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Lily raised an eyebrow at that. “People are locking their doors in Stillwater Springs these days?” she asked.
“I normally don’t,” Hal admitted. “But I’ve got you and Tess to think about now. And some things have been happening around here lately—”
He’d just made a speech, in the living room, about what a good place Stillwater Springs was to raise a child—specifically Tess. Knowing he was tired, Lily didn’t call him on the contradiction between his words and his actions.
I’ve got you and Tess to think about now.
Had he convinced himself they would be staying on in Stillwater Springs permanently, after he’d recovered enough to live on his own?
She set the handful of pills on a paper towel, and handed them to him, along with a glass of water. Watched as he forced down his medication.
“Good night, sweetheart,” he said, when he’d finished, and set his empty glass in the sink.
When was the last time he’d called her sweetheart?
The night Tyler handed her her heart in fragments, that was when. Had it really been that long?
Lily closed her eyes and waited until Hal had left the room. Until she heard his bedroom door close, just down the hall from the kitchen.
And then she cried, for little girls without fathers.
And for big ones, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
T HE FIFTEEN-YEAR GAP between their ages showed in Doreen’s haggard face in ways it hadn’t way back when. She looked thin in her casino-waitress uniform, and lines in her forehead were etched deep. She was developing jowls, and her mouth was hard, the lipstick too red and slightly off-center.
Still, her weary eyes softened a little when she recognized Tyler, standing in one of the casino’s several restaurants. Davie sat in a booth nearby, nursing a soda and pretending to read one of those glorified comic books that pass as a novel.
He doesn’t look much like me, Tyler thought, with distracted regret. But, then, he hadn’t looked much like Jake Creed, either. Secretly, he’d fantasized that his mother had been fooling around, conceived him with some lover, but he doubted his own fantasy. Poor Angie didn’t seem to have the strength to defy Jake that way. Or maybe she’d just loved her husband too much to cheat.
In the end, that love had destroyed her.
“Tyler,” Doreen said, almost breathing the name.
“Doreen,” Tyler replied, with a nod. Now that he was face-to-face with the woman who might have borne his child without bothering to let him know, all the things he’d planned to say, all the things he’d rehearsed on the way into town with Kit Carson riding shotgun, deserted him.
“I could take a break in half an hour,” she said.
Tyler merely nodded again. He’d left Kit Carson at Cassie’s to spare the dog a long wait in the Blazer, so he had time. He could cool his heels awhile.
Doreen hesitated for a few moments, looking from Tyler to Davie and back again. Then she sighed and turned to walk away, take another order for another plate of nachos, another mug of beer.
Everything about her, the way she moved, the way she spoke, said she was miserable. Hated her life, but didn’t know how to escape it.
Unlike Angela Creed. She’d found a way out, and devil take the grief she’d left behind.
Tyler approached Davie’s table.
“Mind if I join you?”
Davie didn’t look up. Just shrugged.
The cover of the graphic novel showed a woman being devoured by some hideous beast, and Davie seemed absorbed.
Tyler sat down across from Davie, signaled another waitress, ordered coffee. He liked a beer once in a while, but with Jake Creed for a father and a wild youth not that far behind him, a man tended to moderate his alcohol intake. He wondered briefly if Logan and Dylan took the same care not to overdo the booze.
“Good book?” he asked.
“What do you care?” Davie shot back.
“Do all those hooks and rings hurt?” Tyler persisted, frowning at the eyebrow piercings. The silver ring through Davie’s lower lip made him a little queasy, and after some of the bar brawls he’d been in, that was no small matter.
“Hurt when they did it,” Davie allowed, sounding defiant and, at the same time, interested. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to your mother,” Tyler said.
“About what?”
Tyler wasn’t about to bring up the paternity question—not before a word with Doreen, anyway. “Just things. Dylan tells me Sheriff Huntinghorse wanted to send you to a foster home, and you said you’d run off if he did.”
There was no humor in the smile Davie gave then, or in his eyes. “Small towns. Word really does travel like wildfire.”
“Running away would be a bad idea.”
“You don’t know my mom’s boyfriend. The sheriff said he was going to track Roy down and warn him not to hit me anymore.” Davie gave a bitter huff of a laugh. “That ought to make things real nice when Mom and I get back to the old trailer after her shift.”
Tyler’s gut churned just to think of what the boy might be facing, later that night and afterward. And he suddenly knew he couldn’t stand it, whether Davie was his or not.
“I’ve been thinking things over,” Tyler said carefully. “Maybe I could use somebody to help out around the cabin.”
Davie couldn’t hide his interest then, though he tried. He closed the book, set it down with a little thump and frowned at Tyler. “What kind of help?” he asked, almost suspiciously.
This from the kid who’d practically begged to stay.
“You said it yourself, this afternoon. Taking care of Kit Carson, cutting grass, stuff like that.”
“That place is small. Where would I sleep?”
“We’d get you a cot and a sleeping bag.”
“You don’t even have a TV.”
Tyler grinned. “You’re mighty choosy, all of a sudden, for somebody who wanted to move right in before.”
“Would you be a foster parent?” Davie asked, sounding like a lawyer now. “Maybe collect a little check from the county or the state?”
Tyler chuckled, enjoyed a sip of bad casino coffee before answering. “Hell,” he said, “no amount of money would be enough to put up with your attitude. It’s a neighborly offer, that’s all. And your mom has to approve, of course.”
From the looks of Doreen, she’d been running interference between good ole Roy, the boyfriend, and her son for too long. Letting Davie bunk in at Tyler’s for a while would probably be a relief, with all her problems.
“What changed your mind?” Davie asked grudgingly, but with a little less attitude than before. He was afraid to hope—Tyler could see that—and it galled him. Brought back way too many memories.
Life shouldn’t be the way it was for Davie, the way it was for a lot of kids.
The way it had been for him.
“I just needed some time to think, that’s all,” Tyler said. The words felt as lame coming off his tongue as they probably sounded to Davie. “Of course, you screw up and you’re out of there.”
Davie’s eyes widened. They were Doreen’s eyes, not Tyler’s own, or those of any family member he could recall, but still.
Still.
“You mean it? I could stay at your place?”
“I mean it. Long as you don’t cause trouble.”
“You’ll get a TV?”
Tyler chuckled. “I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “But once I see what kind of yard-bird you really are, I might let you use my laptop now and then.”
“And all I have to do is take care of the dog and cut some grass?”
“You’ve seen the grass. It’s waist-high. I think there’s a lawn under there someplace, but I can’t be sure.” Tyler paused, considered. “Fact is, I’m thinking of building on to the place.” Had he been thinking that? Not consciously, but now that the idea had presented itself, most likely prompted by Dylan’s mention of razing his old house to put up a new one, and what little he knew about the restorations going on at the main place, under Logan’s direction, he kind of cottoned to the prospect. “That would mean some carpentry. Maybe a little plumbing and electrical work, too.”
Davie looked worried. Maybe all that hard work would be a deal-breaker. “I don’t know anything about construction,” he finally said.
“That makes two of us,” Tyler said.
Cautious relief replaced the consternation in Davie’s face. “I wouldn’t mind learning, though. I always thought it would be kind of cool to be able to make bookshelves and stuff like that.”
Tyler glanced pointedly at the glorified comic book lying forgotten on the table. “You got a collection of those things?” he asked.
Davie gave a snort of amusement, tinged with bitterness. “No,” he said. “I got this one at the library. I mostly go there to use the computers, but Kristy said I ought to give reading a shot, and she never chases me off when I’m just looking for a place to hang out, so I checked this out.”
Tyler raised one eyebrow, intrigued. “I suppose she—Kristy, I mean—suggested something like White Fang or Ivanhoe, ” he said.
Davie laughed, and this time it sounded real. Almost normal. “Nope. She chose this one for me herself. Said it would be a good way to get my feet wet, find out how much fun reading can be.”
Tyler thought back to Kristy’s predecessor, Miss Rooley. She’d been a spinster, tight-mouthed and generally disapproving. She’d allowed him to hide out in the library, too, as a kid, when Jake was having a particularly bad day and Logan and Dylan weren’t around to get between him and the old man’s fists, but she’d demanded her pound of flesh. He’d been forced to read what Miss Rooley reverently called “The Classics,” always capitalizing the term with her tone.
At first, it was agony, slogging through tomes he barely understood. Then, he’d begun to enjoy it, though that was something he’d never wanted anybody to know, particularly his older brothers. Right up there with his secret penchant for Andrea Bocelli’s music. He liked the Big Band stuff, too—Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, that crowd.
As secrets went, these were pretty tame, but they were secrets just the same. And they would be harder to hide, with a kid living under the same roof.
“You like Kristy?” Tyler asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.
“She’s all right,” Davie allowed. “I’m supposed to call her ‘Mrs. Creed’ at the library.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said.
Mrs. Creed. There were two of them now, counting Logan’s bride.
It just went to show that those who didn’t learn from history really were condemned to repeat it.
Kristy had lived outside of Stillwater Springs all her life; she knew what it meant to marry a hell-raiser, which left her with no excuse for taking the risk. Briana, on the other hand, was an innocent victim, a stranger.
Had anybody warned her that the Creeds were notoriously bad at marriage? Showed her the three graves in the old cemetery out beyond the orchard, the final resting places of the last generation of Creed wives—all of them dead long before their time?
Watching Davie, Tyler thought the boy studied his face a little too intently, seeing too much. He looked as though he wanted to ask a question, but he gulped it back when they got unexpected company.
A big man loomed over the table, beer-belly straining at his wife-beater shirt. His arms were tattooed from fingertips to shoulder, he needed a shave and the billed cap pulled low over his face looked as though it had been run over by a semitruck with a serious oil leak.
Davie seemed to shrink in on himself, like he was trying to disappear.
Roy’s presence had exactly the opposite effect on Tyler.
He slid out of the booth and stood.
Doreen had always liked tattoos. Maybe that explained why she’d taken up with three hundred pounds of ugly, though some things went beyond reasonable explanation, and this creep was one of them.
Roy’s mean little pig eyes widened a little. Evidently, he’d been so focused on Davie, he hadn’t noticed that the boy wasn’t alone.
Now, he looked Tyler over with belligerent caution.
“Who are you?”
“His name’s Tyler Creed, Roy,” Davie piped up, obviously terrified. “We were just talking. He wasn’t doing any harm—”
Tyler put out one hand to silence the boy.
Roy, being a head shorter but bulky, looked up into Tyler’s face.
“A Creed, huh?” he said. “Know all about that outfit.”
Tyler folded his arms. Waited.
Roy pulled in his horns a little. “Look,” he said. “I just came to take the boy home. There’s no need for any trouble.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Tyler answered. “Not at the moment, anyhow.”
Roy clearly didn’t appreciate being thwarted; like all bullies, he was used to getting his way by acting tough. The trouble with acting tough was, as Jake had often said, the inevitability of running into somebody just a little tougher.
And that could make all the difference.
“I said I didn’t want any trouble,” Roy reiterated mildly. “I just want to take the boy home, where he belongs.”
“We’re still figuring out where he belongs,” Tyler said, just as mildly but with an undercurrent of Creed steel. “Right now, all I’m sure of is, he’s staying right here, and you’re not going to lay a hand on him.”
