скачать книгу бесплатно
Logan consulted Cassie’s note again, then dialed the number scrawled next to Tyler’s name.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
Then, the recording. “This is Tyler Creed. I’m busy right now, but I’ll call you back unless you’re selling something. In that case, you’re SOL. Wait for the beep, and spill it.”
Logan chuckled, waited for the beep.
“This is Logan,” he said. He recited both his cell number and the new one for the ranch phone. “Call me. I’m not selling anything.”
Like hell he wasn’t.
CHAPTER THREE
SOLEMNLY, Alec presented Briana with a tattered piece of notebook paper. The pencil marks forming Vance’s number were pressed in hard, as though Alec had been afraid they would fade if he didn’t copy them down with all his might.
The sorrow Briana felt in that moment weighed down her heart. Even Alec, Vance’s most loyal supporter, knew that the precious digits in that phone number were elusive. Like his father.
Tears scalded the backs of her eyes, and she touched the pendant she always wore—she’d made it herself, scanning an old photo of her dad, resizing it, setting it in resin. He’d been a rambler, too, Bill McIntyre had, a well-known rodeo clown following the circuit during the season, parking his camper in his sister’s backyard in Boise when there were no rodeos to perform in. The difference was, he’d taken Briana on the road with him, after her mother died. She’d been Alec’s age then.
Her aunt Barbara had objected, of course, to all the travel and Briana doing her schoolwork by correspondence instead of attending a real school. A young girl needed friends, Barbara had argued. Needed dance lessons and Sunday school and security.
Every time they’d returned to Boise, Briana’s bossy but beloved aunt had hustled her off to the school for tests; every time, Briana had proved to be far above her grade level. In fact, she’d completed high school by the time she was fifteen. Bill had immediately signed her up for college-level courses, and she’d aced those, too, with his help.
She treasured the recollection of the two of them sitting at the little fold-down table in the camper, lamplight casting a golden benediction from over their heads, bent over one textbook or another.
Now, with her son standing hopefully before her, she missed her dad more poignantly than ever. Sure, he’d dragged her all over the United States in that old camper, but he’d been rock-solid, too. There for her, no matter what.
Her greatest regret, where her children were concerned, was that she hadn’t given them the kind of father Bill had been to her. Instead, she’d been swept away by Vance’s good looks, charm and easy drawl.
“Are you going to call Dad?” Alec asked, his voice small.
Briana smiled. “Yes,” she said. “But only to ask how long he’ll be staying.”
Alec looked desperately relieved. His gaze slipped to the pendant, on its simple leather cord, and the image of Bill “Wild Man” McIntyre, clad in full clown regalia. “You miss Grampa, huh?”
“Lots,” Briana admitted. Her dad had retired from rodeo soon after she married Vance, giving up his beloved camper for a modest house a few blocks from Barbara and her family, saying he was all set to fish every day and wait for his grandchildren to come along.
A month later, he’d passed away very suddenly, after a particularly nasty case of the flu had turned to pneumonia.
The irony of that still bothered Briana. Her dad had been gored by bulls and trampled by broncs in his long career as a rodeo clown, and in the end, he’d died of an ailment a simple injection might have prevented.
Alec leaned in, planted a kiss on Briana’s cheek. “’Night, Mom,” he said. “And thanks.”
Briana waited until Alec and Josh had both settled in for the night, keeping herself busy by puttering around the kitchen, washing up dishes she’d left in the sink that morning, making up a grocery list, checking and rechecking her work schedule for the coming week. Finally, sweaty-palmed, she took the phone receiver off the hook on the wall and called Vance.
“That number,” an automated operator responded, after three rings, “is no longer in service.”
Of course it wasn’t, Briana thought, hanging up with a slight bang, feeling both relieved and annoyed. Vance would have had to buy more minutes to keep that particular line of communication open; instead, he’d simply gotten another phone, in another convenience store, with a new number he hadn’t troubled himself to share with her.
She rarely had anything to say to Vance, but suppose one of the boys were sick or hurt? How would she reach him?
Resigned, Briana sighed and checked the clock on the stove. Too early to turn in, especially with all that caffeine coursing through her system, and she didn’t feel like watching television or cruising the Internet.
Wandering into the living room, she peered through the lace curtains toward the main ranch house. Saw its lights shining through the trees in the orchard for the first time since she’d moved into Dylan’s place as caretaker-in-residence. The sight was comforting, made her feel less isolated and alone. Not that she meant to get too friendly with Logan Creed—he was easy on the eyes, and she’d liked him right away, even if he did make her nervous, but he was a cowboy.
Like Vance.
He’d blown in on a stray wind, like some tumbleweed, Logan had, and he was likely to blow right out again, when the right breeze came along.
Biting her lower lip, Briana turned away from the window.
In the distance, the phone jangled.
She ran to answer, smacking her shin on one of the kitchen chairs as she passed. Wincing, she grabbed up the receiver and said, “Hello? Vance?”
Silence.
“Hello?” Briana repeated.
“It’s Logan,” her neighbor said quietly.
“Oh,” Briana said.
“I’ll make this quick, since you’re expecting another call,” Logan replied affably. “I checked out Dylan’s pasture fence, and I don’t think it would hold that bull if he decided to charge. Since I’m planning to do a lot of work around the place anyway, I’m having new posts and rails put in. Just thought I’d let you know before the work crews showed up.”
I’m not expecting another call. That was what Briana wanted to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to let on that she was glad he’d phoned, glad to hear another adult human voice on a dark summer night. He’d think she was needy if she did. In the market for a man.
“Did you clear that with Dylan?” she said instead, rubbing her bruised shin, and then wished she’d gone the needy route anyway. That would have been better than the unintentionally snippy way she’d put the question.
Logan waited a beat before answering, to let her know he’d registered the tone. “I don’t imagine he’d object, since I’m footing the bill. If that bull got out and did some damage, it would be Dylan’s hide the lawyers nailed to the barn wall, not mine.”
The thought of Cimarron running amok, with Josh or Alec in his path, pushed all concerns about how she might have sounded to Logan right out of Briana’s mind. Having watched hundreds of rodeos in her time, she’d seen bulls send cowboys and clowns into midair somersaults and, once or twice, cave in their rib cages when they landed.
“You really think he could get loose? Cimarron, I mean?”
“Yeah,” Logan replied. She heard Isn’t that what I just said? in his intonation, though that part went unspoken.
“Oh my God,” Briana murmured, closing her eyes. Child care was hard to find in Stillwater Springs, so when she couldn’t take the boys to work with her, leaving them to study or play handheld video games in the casino’s coffee shop, she left them home to play, study or do chores. They had strict orders to call at any sign of a problem, and stay close to the house while she was away, but they were boys, after all. Lively and adventurous. She knew they probably ranged over most of the ranch when she wasn’t around.
“Is something wrong?” Logan asked moderately.
“I was just worrying,” Briana said, trying to smile, though she couldn’t think why, since she was alone in the kitchen and Logan couldn’t see her. “It’s a mother thing.”
“I’ll take care of the fence,” Logan assured her. “In the meantime, see that the boys stay clear of Cimarron.” A pause. “Dylan did warn you about the bears, didn’t he?”
Briana gulped. “Bears?”
“They like to raid the orchard every now and then,” Logan said.
“In two years,” Briana said, her stomach doing a slow backward roll, “I haven’t seen a single bear.”
“They’re around,” Logan replied. “Mostly browns and blacks, but there is the occasional grizzly, too, and they’re bad news.”
“G-Grizzlies?” Briana echoed stupidly.
Logan sighed. “Dylan should have told you,” he said.
Briana barely knew Dylan Creed, but she had every reason to be grateful to him since he’d given her a place to stay when she needed it most, along with a generous supply of groceries and an old pickup to drive, and the faintly critical note in Logan’s voice put her on the defensive. “I guess the subject never came up,” she said stiffly.
“With Dylan,” Logan countered dryly, “the most important subjects often don’t come up.”
“I’ll watch out for Cimarron and the bears,” Briana said.
There was more Logan wanted to say—she could sense that—but he must have quelled the urge. “Good,” he said, after several seconds had ticked by. Nothing more, just Good.
A man of few words, then.
Call-waiting clicked in. Since Briana didn’t have caller ID, and since her better angels whispered that Logan had warned her and she had no cause to be hostile, she ignored the beeps. “Maybe you’d like to join us for supper tomorrow night,” she said, to make up for her bad manners.
A flush climbed her neck while she waited for Logan’s reply.
“Can I bring anything?” he asked presently.
“No need,” she said, strangely jubilant at his tacit acceptance. It was only supper, a simple neighbor-toneighbor courtesy. Mustn’t make a big fat deal of it. “Sidekick’s welcome, too, of course. Six-thirty? I get home from work at about five-fifteen, and I’ll need time to shower and cook and everything.”
More information than he needed, Briana reflected, blushing even harder. What was the matter with her?
“Six-thirty,” he agreed, with a smile in his voice. It was almost as if he knew she was red from her throat to the roots of her hair.
They said goodbye and hung up, and the instant the connection was broken, the phone rang again.
“Hello?” Briana said. Had Logan changed his mind about supper already? Remembered a previous commitment?
“Hey,” Vance said. “I just tried to call and—”
Briana let out a long breath. “I was on the other line.”
“Did you get my message?”
“Yes. You’re thinking of dropping in for a visit.” She lowered her voice, since the boys’ room was nearby and she wouldn’t put it past either or both of her sons to be glued to the other side of the door with their ears on broadband. “Alec is going to be seriously disappointed if you don’t show up.”
“How about you, hon?” Vance drawled, playing up the cowboy routine that had sucked her into his orbit the first time. “Would you be disappointed if I didn’t show up?”
Briana’s blood pressure surged. She waited for it to peak and go into a decline before she answered. “Not in the least,” she said. “We’re divorced, Vance. D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D.”
Atypically, he backed off. He was playing it cool, which meant he wanted something.
“What’s up, Vance?” she asked, as calmly as she could. If she came on too strong, he’d simply hang up on her, but she wasn’t going to roll over, either. “You didn’t make it to Stillwater Springs when Josh had his tonsils out last fall. You were a no-show at Christmas, Thanksgiving and both the boys’ birthdays. What’s so important that you’re willing to swing this far off the circuit to sleep on my couch?”
Vance’s answer was underlaid with one big, silent sigh of long-suffering patience. He was so misunderstood. “I just want to talk to you face-to-face, that’s all. And see the boys.”
And see the boys.
Always the afterthought.
“About what?” Briana demanded, still struggling to keep her voice down. “So help me, Vance, if it’s about wriggling out of paying your child support again—”
“It isn’t,” he interrupted, sounding put-upon. “Why does everything always come down to money with you, Bree?”
“If everything ‘came down to money’ with me, Vance Grant, you’d be in jail right now. Josh and Alec are your sons. Don’t you feel any responsibility toward them at all?”
“I love them,” Vance said, going from put-upon to downright wounded.
“Talk is cheap,” Briana said.
“Do you want me to come or not? I can be there Saturday.”
“I work on Saturday.”
“That’s okay,” Vance responded, magnanimous now. “I can hang out with the boys until you get home.”
Briana thought of Alec, his face so full of hope, and then of Josh, who’d threatened to run away if Vance made good on the visit. “Alec will be thrilled,” she said, in all truth. “Good luck with Josh, though.”
“What’s up with my buddy Josh?”
“I’d say he sees right through you, Vance,” Briana said. Josh didn’t need a buddy, he needed a dad—a concept well beyond Vance’s capacity to grasp.
“And that’s supposed to mean what?” Vance asked furiously.
True colors, Briana thought. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Stop baiting him, said the better angel.
Sometimes she’d like to throttle that better angel.
“You figure it out,” she said.
“Look, I don’t need this. Maybe it would be better if I just stayed clear.”
Briana closed her eyes, but Alec’s image was still there, yearning for a visit from the father he adored. She had to stop thinking about what she wanted—never to lay eyes on Vance Grant again—and consider her children’s needs. Right or wrong, Vance was their dad, and as much as Josh protested, he wanted a relationship with him as badly as Alec did.
“I’m sorry,” she said, nearly choking on the words.
“You know what’s wrong with you?” Vance countered. He’d changed tactics again, turned the dial to “charm.” “You need sex.”
