Montana Creeds: Tyler (15 page)

“I've never been on a horse in my life,” Lily said, alarmed. But it wasn't the horse that scared her; as a veterinarian's daughter, she'd been around animals of all shapes and sizes. It was just that Stillwater Springs Ranch was Tyler's home ground, and that made an encounter more likely. She didn't know if she was ready to face him yet.

“Time you tried it,” Kristy said.

“A horse! I love horses, and baking stuff, too!” Tess enthused, from just behind Lily. She hadn't heard the child approaching, and almost jumped out of her skin. “Oh,
Mom,
we
have
to go!”

Kristy chuckled, nodded her agreement with Tess.

“Is Tyler—” Lily croaked out, and then felt stupid all over again.

A look of understanding moved in Kristy's face, along with a certain sadness. “It's not likely you'll run into Ty,” she said, very quietly. “Come on, Lily. This would be good for you. And I'd really like for you to meet Briana and her boys.”

“Please, Mom?” Tess pleaded, standing at Lily's elbow now and looking up at her plaintively. It was as though the little girl's whole future hinged on 1) riding a horse and 2) baking bread. If she'd been a few years older, the boys probably would have been a factor, too. “Please?”

Lily couldn't think of a reason not to go—her father wanted, and probably
needed,
to visit the clinic, look in on his furry patients, make sure the veterinary school student filling in for him was taking care of business. Eleanor would be off berry-picking for the day, leaving Tess at loose ends.

“All right,” she said, slipping an arm around Tess's shoulders and squeezing her once against her side. “Why don't you and Bonnie come inside and say hello to my dad while I change.”

Tess had already swapped out her China-tunneling gear for blue jeans and a T-shirt.

Kristy's gaze moved past Lily, and her smile brightened. “Hello, Doc,” she said, as Lily turned to see her father coming toward the fence. “How are you?”

“I'm doing just fine,” Hal said warmly. “Coffee's on. Come on in and visit for a few minutes.”

Kristy looked cheerfully regretful. “Maybe next time,” she said. “If I take Bonnie out of that car seat, it will be half a day before I can wrestle her back in.”

Tess had Lily by the hand by then, tugging her toward the house. “
Hurry,
Mom!” she whispered, as though afraid Kristy would change her mind, rescind the invitation to bake bread and ride horses and go off without them.

Kristy and Hal went on chatting while Tess practically dragged Lily inside.

While Tess waited impatiently in the kitchen, Lily donned a long-sleeved pink T-shirt, hoping to protect herself a little from the fierce summer sun, and insisted that Tess switch out her sandals for a sturdy pair of sneakers.

Neither of them owned a pair of boots.

Within a few minutes, they were buckled into the flashy extended-cab truck waiting in the driveway, Tess in back with Bonnie, Lily up front with Kristy.

“This is quite a rig,” Lily said, as they backed out of the driveway, Kristy giving a farewell toot of the horn to Hal, who stood waving in the yard.

“It's Dylan's,” Kristy explained, shifting out of Reverse with admirable skill when they'd reached the street. “Tyler has my Blazer.”

Tyler.

Lily drew in a breath.

It was pretty bad when even the mention of his name threw her off balance.

“My mom went out to dinner with Tyler last night,” Tess piped up, from the back. “She got home
really
late
and she wore this pretty red dress—that was it hanging on the clothesline in my grampa's yard—”

“Tess,” Lily broke in, closing her eyes.

Kristy merely chuckled.

“Eleanor is going berry-picking with her aunt today,” Tess prattled on. It was as though she'd stored up words and more words, for months or even years, and the dam had finally broken. Tess was at verbal flood tide. “She wanted me to come with them, but I knew my mom would say no because she doesn't let me go places with people unless she's along, too, or she's been friends with them
forever—
Wait till I tell Eleanor that I got to go someplace, too, and even ride a horse and make bread—”

Lily groaned slightly.

Kristy smiled, reached across the console to pat her arm. “It's okay, Lily,” she said quietly. “Let her talk.”

And talk Tess did—all the way to Stillwater Springs Ranch, some twenty minutes outside of town.

Lily had visited the place once or twice in her teens, while she was dating Tyler, and it had been pretty rundown the last time she'd seen it.

Now, the hand-carved sign over the front gate arched proudly over their heads as Kristy drove beneath it. The barn had been entirely replaced, and the corral fences were in good repair and painted white. The house retained its original rambling Ponderosa-like design, but the fresh-lumber framework of two large new wings jutted out from either side.

The yard seemed full of dogs and little boys, though in reality there were only two of each.

Bonnie began clamoring to get out of her car seat and
join the fun, and Tess went silent, but not, Lily sensed, because she felt shy. The little girl fairly exuded eager curiosity.

“Stay put, Houdini,” Kristy told Bonnie, bringing the rig to a stop between another truck and a BMW. They all waited while the cloud of dust they'd raised subsided a little.

The boys—a little older than Tess—bounded toward the truck, the dogs frolicking behind them. The smaller boy jumped up onto the running board on Kristy's side and gestured for her to roll down the window.

She did, waving some of the still-roiling dust away from her face. “Hey, Alec. Josh. What's happening?”

Alec, it turned out, was the boy standing on the running board. He gave Lily a brief glance, then focused his freckled attention on Tess. “Who's the
girl?
” he asked.

“That's my good friend, Tess,” Kristy said, without hesitation. “Tess, this yahoo with his head stuck through the window is Alec. The polite one is his big brother, Josh.”

“Hello,” Tess said staunchly. Her desire to be part of the afternoon's adventures was almost palpable.

One second after she'd spoken, she was out of the truck, springing to the ground, rushing to join in. Bonnie, trapped in her car seat, wailed with frustration.

“I'm coming,” Kristy told Bonnie calmly, unhooking her seat belt.

Alec had leaped off the running board by then, so it was safe to open the driver's door. Kristy did so, and went around to set Bonnie free. Lily was the last one out of the rig.

A trim woman came out of the house, smiling. She had vivid green eyes and strawberry-blond hair, pulled back into a tidy French braid. Like Kristy, she wore jeans and a cotton print blouse, and the boots on her feet weren't the for-show kind. They were scuffed, and respectably dirty, with rounded toes and low heels, the kind a rancher's wife would wear.

“You must be Lily,” the woman said warmly, putting out a hand in greeting. She had to raise her voice a little to be heard over the gleeful barking of the two dogs and all the kids jabbering at once.

“And you must be Briana,” Lily responded, offering her own hand, and a smile, too.

Briana's attention was momentarily diverted to her sons. “Boys,” she said. “Settle down a little, and the dogs will, too. All that yapping and yowling is enough to give me a headache.”

“We've got lots of horses,” Lily heard the older boy, Josh, say to Tess. “Want to see them?”

Lily bit back an automatic be-careful. She didn't know Briana Creed, but Kristy was an old friend, and a responsible person, and she didn't seem one bit worried. Lily took a deep breath, let it out slowly and kept her fears to herself.

Kristy hoisted Bonnie up onto one hip and offered a hand to Tess. “I'll go along, too,” she said, and started for the barn.

Lily didn't know whether to follow the gaggle of woman, dogs and children, or stay behind with Briana.

“She's a regular pied piper,” Briana commented, smiling as she watched Kristy move away, with a trail
of kids and canines straggling behind her. “Come inside, Lily. I just brewed a pitcher of iced tea.”

Again, Lily hesitated—everything inside her was geared to watching over Tess in any and all situations—but there was something about Briana, about the very energy of that place, that reassured her.

And she trusted Kristy.

“Your dad gave us quite a scare,” Briana said, as she and Lily headed toward the house. “I guess you know the heart attack happened right here, on our patio, during a barbecue we held for Jim Huntinghorse, when he was running for sheriff.”

Lily nodded, shuddering a little. The story could so easily have turned out differently—she and Tess might have come back to Stillwater Springs for a funeral, rather than a long summer visit.

“Dylan and Jim did CPR,” Briana went on, as they stepped into a cool, old-fashioned kitchen. The room, like the rest of the house, was obviously being renovated.

“I'd like to thank them both in person,” Lily said.

“You'll get your chance,” Briana told her, gesturing toward the large round table in the center of the kitchen and heading for the refrigerator. “Have a seat. I'll pour that tea I promised you.”

Lily sat down, looking around and trying not to be too obvious about it.

The Creeds were a local legend, so she knew some of their history. According to Hal, except for the five years since Jake Creed's death, that house had been continuously occupied for well over a century.

What would it be like, to live in a place where so many of your ancestors had lived and died?

“We're replacing this god-awful flooring with pegged hardwood,” Briana said good-naturedly, arriving at the table with two ice-filled glasses and a pitcher of cold tea. “At the same time, Logan and I don't want to change things too much.”

Logan and I
.

Lily smiled. In high school, Logan had had the typical Creed reputation: hell-raiser, heartbreaker, fearless rebel. He'd been reckless to a fault. Now, apparently, he was a family man, concerned with things like pegged hardwood and the integrity of old houses. “I see you're building on,” she said, mostly because it was her turn to contribute to the conversation.

Briana smiled, poured tea for herself and then for Lily, and sat down across from her at the table. Schoolbooks and tablet paper had been gathered into a semineat pile and shunted over to one side. “We're adding a master suite,” she told Lily. “Rooms for the boys, an office for Logan and a big family room.”

A big family room implied the expectation of a big
family.
Clearly, Briana and Logan planned to have more children, and Lily felt a swift stab of generous envy. She'd wanted at least four herself, and she and Burke had tried, but after Tess, there had been no more pregnancies.

She supposed it was for the best, but there was still that bruised place in her heart, where the disappointment lived.

She must have made some inane comment, because Briana reacted as though she'd spoken.

Nodding, Briana joked, “At least we're not going to have a room with a mechanical bull in it, like Kristy and Dylan.”

“A mechanical bull?” Lily echoed, confused.

“You know.” Briana grinned. “Like the ones they have in cowboy bars? A bull-shaped machine that bucks?”

Lily laughed.
Toto,
she said silently,
we're not in Chicago anymore.

“I remember,” she told Briana. “Dylan rode bulls in the rodeo.”

Again, Briana nodded. “Logan's event was saddle-bronc riding, and Tyler rode bareback.”

Tyler. For about five seconds, she'd forgotten about him.

Silly to think the respite could have lasted. This was Tyler's childhood home; he'd grown up in this house. And even when Lily was dating him, back when she'd barely gotten the braces off her teeth, he'd been entering every rodeo he could.

“I guess they must still have the rodeo in their blood,” she said, referring to the mechanical bull Dylan and Kristy were installing.

Briana smiled again. Or had she ever actually
stopped
smiling? She and Kristy were about the happiest women Lily had ever seen, and it wasn't hard to figure out at least one of the reasons. They slept with Creed men, every night of their lives. It figured that they'd glow with perpetual satisfaction, if her own night with Tyler was any indication of what these fabled brothers could do in—or out of—bed.

“They're over it,” Briana said, with a note of relief in her voice. “Following the rodeo, I mean. But Logan and
Dylan still ride like crazy men when they're herding cattle.” She paused and, for the first time, her spirits seemed, if not dampened, not high, either. “Then there's Tyler—”