Montana Creeds: Tyler (32 page)

His throat shut tight against the recollection of that
night and so many others, so tight it hurt. He closed his eyes, dealing with it, opened them again.

I don't want to be like her,
Davie had said.

Now, belatedly, Tyler answered him. Answered himself. “You don't have to be like your mother,” he said. And
he
didn't have to be like Jake. “All you have to do is make the best choices you can, and your life can be anything you want it to.”

Davie looked so hopeful that Tyler wanted to go out and clear a path through the world for the kid. He supposed that made him a father, and DNA be damned.

He waited until Davie had gone outside with Kit Carson to sit at the end of the dock with a fishing pole, gathered his composure a little and got out his cell phone.

Lily answered on the first ring. “Tyler?” she said, instead of hello.

It was one word, but it poured over his spirit like a warm, soothing balm. “Yeah,” he said, wishing he could bounce up to the satellite, along with the signal from his phone, and bounce down again in Chicago, stand face-to-face with her. “It's me.”

“I miss you,” she said softly.

Tyler closed his eyes, let the tenderness of that statement penetrate every part of him. It felt like healing light, slipping through some crack between heaven and earth. “Two weeks is too long,” he told her.

“Don't I know it,” she replied. “I'll start packing things up tomorrow, and the real estate agent will be by in the afternoon—probably armed with a list of things I'll have to do to the place.” She paused. “Did you choose a trailer?”

He smiled at the word
trailer
—it didn't accurately describe the structure, but it was the easiest word, the one country folks used most readily. “Sure did,” he said. “Dan's going to bulldoze the cabin day after tomorrow, and set up some kind of temporary foundation, so Davie and I will be moving into the Holiday Inn for a couple of days.”

When Lily didn't ask if he'd had the bedroom soundproofed, he knew for sure she was with her dad and Tess.

Sure enough, she said, “Wait a second,” and Tyler listened as she asked Doc some question, her voice just hushed enough that he couldn't catch the words.

“Dad says to stay at his place. The key's under the pot with the dead flowers in it, on the back porch.”

Tyler knew he couldn't accept, any more than he could move in with Dylan and Kristy, or Logan and Briana, but the offer meant a lot. He and Doc hadn't always been on the best terms. “Thanks,” he said, “but we'll be okay at the hotel.”

“I want you to be more than just okay, Tyler.”

“Not possible, with you in another state,” he said. Then he smiled to himself. Another state? Hell, another
room
would have been too far away.

“Is Davie all right?” Lily asked. “And Kit Carson?”

“They're okay, too.” There was no point in telling her about Doreen's shenanigan—she'd only worry that they were all going to wind up on an episode of
Forensic Files
. “Right now, they're down on the dock, fishing.”

That sounded normal, didn't it? A dog and a boy with a fishing pole, braving the mosquitoes to sit out under a blanket of stars splashed across a navy sky?

“Just okay,” Lily repeated fretfully.

Tyler chuckled. “Lily?”

“What?”

“We're fabulous. We're so happy, Davie and Kit Carson and me, we can't contain ourselves. Is that better?”

She laughed. “No,” she said. “I want you to miss me a
little
.”

“No problem there,” Tyler answered, and his voice sounded gruff again. “Come home soon, okay?”

“It can't be soon enough to suit me,” she answered.

“Of course I'm going to take you down, or bend you over something and screw your socks off, the minute we're alone.”

“No fair,” she said sunnily.

He could just see her squirming, maybe blushing a little.

The image did a lot to cheer him up.

It also gave him an instant hard-on, which meant a cold shower or a header into the lake, if he didn't want to suffer the whole night.

“Oh, trust me,” he said, “I'm paying the price.”

“Good,” she replied brightly, as though they'd been discussing carpet colors for the triple-wide or something. “That's
wonderful,
Tyler.”

He laughed. “You'll pay,” he promised.

“So will
you,
” she chimed in response.

He didn't want to let her go, but the conversation had about run its course, unless he went on to tell her that Kit Carson had barfed in the truck twice that day and Sheriff Jim had stopped by to question Davie about what
might turn out to be an attempted murder. And he wasn't about to do that.

There
was
one thing he wanted to say, but you didn't tell somebody you were ninety-nine percent certain you were in love with them over the phone. Best wait until she was home again, and he had her alone and could peel off her clothes and lick everything he uncovered.

The hard-on progressed from uncomfortable to downright painful. Tyler bit back a groan and asked, “Can I call you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Lily answered. “If you think you can behave yourself.”

“No phone sex? You don't want me to tell you everything I'm going to do to you, and then do again until you lose your mind and come like you've never come before?”

Her answer made him laugh.

“I didn't say that, now, did I?”

“What time, Lily?”

“What time?” She
was
flustered, then.

Good.

“What time shall I call you and make love to you with my voice,” he clarified. “Remember that day in Wal-Mart? It's going to happen again, Lily, only long-distance this time.”

There was just the slightest tremor in her voice when she answered. “Dad and Tess are going to the Museum of Natural History tomorrow morning,” she said. “Suppose
I
call
you?
”

A
FTER A PLUNGE INTO THE LAKE
,
long after Davie had fallen asleep on his cot downstairs, Kit Carson balanced on the teetery rigging right along with him, Tyler's raging body calmed down.

Mostly.

But his mind just wouldn't stop; it was like a bronc at the rodeo, evading the pick-up men the way broncs-on-adrenaline sometimes did, still bucking, reins dangling, long after the buzzer sounded and the cowboy had scrambled over the fence to safety.

Davie had said he and Doreen hadn't set him up for a scam and the story had some credibility with Tyler; after all,
he'd
been the one to do the paternal math and then hogtie the obvious conclusion and run with it. Doreen had denied that Davie was his, that night at the casino, when they discussed the situation, and with considerable regret. She'd said she wished it was true, but Davie's biological father was some truck driver, long out of the picture.

It had sounded reasonable at the time, even a little noble, given that Doreen could have been collecting child support for the past thirteen years—money she'd
obviously needed. But con artists made a specialty of seeming reasonable, didn't they?

Of
course
they were convincing. They were masters of the art of bullshit—they had to be.

Tyler couldn't overlook that possibility. It was all too easy to imagine Doreen following his career on ESPN, in the tabloids, where he'd kicked up a deliberate fuss more than once, and in the movies. At some point, she might have decided to bide her time and go for lump sum when the opportunity was at its prime.

It seemed likely now that he'd been carefully led, managed, from the time he came back to Stillwater Springs. And it wasn't inconceivable—it wasn't even all that big a stretch—to think Roy might have been in on the whole thing, too.

He could just hear the planning they must have done—Doreen and Roy and possibly Davie, gathered around some scratched-up table, somewhere in the wonderful world of low-income housing.

You act scared,
Doreen might have told Davie.
Tell Tyler Roy beats you up, regular. Roy, I'll call you when the right moment comes. You put on a show for the pigeon. Act real mean. Tyler will buy that, it's a hot button with him, after all he went through with
his
old man—

Lying there in his loft bed, with Lily conspicuously absent, sleepless and feeling like a rube, it was no trick at all to believe he'd been suckered, taken in.

And yet whenever Tyler was around Davie, he definitely picked up Creed vibes. He'd learned to trust his instincts over the years, rarely had a hunch that didn't
prove right—and several of them had saved his life. Deep down, he'd still have bet his share of the ranch that Davie
was
his son.

Or was that just wishful thinking, plain and simple? His childhood had been hell, and after the old man died, he'd been estranged from Dylan and Logan for five long years. And he'd lost Shawna—his best friend if not the love of his life, like she should have been.

Back then, still broken, Tyler hadn't been
able
to love a woman full-out, no holds barred, the way he was starting to love Lily. He hadn't had a clue what was going on in the dark recesses of his psyche, when it would have counted, when he might have given Shawna a fighting chance to get past all the walls he'd put up.

Tyler rolled onto his side, slammed a fist into his pillow, as if pounding it to fit his thick-skulled Creed head would make a difference.

Nothing
was going to make a difference now—not to Shawna. She'd been anything but stupid, so she must have known the score from day one, but she'd carried on anyhow, cowgirl-style. Put a brave face on things, done everything she could to make him happy, and to be happy herself.

I'm sorry, Shawna. God, I'm so sorry.

The best—and worst—part was knowing Shawna would have forgiven him if he'd 'fessed up, said she knew he'd been doing the best he could. Shawna's family, hardscrabble ranchers, had been so much healthier than his, and she'd grown up whole. In a better world,
he
would have been the one to slide off the side of a slick Nevada mountain, not her.

Shawna would have mourned, but those folks of hers, parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, would have gathered her in, too. Kept her safe in the center of a warm circle, seen her through the worst of it, encouraged her to go on with her life when she'd had time enough to grieve.

By now, she'd be remarried, with a couple of kids, and he'd only be a memory that gave her a pang to the heart sometimes when it snowed in the night and she woke up to a pristine landscape outside her window, or when she heard their song on the radio….

“Stop,” Tyler growled, thrusting himself onto his elbows.

He'd done everything but cry at his own funeral, imagining the parallel-universe scenario, and that made him feel like the damn fool he was. There was no changing the past, and he had to stop trying.

He'd had his chance with Shawna, and he'd blown it.

Now, he had a chance with Lily.

Twice in a lifetime, cowboy,
he thought.
That's two more chances than a lot of people get, so don't screw this up.

He sat upright, thrust the splayed fingers of one hand through his hair.
Don't screw this up?
Hadn't he
already
screwed it up, by getting involved with Doreen and Davie the way he had?

What if he was plain-old, flat-out wrong about Davie?

A man had
died
in the kid's presence, and telling about it later, he'd finished with
boo-hoo?
The kid could be a sociopath, if not worse.

Or simply a thirteen-year-old boy, used to making the best of situations most
adults
never had to deal with.

On the plus side, Davie was good to the dog—he seemed to love Kit Carson as much as Kit loved him. Not typical sociopathic, or
psycho
pathic, behavior. But did it preclude the possibility that Doreen might have purposely offed poor old Marty, and that Davie might have helped her cover it up? Even helped her do it?

Jesus.

What in hell might he be letting Lily and Tess in for, bringing them to live under the same roof with Davie? The little girl would be vulnerable to Davie in ways Tyler couldn't stand to think about, and couldn't ignore, either.

On the other hand, all he really had to go on was his imagination, which happened to be running wild at the moment. It wouldn't be right to turn his back on Davie on the strength of midnight suppositions.

And it had to be after midnight.

He groped for his watch on the upended fruit crate that served as a bedside table, held it in the shaft of moonlight beaming in through the window. Seeing the golden cowboy on the face of that watch, riding a bronc and holding one arm high, certain to make the critical eight seconds, Tyler's eyes burned.
Shawna
. She'd been so proud when she gave him that watch to celebrate his first championship, probably never even regretted selling her horse trailer and prize saddle to raise the money.

He'd planned on buying her a bigger, better trailer and another fancy saddle, too, but like so many good intentions, that one had been a paved road to hell.

Tyler blinked a couple of times. Squinted to read the dial.

Quarter after eleven? That was
all?
Hell, it felt as though he'd been tossing and turning on that painfully empty bed for a whole night, and he hadn't even turned in until ten.

Frick, he was getting old.

He got up, pulled on some jeans, tugged a T-shirt over his head, threw a flannel work shirt on over that. Pulled on socks and boots and descended the stairs as quietly as he could, in case Davie was having better luck in the sleep department. Grabbing up his laptop, along with his cell phone, he hushed Kit Carson, who stirred on the cot, and went outside.

Closing the door behind him, he sat down on the porch steps and looked up at the bright Montana stars. Millions of them, close enough to touch.

They roused a sweet loneliness in Tyler, those stars.

It would have been his salvation to call Lily—it was two hours later in Chicago, so he'd wake her up—and her voice would be all sleepy and warm. She'd be ripe for a little phone sex….

He shook off the fantasy. Lily was wrapping things up back there; she had a lot to do. She had a child and an ailing father to look after, a condo to clean, things to pack up.

She needed her rest.

So he'd wait, as agreed, until she called him.

If it killed him.

He would have liked to talk to Logan about all this, or Dylan, or both of them. But they had wives, kids—
lives
. He could have put aside his pride and leveled with either one of his brothers—and that was undeniably progress—
but he wasn't about to wake them up, or interrupt something more intimate than sleep. Most likely, they were doing some headboard-slamming with their beautiful ladies.

That made him smile.

Cassie? She'd listen, if he let her know he needed to talk. She'd always been a rock, a refuge. She'd steered him through a lot of things, including some dark days after Shawna's accident. But Cassie's magic only worked in person, not over the phone, and he couldn't drive over to her place and knock on the door at that hour. For one thing, he'd probably get her out of bed, and for another, leaving Davie home alone, at least at night, wasn't an option.

The kid might be thirteen, and street-wise—he might even be a psychopath—but it was a sure bet he'd spent more than his share of nights in an empty house or apartment as it was.

And too many things could happen. What if there was a fire? What if his appendix ruptured?

Tyler shook his head, flipped open the lightweight, superpowered laptop, logged on.

If he couldn't sleep, he'd do a little detective work instead.

First stop, his favorite search engine. His mailbox was jammed, but that could wait.

He typed in “Doreen McCullough,” expecting to wade through a hundred different Doreen McCulloughs, if not a thousand, before he found Davie's mom and his first lover.

The first few were strangers, as expected, but then he hit pay dirt—if a mug shot could be called pay dirt.

There was Doreen, face bare of makeup, wearing an orange jail outfit and holding up a sign with numbers on it.

Feeling sick, Tyler scanned page after page of a whole
other
kind of dirt. Doreen hadn't hit bottom with Roy Fifer—she'd come
up
in the world.

She'd been busted for soliciting in Vegas, not once but three times. She'd tried her hand at shoplifting, and done a year for credit-card fraud.

Where had Davie been, when she was sent up?

In a foster home? With the truck driver Doreen had originally named as Davie's father?

“Okay, so she has a rap sheet,” Davie said, from just behind him.

Tyler hadn't heard the kid get out of bed, let alone approach, but he wasn't really surprised. Davie probably hadn't been able to sleep any more than he had. He'd been playing possum when Tyler passed through the kitchen a little while before.

“Want to tell me about it?” Tyler asked quietly. Evenly.

Davie stepped around him, wearing the ratty pair of sweatpants he slept in. Sat down on the step next to Tyler.

“What's to tell?” he finally said. “It's all right there, on the Internet. Most of it, anyway.”

Tyler wondered if Jim Huntinghorse had already reviewed all this stuff and, if so, why he hadn't mentioned it during his visit earlier in the evening. “Where
did you stay, Davie, when Doreen was doing her time for credit-card theft?”

Davie was a long time answering. He didn't look at Tyler or at the computer screen, but straight out into a darkness that must have seemed dense enough to swallow him whole and then digest him right into oblivion.

“With my grandmother,” he finally admitted. “Scroll a little farther—she's on there.”

Instead, Tyler closed the laptop, set it aside on the newly repaired porch. Kit Carson squeezed between him and Davie and trotted out into the high grass to lift a leg against the right rear tire of the new Chevy. It gleamed in the thin light of a waning moon, that pickup, a thing of beauty. The kind of rig he should have bought in the first place. “I'd rather hear it from you,” he said.

Davie sighed. “Gramma plays bingo all the time, so she wasn't much interested in me—I just got in her way, mostly.” The boy gave Tyler a sidelong look and did the Creed grin again, flawlessly. “Not what you were expecting, huh? You thought I was going to say I was taken in by wolves while Mom was in the slammer, or maybe a band of outlaw bikers—”