Montana Creeds: Tyler

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.