Montana Creeds: Dylan

Silence fell.

The little girl turned and looked up at him curiously.

“The lady,” Dylan said, “is trying to read a story. So you yahoos better settle down and listen.”

Somehow, Kristy managed to get through three chapters of the book, but it was a lackluster performance, for sure. Her gaze kept straying to Dylan and the little girl, and every time that happened, she felt her neck heat up.

At last, mothers started wandering in and collecting their charges. Kristy tried to look busy, but that was hard, given that she was still sitting on the floor with nothing but a book to fiddle with. Worse, her legs had gone to sleep, and she knew if she stood up too suddenly, she’d probably fall on her face.

In front of Dylan Creed.

Why didn’t he just leave, like everybody else?

“Nice job,” he said, and Kristy was startled to realize he was sitting right beside her. The little girl was playing with the large plastic blocks the Friends of the Library had provided for the play area.

Was he making fun of her?

Kristy swallowed again. Gulped, was more like it.

“She’s beautiful,” she croaked, inclining her head toward the child.

Dylan nodded. “Her name is Bonnie,” he said.

What do you want? That was what Kristy would have asked if she hadn’t been too chicken, but what tumbled out of her mouth was, “I heard you were passing through.”

Great.

Now he’d think she’d been panting for any Dylan Creed news that might come her way.

“I’m not passing through,” Dylan replied, watching Bonnie with a soft light in his wicked china-blue eyes. “I’m planning to stay on—tear down that old house of mine, now that Briana and her boys don’t need it anymore, and build a new one. I’m going to have a barn, too, and some horses. Maybe even run some cattle with Logan’s herd.”

Why was he telling her all this? Did he think she cared?

Did she care?

No, no, a thousand times no.

Get a grip, she told herself.

Okay, so Bonnie could have been her little girl, as well as Dylan’s, if things had turned out differently. But they hadn’t, and that was that.

She had a house and a job and a perfectly good cat.

An excellent life, damn it.

“That’s nice,” she said, easing her legs out straight and giving them subtle shakes to get the circulation going again so she could stand up and walk away with some degree of dignity. Go about her business. Tell Susan she had a headache and wasn’t staying until five.

But that would be a lie.

It was her heart that ached, not her head.

“How have you been, Kristy?” Dylan asked.

What was this, Be Kind to Former Lovers Week? “Fine,” she said.

One corner of his mouth tilted upward in a sad little grin. “Up until the last time I talked to Logan, I thought you were married to Mike Danvers.”

The name fell between them like a lead weight.

Kristy recovered quickly, but not quickly enough. Something moved in Dylan’s eyes while she was coming up with her response, even though it only took a split second. “It wouldn’t have worked out for Mike and me,” she said.

“Like it didn’t work out for us,” Dylan said, and try though she might, Kristy couldn’t get a bead on his tone.

“We were young,” she heard herself say. “The world was falling apart. Your dad had just been killed in that logging accident, and both my folks—”

“Daddy!” Bonnie whooped suddenly, shrill with joy. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

She ran at Dylan and he scooped her up in his arms.

“Potty!” Bonnie yelled triumphantly.

Dylan sighed. “Would you mind taking her to the women’s room?” he asked Kristy.

Glad of an excuse to break out of his orbit, if only for a few minutes, and hoping to God her legs had woken up, Kristy got to her feet, took Bonnie by the hand and escorted her to the bathroom.

Because so many of the children who came to the library were small, Kristy was used to that particular duty. But this was Dylan’s little girl. He’d conceived this beautiful moppet with some nameless, faceless woman—not with her.

Damn it. When they’d made love all those times, before the rodeo and death and a lot of other things came between them, they’d always ended up choosing names afterward. They’d call a boy Timothy Jacob, for their fathers. A girl, Maggie Louise, for their mothers …

When she and Bonnie stepped out of the restroom, Dylan was waiting in the corridor, leaning against the wall with that indolent grace that seemed to emanate from his very DNA.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

He hoisted Bonnie up into his arms. “Good to see you again, Kristy,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.

“You, too,” Kristy said. Fortunately, he left before the tears sprang to her eyes.

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

Good to see you again …

You, too.

Kristy ducked back into the women’s restroom, turned on the cold-water faucet and stood splashing her face until the burning stopped. But she still heard the voices, hers and Dylan’s, though this time, they came from the long ago.