Montana Creeds: Tyler

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.”