Dear Reader,

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

Tyler Creed, the youngest of the Creed brothers and the one with the hottest temper and the biggest chip on his shoulder, is determined NOT to have anything to do with his two brothers or their new enterprise, Tri-Star Cattle Company. The same might go for Lily Ryder Kenyan, the girl he dated and betrayed back in the day. But there’s one problem. Lily isn’t a girl anymore; she’s a beautiful, passionate woman. And the two of them strike sparks off each other in this red-hot, very sexy story.

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 program.

The Pets for Life program 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 LAEL MILLER

“As hot as the noontime desert…Well-developed, personable characters and a handful of loose ends will leave readers anticipating future installments.”

— Publishers Weekly 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.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Man from Stone Creek

“Intrigue, danger and greed are up against integrity, kindness and love in this engrossing western romance. Miller has created unforgettable characters and woven a many-faceted yet coherent and lovingly told tale.”

— Booklist on McKettrick’s Choice (starred review)

“An engrossing, contemporary western romance…Miller’s masterful ability to create living, breathing characters never flags…combined with a taut story line and vivid prose, Miller’s romance won’t disappoint.”

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

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

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

Linda Lael Miller
Montana Creeds: Tyler

For Katherine “KO” Orr and Marleah Stout,

my pals. Loves ya’s.

Montana Creeds: Tyler

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

T YLER C REED SUPPRESSED a grin as the old guy in the Wal-Mart parking lot stared, dumbfounded, at the fancy set of keys resting in his work-roughened palm. Blinked a couple of times, like somebody trying to shake off an illusion, then gave the brim of his well-worn baseball cap an anxious tug. According to the bright yellow stitching on the hat, his name was Walt and he was the world’s greatest dad.

Walt looked at his ten-year-old Chevy truck, the sides streaked with dry dirt, the mud flaps coated, and then shifted to stare at Tyler’s shiny white Escalade.

“I thought you was kiddin’, mister,” he said. “You really want to trade that Cadillac, straight across, for my old rig? It’s got near a hundred thousand miles on it, this junker, and every once in a while, a part falls off. Last week, it was the muffler—”

Tyler nodded, weary of Walt’s prattle but not about to show it. “That’s the idea,” he replied quietly.

The aging redneck approached the Cadillac, touched the hood with something like reverence. “Is this thing stolen?” Walt asked, understandably suspicious. After all, Tyler reflected, a man didn’t run across a deal like that every day, especially in Crap Creek, Montana, or whatever the hell that wide spot in the road was called.

Tyler chuckled. “No, sir,” he said. “I own it, fair and square. The title’s in the glove compartment. You agree, and I’ll sign off on it right now, and be on my way.”

“Wait till Myrtle comes out with the groceries and sees this,” the old fella marveled, hooking his thumbs in the straps of his greasy bib overalls, shaking his head once and finally cutting loose with a gap-toothed smile. Walt needed dental work.

Tyler waited.

“I still don’t understand why any sane man would want to make a swap like this,” Walt insisted. “Could be, you’re not right in the head.” He paused, squinted up into Tyler’s impassive face. “You look all right, though.”

Involuntarily, Tyler glanced at his watch, an expensive number with a twenty-four-karat-gold rodeo cowboy riding a bronc inlaid in the platinum face. Diamonds glittered at the twelve, three, six and nine spots, and the thing was as incongruous with who he was as the pricey SUV he was virtually giving away, but he’d never considered parting with the watch. His late wife, Shawna, had sold her horse trailer and a jeweled saddle she’d won in a barrel racing event to buy it for him, the day he took his first championship.

“I don’t know as I’m eager to trade with a man in a hurry,” Walt said astutely, narrowing his weary eyes a little. “You’re runnin’ from somethin’, and it might be the law. I don’t need that kind of trouble, I can tell you. Myrtle and me, we got ourselves a nice life—nothin’ fancy—I worked at the lumber mill for thirty years—but the double-wide is paid off and we manage to scrape together ten bucks for each of the grandchildren on their birthdays—”

Tyler suppressed a sigh.

“That’s some watch,” Walt observed, in no particular hurry to finalize the bargain. The wise gaze took in Tyler’s jeans and shirt, newly purchased at rollback prices, lingered on his costly boots, handmade in a specialty shop in Texas. Rose again to his black Western hat, pulled low over his eyes. “You win it rodeoin’ or somethin’?”

“Or something,” Tyler confirmed. His own brothers, Logan and Dylan, didn’t know about his marriage to Shawna, or the accident that had killed her; he wasn’t about to confide in a stranger he’d met in the parking lot at Wal-Mart.

“You look like a bronc-buster,” Walt decided, after another leisurely once-over. “Sorta familiar, too.”

You look like a forklift driver, Tyler responded silently. He looped his thumbs in the waistband of his stiff new jeans. “Deal or no deal?” he asked mildly.

“Let me see that title,” Walt said, still hedging his bets. “And some identification, if you don’t mind.”

Knowing it wouldn’t matter if he did mind, Tyler fetched the requested document from the SUV, pausing to pat the ugly dog he’d found half-starved in another parking lot, in another town, on the long road home.

“Dog part of the swap?” Walt asked, getting cagier now.

“No,” Tyler said. “He stays with me.”

Walt looked regretful. “That’s too bad. Ever since my blue tick hound, Minford, died of old age last winter, I’ve been hankerin’ to get me another dog. They’re good company, and with Myrtle waitin’ tables every day to bank-roll her bingo habit, I’m alone a lot.”

“Plenty of dogs in need of homes,” Tyler pointed out. “The shelters are full of them.”

“Reckon that’s so,” Walt agreed. He studied the title Tyler handed over like it was a summons or something. “Looks all right,” he said. “Let’s see that ID.”

Tyler pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and produced a driver’s license.

Walt’s rheumy eyes widened a little, and he whistled, low and shrill, in exclamation. “Tyler Creed,” he said. “I thought I’d heard that name before, when I saw it on the title to this Caddie of yours. Four times world champion bronc-rider. Seen you on ESPN many a time. In some TV commercials, too. Takes guts to stand in front of a camera wearing nothing but boxer-briefs and a shit-eatin’ grin the way you done, but you pulled it off, sure as hell. My daughter Margie has a calendar full of pictures of you—two years out of date and she still won’t take it down off the wall. Pisses her husband off somethin’ fierce.”

Inwardly, Tyler sighed. Outwardly, he stayed cool.

“Myrtle and me, we’d be glad to have you come to our place for supper,” Walt went on.

“No time,” Tyler said, hoping he sounded regretful.

Walt looked him over once more, shook his head again and got his own paperwork out of that rattletrap truck of his. Signed his name on the dotted line. “Just let me fetch my toolbox out of the back,” he said.

“I’ll get my own gear while you’re doing that,” Tyler answered, relieved.

The switch was made. Tyler had his duffel bag, his dog and his guitar case in the Chevy before Walt set his red metal toolbox in the back of the Escalade.

“Sure you won’t come to supper?” Walt asked, as a woman emerged from Wal-Mart and headed toward them, pushing a cart and looking puzzled.

“Wish I could,” Tyler lied, climbing into the Chevy. If he drove hard, he and Kit Carson, the dog, would be in Stillwater Springs by the time the sun went down. They’d lie low at the cabin overnight, and come morning, he’d find his brother Logan and punch him in the face.

Again.

Maybe he’d put Dylan’s lights out, too, for good measure.

But mainly, heading home was about facing up to some things, settling them in his mind.

“See you,” he told Walt.

And before the old man could answer, Tyler laid rubber.

Five miles outside Crap Creek, the Chevy’s muffler dropped to the blacktop and dragged, with an earsplitting clatter, throwing blue and orange sparks.

“Shit,” Tyler said.

Kit Carson gave a sympathetic whine.

Well, he’d wanted to go back and find out who he’d have been without the rodeo, the money and Shawna. This was country life, for regular folks.

And it wasn’t as if Walt hadn’t warned him, he thought.

With a grimace, Tyler pulled to the side of the road, shut the truck off and scooted underneath the pickup on his back, with damage control on his mind. Just like the bad old days, he reflected, when he and his dad, Jake, had played shade-tree mechanic in the yard at the ranch, trying to keep some piece-of-shit car running until payday.

Whatever Walt’s other talents might be, muffler repair wasn’t among them. He’d duct-taped the part in place, and now the tape hung in smoldering shreds and the muffler looked as though somebody had peppered it with buckshot.

Tyler sighed, shimmied out from under the truck again and got to his feet, dusting off his jeans and trying in vain to get a look at the back of his shirt. Kit sat in the driver’s seat, nose smudging up the window, panting.

Easing the dog back so he could get his cell phone out of the dirt-crusted cup well in the truck’s console, Tyler called 411 and asked to be connected to the nearest towing outfit.

L ILY K ENYON WASN’T HAVING second thoughts about staying on in Montana to look after her ailing father as she and a nurse muscled him into her rented Taurus in front of Missoula General Hospital. She was having forty-third thoughts, seventy-eighth thoughts; she’d left second ones behind about half an hour after she and her six-year-old daughter, Tess, rushed into the admittance office a week before, fresh from the airport.

Lily had remembered her father as a good-natured if somewhat distracted man, even-tempered and funny. Until her teens, she’d spent summers in Stillwater Springs, sticking to his heels like a wad of chewing gum as he saw four-legged patients in his veterinary clinic, trailing him from barn to barn while he made his rounds, tending sick cows, horses, goats and barn cats. He’d been kind, referring to her as his assistant and calling her “Doc Ryder,” and it had made her feel proud, because that was what folks in that small Montana community called him .

In those little-girl days, Lily had wanted to be just like her dad.

Now, though, she was having a hard time squaring the man she recalled with the one her bitter, angry mother described after the divorce. The one who never showed up on the doorstep, sent Christmas or birthday cards, or even called to ask how she was.

Let alone sent a plane ticket so she could visit.

Now, after seven long days of putting up with his crotchety ways, she understood her mom’s attitude a little better, even though it still smarted, the way Lucy Ryder Cook could never speak of her ex-husband without pursing her lips afterward. Hal Ryder, aka Doc, seemed fond of Tess, but every time he looked at Lily, she saw angry, baffled pain in his eyes.

Once her father and daughter were buckled in, Hal in the front and Tess in the special booster seat the law required of anyone under a certain age and height, Lily slid behind the wheel and tried to center herself. The day was hot, even for July; the hospital had been blessedly cool, but the vents on the dashboard of the rental were still huffing out blasts of heat.

Sweat dampened the back of Lily’s sleeveless blouse; without even turning a wheel, she was already sticking to the seat.

Not good.

“Can we get hamburgers?” Tess piped from the backseat.

“No,” said Lily, who placed great stock in eating healthfully.

“Yes,” challenged her curmudgeon of a father, at exactly the same moment.

“Which?” Tess inquired patiently. “Yes or no?” The poor kid was nothing if not pragmatic—stoic, too. She’d had a lot of practice at resigning herself to things since Burke’s “accident” a year before. Lily hadn’t had the heart to tell her little girl what everyone else knew—that Burke Kenyon, Lily’s estranged husband and Tess’s father, had crashed his small private plane into a bridge on purpose, in a fit of spiteful melancholy.

“No,” Lily said firmly, after glaring eloquently at her dad for a moment. “You’re recovering from a heart attack,” she reminded him. “You are not supposed to eat fried food.”

“There’s such a thing as quality of life, you know,” Hal Ryder grumped. He looked thin, and there were bluish-gray shadows under his eyes, underlaid by pouches of skin. “And if you think I’m going to live on tofu and sprouts until my dying day, you’d better think again.”

Lily shifted the car into gear, and the tires screeched a little on the sun-softened pavement as she pulled away from the hospital entrance. “Listen,” she replied tersely, at her wit’s end from stress and lack of sleep, “if you want to clog your arteries with grease and poison your system with preservatives and God only knows what else, that’s your business. Tess and I intend to live long, healthy lives.”

“Long, boring lives,” Hal complained. Lily had stopped thinking of him as “Dad” years before, when it first dawned on her that he wouldn’t be flying her out to Montana for any more small-town, barefoot-and-Popsicle summers. He hadn’t approved of her teenage romance with Tyler Creed, and she’d always suspected that was part of the reason he’d cut her out of his life.

“I’d be happy to hire a nurse,” Lily said, shoving Tyler to the back of her mind and biting her lip as she navigated thickening late-morning traffic. “Tess and I can go back to Chicago if you’d prefer.”

“Don’t be mean, Mom,” Tess counseled sagely. “Grampa’s heart attacked him, remember.”

The image of a ticker gone berserk filled Lily’s mind. If the subject hadn’t been so serious, she’d have smiled.

“Yeah,” Hal agreed. “Don’t be mean. It reminds me of Lucy, and I like to think about her as little as possible.”

Since Lily wasn’t on much better terms with her mother than she was with Hal, she could have done without that last remark. She peeled her back from the seat and fumbled with the air-conditioning, keeping one eye on the road. Her cotton shorts had ridden up, so her thighs were stuck, too, and it would hurt to pull them free.

Another thing to dread.

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered.

“Nana’s a stinker,” Tess commented, her tone cheerful and affectionately tolerant.

“Hush,” Lily said, though she secretly agreed. “That wasn’t a nice thing to say.”

“Well, she is, ” Tess insisted.

“Amen,” Hal added.

“Enough,” Lily muttered. “Both of you. I’m trying to drive, here. Keep us all alive.”

“Slow down a little, then,” Hal grumbled. “This isn’t Chicago.”

“Don’t remind me.” Lily hadn’t intended to sound sarcastic, but she had.

“Is your house big, Grampa?” Tess asked, bravely trying to steer the conversation onto more amiable ground. “Can I have my mom’s old room?”

Lily flashed on the big, rambling Victorian that had once been her home, with its delightful nooks and crannies, its cluttered library stuffed with books, its window seats and alcoves and brick fireplaces. Remembering, she felt the loss afresh, and something squeezed at the back of her heart.

“You can,” Hal said, with a gentleness Lily almost envied. She felt his gaze touch her, sidelong and serious. “Is there a man waiting in Chicago, Lily—is that why you want to go back?”

Lily tensed, searching for the freeway on-ramp, wondering if the question had a subtext. After all, Lily’s mother had left her father for another man, and he hadn’t remarried during the intervening years. Maybe he mistrusted women—his only daughter included. Maybe he expected her to drop everything and run back home to some guy she’d met at Burke’s funeral.

She sighed and shoved a hand into her blond, chin-length hair, only to catch her fingers in the plastic clip she’d used to gather it haphazardly on top of her head that morning before leaving the motel for the hospital. She wasn’t being fair. Her dad had suffered a serious coronary incident, and the doctors and nurses at Missoula General had warned her that depression was common in patients who suddenly found themselves dependent on other people for their care.

Hal Ryder had been doing what he pleased, at least since the divorce. Now, he needed her, a near stranger, to fix his meals, sort out his prescriptions, which were complicated, and see that he didn’t try to mow his lawn or fling himself back into his thriving practice before he was ready.

“Lily?” he prompted.

“No,” she said, after thumbing back through her thoughts for the original question. “There’s no man, Hal.”

“Mom’s a black widow,” Tess explained earnestly.

Hal chuckled. “I wouldn’t go that far, cupcake,” he told his granddaughter.

For a reason Lily couldn’t have explained, her eyes filled with sudden, scalding tears—and she blinked them away. Tears were dangerous on a busy freeway, and besides that, they never made things better. “I’m a widow, ” Lily corrected her daughter calmly. “A black widow is a spider.”

“Oh,” Tess said, digesting the science lesson. She began to thump her sandaled heels against the front of her seat, something she did when she was impatient for the drive to be over.

“Stop,” Lily told her.

A few moments of silence passed. Then Tess went on. “My daddy died when I was four,” she announced.

“I know, sweetheart,” Hal said, his voice tender and a little gruff.

Lily’s throat ached. She’d filed for divorce, after a tearful call from Burke’s latest girlfriend, whom he’d apparently dropped. Would he still be alive if she’d waited, agreed to more marriage counseling, instead of calling a lawyer right after hanging up with the mistress? Would her child still have a father?

Tess had adored her dad.

“His plane hit a bridge,” Tess said.

“Tess,” Lily said gently, “could we talk about this later, please?”

“You always say that.” Tess sighed; she’d been born precocious, but since Burke’s death, she’d been wise beyond her years, an adult in a first-grader’s body. “But later never comes.”

“You can talk to Grampa,” Hal said, slanting another look at Lily. “ I’ll listen.”

Helpless rage filled Lily; her hands, still damp with perspiration even though the air conditioner had finally kicked in, tightened on the steering wheel. I listen, she wanted to protest. I love my child, unlike some people I could name.

To her surprise, her dad reached across the console and patted her arm. “Maybe you ought to pull over for a few minutes,” he said. “Get a grip.”

“I have a grip,” Lily said stiffly, drawing a very deep breath, letting it out and purposely relaxing her shoulders.

“I’m hungry,” Tess said. She never whined, but she was teetering on the verge. No doubt she was picking up on the tension between the adults in the front seat.

Definitely not good.

“We’ll be in Stillwater Springs in under an hour,” Lily said, keeping her tone light. “Can you hold out till we get there?”

“I guess,” Tess said. “But then we’ll have to stop at a supermarket and everything. Grampa told me there’s no food in the house.”

Lily’s head began to pound. She glanced into the rearview mirror, to make eye contact with her daughter. “Okay, we’ll stop,” she said. “We’ll get off at the next exit, find one of those salad buffet places.”

“Rabbit food,” Hal murmured.

“One burger wouldn’t kill us,” Tess said.

Whose side was the child on, anyway?

“No burgers,” Lily said firmly. “Fast-food places don’t offer organic beef.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Hal said.

“Kindly stay out of this,” Lily told her father evenly. “My purse is on the seat beside you, Tess. There’s a package of crackers inside. Have some, and I’ll keep my eye out for a decent market.”

Sullenly—Tess was never sullen—the child rummaged through Lily’s handbag, found the crackers, tore open the package and munched.

After that, none of them spoke. They were twenty minutes outside Stillwater Springs when they spotted the man and the dog walking alongside the highway.

Something about the man jarred Lily—the set of his shoulders, the way he walked, something— tripping all sorts of inner alarms.

“Stop,” Hal commanded urgently. “That’s Tyler Creed.”

And I thought this day couldn’t get any worse .

Lily pulled over and put on the brakes, while her father buzzed the passenger-side window down.

“Tyler? Is that you?” he called.

The man turned, flashed that trademark grin, dazzling enough to put a heat mirage to shame. Damn it, it was Tyler.

All grown-up, and better-looking than ever.

And here she was, with her back and thighs glued to the car seat and her hair tugged up into a spiky mess.

He approached the car, the dog plodding patiently at his heels. Bent to look in at Hal. When his gaze caught on Lily, then Tess, the grin faded a little.

“Hey, Doc,” Tyler said. “I heard you went through a rough spell. You feeling better?”

“I’ll be all right, thanks to Dylan and Jim Huntinghorse,” Hal replied. “I went toes-up at Logan’s place, during a barbecue, and they gave me CPR. I’d be six feet under if it hadn’t been for those two.”

Tyler gave a low whistle. “Close call,” he said. In high school, he’d been cute. Now, he was drop-dead gorgeous. His eyes were the same clear blue, though, and his dark hair still glistened, sleek as a raven’s wings. “Lily,” he added, in grave greeting.

“Get in,” Hal said. “We’ll give you a lift to Stillwater Springs.”

“Don’t you have a car?” Tess ventured, fascinated, straining in the hated “baby seat” to get a look at the dog.

Tyler grinned again, and Lily’s stomach dipped like a roller coaster plunging down steep and very rickety tracks. “It broke down on a side road,” he explained. “No tow trucks available, so Kit Carson and I started hoofing it for home.”

“Hoofing it?” Tess echoed, confused.

“Walking,” Lily translated.

Tyler chuckled.

“Well, get in,” Hal said. “That sun’s hot enough to bake a man’s brain.”

Tyler opened the right rear door of the Taurus, and he and Kit Carson took their places alongside Tess, the dog in the middle. Delighted, Tess shared the last of her crackers with Kit.

“Obliged,” Tyler said.

“My daddy died when I was four,” Tess said. “In a plane crash.”

Lily tensed. Oddly, Tess often confided the great tragedy of her short life in strangers. With counselors and well-meaning friends, she tended to clam up.

“I’m sorry to hear that, shortstop,” Tyler told her.

“Is hoofing it the same as hitchhiking?” Tess asked. “Because hitchhiking is very dangerous. That’s what Mom says.”

Lily felt Tyler’s gaze on the back of her neck, practically branding her sweaty flesh.

“Your mom’s right,” Tyler answered. “But Kit and I didn’t have much choice, as it turned out.”

“You could have called Logan or Dylan,” Hal said.

Lily wondered at the note of caution in her father’s voice, but she was too busy merging back onto the highway to pursue the thought very far.

“Cold day in hell,” Tyler said.

Lily cleared her throat.

“Cold day in heck, then,” he amended wryly.

“Who are Logan and Dylan?” Tess asked.

“My half brothers,” Tyler replied, belatedly buckling his seat belt.

“Don’t you like them?” Tess wanted to know.

“We had a falling out,” Tyler said.

“What’s that?” Tess persisted.

Risking a glance in the rearview mirror, Lily saw him ruffle Tess’s dark blond hair. She had Burke’s green eyes, and his outgoing personality, too. Telling her not to talk to strangers was pretty much a waste of time—not that Tyler Creed was a stranger, strictly speaking.

“A fight,” Tyler said.

“Oh,” Tess said, sounding intrigued. “I like your dog.”

“Me, too.”

Lily sat ramrod-straight in the sticky vinyl seat. Concentrated on her driving. She’d thought a lot about Tyler Creed since she’d hurried out to Montana to keep a vigil at her father’s bedside, but she hadn’t expected to actually run into him. He was a famous rodeo cowboy, after all—a sometime stuntman and actor, and he did commercials, too.

People like that were, well, transitory. Weren’t they?

Wandering through her kitchen with a basket of laundry one day a few years before, she’d glimpsed him on the countertop TV, hawking boxer-briefs, and had to sit down because of heart palpitations. Burke, an airline pilot by profession, had been between flights, and asked her what was the matter.

She’d said she was getting her period, and felt woozy.

She’d felt woozy, all right, but it had nothing to do with her cycle.

“Grampa and I wanted hamburgers for lunch,” Tess informed her fellow passenger, “but she said it would clog our arterials, so now we have to wait and eat salad with tofu .”

“Ouch,” Tyler commented. “That bites.”

Lily pushed down harder on the accelerator.

“Where shall we drop you off?” she asked sunnily, when they finally, finally hit the outskirts of Stillwater Springs. The place looked pretty much the same—a little shabbier, a little smaller.

“The car-repair place,” Tyler replied.

Lily had forgotten how sparely he used words, never saying two when one would do. She’d also forgotten that he smelled like laundry dried in fresh air and sunlight, even after he’d been loading or unloading hay bales all day. Or walking along a highway under a blazing summer sun. That his mouth tilted up at one corner when he was amused, and his hair was always a shade too long. The way his clothes fit him, and how he seemed so comfortable in his own skin…

Do not think about skin, Lily told herself, aware that her father was watching her intently out of the corner of his eye, and that that eye was twinkling.

“Thanks for the ride,” Tyler said, when they pulled up to the only mechanic’s garage in town. Kit Carson jumped out after him.

“Bye!” Tess called, as though she and Tyler Creed were old friends.

“Anytime,” Lily lied.

He walked away, without looking back.

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

Lily had been crushed, then mortified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing to him, everything to her.

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

Let’s go home, Lily.

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

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

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

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

And she had gotten over Tyler Creed.

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

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

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

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

“Kristy Madison,” Lily said aloud, cheered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m so sorry,” Kristy said gently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Logan was married, and building on to his house.

Kristy was obviously happy with Dylan.

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

As if she cared.

CHAPTER TWO

I F HIS BRAIN HADN’T SNAGGED on Lily Ryder and then gotten snarled like so much fishing line, Dylan wouldn’t have taken Tyler by surprise the way he did, there in the auto-repair shop. A hard slug to his right shoulder jerked him back to the here and now, pronto.

Tyler turned, ready to fight, but drew up when he saw Dylan’s side-slanted grin and the bring-it-on glint in his blue eyes.

“That city-slicker rig of yours break down someplace?” Dylan asked.

Tyler unclenched his right fist, let out a breath. Much as he would have liked to punch his middle brother, he figured it might scare Kit Carson, so he didn’t. The dog had been through enough. “I swapped it for a truck,” he heard himself say. “And that broke down.”

Dylan raised one eyebrow. “Need a ride?”

Tyler looked down at the mutt, resting watchfully at his feet, brown eyes rolling from one brother to the other. The poor critter looked as though he expected to be smashed between two giant cymbals at any moment.

“Yeah,” Tyler said, reluctantly agreeing to Dylan’s offer. “The tow truck’s out on another call, and I’m fifth in line, so it might be tomorrow before they can haul the Chevy in and fix it.”

After he’d told Vance Grant, the only mechanic on duty, that he’d check back in the morning, Tyler and Kit followed Dylan out into the afternoon heat. They made a stop at the supermarket, for dog kibble, coffee and a few other staples, and headed, by tacit agreement, for the ranch. In all that time, barely two words passed between them.

They were a good three miles out of town, in fact, Kit panting happily in the backseat of Dylan’s extended-cab pickup, before it occurred to Tyler to wonder how his brother had happened along at just the right—or wrong—time.

Reflecting on the question, Tyler idly rubbed his sore shoulder, where Dylan had slugged him. “Did you come into the shop looking for me?” he asked.

“Yup,” Dylan answered easily, without so much as glancing in his direction. The slight tilt of amusement at the corner of his mouth told Tyler he’d seen him nursing that arm, though. “Word gets around. Big news, when a Creed hits the old hometown.”

Tyler sighed. “Not much happens around here, if we’re news.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dylan said. “If you ever stuck around long enough to find out what’s going on around Stillwater Springs, that is.”

They’d run into each other a little over a week before, at the home of a mutual friend, Cassie Greencreek, but it hadn’t exactly been a family reunion. Tyler had met Dylan’s little girl, Bonnie, and taken a fierce liking to her, even fetched her some medicine when she was sick, but that was the extent of the brotherly bonding.

“Catch me up,” Tyler said, because Dylan was bent on talking, evidently. And when Dylan was bent on anything, it was easier to just ride it out.

“Well, I got married,” Dylan said. “To Kristy Madison.”

Tyler absorbed that. “Okay,” he said. “Congratulations.”

“Gee, thanks. Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.”

“She’s half again too good for you,” Tyler commented, at something of a loss. There was so much bad blood between him and his brothers that he didn’t know how to carry on a civil conversation with either of them. “Kristy, I mean.”

Dylan laughed. “True,” he answered. Then he proceeded to bring Tyler up to speed on all the latest doings in Stillwater Springs, Montana. “They dug up a couple of bodies on the old Madison place,” he went on. “And Sheriff Book retired early, a week before the special election. Mike Danvers was running against Jim Huntinghorse, but he dropped out of the race, so Jim’s The Man now.”

“Bodies?” Tyler echoed. He’d barely untangled himself from the shock of seeing Lily Ryder again, and that little girl of hers, and now Dylan was laying all this stuff on him.

“Murder victims,” Dylan confirmed.

“Holy shit,” Tyler said. “Anybody we knew?”

“Probably not,” Dylan answered, as they bumped off the main road onto one of the old cattle trails snaking through the ranch like a network of ancient tree roots. A muscle tightened in Dylan’s jaw. “A drifter who worked for Kristy’s dad for a while, and a young girl who went missing during a family camping trip a few years back.”

Tyler remembered the media frenzy surrounding the missing girl. Searchers had turned over every rock in that part of Montana, without success, and eventually the hoo-ha had died down and the parents had gone home, defeated and hollow-eyed with despair. “Did Floyd nab the killers?”

“Do you ever read a newspaper?” Dylan countered, sounding semi-irritated now. Now there was a tone Tyler understood.

“No,” he snapped back. “My lips move when I read, and that makes me testy.”

“ Everything makes you testy, little brother.” Dylan paused, sighed. Went on. “Freida Turlow killed the girl—some kind of jealousy thing. And the drifter—well, that’s another story.”

“Those Turlows,” Tyler said, “are just plain loco.”

Dylan laughed again, but it was a raw, gruff sound, without a trace of humor. “Coming from a Creed, that’s saying something.”

In spite of himself, Tyler laughed, too.

“What brings you back to the home place, little brother?” Dylan asked. He was downright loquacious, old Dylan.

“Stop calling me ‘little brother,’” Tyler told him. “I’m a head taller than you are.”

“You’ll always be the baby of the family. Deal with it.” Dylan downshifted, with a grinding of gears, and they jostled up the lake road, toward Tyler’s cabin. “Answer my question. What are you doing here?”

Tyler let out a long sigh. “Damned if I know,” he admitted. “I guess I’m tired of the open road. I need some time to think a few things through.”

“What things?”

Again, Tyler’s temper, never far beneath the surface, stirred inside him. “What the fuck do you care?” he asked.

Kit Carson gave a fitful whimper from the backseat.

“I care,” Dylan said evenly. “And so does Logan.”

“Bullshit,” Tyler said flatly.

“Why is that so hard for you to believe?”

The cabin came in sight, nestled up close to the lake. It was more shack than house, his hind-tit inheritance from the old man, but Tyler loved the solitude and the way the light of the sun and moon played over that still water.

Logan, being the eldest, had scored the main ranch house when Jake Creed got himself killed up in the woods, logging, and Dylan, coming in second, got their uncle’s old dump on the other side of the orchard. That left Tyler in third place, as always.

Hind-tit.

Tyler unclamped his back molars, reached back to reassure the dog with a ruffling of the ears. Ignoring Dylan’s question, he asked about Bonnie instead.

“She’s fine,” Dylan answered.

He brought the truck to a stop in front of the log A-frame, and Tyler had the passenger-side door open before Dylan had shut off the engine. Kit Carson waited, shivering a little, with either anticipation or dread, until Tyler hoisted him down from the backseat.

“Thanks for the lift,” Tyler told his brother, reaching over the side of the truck bed for the kibble and the grub they’d picked up in town. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?

Dylan got out of the truck, slammed his door.

“Don’t you have things to do?” Tyler asked tersely. Kit Carson was sniffing around in the rich, high grass, making himself at home—and he was all the company Tyler wanted at the moment. Once inside, he’d prime the pump, build a fire in the antiquated wood cookstove and brew some coffee. Try to get a little perspective.

“I have all kinds of ‘things to do,’” Dylan answered, his mild tone in direct conflict with his go-to-hell manner. “I’m building a house, for one thing. Logan and I are back in the cattle business. But you’re at the top of my to-do list today, little brother. Like it or lump it.”

Tyler consulted an imaginary list, envisioning a little notebook, like the one his dad had always carried in the pocket of his work shirt, full of timber footage and married women’s phone numbers. “You’re at the top of mine, too,” he replied. “Trouble is, it’s a shit list.”

Dylan leaned against the hood of his truck, watching as Tyler started for the cabin, lugging the kibble under one arm and juggling two grocery bags with the other. Kit Carson hurried after him, though it was most likely the dog food he was after.

“Ty,” Dylan said, easy-like but with that steel undercurrent that was pure Creed orneriness, born and bred, “we’re brothers, remember? We’re blood. Logan and I, we’d like to mend some fences, and I’m not talking about the barbed-wire kind.”

“You’ve obviously mistaken me for somebody who gives a rat’s ass what you and Logan would like.”

Dylan stepped back from the truck, folded his arms. “Look,” he said, as Tyler passed him, headed for the front door of the cabin, “we were all messed up after Jake’s funeral—”

Messed up? They’d gotten into the mother of all brawls, he and Logan and Dylan, down at Skivvie’s Tavern. Wound up in jail, in fact, and gone their separate ways—after saying a lot of things that couldn’t be taken back.

Tyler shook his head, shifted to fumble with the doorknob. The thing was so rusted out, he’d never bothered with a lock, but that day, it whisked open and Kit Carson shot over the threshold, growling low, his hackles up.

Dylan was right at Tyler’s back, carrying his guitar case and duffel bag. “What the hell?” he muttered.

Somebody was inside the cabin, that was obvious, and Kit Carson had them cornered in the john.

“Whoa,” Tyler told the dog, setting aside the stuff he was carrying.

“Call him off!” a youthful voice squeaked from inside what passed as a bathroom. “Call him off!”

Tyler and Dylan exchanged curious glances, and Tyler eased the dog aside with one knee to stand in the doorway.

A kid huddled on the floor between the pull-chain toilet and the dry sink, staring up at Tyler with wild, rebellious, terrified eyes. Male, as near as Tyler could guess, wearing a long black coat, as if to defy the heat. Three silver rings pierced the boy’s right eyebrow, and both his ears and his lower lip sported hardware, too. The tattooed spider clinging to his neck added to the drama.

Tyler winced, just imagining all that needlework. Gripped the door frame with both hands, a human barrier filling the only route of escape, other than the tiny window three feet above the tank on the john. The kid glanced up, wisely ruled out that particular bolt-hole.

“I wasn’t hurting anything,” he said. His eyes skittered to Kit, who was still trying to squeeze past Tyler’s left knee and challenge the trespasser. “Does that dog bite?”

“Depends,” Tyler said. “What’s your name?”

The boy scowled. “Whether he bites me or not depends on what my name is?”

Tyler suppressed a grin. Aside from the piercings and the spider, he reckoned he and the kid were more alike than different. “No,” he said. “It depends on whether or not you stop being a smart-ass and tell me who you are and what the hell you’re doing in my house.”

“This is a house? Looks more like a chicken coop to me.”

Standing somewhere behind him, Dylan chuckled. He’d set Tyler’s guitar case and duffel bag down and, from the clanking and splashing, started working the pump at the main sink.

“Okay, Brutus,” Tyler said, looking down at the dog, “get him.”

Kit Carson looked up at him in confusion, probably wondering who the hell Brutus was.

“Davie McCullough!” the kid burst out, scrambling to his feet and, at the same time, trying to melt into the bathroom wall, which was papered with old catalog pages and peeling in a lot of places. “All right? My name is Davie McCullough! ”

“Take a breath, Davie,” Tyler told him. “The dog won’t hurt you, and neither will I.”

Somebody had hurt him, though. Now that the kid was up off the floor, and dusty light from the high window illuminated his face, Tyler saw bruises along his jawline, fading to a yellowish purple.

Again, Tyler flinched. Either Davie McCullough had been in a tussle with some other kid recently, or an adult had beaten the hell out of him. Having had an alcoholic father himself, Tyler tended toward the latter theory.

“What happened to your face?” Dylan asked, poking wood into the stove to boil up some java, as soon as Davie edged out of the bathroom, past both Tyler and the dog.

Davie kept a careful distance from everybody. Quite a trick in a cabin roughly the size of one of those clown cars that spill bozos at the rodeo.

“You’re really going to build a fire on a day like this?” Davie countered.

“I asked my question first,” Dylan responded, setting the dented enamel coffeepot on the stove with a thump.

Davie scowled. With a temperament that prickly, Tyler thought with grim amusement, he should have been a Creed. “My mom’s boyfriend was in a mood,” he said, peevish even in an indefensible position. “Okay?”

Tyler felt another pang of sympathy—and an urge to find the boyfriend and see if he was inclined to take on a grown man instead of a skinny kid who’d probably never lifted anything heavier than a laptop computer.

“Okay,” Dylan answered affably. He reached right into one of Tyler’s grocery bags, pulled out a package of chocolate cookies and tossed it to Davie. Davie caught the bag and promptly tore into it.

“I ate that canned meat you had in the cupboard,” he told Tyler, spewing a few cookie crumbs in the process. “You don’t keep much food around here, do you?”

“McCullough,” Tyler said, and this time, he didn’t bother trying to hold back a grin. “I don’t think I’ve run across that name around Stillwater Springs. You new in town?”

Clearly torn between bolting for the door, which Dylan had opened to let out some of the stove heat, and staying because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, Davie hesitated, not sure how to answer, then drew back one of the four rickety chairs at the table in the center of the cabin and plunked down to scarf up cookies in earnest.

He’d obviously been hiding out at the lake for a while, if he’d run through the several dozen cans of congealed “ham” Tyler kept on hand for intermittent visits.

“My mom lived here a long time ago,” Davie said, after considerable cookie-noshing. “Before I was born.”

“Who is your mom?” Dylan asked mildly. Mr. Subtle. Like an idiot wouldn’t know he was planning to find the woman and give her some grief for letting the boyfriend pound on her kid.

“You a social worker or something?” Davie asked suspiciously.

“No,” Dylan replied, finding mugs on the shelf, peering into them and frowning at whatever was crawling around inside. “Just trying to be neighborly, that’s all. Your mom must be pretty worried, though.”

“She’s too busy schlepping drinks out at the casino to be worried,” Davie scoffed. “Roy’s been out of work for a year, so she’s been pulling double shifts, trying to save up enough to get us our own place.”

Another look passed between Dylan and Tyler. Neither of them spoke. Now that the kid had some sugar and preservatives under his belt, he’d turned talkative.

“We live out at the Shady Grove trailer park, with Roy’s grandma. It’s pretty crowded, especially when he’s on the peck.”

Jake Creed had been known to throw a punch or two, when he was guzzling down a paycheck, and both Dylan and Tyler had been in Davie’s shoes more often than either of them would admit. They’d taken refuge at Cassie’s place, sleeping on her living room floor or in the teepee out in her yard. Only Logan had been immune to Jake’s temper, maybe because he’d always been the old man’s favorite—the one who might “amount to something.”

The coffee started to perk.

Kit Carson ambled out onto the porch and lay there letting the sun bake his bones, like an old dog ought to be allowed to do.

“I’ll give you a ride back to town,” Dylan told Davie, once some time had gone by. “The new sheriff’s a friend of mine. There might be something he can do about Roy.”

Davie’s face seized with fear, quickly controlled, but not quickly enough. “Nothing short of a shotgun blast to the belly is going to fix what’s wrong with Roy Fifer,” he said. “Why can’t I just stay here? I can sleep outside, and I’ll work off the food I ate, chopping wood or something.”

Tyler knew he couldn’t keep the boy; he was a loner, for one thing. And for another, Davie was a minor child, no older than thirteen or fourteen. For good or ill, his living arrangements were up to his mother. “That wouldn’t work,” he said, with some reluctance.

What would he and Dylan have done, all those nights, if Cassie had turned them away from her door? If she hadn’t faced Jake Creed down on her front porch and told him she’d call Sheriff Book and press charges if he didn’t go away and sober up?

“I’ll work,” Davie said, and the desperation in his voice made Tyler’s gut clench. “I could take care of the dog and chop firewood and catch all the fish we could eat. I’ll stay out of your way—won’t be any trouble at all—”

“I might not be around long,” Tyler said, his voice hoarse, unable to glance in Dylan’s direction. “And you can’t stay here alone. You’re just a kid.”

Davie looked as near tears as pride would allow. “Okay,” he said, shoulders sagging a little.

Dylan pushed back his chair, stood. Sighed. He had to be remembering all the things Tyler remembered, and maybe a few more, since he’d been the middle son, not the youngest, like Tyler, or the smart one, like Logan. No, Dylan had been wild, the son who mirrored all the things Jake Creed might have been, if he hadn’t been such a waste of skin.

“I’ll have a word with Jim,” he told Tyler.

Tyler merely nodded, numb with old sorrows. Shared sorrows.

As kids, he and Dylan and Logan had fought plenty, but they’d always had each other’s backs, too. Logan, mature beyond his years, had made sure he and Dylan had lunch money, and presents at Christmas.

When had things gone so wrong between the three of them?

Not at Jake’s funeral. No, the problem went back further than that.

Passing Tyler’s chair, Dylan laid a hand on his shoulder. “You know my cell number,” he said quietly. “When your truck’s ready to be picked up, give me a call and I’ll give you a lift to town.”

L ILY AWAKENED at sunset, to the sound of familiar voices—her daughter’s and her father’s, a novel combination—chatting in the nearby kitchen. Outside somewhere, perhaps in a neighbor’s yard, a lawn sprinkler sang its summer evensong— ka-chucka-chucka-whoosh, ka-chucka-chucka-whoosh.

Sitting up on the narrow bed in what had once been her mother’s sewing room, Lily smiled, yawned, stretched. Slipped her feet into the sandals she’d kicked off before lying down. She’d intended to rest her eyes; instead, she’d zonked out completely, settling in deeper than even the most vivid dreams could reach.

For a little while, she’d been mercifully free of ordinary reality.

The guilt over Burke’s death.

The wide gulf between her and the man she had once called “Daddy.”

The gnawing loneliness.

She sat for a few moments, listening to the happy lilt in Tess’s voice as she told her grandfather all about story hour at the library. It had been too long since Lily had heard that sweet cadence—Tess was usually so solemn, a little lost soul, soldiering on.

Hal chuckled richly at one of Tess’s comments. He’d always been a good listener—until he’d simply decided to stop listening, at least to Lily. When she’d called him, after the divorce, desperate for some assurance that things would be all right again, he’d brushed her off, or so it had seemed to a heartbroken child, grieving for so many things she could barely name.

Lily stepped into the kitchen, found Tess and Hal setting the table for supper. Spaghetti casserole—the specialty, Lily recalled, of Janice Baylor, her dad’s longtime receptionist. Tess’s small face shone with the pleasure of the afternoon’s adventure at the library with Kristy.

Lily bit back a comment about the fat and cholesterol content of Janice’s casserole and smiled. “Something smells good,” she said.

“Mrs. Baylor brought us sketty for supper,” Tess said cheerfully.

Hal watched Lily, probably expecting a discourse on the wonders of tofu. “You look a little better,” he said. “Not so frazzled.”

Lily nodded. She needed a shower and more sleep—would she ever catch up?—but she needed a hot meal more, and her father and daughter’s company more still.

“How about you?” she asked Hal. “Did you rest this afternoon?”

Hal grinned. Here at home, he didn’t look so wan and gaunt as he had in the hospital. The expression of frenzied dismay in his eyes had subsided, too. He’d decided, Lily thought, to live.

“As much as I could, with half the town stopping by with food,” he answered. “The doorbell rang at least a dozen times.”

Lily was horrified. She hadn’t heard a thing. Hadn’t stirred on the hard twin bed in the sewing room. What kind of caretaker was she, anyway?

Her thoughts must have shown in her face; Hal winked and said quietly, “Sit down, Lily. You’re home now.”

You’re home now .

Kristy had said something similar, earlier that day.

It was a nice fantasy, Lily supposed, but once her father was well enough to carry on alone, she and Tess would be returning to their old lives in Chicago, to the condo, and Tess’s private school, and Lily’s job as a buyer for an online retailer of women’s clothes.

Burke’s mother, Eloise, who doted on Tess, would be lost without their weekly tea parties—just the two of them, if you didn’t count Eloise’s maid, Dolores. They used the best bone china, Eloise and Tess, and wore flowered hats and white gloves with pearl buttons. Eloise took Tess to museums, and bought her beautiful, hand-made dresses, and invited her for long weekends at the Kenyon “cottage” on Nantucket.

The place had three stories, fourteen rooms, each one graced with exquisitely shabby antique furniture. Priceless seascapes graced the walls, and even the rugs were either heirlooms or elegant finds from the finest auction houses in the world.

Tess, Eloise never hesitated to point out, was all she had left, with her husband gone and her only son killed in the prime of his life. The accusation went unspoken: if Lily had just been a little more tolerant of Burke’s “high spirits,” a little more patient—

Lily’s own mother seemed to have no time for her, or even for Tess, she was so busy gracing her powerful husband’s arm at swanky parties up and down the eastern seaboard.

Resolutely, she shook off the reverie, went to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. Then she sat down to a “sketty” supper with her family.

“I like that man with the dog,” Tess announced, midway through the meal.

Lily felt a little jolt at the mere reminder of Tyler.

“Where does he live?” Tess persisted, when neither Lily nor Hal offered a response.

Lily had no idea. Didn’t want to know. Everything would be easier if she could just pretend Tyler Creed didn’t exist, the way she had since the night he broke her heart, but that was bound to be a tall order in a town as small as Stillwater Springs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lily nearly choked on a forkful of spaghetti casserole.

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

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

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

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

“Don’t,” Lily whispered.

And just then, the wall phone rang.

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

“Hello?” she chimed.

“Lily? This is Tyler.”

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

“Er—hello—” Lily fumbled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

For some people.

People who weren’t Creeds, that is.

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

The question was, of what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about your emotional mushroom cloud.

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

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

“Shit,” he repeated.

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

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

“Yeah, I’m here,” Tyler answered, dizzy with a combination of dread and wild hope. On the one hand, he hoped Davie was his. On the other, such a revelation might make it impossible to find any sort of common ground with Lily.

Did he even want to find common ground with Lily?

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dylan pressed quietly.

“Yes,” Tyler said. “Davie’s about the right age, I guess.” He ducked his head, pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger. The dog gave a little whimper and leaned in harder. “Doreen never pretended I was the only game in town, though, and I think if Davie was mine, she’d have hit me up for money somewhere along the way.”

Dylan was silent for a long time. “Look, you’re going to need a rig. I’ve already spoken with Kristy, and she’s willing to lend you her Blazer until your truck is back on the road. We could bring it out when she gets off work at the library, if you want.”

Pride swelled up inside Tyler, fit to split his hide, but he needed transportation. The auto shop wasn’t the kind of place that offered loaners, and rental cars were out, too, unless he wanted to go all the way to Missoula for one—which he didn’t.

“Okay,” he said, finally. “Thanks.”

Dylan laughed. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It had been plenty hard. Dylan, being a Creed himself, had to know that.

“Don’t start thinking we’re going to buddy-up or something,” Tyler warned.

Again, Dylan laughed, more of a chuckle this time, and the sound of it chafed at some raw places in Tyler. He’d sworn he wouldn’t be beholden to either of his brothers for anything, after that set-to at Skivvie’s following Jake’s funeral, and he’d lived by that vow. Now here he was, borrowing a Blazer like some loser who couldn’t even manage to come up with a set of wheels on his own.

“God forbid,” Dylan said dryly, “that we should ‘buddy-up.’”

“Whatever,” Tyler shot back, and thumbed the disconnect button.

Two hours later—hours Tyler spent alternately pacing and fiddling around with his guitar—two rigs rolled up to the cabin, Dylan driving one, Kristy at the wheel of the other.

Tyler left the doorway, laid his fancy, custom-made guitar in its case and hoped nobody would comment, but Dylan’s gaze swung right to it, as soon as he and Kristy stepped into the house.

Kristy, carrying two-year-old Bonnie on one blue-jeaned hip, went straight over to admire the instrument, giving a low whistle of exclamation.

“A Martin,” she said, with suitable reverence.

“I like a girl who knows her guitars,” Tyler said, giving his sister-in-law a peck on the cheek and then ruffling Bonnie’s blond curls. Kristy was a looker—always had been. Legs that went on forever, and an honest-to-God brain behind that angelic face. And she had a particular glow about her, indicating a very recent orgasm, of the cosmic variety.

Dylan, his eyes peaceful, his body moving as though his joints were greased, had, of course, been the lucky guy.

Tyler felt a stab of pure, undiluted envy.

Smiled to hide it, though he suspected Dylan knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

Kristy pulled the keys to her Blazer from a pocket in her perfectly fitted jeans and jangled them under Tyler’s nose. “Here you go, cowboy,” she said.

“Cowboy,” Bonnie repeated exuberantly, straining to come to him.

Tyler had a weakness for kids, and took his niece into his arms. Crouched to introduce her to Kit Carson.

The little girl giggled with delight.

Kit licked her face.

Tyler stood up again.

Kristy laid the keys on the kitchen table, her dark blue eyes alight with goodwill. “It’s nice to have you back in Stillwater Springs, Ty,” she said. “We’re headed over to Logan and Briana’s for supper. Care to join us?”

“I’m not ready for that,” Tyler said gruffly, after exchanging a glance with Dylan. He was curious about Briana and that ready-made family of Logan’s—two boys, according to Cassie—and all the work going on over at the home place, too, but Logan would be there, and that was reason enough to stay away.

Again, Dylan’s gaze shifted to the guitar. He was probably remembering the incident at Skivvie’s, after they’d laid Jake Creed in his grave, just as Tyler was.

“Bygones,” Dylan said, “ought to be bygones.”

That was easy for him to say, Tyler thought, stung anew by the old fury. He’d written a song about Jake—or the man he’d needed his father to be—and Logan had torn the guitar out of his hands and smashed it to splinters against the bar.

Tyler could still hear the dull hum of the strings.

It had been a mail-order special, that guitar; probably hadn’t cost more than twenty or thirty dollars, even when it was brand-new. It had also been the last thing Tyler’s mother had given him, before she’d gone off to some seedy motel, evidently too weary of being a Creed wife to go on for even one more day, and swallowed a bottle of pills.

“I’ll let you know,” Tyler finally responded, his voice tight, “when bygones get to be bygones. In the meantime, don’t hold your breath.”

Bonnie, picking up on the change in the atmosphere, went back to Kristy, her small face solemn with worry, jamming a thumb into her mouth as she settled against her stepmother’s shoulder.

Kristy’s expression turned troubled, too.

“Bad vibes,” she remarked softly, looking from Tyler to Dylan and back again.

For Kristy’s sake, and even more for Bonnie’s, Tyler worked up what he hoped was a reassuring smile, not a death grimace. “Thanks for the loan of your car, Kristy,” he said. “I do appreciate it.”

Dylan lingered near the open door, ready to leave, now that he’d delivered the rig and thus done his good deed for the day. “If you change your mind about supper, you know where we’ll be,” he told Tyler, and then he went out.

Kristy gave Tyler another puzzled look, then followed with Bonnie.

Tyler waited until they’d all left in Dylan’s truck before grabbing up Kristy’s keys. “Come on, boy,” he said to Kit Carson. “Let’s go find out if I’m somebody’s dear old dad.”

T ESS FELL INTO THE BED in Lily’s old room, the stuffed animals Tyler had won at the carnival so long ago tucked in all around her.

“Can we stay here, Mom?” she asked, when Lily sat down on the edge of the mattress, which was still covered in the ruffly pink-and-white-polka-dot spread she’d received on her eighth birthday. “In Stillwater Springs, I mean, with Grampa?”

Lily stroked a lock of hair, still moist from an after-supper bath, back from her daughter’s forehead. Kissed the place she’d bared. “We have a condo in Chicago,” she said. “And your grandmother Kenyon would miss you something fierce if we moved away.”

“She could visit me here,” Tess said, with an expression of resigned hope shining in her eyes.

The thought of Eloise Kenyon roughing it in a cow-town like Stillwater Springs brought a wistful smile to Lily’s face—the woman probably didn’t own a pair of jeans, let alone the boots or sneakers most people wore. As far as her mother-in-law was concerned, the place might as well have been in a parallel dimension.

“Why do you want to stay in Montana, sweetheart?” Lily asked. “You have so many friends back home—”

“It doesn’t feel lonely here,” Tess told her. She had a way of making statements like that, of pulling the figurative rug out from under Lily’s feet with no warning at all. “I like this house. It feels like it’s hugging me. And Grampa said I could help him take care of all the animals, when he goes back to work.”

Silently, Lily counted to ten. Of course Hal was behind this whole idea of her and Tess moving back to the old hometown—now that he’d come face-to-face with the grim reaper, he was suddenly a family man. Once, he’d taken her, Lily, on his rounds, just as he’d promised to take Tess. Then one day he’d gotten tired of having a daughter, apparently, and written her off, just like that.

By God, he wasn’t going to do that to Tess. He wasn’t going to win the child’s love and trust and then shut her out of his life.

“You were lonely in Chicago?” Lily asked helplessly, because she’d need some time to think before she addressed the other issue. How on earth was she going to warn Tess, a six-year-old child, not to get too attached to her own grandfather? Especially when she so obviously needed a father-figure of some sort?

“It always seemed like Daddy should have been there,” Tess said sagely, with a little shrug. “And I could make new friends right here. Kristy said there were kids around for me to play with, and I really liked story hour, too.”

Lily tried, but tears came to her eyes anyway, and Tess saw them.

She sat up, threw her little arms around Lily’s neck and hugged her tightly. Another child might have clung; Tess was giving comfort, not taking it.

Now, it was Lily who did the clinging.

“Don’t cry, Mom,” Tess pleaded, her breath warm against Lily’s cheek. “Please don’t cry.”

Lily sniffled bravely. “I’m sorry,” she said. “ I’m supposed to be the strong one.”

Tess settled back on her pillows—the very pillows where Lily had dreamed so many Tyler-dreams—and regarded her mother with that singularly serious, too-adult expression that troubled Lily so much.

“Nobody’s strong all the time, Mom,” Tess said. There she was again—the Wise Woman, posing as a child. “You can be happy if you’ll just let yourself. That’s what Grampa said, while you were taking your nap and we were getting supper ready.”

Privately, Lily seethed. Thank you, Parent of the Year, she told her feckless father silently. “I am happy, honey. I’ve got you, after all. What more could I want?” She fussed with the covers a little, looked around at all the mementos of her childhood, thinking, to distract herself, that the room could use updating. New curtains, fresh wallpaper, a few framed watercolors instead of all those dog-eared rock-star posters from her teens…

“You could want a husband,” Tess suggested, in answer to Lily’s question, which had been rhetorical. Not that a six-year-old—even one as precocious as Tess—could be expected to understand rhetoric. “And more kids.”

“I have a job in Chicago, remember?” Lily pointed out. “One I happen to love. And I don’t think I want a husband, if it’s all the same to you.”

Skepticism skewed Tess’s freckled face, wrinkling her nose and etching lines into her forehead. “You don’t love that job, Mom,” she argued. “You’re always saying you’d rather have your own company, so you could do things your way and set your own hours. And anyhow, we don’t need money, do we? Nana Kenyon says you have plenty, thanks to Daddy’s trust fund and the insurance payment.”

Behind her motherly smile, Lily added Eloise Kenyon to the mental hit-list headed up by Hal Ryder. Why would Burke’s mother mention matters like trust funds and insurance settlements to a child, unless she’d wanted the remark to get back to Lily? Using Tess as a go-between was inexcusable, downright passive-aggressive.

As for Burke, whatever his other failings, he had kept his will up to date. He’d looked out for his daughter and, to some extent, his wife.

The trust fund was safely tucked away for Tess, and Lily had used the insurance money to pay off Burke’s many credit card debts and the mortgage on the condo. Her job, though it sometimes made her want to tear out her hair from sheer frustration, paid well, and she and Tess lived simply, anyway.

Lily was nothing if not sensible.

Except when it came to Tyler Creed, of course.

Why had she agreed to have dinner with him, when she knew no other man on earth, not even her own father, had the power to hurt her the way Tyler could?

Was pain getting to be a way of life with her? Had she started to like it?

“We’re both tired,” she said at last. “Let’s talk about this another time.”

She saw the protest brewing in Tess’s eyes. You always say that…and later never comes.

Lily laid an index finger to her daughter’s lips, to forestall the inevitable challenge.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said. “I promise.”

Mollified, though barely so, Tess sighed a little-girl sigh. Relaxed visibly.

Lily kissed her again. “Want me to leave the light on for a while?” she asked. Tess had never been afraid of the dark, but the house was strange to her, after all, however much she claimed to love it, and she’d had a very big day.

“I’m not scared, Mom,” Tess said. “I told you, this is a hugging house.”

A hugging house.

For a moment, Lily yearned for the innocence of youth, ached to feel the way Tess did about the old place. As a child, she had—she’d loved living there. Until her parents had torn the concept of home into two jagged pieces, each taking half and leaving her scrambling in midair.

Lily simply nodded, not trusting herself to speak without crying again, and stood. She switched off the bedside lamp, with its time-yellowed, frilly shade, and headed for the hallway.

“You can leave the door open, though,” Tess volunteered gamely, from the darkness.

Lily smiled, knowing she was visible to her daughter in the light from the hall. “Good night, pumpkin.”

“Night,” Tess murmured, in a snuggling-in voice.

A few moments later, Lily joined her father in the living room at the front of the house. He was seated at his ancient rolltop desk, going over what appeared to be a stack of bills.

Lily, who had a bone to pick with him, swallowed. Was her dad all right for money? He ran a small-town veterinary practice, after all, and if she remembered correctly, collecting his fees wasn’t a high priority with him. Especially if his clients happened to be hard up.

Times being what they were, folks were scrambling just to hold on.

“I could help,” she heard herself say. “If you’re a little behind or something—”

Hal smiled and again, something moved in his eyes. Something that seemed to hurt him. “I appreciate the offer,” he said, his voice sounding a little hoarse. “But I’m solvent, Lily. No need for you to fret.”

Lily nodded, embarrassed now. Kept her face averted as she sat down in an overstuffed armchair that was probably older than she was. “Tess is talking about staying in Stillwater Springs for good,” she ventured. “Is that your doing?”

Hal chuckled, sounding wistful. “It’s still a fine place to raise a child,” he said. “Safe to trick-or-treat at Halloween. You can say ‘Merry Christmas’ to folks without somebody getting in your face for being politically incorrect, and every Fourth of July, there’s a big picnic and fireworks in the park.”

Lily’s face heated. “So is Chicago,” she said, unable to meet her father’s gaze, even then. “A good place to bring up a child, I mean.”

Hal blew out a breath. “ You were happy here,” he reminded her.

“Yes,” she retorted stiffly. “Until I suddenly became persona non grata.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, Lily regretted them. Truthful or not, Hal was recovering from a major heart attack. This was no time for digging up and rattling old bones.

Hal didn’t speak for a long time. When he did, his words made Lily’s throat tighten painfully. “You were never a ‘persona non grata,’ Lily,” he insisted, his tone ragged and weary. “Your mother and I loved you very much. We just didn’t love each other anymore, and you took a lot of the fallout. For that, I am truly sorry.”

She wanted to ask him right then why he’d shut her out all of a sudden, soon after her breakup with Tyler, but she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to hear the answer.

“I guess divorce is never easy on anybody,” she said, conceding the obvious. “Adults or children.”

With a sigh that snagged at Lily’s heart, her father hoisted himself up from the desk chair, crossed the room and sat down in the second armchair, facing her. “Tell me about your divorce, Lily,” he said. “How long were you unhappy with Burke before you finally decided to cut your losses and run?”

Lily lowered her head. “Too long,” she whispered.

“He cheated, didn’t he? Ran around with other women?”

She swallowed hard, nodded. Looked her father straight in the eye. “Mom claims you were ‘running around with other women’ when she left you. Is that true, Da—Hal?”

Hal’s smile was rueful. “It wouldn’t throw the earth off its axis, Lily,” he said gently, “if you called me ‘Dad’ again.” He shifted in his chair, took a pipe from the holder on the table beside him, and at Lily’s fierce expression, put it back. “To answer your question, I was faithful to your mother, at least in the literal sense of the word.”

“What does that mean?”

“That we were too different from each other, Lucy and me,” Hal said slowly. “She liked bright lights and big cities, and I liked being a country veterinarian. She wanted to drive a fancy car, and I refused, even though we could have afforded one, because I didn’t like the statement it would have made among people who struggle just to keep food on the table. When it got down to the brass tacks, Lily, the only thing your mother and I had in common was you.”

Oh, right, Lily wanted to say, but she bit the words back.

Hal chuckled, but he sounded so tired. It was time he took his medicine and went to bed. Lily started to get up, fetch the bag full of pill bottles the doctor had sent home with them.

“Sit down, Lily,” her dad said firmly.

Lily dropped back into her chair.

“I still want to know about Burke. Not the public version. Scion of a great New England family, and all that tripe. What was he really like?”

“Shallow,” Lily said, after some thought. “Funny. Smart. Self-assured.”

“And very popular with other women?” Hal put the question gently, but at the same time there was no doubt that he expected an answer and wouldn’t let her off the hook until she replied honestly. Clearly, he wasn’t going to be thrown off the trail.

“Very,” Lily agreed. “There were a lot of little signs, looking back on it—the usual hang-ups on the phone, odd charges on his credit card statements, condoms in his suitcase when we never used them, things like that. I pretended not to notice—I guess I couldn’t face the truth about us. But it was almost as though Burke wanted me to know he was running around. I’d call his room when he was out of town on a flight, and a woman would answer. He’d say the whole crew was in his room, that they were celebrating somebody’s birthday, or anniversary, or retirement….” She stopped, blushed, shook her head at her own naiveté. “Until he crashed his plane, I thought he was trying to maneuver me into making the first move, so he wouldn’t have to be the first Kenyon in history to file for divorce. But when I finally did see a lawyer, he—”

“Killed himself,” Hal supplied gently.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure of that? Maybe it was an accident.”

“I wish I could believe it was,” Lily said, very softly. “There wasn’t a note or anything, but he called me a couple of hours before he went up that last time. He was upset, begging for another chance, making all sorts of crazy promises.” She stopped, swallowed hard. “He said—he said it wouldn’t be right to break up Tess’s home—that we should have another child—”

“And?”

“I said I didn’t love him anymore. That it was no use trying, since we’d had counseling after his last affair.” Lily bit down so hard on her lower lip that she felt a sting of pain, and half expected to taste blood. She’d wanted more children so badly, but Burke had always refused. One was enough, he’d said. As though Tess were a mortgage with a balloon payment, an object of some kind. “What’s the old saying? ‘Act in haste, repent at leisure’?”

“Even if Burke did crash that plane because you were divorcing him, Lily, it wouldn’t be your fault.”

“I keep telling myself that,” Lily admitted. “But a part of me knows it’s a lie.” The truth burst out then, all on its own, too big to contain. “I didn’t love Burke—I never did. I loved the idea of love, of being someone’s wife, someone’s mother. Having a home and a family. But deep down, I never cared for Burke the way I should have, and I guess he knew it.”

She’d never loved Burke because she’d never stopped loving Tyler, and she was the kind of woman who mated for life.

“You must have had feelings for Burke,” her dad reasoned gently. “After all, you married him. You had Tess with him.”

“I guess in the beginning, I thought I’d fall in love with him in time. But it didn’t happen.” A tear slid down Lily’s cheek, and she didn’t bother to brush it away. “I shouldn’t have gone through with the wedding. He might be alive today if I hadn’t.”

“There’s no way of knowing that,” Hal told her. “Let yourself off the hook, Lily, if only because there’s no way you can change the past, and because Tess needs a happy mother, one who’s looking ahead, not backward.”

“I am happy,” she insisted, for the second time that evening.

Hal’s sigh was heavy with bittersweet amusement, and a certain degree of resignation. “No, you’re not,” he argued. “Your mother was all for the marriage, but I remember looking down into your face, just before I walked you up that church aisle and gave you away, and seeing something in your eyes that made me want to put a stop to the whole shindig, then and there. Tell all those Kenyons and their fancy friends and relations to eat, drink and be merry, but there wouldn’t be a ceremony.”

Hal Ryder had given his daughter away long before her wedding day, but that was beside the point. Still another old, dusty skeleton that shouldn’t be exhumed.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Lily asked softly. “To me, at least?”

Hal sighed again. “Because I didn’t have the right. You were a grown woman, with a college education and a good job. And because I’d already interfered in your life once before that.” Just when Lily would have asked what he’d meant by that last part, he stood, stretched, yawned. “I’m worn-out, Lily,” he confessed. “I need some rest.”

“I’ll get your pills,” Lily said, rising, too.

“Oh, yes,” Hal replied, with grim humor. “My pills. Let’s not forget those.”

In the kitchen, she opened the pharmacy bag, studied the labels on the little brown bottles and carefully counted out the appropriate doses while her father set the coffeepot for morning and locked the back door.

Lily raised an eyebrow at that. “People are locking their doors in Stillwater Springs these days?” she asked.

“I normally don’t,” Hal admitted. “But I’ve got you and Tess to think about now. And some things have been happening around here lately—”

He’d just made a speech, in the living room, about what a good place Stillwater Springs was to raise a child—specifically Tess. Knowing he was tired, Lily didn’t call him on the contradiction between his words and his actions.

I’ve got you and Tess to think about now.

Had he convinced himself they would be staying on in Stillwater Springs permanently, after he’d recovered enough to live on his own?

She set the handful of pills on a paper towel, and handed them to him, along with a glass of water. Watched as he forced down his medication.

“Good night, sweetheart,” he said, when he’d finished, and set his empty glass in the sink.

When was the last time he’d called her sweetheart?

The night Tyler handed her her heart in fragments, that was when. Had it really been that long?

Lily closed her eyes and waited until Hal had left the room. Until she heard his bedroom door close, just down the hall from the kitchen.

And then she cried, for little girls without fathers.

And for big ones, too.

CHAPTER FOUR

T HE FIFTEEN-YEAR GAP between their ages showed in Doreen’s haggard face in ways it hadn’t way back when. She looked thin in her casino-waitress uniform, and lines in her forehead were etched deep. She was developing jowls, and her mouth was hard, the lipstick too red and slightly off-center.

Still, her weary eyes softened a little when she recognized Tyler, standing in one of the casino’s several restaurants. Davie sat in a booth nearby, nursing a soda and pretending to read one of those glorified comic books that pass as a novel.

He doesn’t look much like me, Tyler thought, with distracted regret. But, then, he hadn’t looked much like Jake Creed, either. Secretly, he’d fantasized that his mother had been fooling around, conceived him with some lover, but he doubted his own fantasy. Poor Angie didn’t seem to have the strength to defy Jake that way. Or maybe she’d just loved her husband too much to cheat.

In the end, that love had destroyed her.

“Tyler,” Doreen said, almost breathing the name.

“Doreen,” Tyler replied, with a nod. Now that he was face-to-face with the woman who might have borne his child without bothering to let him know, all the things he’d planned to say, all the things he’d rehearsed on the way into town with Kit Carson riding shotgun, deserted him.

“I could take a break in half an hour,” she said.

Tyler merely nodded again. He’d left Kit Carson at Cassie’s to spare the dog a long wait in the Blazer, so he had time. He could cool his heels awhile.

Doreen hesitated for a few moments, looking from Tyler to Davie and back again. Then she sighed and turned to walk away, take another order for another plate of nachos, another mug of beer.

Everything about her, the way she moved, the way she spoke, said she was miserable. Hated her life, but didn’t know how to escape it.

Unlike Angela Creed. She’d found a way out, and devil take the grief she’d left behind.

Tyler approached Davie’s table.

“Mind if I join you?”

Davie didn’t look up. Just shrugged.

The cover of the graphic novel showed a woman being devoured by some hideous beast, and Davie seemed absorbed.

Tyler sat down across from Davie, signaled another waitress, ordered coffee. He liked a beer once in a while, but with Jake Creed for a father and a wild youth not that far behind him, a man tended to moderate his alcohol intake. He wondered briefly if Logan and Dylan took the same care not to overdo the booze.

“Good book?” he asked.

“What do you care?” Davie shot back.

“Do all those hooks and rings hurt?” Tyler persisted, frowning at the eyebrow piercings. The silver ring through Davie’s lower lip made him a little queasy, and after some of the bar brawls he’d been in, that was no small matter.

“Hurt when they did it,” Davie allowed, sounding defiant and, at the same time, interested. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to your mother,” Tyler said.

“About what?”

Tyler wasn’t about to bring up the paternity question—not before a word with Doreen, anyway. “Just things. Dylan tells me Sheriff Huntinghorse wanted to send you to a foster home, and you said you’d run off if he did.”

There was no humor in the smile Davie gave then, or in his eyes. “Small towns. Word really does travel like wildfire.”

“Running away would be a bad idea.”

“You don’t know my mom’s boyfriend. The sheriff said he was going to track Roy down and warn him not to hit me anymore.” Davie gave a bitter huff of a laugh. “That ought to make things real nice when Mom and I get back to the old trailer after her shift.”

Tyler’s gut churned just to think of what the boy might be facing, later that night and afterward. And he suddenly knew he couldn’t stand it, whether Davie was his or not.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” Tyler said carefully. “Maybe I could use somebody to help out around the cabin.”

Davie couldn’t hide his interest then, though he tried. He closed the book, set it down with a little thump and frowned at Tyler. “What kind of help?” he asked, almost suspiciously.

This from the kid who’d practically begged to stay.

“You said it yourself, this afternoon. Taking care of Kit Carson, cutting grass, stuff like that.”

“That place is small. Where would I sleep?”

“We’d get you a cot and a sleeping bag.”

“You don’t even have a TV.”

Tyler grinned. “You’re mighty choosy, all of a sudden, for somebody who wanted to move right in before.”

“Would you be a foster parent?” Davie asked, sounding like a lawyer now. “Maybe collect a little check from the county or the state?”

Tyler chuckled, enjoyed a sip of bad casino coffee before answering. “Hell,” he said, “no amount of money would be enough to put up with your attitude. It’s a neighborly offer, that’s all. And your mom has to approve, of course.”

From the looks of Doreen, she’d been running interference between good ole Roy, the boyfriend, and her son for too long. Letting Davie bunk in at Tyler’s for a while would probably be a relief, with all her problems.

“What changed your mind?” Davie asked grudgingly, but with a little less attitude than before. He was afraid to hope—Tyler could see that—and it galled him. Brought back way too many memories.

Life shouldn’t be the way it was for Davie, the way it was for a lot of kids.

The way it had been for him.

“I just needed some time to think, that’s all,” Tyler said. The words felt as lame coming off his tongue as they probably sounded to Davie. “Of course, you screw up and you’re out of there.”

Davie’s eyes widened. They were Doreen’s eyes, not Tyler’s own, or those of any family member he could recall, but still.

Still.

“You mean it? I could stay at your place?”

“I mean it. Long as you don’t cause trouble.”

“You’ll get a TV?”

Tyler chuckled. “I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “But once I see what kind of yard-bird you really are, I might let you use my laptop now and then.”

“And all I have to do is take care of the dog and cut some grass?”

“You’ve seen the grass. It’s waist-high. I think there’s a lawn under there someplace, but I can’t be sure.” Tyler paused, considered. “Fact is, I’m thinking of building on to the place.” Had he been thinking that? Not consciously, but now that the idea had presented itself, most likely prompted by Dylan’s mention of razing his old house to put up a new one, and what little he knew about the restorations going on at the main place, under Logan’s direction, he kind of cottoned to the prospect. “That would mean some carpentry. Maybe a little plumbing and electrical work, too.”

Davie looked worried. Maybe all that hard work would be a deal-breaker. “I don’t know anything about construction,” he finally said.

“That makes two of us,” Tyler said.

Cautious relief replaced the consternation in Davie’s face. “I wouldn’t mind learning, though. I always thought it would be kind of cool to be able to make bookshelves and stuff like that.”

Tyler glanced pointedly at the glorified comic book lying forgotten on the table. “You got a collection of those things?” he asked.

Davie gave a snort of amusement, tinged with bitterness. “No,” he said. “I got this one at the library. I mostly go there to use the computers, but Kristy said I ought to give reading a shot, and she never chases me off when I’m just looking for a place to hang out, so I checked this out.”

Tyler raised one eyebrow, intrigued. “I suppose she—Kristy, I mean—suggested something like White Fang or Ivanhoe, ” he said.

Davie laughed, and this time it sounded real. Almost normal. “Nope. She chose this one for me herself. Said it would be a good way to get my feet wet, find out how much fun reading can be.”

Tyler thought back to Kristy’s predecessor, Miss Rooley. She’d been a spinster, tight-mouthed and generally disapproving. She’d allowed him to hide out in the library, too, as a kid, when Jake was having a particularly bad day and Logan and Dylan weren’t around to get between him and the old man’s fists, but she’d demanded her pound of flesh. He’d been forced to read what Miss Rooley reverently called “The Classics,” always capitalizing the term with her tone.

At first, it was agony, slogging through tomes he barely understood. Then, he’d begun to enjoy it, though that was something he’d never wanted anybody to know, particularly his older brothers. Right up there with his secret penchant for Andrea Bocelli’s music. He liked the Big Band stuff, too—Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, that crowd.

As secrets went, these were pretty tame, but they were secrets just the same. And they would be harder to hide, with a kid living under the same roof.

“You like Kristy?” Tyler asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.

“She’s all right,” Davie allowed. “I’m supposed to call her ‘Mrs. Creed’ at the library.”

“Yeah,” Tyler said.

Mrs. Creed. There were two of them now, counting Logan’s bride.

It just went to show that those who didn’t learn from history really were condemned to repeat it.

Kristy had lived outside of Stillwater Springs all her life; she knew what it meant to marry a hell-raiser, which left her with no excuse for taking the risk. Briana, on the other hand, was an innocent victim, a stranger.

Had anybody warned her that the Creeds were notoriously bad at marriage? Showed her the three graves in the old cemetery out beyond the orchard, the final resting places of the last generation of Creed wives—all of them dead long before their time?

Watching Davie, Tyler thought the boy studied his face a little too intently, seeing too much. He looked as though he wanted to ask a question, but he gulped it back when they got unexpected company.

A big man loomed over the table, beer-belly straining at his wife-beater shirt. His arms were tattooed from fingertips to shoulder, he needed a shave and the billed cap pulled low over his face looked as though it had been run over by a semitruck with a serious oil leak.

Davie seemed to shrink in on himself, like he was trying to disappear.

Roy’s presence had exactly the opposite effect on Tyler.

He slid out of the booth and stood.

Doreen had always liked tattoos. Maybe that explained why she’d taken up with three hundred pounds of ugly, though some things went beyond reasonable explanation, and this creep was one of them.

Roy’s mean little pig eyes widened a little. Evidently, he’d been so focused on Davie, he hadn’t noticed that the boy wasn’t alone.

Now, he looked Tyler over with belligerent caution.

“Who are you?”

“His name’s Tyler Creed, Roy,” Davie piped up, obviously terrified. “We were just talking. He wasn’t doing any harm—”

Tyler put out one hand to silence the boy.

Roy, being a head shorter but bulky, looked up into Tyler’s face.

“A Creed, huh?” he said. “Know all about that outfit.”

Tyler folded his arms. Waited.

Roy pulled in his horns a little. “Look,” he said. “I just came to take the boy home. There’s no need for any trouble.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Tyler answered. “Not at the moment, anyhow.”

Roy clearly didn’t appreciate being thwarted; like all bullies, he was used to getting his way by acting tough. The trouble with acting tough was, as Jake had often said, the inevitability of running into somebody just a little tougher.

And that could make all the difference.

“I said I didn’t want any trouble,” Roy reiterated mildly. “I just want to take the boy home, where he belongs.”

“We’re still figuring out where he belongs,” Tyler said, just as mildly but with an undercurrent of Creed steel. “Right now, all I’m sure of is, he’s staying right here, and you’re not going to lay a hand on him.”

A dull crimson flush throbbed in what passed for Roy’s neck, though his head seemed to sit pretty much square with his shoulders. He tightened one grubby fist, too, wanting to hit somebody.

“You lookin’ for a fight, cowboy?” he asked Tyler.

“Nope,” Tyler said. “But I won’t run from one if the opportunity happens to present itself.”

The flush spread into Roy’s hound-dog face.

Evidently, Tyler reflected, Doreen had given up on teaching men how to treat a woman. This guy had no clue how to treat anybody.

Roy rubbed his beard-stubbled chin, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. Thought, Tyler figured, was probably painful for him, and thus avoided except in the most dire circumstances.

“You talked to Jim Huntinghorse,” Roy speculated peevishly. He glanced down at Davie, his expression so poisonous that the very atmosphere seemed polluted by it. “The kid lies. I never done nothin’ to him he didn’t deserve.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tyler spotted Doreen, peering around one of the slot machines edging the restaurant. On the one hand, he felt sorry for her. On the other, he was furious that she wouldn’t step up and protect her own child. She’d probably never had two nickels to rub together, but she’d had spirit once, she’d lived by her own rules, and she hadn’t just survived, she’d thrived . She’d had tattoos, for God’s sake, in an era when women simply didn’t do things like that. She’d traveled with biker gangs and rock bands. She’d taught him to use his fingers and his tongue in ways that bordered on sacred knowledge that had stood him in good stead ever since.

What the hell had happened to her?

The same thing that had happened to his mother, he supposed, in the next moment. Life had simply beaten her down. She’d taken one too many hard knocks, one too many disappointments.

Roy must have seemed like the last train out of town.

Damned if that wasn’t depressing.

“Come on,” Roy barked, gesturing to Davie.

Davie started to get out of the booth. Then, at a glance from Tyler, he stayed where he was.

“He’s not going anyplace,” Tyler said.

“I ought to knock your teeth down your throat,” Roy replied. It wasn’t clear whether he was addressing Tyler or Davie.

“You’re welcome to try,” Tyler told him cordially. “You ever fight a man, Roy? Or just kids and women?”

Roy looked apoplectic. “You ain’t heard the last of me,” he said.

“Not only tough,” Tyler observed, “but original, too. What’s next? ‘This town ain’t big enough for both of us’?”

Davie ducked his head at that, like he was expecting a blow.

And that made Tyler want to tear Roy’s head off, right there in the restaurant. He’d end up as an overnight guest of the sheriff’s if he did, a prospect he didn’t relish after the last experience five years before, but the temptation was fierce just the same.

Roy grunted, shook his head once, like a man plagued by a swarm of flies, and then turned and lumbered out.

“He’ll get you, Tyler,” Davie said pragmatically. “He’ll get me, too. He’s like that.”

“I know what he’s like,” Tyler said, watching Roy disappear.

When he was gone, Doreen came out of hiding. She looked sheepish and scared as hell. Davie didn’t have to go home—Tyler would hand-deliver the kid to the child-protection people before he’d see that happen—but she did.

“You go back and wait in the employees’ lounge,” she told Davie, showing a faint semblance of the old Doreen, the one who’d lived wild and free. “Roy won’t be able to get at you there.”

Davie hesitated, nodded and left the table, then the restaurant.

Tyler gestured for Doreen to sit down. Both of them could have wished for a more private place to hold the forthcoming conversation, but it wasn’t to be, and Tyler, for one, was resigned to that.

Doreen slid into the booth, hunching in the same way Davie had.

Tyler sat down across from her. Drew a deep breath.

“Things are pretty bad, I guess,” he said, when Doreen didn’t speak.

She nodded. “Worse than bad.”

“Is he mine?” The words were out before Tyler had a chance to think them over. Not that thinking would have changed anything, but he might have been more diplomatic.

For a few moments, Doreen pretended not to understand. Tyler simply stared her down.

“No,” she finally said. “Davie isn’t yours. I wish he was, though. God, how I wish he was.”

Tyler felt a combination of relief and disappointment, and he still wasn’t fully convinced that Doreen was telling the truth. “How old is Davie?” he asked quietly.

“Thirteen,” Doreen admitted, after some lip-biting and some hand-wringing.

“The math works,” Tyler said.

Doreen gave a rueful little laugh. Raised and lowered her stooped shoulders. “Yeah,” she said. “For a lot of guys, Ty. Not just you. Davie belongs to a trucker who stopped by Skivvie’s one summer night, crying in his beer because his wife didn’t understand him. I cheered him up. And Davie looks just like him.”

“Okay,” Tyler said. “So why do you let the boyfriend bounce Davie off walls?”

Tears filled Doreen’s eyes. “I’ve been fighting things all my life,” she said. “One day, I just ran out of fight.”

“Tough break for Davie,” Tyler said evenly.

“You think I don’t hate myself for that? For all of it?” Doreen straightened her spine a little—though not enough, unfortunately. “I never expected to end up like this. I could have had an abortion—Davie’s father offered to pay for one—but I had this crazy idea that I’d find a good man someday. Davie and I and the prince.” She laughed again. “What a fairy tale.”

“Let me take Davie home with me. Just for a while. Until you can get things under control.”

Doreen stared at him, clearly amazed. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because I was a kid once, with a crazy father,” Tyler said, as surprised to say what he did as Doreen probably was to hear him admit it. He’d been in denial about Jake Creed all his life, even written songs about him, for Christ’s sake. “What you’re doing now isn’t working, Doreen. Time to try something different.”

“You don’t understand,” Doreen whispered, in a teary rush of words and breath. “Davie’s a handful. He has problems, Tyler. And Roy—well, you don’t know what Roy’s like. He’ll lay for you. He’ll never forget the run-in you and him had tonight. If he has to wait the rest of his life, he’ll find a way to pay you back, and when he does, it won’t be pretty.”

“I can handle Roy,” Tyler said. “Seems to me, the more immediate concern is what he might do to you, or to Davie. Let me drive you someplace, Doreen. Right now, tonight. There are shelters, or you could stay at Cassie’s place—”

Doreen’s face turned to stone. “I know what those ‘shelters’ are like. My mother and I were in and out of them when I was a little girl. Church women, looking down their noses at us. Secondhand clothes. It was like being in prison, and all it did was make my dad even meaner, once he caught up with us. And he always caught up with us.”

“That was then, Doreen, and this is now.”

“Take Davie home with you,” Doreen said, stiff now, and flushed with shame and fury and frustration and God only knew what else. “You’ll want to give him back soon enough.”

“Maybe,” Tyler agreed. But he was remembering all those times when Cassie had stood toe-to-toe with Jake Creed and refused to let him drag his youngest son home by the hair. What would have happened to him if it hadn’t been for Cassie and, to a lesser degree, for Logan and Dylan?

Payback time.

There was a kid in trouble, and he couldn’t ignore that.

Doreen looked at her watch. A little of her favorite tattoo showed on her upper arm—a phoenix, rising majestically from the ashes. “Do what you want,” she said. “Play hero. You’ll be sorry, Tyler. You will be sorry. And that’s the last warning you’re going to get from me.”

Tyler reached for a napkin, gestured for Doreen to hand over the pen she used for taking down food and drink orders. Scrawled his cell number on it.

“Call if you need help,” he said.

Doreen eyed the number with contempt, but she took it in the end. Stuffed it into her apron pocket in a wad.

Tyler watched her go. Settled up for the coffee. Made his way through the casino to the employees’ lounge. He’d gone to high school with the security guard posted in the hallway, and hung out with Jim Huntinghorse when he was still managing the place, so nobody got in his way.

Davie sat hunkered down in a chair in the corner, alone in the room, clutching the library book in both hands.

“Time to ride,” Tyler said.

“What if he’s out there?” Davie asked. “What if Roy’s out there?”

“I couldn’t get that lucky,” Tyler told him, with a grin.

But Roy wasn’t waiting in the parking lot. Davie was surprised; Tyler wasn’t. Roy would strike back, but not when there was a chance of getting his ass kicked in a public parking lot. He was the come-from-behind type. He’d use a tire iron, or maybe even a gun.

Serious business. But Tyler had had a lot of practice at watching his back. A lifetime of it, in fact.

And being a Creed, he didn’t have sense enough to be scared.

So he and Davie made a quick stop at Wal-Mart, for a sleeping bag and a cot, the usual personal grooming necessities and a change of clothes for Davie.

“You don’t actually expect me to wear these, do you?” Davie protested, once they were back in Kristy’s Blazer, headed for Cassie’s place to pick up the dog. He was holding up the pair of jeans Tyler had chosen for him. “They are definitely not cool.”

“Being cool is the least of your problems,” Tyler pointed out. “You’ll wear them.”

Kit Carson greeted them at the door when they got to Cassie’s, probably relieved to learn that he hadn’t been dumped there for the duration. Not that Cassie wouldn’t have been good to him—she was a little rough around the edges, Cassie was, but she had a gentle soul, a heart for lost dogs. And lost boys.

“Picking up strays now?” she asked, under the bug-flecked cone of light on her porch, watching as Davie hoisted Kit Carson into the back of the borrowed Blazer.

Tyler grinned. “Just carrying on the tradition,” he said.

Stillwater Springs was a small town. Cassie, having lived there since before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, had to know Davie, and his mother, too. Maybe she even remembered the summer Tyler had spent in Doreen’s bed, in the little room above Skivvie’s Tavern, learning to be a man.

“Is he yours?” she asked, proving Tyler’s theory.

“Could be,” Tyler answered. “His mother denies it, but she could have lots of reasons for doing that.”

“Like what?” Cassie countered reasonably.

“Like not wanting me to have a claim on him, back when he was little and she could still handle him,” Tyler said. “Doreen was always independent to a fault. Maybe there’s still a little of that left in her, even now.”

“This is going to complicate your life,” Cassie predicted, sounding resigned.

“Maybe my life has gotten too simple,” Tyler replied.

“Spoken like a true Creed,” Cassie retorted, but she was smiling—with her mouth, anyway. Her dark eyes were serious. “Folks have long memories, Tyler. Everybody—including Lily Ryder—is going to recall what happened between you and Doreen, and put two and two together.”

Tyler sighed. He hadn’t let on to anybody that Lily was on his mind, but Cassie knew him too well to be fooled by lies of omission. “Is she involved with anybody? Remarried maybe?” he asked, his voice sounding husky. He wouldn’t have put that particular question to anyone else on earth, not even Lily. His pride wouldn’t have allowed that. But Cassie, a wise middle-aged Native American with a teepee in her yard, was like a grandmother to him.

“No,” Cassie said. And she put a hand on his arm, a signal that she was about to say something he wouldn’t want to hear. “Her husband was a pilot. He killed himself two years ago.”

Suicide.

Tyler closed his eyes, thrust right back into the bad old days as surely and suddenly as if he’d stumbled into a time warp. He might have been a kid again, not a man standing on Cassie’s front porch, but a boy hiding on the other side of the kitchen door, out at the home place, listening as Sheriff Floyd Book, Jim Huntinghorse’s legendary predecessor, broke the news to Jake.

Angie’s dead. I’m so sorry. We found her at the Skylight Motel, on the old state highway. It was an overdose, Jake… .

Tyler had heard a wail, primitive and piercing, and thought it was Jake.

He’d only realized the sound was coming from his own throat when Dylan and Logan each took one of his arms and hauled him up off his knees, braced him between them.

Cassie squeezed his arm, hard, brought him back from the abyss, the place where the questions never stopped.

All of them started with the same word.

Why?

“What could be that bad?” he rasped. “A wife like Lily. A little girl like Tess. What would make a man throw them away?”

“You’re trying to understand again,” Cassie pointed out gently. “And there is no understanding, Tyler. People are fragile. They can break. It’s as simple—and as complicated—as that.”

Don’t try to understand.

How many times had he heard that advice, from how many people? Dylan, certainly. Logan, too. Even his late wife, Shawna, when she’d been trying to pull him out of some slump. And it wasn’t the first time Cassie had offered it, either.

The problem was, he couldn’t help going over the old ground, looking for clues. Analyzing. His mother’s suicide was the reason for so many things that had happened—and not happened—in his life. It drove him half-crazy sometimes, the need to know why she’d done it. Why she hadn’t been able to hold on, leave Jake, make a new start somewhere else.

“You’ll be seeing Lily, I suppose?” Cassie ventured.

“We’re having dinner tomorrow night,” Tyler answered, braced for more advice.

Leave it alone, Cassie had told him, after the breakup that summer, when he’d wanted to go back to Lily, beg her to forgive him for sleeping with Doreen, give him another chance.

Forget the girl, Jake had counseled. She’s too good for you, anyway .

Are you nuts? Logan had demanded, after bouncing him off the back wall of the barn a couple of times. Rolling in the hay with a waitress twice your age when Lily’s crazy about you?

Sometimes, the voices from the past crowded in like that, made Tyler want to put his hands over his ears. Not that that would have shut them out.

What had happened, had happened.

What was done, was done.

So why couldn’t he just let his poor mother rest in peace?

Why couldn’t he forgive her for breaking down that final time?

The realization hit him hard.

That was why he’d come home to Stillwater Springs, left the rodeo and the big-money stunt work and photo shoots behind, sold his big, empty house in L.A. and traded his Escalade for a junker that wouldn’t even run.

He’d come back to take on all the old ghosts, one by one or in a snarling pack, however they came at him. Win or lose, the fight was on.

Would he still be standing when it was all over?

There was only one way to find out.

And he was through running away.

CHAPTER FIVE

A FTER SERVING HER FATHER and daughter a healthy breakfast—grapefruit, whole-wheat toast and scrambled egg whites—Lily sneaked into her dad’s study to pick up the phone.

She’d call Tyler—she’d decided that while tossing and turning the night before. Tell him she couldn’t go out to dinner with him after all. Backpedal like crazy, tell an outright lie if she had to, say anything to get out of that hastily made date.

Except that she didn’t have his number.

She could get it from Kristy, of course. Call her or just walk over to the library and ask. Since Tyler was Kristy’s brother-in-law now, she’d surely know how to reach him.

Her eyes fell on her dad’s tattered address book. Hal had always disapproved of Tyler Creed, but now, after picking Ty up alongside the road the day before, it seemed the man was her dad’s new best friend. Maybe the number was right there, within easy reach.

It would be so much easier if she didn’t have to contact Kristy, either in person or over the telephone.

Lily had flipped to the C s—the book was jammed with tattered sticky notes, names and numbers scrawled helter-skelter on each one, all of them stuck in at odd and dizzying angles—and was scanning for Tyler’s contact information, when Hal walked in.

“Need something?” he asked, with a slight smile.

Lily swallowed hard. “Tyler’s number,” she said. There, it was out there. Let him make of it what he would.

“Don’t have it,” Hal said, still watching her, but more closely now. “By the way, Tess and I have taken a vote. It’s unanimous. Breakfast sucked.”

Lily closed the bulging address book, set it aside. Straightened her spine. “I suppose you would have preferred bacon and eggs?” she asked, sounding a little terse because she was embarrassed that he’d caught her going through his address book and gotten her to admit that she’d intended to call Tyler, of all people.

“ Preferred is not the word,” Hal said, grinning. “More like adored . Why do you want to call Tyler—as if I didn’t know?”

Lily’s face heated. He didn’t know. Hal probably thought she was jonesing to hear Tyler’s voice or something, like a besotted schoolgirl. Or hot to trot. “He asked me out to dinner,” she reminded him. “And I’ve decided not to go.”

Hal frowned. “Why?”

Lily countered with a question of her own. A stall tactic, for sure, and one that wouldn’t work for very long, if at all. “Weren’t you the one who always warned me that the Creeds were bad news, and taking up with them would lead to certain doom and destruction?”

“Lily, this is dinner, not an orgy.”

Lily bit back an instinctive response—being one-on-one with Tyler Creed, even in a public place, was the sexual equivalent of spontaneous combustion. The man could probably bring her to orgasm without even touching her—and she’d be a fool to let herself in for that.

Or a fool not to.

“My,” she said instead, still hedging, “how things have changed.”

“I was wrong about Tyler,” Hal said, catching her completely off-guard. He’d never been quick to admit to a mistake but, then, neither had she, to be fair about it. “Wrong about a lot of things. Go out with him, Lily. Wear a pretty dress and some perfume and enjoy the evening.”

Enjoy the evening. People from her father’s generation were so innocent, so naive.

Or were they?

“What about Tess?” she asked.

“She’ll be just fine here with me. She’s a smart kid. If I go into cardiac arrest, she’ll call 911.”

“What’s cardiac arrest?” Tess asked, appearing in the doorway of the study. She was wearing expensive pink shorts, a flowered sun-top and flip-flops, all gifts acquired on her last visit to Nantucket, with Eloise. A little frown creased the space between her eyebrows. “Is somebody going to put Grampa in jail?”

Lily smiled, in spite of herself. “Nobody’s going to put your grandfather in jail,” she said, to reassure the child. It was so easy to forget how literal children were. “And you look very pretty today, by the way. Do you have plans?”

“There’s a kid playing in the backyard next door,” Tess answered, letting the subjects of incarceration and emergency medical intervention lapse, for the moment at least. “I think it’s a boy, but I’m going to introduce myself anyhow.”

“A nice couple lives there now,” Hal put in, at Lily’s look of concern. In Chicago, she didn’t know a single one of her neighbors, nor did Tess. “They bought the place after the Hendersons retired and moved to Florida.” He smiled down at Tess. “The child in question,” he added, “is a girl, and her name is Eleanor. She’s seven years old, and visiting her aunt and uncle for the summer.”

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