Montana Creeds: Dylan

And now there might be a body moldering on the old Madison place.

His coffee had gone cold, but since the conversation had come to a halt and he didn’t know how to start it up again, he sipped some java.

That was another thing that hadn’t changed.

Kristy’s coffee was still bad.

He smiled at the thought.

“Tell me about your little girl,” Kristy said, and he knew by the way she framed the request that she’d been working up her nerve during the silence.

“You probably already know as much about her as I do,” Dylan admitted. “She’s two. Her name is Bonnie. She likes listening to you read aloud.”

Kristy seemed to relax a little, though there was still a tense undercurrent. “I take it her mother is out of the picture?”

“God knows where Sharlene is,” Dylan said, sighing. Then he met Kristy’s gaze, and held steady. “Sharlene was a mistake, no denying that. But Bonnie—well—she’s the proof that something good comes out of everything.”

Everything but a horse’s grave, in a peaceful copse of trees, added the voice in his mind. Now that the possibility had had a chance to sink in, he knew instinctively that the sheriff and his crew would find something besides Sugarfoot’s bones when they dug that hole.

Kristy’s smile was misty. “I envy you,” she said.

Again, Dylan was taken aback. He’d forgotten Kristy’s capacity to surprise him—one of the things he’d loved best about her. “Why?” he asked, honestly puzzled.

“Because you have a child,” she said slowly, and with amused patience.

“I just hope I can keep her,” he answered. The worry that Sharlene would change her mind and take Bonnie back circled in the darkest depths of his mind, liable to drag him under when he least expected it.

Kristy raised one eyebrow. Waited.

“I plan to file for permanent custody when Logan gets home from Vegas,” he explained. “Until then, I’m pretty much hanging out there in the wind.” He studied Kristy, remembering—no, remembering wasn’t the right word, because he hadn’t actually forgotten in the first place—how good it had felt to hold her tightly again.

“You didn’t—steal her, did you?”

“You’re the second person who’s asked me that,” Dylan said. “No, I didn’t kidnap my daughter. Sharlene left her in my truck while I was inside some dive in Las Vegas, playing poker, along with a note saying she couldn’t take care of her anymore.”

Kristy’s mouth dropped open. “She left a child alone in a truck?”

“She was around someplace, keeping an eye out.”

Like that made a difference. He’d probably never know what Sharlene would have done if he hadn’t found Bonnie. Even if they happened to have a reasonable conversation at some point, Sharlene wasn’t likely to be honest and straightforward.

“Oh, well,” Kristy said skeptically, “that changes everything.”

“Sharlene isn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee,” Dylan allowed. “But in her own crazy way, I think she was doing what she thought was best.”

Kristy pulled in her horns a little. Sighed again. “Why not simply call you, if she felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for Bonnie, and ask for help?”

Dylan didn’t like the answer that came to him, liked saying it out loud even less. “She probably thought I’d say no, so she didn’t give me the chance.”

A short silence fell, during which Kristy regarded Dylan long and hard. “Would you have said no?” she finally asked.

“Of course not,” he said, mildly affronted. “Bonnie is my daughter.”

“Excuse me,” Kristy countered, “but some guys would have married the mother of their child.”

Just like that, she’d gotten his hackles up. That was another thing he’d forgotten about Kristy—her gift for pissing him off royally. “I didn’t love Sharlene,” he said tautly, “and she sure as hell didn’t love me.”

“Did either one of you love Bonnie?” Kristy asked.

Dylan had to unclamp his back molars before he could reply. “I never missed a child-support check,” he said.

“Aren’t you noble?” Kristy challenged, bending one knee and sitting on her leg, which was still another thing he recalled about her. Her forehead was furrowed, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Did you ever see Bonnie, before you found her in your truck? Did you ever take care of her when she was teething, or had the flu? Did you even carry her picture in your wallet?”

“Yes,” Dylan growled, leaning in a little. “I saw Bonnie whenever I could catch up with Sharlene. No, I wasn’t there when she was teething, or if she had the flu.” He raised his haunches, pried his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open to the discount-store photo of the one person in the entire world he was absolutely, positively sure he loved. “Sharlene’s grandmother sent me this,” he finished, confounded by his own fury. After all, none of this was Kristy’s fault—not directly, anyway. “Along with a bill for Sharlene’s boob job. It seemed they both thought she’d have a better chance of landing a husband with a big set of knockers.”

Kristy blushed.

Dylan didn’t care. If she wanted to play hardball, so be it.

“Did you pay it?”

For a moment, Dylan wasn’t sure he’d heard the question correctly. “What?”

A smile teased at the corner of Kristy’s lush and highly kissable mouth. “Did you pay the bill for the boob job?”

“No,” he said.

She laughed.

And then, remarkably, he laughed, too. “Your coffee is still awful,” he said.

“And you still get your back up too easily.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

He needed to leave, pick Bonnie up at Cassie’s and get her settled out at the ranch. But first he had to know for sure that Kristy was going to be all right.

Spotting a small blackboard on the wall next to the back door—Kristy’s grocery list was on it, in her precise librarian’s handwriting, all loopy and firm—he crossed to it, picked up a stubby piece of blue chalk and scrawled his cell number below broccoli.

“Call me,” he told Kristy, turning to see her clearing their cups from the table with brisk, efficient motions, “if you need anything.”

“I won’t,” she said. “Need anything, I mean.”

Her stubbornness. Her pride. It was all coming back to him now.

“Why didn’t you marry Mike?” he asked. He felt entitled to ask that question; turnabout was fair play, after all.