bullshit had sure gone over with the women when they were young and on the prowl. It probably still worked, Logan reflected.

“You mean it?” Jim asked.

“I mean it.”

“You meant it when you promised to be best man in my wedding, too,” Jim pointed out.

“I was in Iraq,” Logan said.

“You were in Iraq?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Just because you say something, Creed, that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“When my stuff gets here, I’ll show you the documentation. Honorable discharge. Even a couple of medals.”

Jim gave a low whistle. “So that’s why you dropped out of the rodeo scene. You always got a lot of play on ESPN. Then, all of the sudden, you’re just not there. You got drafted?”

“I enlisted,” Logan said. “Can we not talk about Iraq right now?”

Jim frowned, obviously confused. He was a veteran himself, and in buddy world, guys swapped war stories. “Why not?”

“Because I need booze to even think about combat, let alone talk about it, and given my illustrious history, not to mention the high incidence of alcoholism in the Creed clan, I try to limit myself to the occasional beer.”

“Oh,” Jim said. “Bad, huh?”

“Bad,” Logan admitted.

“You were special forces, right?”

“Right. And this constitutes talking about Iraq. I’m stone-cold sober and I’d like to stay that way.”

“Okay,” Jim agreed hastily, putting up both hands, palms out. “Okay.”

Logan stood. “I just came by to say hello and let you know I’m back. My dog’s in the truck and I have contractors to meet with, plus I promised to stop by Cassie’s before I head for home.”

Jim grinned, rising, too. “You have a dog and a truck? You really are going redneck.”

“Nah,” Logan said, giving the waitress a wave as he turned to go. “I still have both my front teeth.”

“Not for long,” Jim quipped, “if either of your brothers gets a wild hair to come back home the way you did.”

Jim was only joking, but the words jabbed at a sore spot in Logan. It was too much to hope that Dylan’s and Tyler’s personal roads might turn and wind homeward, and the three of them could come to some kind of terms, but Logan hoped it would happen, just the same.

His friend walked him to the front doors of the casino, slot machines flashing and chinging all around them. Logan wondered how anybody could work in the place, with all the noise.

“I’m off at six,” Jim said, as they parted. “Want to play some pool, swig some beer and catch up?”

“Not tonight,” Logan answered, remembering the unexpected invitation to have supper at Briana’s. She’d clearly been pissed off when he mentioned Dylan, and then she’d turned right around and offered him a meal. There was no figuring women. “Already made plans.”

“Soon, then,” Jim said. “I promise—no combat stuff. Unless you count a detailed description of my divorce as a war story, that is.”

Logan laughed, slapped Jim on the shoulder. “Any time after tonight,” he said. “You know where I live. Stop by when you get a chance.”

Jim nodded, and then Logan headed for his truck, and Jim went back inside the casino to do whatever the general manager of a casino did.

SO, BRETT TURLOW thought, just getting into his car after a brutal all-night poker game in which he’d lost his ass, he wasn’t the only one who’d returned to the old hometown after a long absence. Difference was, he’d come back with his tail between his legs. Logan Creed looked a mite too cheerful for that to be the case with him.

Brett slid behind the wheel of the dented Corolla he’d borrowed from his sister. Watched as Creed climbed into a respectably battered pickup truck, ruffled his dog’s ears and started the engine.

Most likely, Logan meant to sell the ranch, since nobody appeared to give a good goddamn about the place, and get on with his life.

That would be a good thing, if he left.

If Creed stayed, on the other hand, it meant trouble, pure and simple.

Bleary-eyed, half-sick because he hadn’t eaten in twelve hours and he’d gambled away most of his unemployment check, Brett made a mental note to ask around a little. Find out what Creed’s intentions were.

In the meantime, he needed to crash.

BRIANA STAYED clear of the coffee shop until Logan was gone. Then she wandered nonchalantly in to say hello to Millie, the sole waitress on duty, and snag a nonfat latte to keep her going through the morning.

She’d been up late the night before, on a jangling java-high, worrying that Vance would show up on Saturday, worrying that he wouldn’t. She needed caffeine, fast. Hair of the dog that bit her, so to speak.

The boys were still at home, warned on pain of death to stay away from Cimarron and the orchard, where there might be bears.

“Did you see that guy talking to Jim?” Millie enthused, automatically starting the latte. “Mucho cute.”

Briana felt a sting of proprietary annoyance and a boost to her spirits, both at once. “The cute ones are deadly,” she said lightly.

“Yeah,” Millie answered, looking back at Briana over one shoulder while the milk foamed under the sputtery nozzle on the fancy coffee machine, “but what a way to go. I’m going to ask Jim what his name is.”

“No need,” Briana said. “It’s Logan Creed.”

Millie’s eyes widened. “As in Stillwater Springs Ranch?”

“As in,” Briana confirmed. Like her, Millie was relatively new in town. She’d heard about the Creed brothers, though; they were almost folk heroes, like certain outlaws in the old west.

Famous for raising hell, mostly, from what Briana had been told.

“So you know him, then?” Millie fished, handing over the latte.

“I live on the ranch,” Briana reminded her friend. “That makes us neighbors.” She hugged the rest of the story—that Logan was having supper with her and the boys that night—close, like some delicious adolescent secret.

Silly.

Just then, Briana’s radio, buckled to her belt, crackled to life. A disembodied voice informed her that someone had just hit a jackpot on the newest bank of slot machines—time to attend to business.

She thanked Millie for the latte and hurried off.

The jackpot was a big one, it turned out. A little blue-haired lady off the senior citizens’ bus had struck gold on the Blazing Sevens, and Briana spent the next forty-five minutes handling the paperwork.

Jim, being the manager, paid out the booty in crisp hundred-dollar bills, beaming for the camera right along with the lucky winner.

After all the hoopla died down, Briana pulled her boss aside for a word. “I need Saturday off, if that’s possible,” she said.

Jim frowned. He was a good man, serious about his work and goal-oriented. There was even some talk that he might run for sheriff, if old Floyd Book retired early, on account of his heart condition.

“Saturdays are pretty busy,” he reminded her.

“I know,” Briana said.

He flashed her the grin that made a lot of women’s knees buckle. She and Jim had gone out a couple of times, after their separate divorces, but there was no spark, and when he got promoted to his present lofty position, they’d decided to stop dating and be friends.

“Hey,” he said. “I know you. If you’re asking for time off, it’s important.”

Was it important? Vance was supposed to arrive on Saturday, and she was nervous about his spending the day with the boys without her there. There was no physical danger—Vance had never raised a hand to her or their sons—but Alec and Josh could so easily be hurt in other ways.

“My ex-husband is coming back then,” she confided.

Jim’s grin faded. “Oh.”

Realizing what he was thinking—that there was a reconciliation in the offing—Briana blushed. “It’s nothing like that,” she said quickly. “I’m just worried about the boys being alone with him all day. Alec is suffering from a bad case of hero worship, and God knows what ideas Vance might put in his head, and Josh told me he’d rather run away—”

Jim put up a hand. “You can have Saturday off,” he interrupted. “I’ll fill in for you myself. But you owe me an extra shift.”

Briana nodded, deeply relieved. “Thanks, Jim.”

He smiled, but his dark eyes were worried. “Josh threatened to run away?”

Jim knew Briana’s sons, since they were in the casino coffee shop so often, and he’d been remarkably tolerant of their presence. Lots of bosses wouldn’t have been so understanding, but Jim had a boy of his own. Four-year-old Sam lived with his mother now, in Missoula, and didn’t visit often.

Briana patted his arm. “I don’t think Josh would really hit the road on his own, but I’d rather not take the chance.”

Jim heaved a heavy sigh, shoved a hand through his longish, blue-black hair. “Kids do stupid things sometimes,” he said.

Briana thought of the bull in Dylan’s pasture, and the bears that apparently fed in the orchard on occasion. She glanced at her watch. It was almost lunchtime; she’d call home from the employees’ lounge behind one of the casino’s three restaurants and make sure Alec and Josh were following orders.

“Yeah,” she agreed belatedly. “Sometimes they do.”

She and Jim parted, and she headed for the lounge, went straight to the pay phone. She needed a cell, but it wasn’t in the budget.

Josh answered on the third ring. “Alec is a buttface,” he said, without preamble.

“Be that as it may,” Briana answered, used to the running battle between her sons, “he’s your brother. What are you two up to?”

“Alec is doing his math, and I was on the Internet until you called. Wanda ate a woodchuck or something, and her farts are, like, gross.”

“I feel your pain,” Briana said cheerfully. “And how could Wanda have eaten a woodchuck?”

“I said ‘or something,’” Josh pointed out.

Briana smiled. “Joshua?”

“Okay, it was the bratwurst left over from night before last,” Josh said. “It wasn’t my idea to give it to her. Alec did that.”

Situation normal.

“Will you come and get us?” he asked. “It’s boring around here, when we can’t even go outside.”

“No time,” Briana said. “You’ll have to tough it out until I get home. I’m stopping off at the supermarket after work, so I might be a few minutes late.”

“Alec really thinks Dad’s coming on Saturday.”

Briana closed her eyes. “Maybe,” she said evenly. “Maybe he’s coming on Saturday.”

“With Dad, it’s always ‘maybe,’”

Josh replied.

“True enough. Do me a favor, though, and hold the remarks. It really upsets Alec.”

“He’s living in a fantasy world.”

“You’re Alec’s big brother,” Briana said. “Be nice to him.”

Josh sighed dramatically. “Okay, but only until you get home,” he said. “Then all bets are off.”

“Fair enough,” Briana said, with a smile.

Josh responded with a disgusted wail.

“What?” Briana asked anxiously, thinking the house had caught fire or a serial killer was trying to break down the back door.

“Wanda just cut one,” Josh lamented. “Again!” In the background, Alec whooped with manic delight.

“Butt-face!” Josh yelled.

“No name-calling, Josh,” Briana said. “You promised.”

“All right,” Josh countered, “but if you’re not here by five-thirty, I’m going to have to kill him.”

“I’ve only got one word for you, Joshua Grant.”

“What?”

“Babysitter,” Briana replied. Then she said goodbye and hung up.

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE WERE TWO CARS parked in front of Cassie’s ramshackle place at the edge of town, and she’d scrawled With a client on the whiteboard nailed up beside the front door. Logan took the marker, dangling from a piece of tattered baling twine, and added I was here. Logan.

That done, he turned and swung his gaze across the property.

Sidekick was sniffing around the edge of the teepee, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Stillwater Springs, Montana, had to offer. It was authentic, built in the old way, by Cassie’s father, of tree branches and buckskin, and she charged fifty cents per visit.

Logan approached, dropped two quarters into the rusty coffee can that served as a till—Cassie believed in the honor system and so did he—and ducked into the cool, semidarkness where he and Dylan and Tyler had played as boys.

Except for the long-cold fire circle in the center, rimmed by sooty stones, the teepee was empty. Gone were the ratty blankets he remembered, the gourd ladle and wooden bucket, the clay cooking pots. No sign of the mangy bearskins, either.

He sat down, cross-legged, facing the fire pit, and imagined the flames leaping before him. Sidekick took an uncertain seat beside him, leaned into his shoulder a little.

Maybe the animal knew that in the old times, he might have been on the supper menu.

Logan wrapped an arm around the dog, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Nobody’s going to boil you up with beans.”

Sidekick stuck close, just the same.

As Logan sat, he drifted into a sort of meditation, recalling other visits, sometimes alone, sometimes with his brothers. They’d always built a fire, filling the place with hide-scented smoke, and taken off their shirts. Sometimes, they’d even painted their chests and faces with cosmetics left behind by one or the other of their mothers.

Jake never threw anything away.

Except, of course, for three wives and three sons.

Something tightened inside Logan, and Sidekick seemed to feel it, as though the two of them were tethered together by some intangible cord. The dog gave a low, throaty whine.

The warp and woof of time itself seemed to shift as Logan sat there, waiting. It stretched and then contracted, until, finally, he could no longer measure the passing of seconds or minutes or even hours.

Outside, car doors slammed.

Engines started.

Sidekick eased away from his side, restless, and headed for the opening to look out.

And still Logan didn’t move.

He knew the bulky shadow at the entrance was Cassie, but he didn’t look up or speak.

“You’ll have to make peace with him, you know,” she said quietly.

Logan didn’t respond, even to nod, nor did he meet her eyes. He knew she was referring to Jake, the man he both loved and hated, with such intensity that most times, he couldn’t separate one emotion from the other.

“He won’t rest until you do,” Cassie went on. She stepped into the teepee then, sat down on the ground across from him, graceful despite her size.

Logan blinked, came out of the meditation, or whatever it was. He smiled. “Still telling fortunes, I see,” he said, referring to the client she’d been with when he arrived.

“It’s a living,” she said, with a little shrug and a partly sheepish smile.

“You don’t need to read cards to make a buck, Cassie,” he pointed out, as he had at least a hundred times before. “You get a regular check from the tribal council.”

“Maybe it isn’t about the money,” Cassie suggested mildly, laughing a little when Sidekick gave her a nuzzle with his nose and tried to sit in her ample lap.

“What do you tell them?” Logan asked. “Your clients, I mean?”

“Depends,” Cassie answered, “on what I think they need to hear.” She regarded him with a focus so sharp that it was unsettling. “Did you call Dylan and Tyler?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Dylan basically blew me off. I left a message for Ty, but he hasn’t called back.” He grinned. “Off the hook,” he finished.

“In your dreams,” Cassie said.

“Is this the part where you tell me what you think I need to hear?”

“Yes,” she replied succinctly.

He huffed out a sigh.

Sidekick arranged himself on Cassie’s broad thighs, and she didn’t push him away. Instead, she stroked his back idly, though her attention was still on Logan, one hundred percent. It felt a little like a ray of sunlight coming through the lens of a magnifying glass, searing its way through the brittle inner shell meant to hide his secrets.

“Jake won’t rest until you’ve come to terms with being his son,” Cassie said.

Logan bristled. “What do you mean, he won’t rest? He’s dead, gone, crossed over, whatever. Maybe they let him into heaven, but I’m betting he gets his mail in hell.”

“So bitter,” Cassie said, in a tsk-tsk tone. “No one is all bad, Logan. Including Jake Creed.”

“He was a son of a bitch.”

Cassie frowned. “Wrong. Your grandmother was a fine woman.”

Logan said nothing. He’d never known his grandmother, or his grandfather, either. They’d both died long before he was born, and Jake neither told stories about them nor kept their pictures around.

“People come into this life with agendas to fulfill, Logan,” Cassie told him quietly. “Sometimes they’re simple. Sometimes they’re complicated. Jake did what he was supposed to do.”

“What? Raise hell?”

“He made you strong.You and Dylan and Tyler.You’re as tough as the walls of this teepee, all three of you.”

“It would have been easier,” Logan said, “if he’d just named me Sue.”

Cassie laughed. “Easier isn’t necessarily better,” she pointed out.

Logan wanted to refute that statement, but even with all his legal training, he couldn’t come up with a solid argument. “I called my brothers,” he said. “The ball is in their court. What else is there to do?”

“You haven’t been to Jake’s grave, have you?”

Logan stiffened, shook his head. Cassie, it seemed, had eyes everywhere, in the bushes, in the trees, in the walls. She’d always known, somehow, what he’d done and what he hadn’t done. Worse, she believed she had the right to comment.

“His things are still packed away, too. That’s convenient, isn’t it? Because then you don’t have to remember quite so readily.”

“I came back here, didn’t I?”

Again, Cassie executed a half shrug. “You won’t stay if you don’t settle things with Jake,” she said. “I know what your dream is—to make the name Creed mean something good—and I can tell you that it’s more than just a dream. It’s a quest—the most important thing you’ll ever do.” At this, she paused and looked up and around at the interior of that teepee, as though her ancestors were hovering in the air or something. When her brown gaze collided with Logan’s, he felt like a butterfly with its wings pinned to a mat. “You’ll fail if you don’t own who you are—all of it. Not just the law degree, and the fancy silver belt buckles you won at the rodeo, and all that money you’re pretending you don’t have. You’ve got to accept that you’re flesh of Jake Creed’s flesh, bone of his bone, blood of his blood, and nothing is going to change that.”

Logan shifted, got to his feet. “He was a bastard,” he said. “If I could be anybody else’s son—anybody’s—I would.”

“Well,” Cassie said implacably, moving Sidekick gently off her lap and then accepting Logan’s hesitantly offered hand so she could stand, “you’re not. That’s one thing I know for sure.”

“Maybe you should have told him,” Logan said, seething. “He used to say otherwise. He said Teresa was a whore—did you know that? Practically every time he got drunk, which was often, he told me she’d been catting around, and I probably wasn’t his.” He leaned in a little, despite the flinch he saw in Cassie’s broad, kindly face. “And you know what? I wished to God it was true back then, and I wish it now!”

Cassie stood her ground, like she always had. It was a trait he blessed her for, even when he hated what she said. “How’s that working out for you, Logan?” she asked quietly. “All that wishing?”

He glared at her.

She waited.

“You’re so sure he wasn’t telling the truth, for once in his miserable, worthless life?”

“Teresa was faithful to her husband. She loved him. She loved you.” Cassie drew in a long, somewhat quivery breath. “Besides, you have Jake’s bone structure. His temper, too, and that mile-wide stubborn streak that ought to be in every dictionary under ‘Creed.’”

“Great,” Logan said, sagging a little on the inside, now that he’d let off steam. “And what am I supposed to do with all this information, oh, great medicine woman?”

“Break the curse,” Cassie answered. “Make different choices than Jake did. Find a woman, love her with your whole heart and mind and body and spirit. Make babies with her. Stick with her—and the children—for the duration.” She paused, regarded him with a kind of warm sorrow that got under his skin in a way her challenges hadn’t. “You’ve been running ever since the day they put Jake in the ground,” she went on, touching his arm. “Coming back here was a big thing. I know that. But until you can forgive Jake—really forgive him—you’ll be stuck, no matter where you go or what you do.”

Logan thrust a hand through his hair. “I can’t,” he said.

“Then you and your dog might as well get back in that old truck and move on, because you’re wasting your time here.” Tears glittered in Cassie’s wise brown eyes. “In all the ways that really count, Teresa was my daughter. I know what Jake put her through—Maggie and poor Angela, too. I had to let it all go, Logan—the hatred, the need for revenge—because it was devouring me from the inside.

“Look at your life. Your brothers are strangers to you. Twice, you married the wrong woman. The ranch—your legacy—is practically in ruins. You can’t just ignore all of that. You have to make it right.”

“How?” Logan demanded, furious because it was all true. Both his wives, Susan and Laurie, had been good women. He’d never raised a hand to either one of them, barely raised his voice, in fact. But in his own way, he’d been no more available to them than Jake was to Teresa or Maggie or Angela. “Short of committing bigamy—”

Cassie smiled. “Those marriages are behind you,” she said. “Did you part friends?”

Friends? Logan ached. He’d loved Susan, or thought he did. And when they weren’t having monkey sex, they’d been giving each other the cold shoulder. Now, she was happily married to a balding dentist with a slight paunch, and expecting her second child. He’d given her a settlement when his company took off, several years after their divorce, and she’d put it in trust for her children. Still, the last time he’d seen Susan, he’d known by the look in her eyes that she could barely restrain herself from spitting in his face.

“Not so much,” he admitted. He still talked to Laurie sometimes—usually when she needed something. She’d used her divorce settlement to open a hair salon in Santa Monica, and the last time they’d spoken, she’d told him all about her recent wedding ceremony on a beach at sunset.

She’d married herself. White dress, veil, cake and all.

Still, it had to be an improvement over being married to him, Logan reflected ruefully. Except, if he did say so himself, for the sex.

That had been beyond good, with both Susan and Laurie.

It was also pretty much all he missed about being married.

“Are they happy?” Cassie asked, ostensibly asking about his exes.

He nodded. “Nothing like divorcing one of the Creed men to improve a woman’s outlook on life,” he said.

Cassie laughed. Dusty light poured into the teepee as she pulled the flap aside to step out. Sidekick preceded her—Logan followed.

The sun dazzled him, made him fumble for his sunglasses, which he’d left on the dashboard of the Dodge.

Another car pulled into the driveway, parked beside his truck.

“That’s Elsie Blake,” Cassie said, with a philosophical sigh. “She’s going to ask if I see a man in her future, the way she does every time she comes for a reading. I ought to tell her she’d be better off marrying herself, like Laurie did.”

Logan blinked. “You knew about that?”

“Of course I did,” Cassie answered brightly, and the dismissal was as clear as if she’d flat-out told him to get his butt into his truck and go home already. “She mailed out announcements, with a picture of herself on the front, wearing a white dress. I sent her a toaster.”

Logan was rolling his eyes as Cassie walked away.

RUSHING INTO the kitchen with a grocery bag in each arm, Briana surveyed her surroundings. The counters were clear, except for the vestiges of lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches, she guessed, by the burned crusts of bread—sneakers were neatly lined up just inside the back door and both boys looked angelic enough to light candles for a Vatican Mass. Only Wanda was her regular self.

“Okay,” Briana said suspiciously, juggling the bags and heading for the table to set them down. “What have you guys been up to?”

“I’ve been doing my history homework on the computer,” Josh said loftily, and whatever Web page he’d been looking at faded into cyber-oblivion at the click of the mouse.

“And I swept the floor,” Alec volunteered. “After I did my homework, of course. Not that stink-face would let me use the computer.”

“What did I say about name-calling?”

The boys exchanged poisonous glares.

“Don’t do it,” they chorused dolefully.

Briana had been concerned that Alec and Josh might head for the orchard—it was infested with bears, to hear Logan tell it—or dash off to Cimarron’s pasture to play matador the moment she’d driven out of sight that morning. Instead, they’d probably watched something they weren’t supposed to on TV, or gotten into her secret stash of snack-size candy bars.

Or both.

“What are we having for supper?” Alec asked, as Briana began taking things out of the bags—milk, oversize cans of soup, packages of hamburger and chicken breasts, bread and fresh fruit, frozen potatoes compressed into little cylinders.

“A casserole,” she said.

Alec frowned in obvious disapproval while Wanda scratched hopefully at the back door, asking to be let out. “You do remember that we’re having company tonight?”

Briana smiled hurriedly, went to open the door for Wanda, and then put away everything except the soup, two pounds of lean hamburger and the potato chunks. “Yes, Alec,” she said. “I remember.”

“I think cowboys eat steaks,” Josh observed, drawing nearer. This particular casserole was Briana’s specialty—her dad had taught her how to make it—and both boys loved it. usually.

“Not tonight, they don’t,” she replied, going to the sink to wash her hands before assembling the meal. She would shower while the dish was in the oven, and put on fresh mascara and lip gloss, too. There was no time for a shampoo, so she’d wind her braid into a chignon at her nape, pin it into place and hope for the best. “Tonight, it’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza or nothing.”

Alec made a face. “Josh is right,” he said, in an Ihate-to-admit-it kind of tone. “Cowboys like steak and stuff like that.”

“Sorry,” Briana said, sounding a bit manic. Wanda was scratching at the door again. “No steak. Somebody let the dog in, please.”

Josh did the honors, after a brief stare-down with Alec.

“And then feed her,” Briana added.

“We’ve been cooped up in the house all day,” Josh said, looking like a slave hauling construction materials to a pyramid as he dipped Wanda’s bowl into the kibble bag, brought it out overflowing and set it down on the floor for her. “I was hoping we could have another picnic at the cemetery.”

“I told you what Mr. Cre—Logan said about bears.”

“When was the last time you saw a bear, Mom?” Josh persisted.

Briana sighed. She’d never seen a bear, at least not around Stillwater Springs, which was probably why Dylan hadn’t warned her when she and the boys moved in. He had told her, during one of their rare phone conversations, that the cellar floor was rotting in places and the furnace needed three good kicks to get going when the temperature fell below freezing in the winter and that she should let the neighbor feed Cimarron and keep away from him herself.

If bears were a threat, wouldn’t he have said something?

Wouldn’t Jim Huntinghorse or one of the dozens of other people she knew in town have said something?

Her mood, already slightly frenzied, darkened a little. Logan was either paranoid about bears, or he simply didn’t want her and her sons having the run of the property.

For a moment, she wished she hadn’t invited him over, that or any night. What other ridiculous fears was he going to plant in her head?

“When, Mom?” Josh prodded, because he never let any subject drop before he was satisfied that all the angles had been covered.

“Okay,” she said. “We can still go to the cemetery for picnics—but not tonight. I am not lugging a hot casserole across the creek.”

Josh and Alec gave each other high fives, in an unusual show of accord.

Hastily, she browned the hamburger in a cast-iron skillet, drained it, mixed it in with the cream of mushroom soup and a few dehydrated onions, poured the potato thingies over the top and put the whole concoction into the oven at three-fifty.

The phone rang as she was stepping out of the shower.

Vance, calling to say he’d be arriving early or not coming at all?

Logan, begging off on supper?

The bathroom door creaked open and Alec stuck his head through the crack, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Mom!”

Briana, wrapped in a towel, chuckled at the sight. “What?”

“We won a week’s vacation at Lake Tahoe,” Alec said. “All we have to do is look at a time share and watch a video. They’ll even fly us down there!”

“It’s a sales pitch,” Briana said, reaching for her robe with her free hand. “Hang up.”

“But I told the guy you were in the shower and I’d come and get you. Mom, we won.”

Briana was in her robe by then, belt pulled tight. “You can open your eyes now, Alec,” she said. “I’m decent. Go back, tell ‘the guy’ we’re not interested and hang up.”

Alec dragged off to the kitchen to do as he was told—Briana hoped—and she slipped into her bedroom to put on clean underwear, cut-off jeans and a white tank top. She slipped her feet into sandals, pinned up her hair, applied a spritz of the drugstore perfume the boys had given her for Christmas and examined her reflection in the blurry mirror above the bureau.

She definitely needed mascara and lip gloss, she decided.

The savory scent of the casserole filled the kitchen when she made her entrance. She drew up, a little thrown, when she saw Logan sitting at the kitchen table, with Josh seated at his right side and Alec at his left.

“I’m early,” he said, looking apologetic as he rose from his chair. He’d brought wildflowers in a canning jar and a bottle of light wine, both of which were sitting on the table.

She gave him credit for good manners. But he looked too fine in his new jeans and pressed white shirt, open at the throat. His dark hair was still damp from a shower, and there were little ridges where he’d run a comb through it.

The back door was open, and through the screen, Briana saw Sidekick sleeping contentedly on the porch. She’d had to look away from Logan for a moment, in order to steady her nerves, but now she made herself look back.

“That’s okay,” she said, too brightly and a beat too late. “Supper’s ready.”

“Smells good,” Logan said. He sounded shy.

She knew he wasn’t.

Was he putting on an act?

“It’s Wild Man’s Spud Extravaganza,” Alec announced proudly, evidently over his earlier fixation about serving steak.

Logan, sitting down again at a nod from Briana, raised an eyebrow, and a slight grin quirked one corner of his mouth. “Who’s Wild Man?” he asked.

“Our Grampa,” Josh answered. “He was a famous rodeo clown.”

“Oh,” Logan said, his eyes never leaving Briana’s face. “That Wild Man.”

“You knew him?” Alec asked, hyperintrigued. This, his expression seemed to say, was even better than “winning” a free trip to Lake Tahoe. Even his freckles were jazzed.

“I saw him perform a few times, when I was about your age,” Logan answered, shifting his gaze to Alec, somehow managing to pull Josh into his orbit, too. “I wanted to be Wild Man McIntyre when I grew up. Turned out to be myself instead.”

Briana busied herself setting the table. Logan had probably eaten off the same dishes they’d be using that night, she thought fitfully, back when he and Dylan were like regular brothers. If indeed they’d ever been regular brothers.

“We’ve got a whole album full of pictures of him!” Alec said.

“After supper,” Briana interjected, her smile a little tight-lipped.

The boys missed it.

Logan didn’t. His eyes lingered on her face, making every single cell in her body throb before going back to Alec. “I’d like that fine,” he said. “When the time is right.”

Briana gave herself strict orders to calm down, stop being such a ninny, but herself didn’t listen. This was just supper with a neighbor, that was all, but it felt like more.

It felt like some kind of beginning.

Briana didn’t like beginnings, because they inevitably turned into endings. Given her druthers, she’d have spent the rest of her life somewhere in the middle, between major events. The present, for all its problems, was a terrain she knew.

She had her boys, and a place to live, and a job that paid the bills.

And that was enough—wasn’t it?

The casserole went over big. Logan had two helpings, though he didn’t touch the wine. Since he’d opened the bottle at some point, Briana accepted a glass, took a couple of jittery sips and decided she’d be better off without a buzz. Even a very mild one.

The truth was she had enough of a buzz going in her nerve endings already, without adding alcohol to the mix. Maybe Vance had been right, when he’d accused her of being sex-starved.

She went weeks without thinking about sex.

Now, with Logan Creed sitting at her table, looking ruggedly handsome in his cowboy dress-up clothes, something primitive was streaking through certain parts of her anatomy.

It simply wouldn’t do.

As soon as everybody was finished eating, Briana jumped up and started bustling around, cleaning up. Usually, she made Alec and Josh do the dishes, but tonight she needed to be busy.

So she bounced around that kitchen like a bumblebee trapped in a sealed jelly jar. Even Wanda regarded her with curiosity.

Logan tried to help with the dishes, but she sort of elbowed him aside. All she needed was that man standing hip-to-hip with her in front of the sink, or anywhere else. The scent of his cologne—if that was what it was—made her feel light-headed. He smelled like sun-dried sheets, fresh-cut grass and summer.

Josh fetched the photo album from its honored place in the living room, and opened it on the freshly cleared table. “This is him,” he told Logan, tapping at a faded black-and-white image with one index finger. “This is my Grampa, Bill ‘Wild Man’ McIntyre.”

Briana had long since come to grips with the fact that her boys would never actually know their grandfather. Just the same, her eyes were suddenly scalding, and her throat was tight.

The angle of Logan’s head, bent over the album, touched something tender inside her. She wished he’d just get up and leave. Wished even more that he would stay.

She was losing her mind.

As if he’d felt her watching him, Logan lifted his eyes.

“Mom says the clowns are the bravest men in rodeo,” Alec said, preening a little.

“She’s right about that,” Logan said, still watching her. “They’ve saved my… life a time or two.”

Briana tried her damnedest to look away, found she couldn’t.

“See?” Josh chirped, delighted to be right. “I told you Logan was a cowboy!”

Briana’s cheeks stung. Look away, she pleaded silently, because I can’t.

As if he’d heard her, Logan averted his eyes. Fixed his attention on Alec and Josh. “I was a cowboy, once upon a time,” he told the boys quietly. “Gave it up to join the service.”

“Were you in the war?” Alec asked, impressed again. Or still.

“Yeah,” Logan said. His voice came out sounding hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “Didn’t care much for that.”

Didn’t care much for that.

The very way he’d said the words marked them as the understatement of the ages.

“We usually take Wanda for a walk after supper,” Josh said.

Logan was clearly grateful for the change of subject. He pushed back his chair, smiling. “Sounds like a good idea,” he replied. “Maybe Sidekick and I could tag along?”

“What if we should stumble across a bear?” Briana asked, raising both eyebrows. She’d finished with the washing up by then, draped the dish towel over the plates and glasses and silverware stacked on the drainboard.

Logan chuckled. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t recommend running. A bear can beat a fast horse. Climbing a tree is out, since they’re pretty handy at that, too. Guess I’d just have to grin him down, like ol’ Dan’l Boone.”

“We’re related to Daniel Boone,” Josh said.

“Isn’t everybody?” Logan teased.

Josh laughed.

Logan opened the screen door, and they all went out, Briana bringing up the rear.

She would have sworn Logan was looking at her—well, rear—as she passed.

Sidekick and Wanda trotted ahead, happy at the prospect of a walk, with the boys close behind them.

“They like you,” Briana told Logan.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

She turned her head, looked up at his face. “Depends,” she said. “They miss their dad. It would be easy for them to—”

“To what?” Logan asked quietly.

“To like you too much,” Briana answered, embarrassed.

“I’m harmless,” Logan said.

“I don’t think so,” Briana replied.

And they walked in silence for a while, watching the two boys and the two dogs cavorting up ahead.

Although the sun would be up for at least another hour, the first stars were popping out, and the moon was clearly visible. The country air smelled of hay and grass and fertile earth.

Or was that Logan?

She’d barely touched her wine, but Briana Grant felt moderately drunk. “Why did you tell me to watch out for bears?” she asked. “I was almost afraid to let the boys leave the house.”

He didn’t take her hand, but he moved closer, their knuckles touched and a hard, burning thrill ripped through Briana’s system.

“I wasn’t trying to scare you,” Logan said. “Bears feed at the landfill, mostly, on the other side of town. But once in a while, they pay a visit to the orchard. I’d say it was because of people encroaching on their habitat, but the fact is, they’ve been raiding those pear and apple trees since the first season they bore fruit. And that was back in old Josiah Creed’s time.”

Briana shivered, hugged herself, though the night was warm.

“Bears are like most wild animals,” Logan went on. “They’re only dangerous if they feel threatened, and that happens when you take them by surprise.”

“I guess I could beat a spoon against the bottom of a pan or something,” Briana said seriously. “When we go to the cemetery, I mean. We don’t have much reason to pass through the orchard.”

Logan grinned. “You could do that,” he said.

Was he laughing at her?

Briana got her back up a little. “I don’t want my boys to be afraid,” she said. “Not even of bears.”

“A little fear is a healthy thing sometimes,” Logan retorted. “Especially where bears are concerned. And that old bull of Dylan’s.”

She stole a sidelong glance at Logan, but whatever she’d heard in his voice as he mentioned his brother didn’t show in his face or bearing. “We’ve never had any trouble with Cimarron,” she said.

“God only knows why he keeps that bull anyhow,” Logan mused, with a distracted shake of his head. “He doesn’t run cattle. It would make sense if he had heifers to breed.”

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

“Cimarron?” Logan asked, hedging.

“Dylan,” Briana said.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say, then?”

“That we had a falling-out a long time ago,” Logan told her. His tone was stiff; she’d crossed a line. “It happens with brothers.”

Briana looked up ahead, at her boys, and felt the usual surge of wild, helpless love for them. “Alec and Josh argue all the time,” she confessed. “But if they grew up and hated each other, I don’t think I could stand it.”

Logan didn’t answer for a few moments. “I don’t hate Dylan,” he said.

Briana glanced at him, saw that his jawline had tightened. Since she’d already said too much, she decided to hold her tongue. No sense in digging herself in deeper.

Logan whistled, the sound low and distinctly masculine, and both boys and both dogs turned at the sound, sprinted back toward him.

“Thanks for supper,” Logan said. “Sidekick and I had better be getting back home now. Big day tomorrow.”

Briana merely nodded.

Logan said goodbye to the boys, and then he and Sidekick headed off toward the orchard. If either one of them were worried about encountering a bear, it didn’t show in the easy way they strolled that country road.

CHAPTER FIVE

LOGAN’S CELL PHONE rang as he walked through the twilight-shadowed orchard, the dog prancing briskly alongside. He squinted at the caller ID panel, swallowed hard and thumbed the appropriate button.

“Hello, Ty,” he said.

The responding chill was transmitted in milliseconds, bouncing from Tyler to some satellite and straight into Logan’s right ear to pulse through his whole head.

“You left a message?” Tyler asked. His voice was deep—the last time they’d spoken, it had still been changing.

Logan suppressed a sigh. “We need to talk,” he said.

“Maybe you need to talk, big brother,” Tyler countered, “but I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

Logan stopped in the middle of the orchard, looked up into the branches arching over his head, in case a bear was about to land on him. The weight of what lay between him and Tyler was heavier than anything that could have dropped out of a tree, though.

“Don’t hang up, okay?” he asked. He’d had to swallow a measure of pride before he could get the words out.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,” Tyler snapped, but at least he was still there. Still listening—if that stony stillness could be considered listening.

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