Montana Creeds: Logan (24 page)

Briana hugged him, closed her eyes tightly, felt the tears seep through anyway. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, after clearing her throat. “You won’t have to take care of me, sweetie.”

“But I want to,” Josh said.

“I want to more than Josh does,” Alec interjected. “I’ll buy you a nice house and a horse of your own and pay off all your bills. You won’t even have to go to that stupid casino anymore.”

Briana blinked rapidly, sniffled and swiped the back of one hand across her eyes. “How about we table this
discussion until you’re both out of college and pulling down the big bucks?”

Josh agreed soberly.

Alec beamed, but dejection soon replaced the happy smile. “Logan,” he said, his tone solemn, “doesn’t have a
TV.”

“Terrible!” Briana mocked, grinning moistly at her younger son. “Now we’ll have to do something dreadfully old-fashioned, like
talk to each other!”

“What are we going to talk about?” Josh asked.

“College?” Briana suggested.

“Too far in the future,” Josh said, with a decisive shake of his head.

She forced herself to sit down on the couch, however gingerly. Then she patted the cushions on either side, and the boys joined her.

“Do you like visiting your dad and Heather?” she asked.

“It’s okay,” Josh said, typically taciturn.

“Heather lets us stay up later than you do,” Alec volunteered, shifting his bulky cast. His eyes widened. “She didn’t mean to hit me with the van, Mom.”

“I know,” Briana said, hugging him close for a moment, which was about all he would tolerate. The footed-pajama, teddy-bear,
Goodnight Moon
days, when it was okay to cuddle, were behind them now, a fact that never failed to sadden her, when she let herself think about it.

“Did you quit your job at the casino?” Josh asked. “You didn’t go to work today.”

Briana sighed. “No. After Alec broke his arm, I just decided to take some time off, that’s all.”

“Can we afford it?” This from Josh, the man of the family. Little Atlas, balancing the world on his young shoulders.

“Not really,” Briana answered, because she’d already lied to them about the reason they were staying at Logan’s place that night, and she didn’t want to compound that. When she
did
fib to Alec and Josh, she did so by omission, rather than putting a whopper into words. “But we’ll be all right, like we always are, so I don’t want you to worry.”

“I like talking,” Alec said.

“It’s nice,” Briana agreed.

“If Dad got married again,” Alec continued, “why can’t you?”

As many times as her smart boys pulled the rug out from under her, Briana was always surprised. “I guess I could,” she said, after a few moments of thought. “But I don’t know any potential husbands.”

“You know Logan,” Alec reasoned.

“He’s too poor to buy a TV,” Josh pointed out.

Briana laughed. Squeezed them both to her sides.

“No, he’s not,” Alec retorted, leaning around Briana to stare down his brother. “Look at that
computer,
doofus.”

“No names,” Briana said.

“If you married Logan, you could have babies,” Alec said. “Heather wants to have a baby, but
Dad said he’s got his hands full with the ones he’s already got.”

Inwardly, Briana seethed. Vance had his hands full? Until a few days ago, he’d been perennially behind on his child support, and his communications with the boys had amounted to an occasional phone call—collect, as often as not—or a scrawled postcard.

Outwardly, though, she smiled. She had a bone to
pick with Vance and pick it she would, when she could get him alone, but Alec and Josh didn’t.

“Babies are a lot of responsibility,” she said moderately. The subject—and the couch she was sitting on—reminded her that she needed to get on birth-control pills, asap. She wasn’t foolish enough to think what had happened that morning wouldn’t happen again—or that she could get by with it for any length of time.

“Can we light a fire in the fireplace?” Josh inquired.

There was kindling in the grate, and crumpled newspapers, and a pile of logs rested next to the hearth. “It’s kind of a warm night,” Briana observed, wondering if Logan had laid the fire, the way he’d made the bed and turned back the covers.

“We could pretend we were camping,” Alec said hopefully.

“Okay,” Briana said, because she’d had to refuse them so many things in their short lives, and this was something she could say yes to.

They moved the air mattress and sleeping bags back, away from the fireplace, and Briana crouched to strike a match to the kindling. Soon, a happy blaze danced along the kindling, and she added a small log before putting the screen in place again and standing back to admire her handiwork.

When she turned around, Alec and Josh were in their sleeping bags, with Wanda ensconced
between them on the air mattress. Chins cupped in their hands, they watched the flames.

“I like it here,” Alec said, yawning.

“Me, too,” Josh added.

Within fifteen minutes, they were sound asleep.

Briana got a library book out of her overnight bag, read for half an hour and then started to yawn herself. After checking to make sure the front and back doors were locked, she banked the fire and headed for Logan’s bedroom.

In the adjoining bathroom, with its huge claw-foot tub and pedestal sink, she brushed her teeth, washed her face and successfully resisted an unbecoming urge to snoop in the medicine cabinet.

You could tell a lot about a person by what they kept in a medicine cabinet.

A variety of over-the-counter cold remedies and painkillers? Hypochondriac.

Prescription drugs from more than one doctor? Pill addict.

Colored or—God forbid—
flavored
condoms? Player.

Stalwartly, Briana turned her back on the cabinet and walked away.

Sleeping in Logan Creed’s bed would be challenge enough, without scouting out his medicine cabinet.

S
NOOKS AND SIDEKICK
had long since passed out on the dog bed in the corner of the kitchen, leaving Logan to sit alone in the dark, trying to profile whomever had trespassed in Briana’s house.

A little after midnight, he faced facts. His plan was a bust.

He wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of sleeping on Briana’s bed, but on the off chance the pervert showed up after all, that was where he’d head. So Logan went in there, sat down on the edge of the mattress and kicked off his boots. Then he lay down.

The pillowcases smelled like Briana—flowery, with a touch of spice.

Logan turned onto one side, punched the pillows a couple of times, then turned onto the
other
side. That morning, he’d awakened with Briana, the two of them pressed together on the narrow couch in his living room.
Tomorrow
morning, he’d probably wake up with Snooks standing on his chest, licking his nose.

Lying there in moon-washed darkness, he thought about the gossamer nightgown, and the prowler, and Sheriff Book’s admonition about taking the law into his own hands.

Logan hadn’t come back to Stillwater Springs looking for trouble, but he didn’t mean to shrink from it, either. That wasn’t the Creed way. If Brett Turlow, or anybody else, came creeping around Briana, Logan would do whatever needed doing, including ass-kicking.

He closed his eyes, convinced he wouldn’t sleep.

When the noise awakened him, he thought he’d dreamed it at first.

A glance at Briana’s bedside clock told him it was after three.

Something thumped, out in the kitchen.

Sidekick—or possibly Snooks—gave a low, barely audible growl.

Logan frowned and sat up, making as little noise as he could.

Looking down, he saw two canine noses sticking out from under the bed.

A second thump sounded, and somebody muttered a raspy curse.

Logan stood, glad he wasn’t wearing his boots, and soft-footed it out of the bedroom and into the hallway.

The corridor was pitch-dark, but he saw a shadow moving in the kitchen, and a weird, hot-damn kind of thrill raced through him. Adrenaline pumped.

Damned if the pervert hadn’t taken the bait.

Logan inched closer, squinting, but all he saw was a man-shape, groping around in the kitchen, neatly skirting the shaft of moonlight coming in through the windows over the sink.

It never occurred to Logan that the intruder might be armed—he simply went after him, bare-knuckled, pounced on him and knocked him to the floor.

“What the fuck?” the prowler rasped.

A head of golden hair glinted in the light of the moon.

“Shit,”
Logan said, slowly removing his hands from the other man’s throat.

Dylan sat up.
“Logan?”

Logan stood, fumbled for a light switch and watched as Dylan got to his feet.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dylan demanded, his blue eyes snapping with fury.

“I might ask the same question,” Logan countered, folding his arms.

“I couldn’t get a room in town,” Dylan said, recovering his hat from the floor and slapping it once against his right leg. “I called Briana, but
nobody answered, so I came out here hoping to sleep on the couch.”

“And you’re here—at Stillwater Springs, I mean—because…?”

“Because I damn well felt like it, that’s why,” Dylan growled. “I wasn’t expecting a hundred and ninety
pounds of cowboy to land on me out of nowhere, that’s for sure.”

Logan grinned, but he knew there wasn’t much warmth in the expression. “And Briana probably wasn’t expecting to find you snoring on her couch in the morning, either.”

“I left a message,” Dylan reminded him, hanging his hat on the peg next to the door like he—well—owned the place. He cocked his head toward the wall phone.

“Obviously, she didn’t get that message,” Logan said evenly. “Damn it, Dylan, you can’t just go letting yourself into people’s houses in the middle of the night. Some of them would shoot first and ask questions later.”

Dylan spared him a slightly sour grin. “Or maybe just slam the poor bastard to the floor and try to choke him.” His blue eyes, always full of the devil, narrowed a little. “Where is Briana, anyhow? And why are you here?”

Logan went to the cupboard, found a can of coffee and busied himself brewing a pot. “It’s a long story,” he said.

“I’m listening,” Dylan replied, helping himself to a chair at the table. “Is there anything to eat?”

“No,” Logan said.

“Okay. Just asking.”

Snooks and Sidekick came slinking out of the hallway and approached Dylan, who greeted them with easy affection. Animals liked Dylan, and so did women and kids.

Logan started to feel downright territorial. Grudgingly, he opened Briana’s fridge, found a carton of pansy-assed yogurt in a container the size of a shot glass and flung it at Dylan.

“Gee,” Dylan said, catching the toss. “Thanks.”

“You’re hungry? Eat.”

“You are really defensive, considering that this is my damned house and not yours.”

“It’s Briana’s house,” Logan said.

“Is this why you wanted me to come back to the ranch? So you could bite my head off?” Dylan asked affably. He got up, rooted through drawers until he found a spoon and tucked into the yogurt.

“Who said I wanted you to come back?”

Dylan stood leaning against a counter. Between bites of yogurt, he answered, “I don’t hear a word from you for five years, and then all of a sudden you’re calling me to tell me my bull is a menace and you’re putting up fences. Why else would you do that if you weren’t trying to provoke me into coming home?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be falling off saloon roofs in a movie?” Logan countered, getting two mugs out of a cupboard and thunking them down on the tabletop. He
had
wanted Dylan to come home, so why was he so pissed off?

The answer was uncomfortable. Vance was married, and presented no competition for Briana’s attention. Dylan was another matter entirely.

Dylan’s eyes sparkled; he’d always been good at reading Logan. “Finished the stunt job early,” he said. “I had some time on my hands, so I came to see what exactly you plan to do with this ranch.”

The coffee wasn’t finished, but Logan brought the carafe to the table and filled their cups anyway.

“What’s going on, Logan?” Dylan asked quietly. “If Briana were here, the ruckus would have brought her out of hiding a while ago.”

“She’s at my place,” Logan said. “With her kids and the dog.”

“Why?”

Logan shoved a hand through his hair, sat down.

Dylan joined him at the table.

And Logan told his brother about the intruder.

Dylan listened intently. “You thought I was him,” he said.

Logan smiled. “Yeah. And, frankly, I’m kind of disappointed that you aren’t. Because I really wanted to get this yahoo by the ears and bounce his head off the floor a couple of dozen times.”

Dylan took a thoughtful sip of his coffee, made a face at the taste. Logan had forgotten that his younger brother fancied himself a natural-born barista, and a natural-born everything else, too. “Cheap stuff,” he muttered.

Logan leaned back in his chair. “Your tenant,” he said, “isn’t exactly rich. You expected the finest Colombian beans, personally delivered by Juan Valdez?”

“Man,” Dylan said, “you are
really
on the peck. Are you sleeping with Briana?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“A reasonable one. You’re pretty touchy about her, it seems to me, and what’s with the X-rated nightie hanging out there on the clothesline?”

Logan’s jaw tightened of its own accord. “I told you what happened. I figured it might attract the pervert.”

“It certainly worked on me,” Dylan drawled.

“I rest my case,” Logan said.

“Very funny.”

“Oh, I’m a hoot.”

“No, you’re not,” Dylan said. “You’re still the same old tight-assed, judgmental son of a bitch you always were.”

“Are we actually going there?” Logan leaned forward in his chair, arms folded, biceps quivering for action. “Because I’ve still got pissed-off to spare.”

“I can see that.”

“Why didn’t you come to my place?”