Montana Creeds: Dylan

Dylan ended the phone call, no closer to asking Logan for help than he had been in the first place, scooped up the demon child, tossed the bills to pay for the meal onto the cashier’s counter and fled.

Now, he’d have to find a place to hose the kid down.

He cleaned her up with baby wipes, purchased along with the unicorn, a plastic kid-toilet, the little tennis shoes and the new outfit she’d pretty much ruined.

“Potty,” she said, as they pulled out of the truck stop and onto the highway. “Daddy, potty.”

“There’s no way we’re going back in there,” Dylan said. “We’re probably banned from the place, thanks to you. Eighty-sixed, for all time and eternity.”

“Potty,” Bonnie insisted. Besides Daddy, that seemed to be the only word she knew. He’d sneaked her into at least four different men’s rooms since they’d left South Point that morning. Held her on the seat so she wouldn’t fall in and looked the other way as best he could.

Her lower lip started to wobble. “Potty,” she said pitifully.

“Oh, hell,” Dylan muttered. He pulled the truck over, located the miniature pink toilet, and set it down behind some bushes. Then he unfastened Bonnie from her car seat and carried her, spaghetti stains and all, to the john.

He turned his back.

She must have gotten her pants down on her own, because he heard a cheery little tinkle. When he finally turned around, she was grinning up at him, her hair crusted in spaghetti sauce, and grunting ominously.

Dylan had ridden the meanest bulls on the rodeo circuit, and until he and Cimarron, the bull to end all bulls, met up, he’d never been thrown. He’d held his own in bar brawls and backstreet fights where losing meant getting your head slammed against the curb. Bluffed his way past the toughest poker players at the toughest tables in the toughest towns in America.

But a little girl pooping—now, that was a new one.

“Wipe!” she crowed, upping her known vocabulary to three words.

“Not a chance,” Dylan said. But he got some more baby wipes out of the truck and handed them to her.

She must have used them, because when she came past him, her pants were up and she was pulling the potty-chair behind her. Gnarly as the whole experience had been, Dylan felt a rush of pride. The kid was independent, for a two-year-old. She’d even thought to dump the evidence.

“We need a woman,” he told her, once they were back in the truck and he’d used yet another baby wipe to wash her hands and fastened her into the car seat, which was so complicated it might have been invented by NASA. “Any woman.”

But it wasn’t any woman who came to mind.

It was Kristy Madison.

No way, he told the image.

After that, they drove for hours, and a little past three in the morning, they hit the outskirts of Stillwater Springs, Montana.

Dylan owned a house on the family ranch—Briana and her kids had been living there up until recently, when they’d moved in with Logan, but there had been a break-in and some vandalism, and he didn’t know if Logan had arranged for repairs yet.

So he headed for Cassie’s place.

When they pulled into her driveway, light glowed through the buckskin walls of her famous teepee. Dylan had spent a lot of happy hours in that teepee, with Logan and/or Tyler, pretending to be Indians plotting a raid on a white settlement.

Now, with Bonnie asleep in her car seat and clinging to that naked, inked-up doll like it was her last friend, the pink unicorn spurned, he got out of the truck and headed toward the teepee.

Cassie, a bulky and singularly beautiful woman and the closest thing to a grandmother he’d ever had, sat watching low, flickering flames in the fire pit inside the teepee. It might have been a picturesque scene, if she’d been wearing tribal gear, but double-knit pants, bulging at the seams, neon-green high-top sneakers and a sweatshirt with a picture of Custer on the front, with an arrow through his head, lacked the punch of a fringed leather dress and moccasins.

Custer was a nice touch, though. From his benignly confident expression, the arrow didn’t bother him much.

“Dylan,” Cassie said, looking up. And she didn’t sound surprised.

“I need help,” he told her. No sense beating around the bush with Cassie; she could see right through a person.

She smiled. Nodded. Moved to rise.

He extended a hand to help her up.

Led her to the truck.

She drew in a breath at the sight of Bonnie, still sleeping the sleep of the just. “Yours?” she whispered.

“Mine,” he confirmed and, once again, he felt that same swell of pride.

“Where is her mother?”

“God knows.” Dylan got Bonnie out of the car seat, her head bobbing against his shoulder. “I’m going to petition for full custody, but I need Logan’s help to do that.”

“There are a lot of lawyers in this world,” Cassie pointed out quietly. “Why Logan?”

“Because this could be—well—tricky.”

“Dylan Creed, did you steal that child from her mother?” They’d reached the gate by then, and Cassie led the way up the walk, onto the porch. Jiggled the knob on the door.

Evidently, she couldn’t see through him. Not always, anyway.

“No,” Dylan said. It was late—or early—and he was too wrung out from the long drive and the stress of looking after a two-year-old to go into the story. “Give me a little credit, will you? I’m not a criminal.”

“But you’re looking over your shoulder for some reason,” Cassie whispered, switching on a lamp in the familiar living room of her small, shabby house. She took Bonnie from him, murmured soothingly when the little girl fussed in her sleep.

“I don’t have legal custody,” Dylan answered. “Until I do, I’m keeping a low profile, in case Sharlene changes her mind. I’ll tell you the rest in the morning.”

Cassie stared into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded again. “All right,” she said, making for the spare bedroom. “I’m putting this child to bed. There’s cold chicken in the refrigerator if you’re hungry.”

Grateful, Dylan let himself drop onto the couch, and before he knew it, the sun was up and Bonnie was standing beside him, tugging playfully at his hair.

He grinned, glad to see her. She was wearing one of Cassie’s massive T-shirts, tucked up here and there with safety pins, to make it fit, and she was clean.

God bless Cassie. Despite her obvious misgivings, she’d given Bonnie a much-needed bath, and probably fed her, too.

“Daddy,” Bonnie said angelically, stroking his beard-stubbled cheek with one very small hand.

And if Dylan hadn’t known before that he’d do anything to keep and raise this child—his child—he knew it then.

“DDYLAN’S OUT AT CASSIE’S place,” Kristy’s hairdresser, Mavis Bradley, told her, when she came in for a lunch-hour trim. “I saw his truck parked in her driveway when I came in to work.”

A thrill went through Kristy, part dread, part anticipation. She waited it out. If Dylan was in town, he’d soon be gone. That was his pattern. Come in, stomp somebody’s heart to bits under his boot heel and leave again.