Montana Creeds: Logan

“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.”

Instantly, Logan Creed came to mind. Would his chest be hairy or smooth, when he took off his shirt?

Briana gave herself an inward shake. “Maybe I do,” she admitted. “But not with you, so don’t get any ideas. You are sleeping on the couch.”

“I’d planned on that anyhow,” Vance said. “Which reminds me—does it fold out?”

He’d asked that same question in the message he’d left on the answering machine. Briana was puzzled, and a little alarmed.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

Vance’s chuckle sounded false. “I’ve been thrown from a lot of broncs in my time,” he replied. “Have to think about my back, now that I’m getting older.”

“Right,” Briana said, still curious, but unwilling to pursue the subject any further. She’d been talking to Vance too long as it was. Twenty minutes out of her life, and she’d never get them back.

“See you Saturday,” Vance said cheerfully, like she was looking forward to his arrival instead of dreading it with every fiber of her being.

“See you Saturday,” she confirmed glumly.

And then she hung up.

“I OUGHT TO PUNCH you in the mouth,” Jim Huntinghorse said, the next morning, when Logan tracked him down at the Council Fire Casino.

Logan grinned. “I’m real glad to see you again, too, old buddy,” he said, drawing back a chair at one of the tables in the coffee shop and signaling the waitress for a cup of coffee. Since Sidekick was out in the truck, he didn’t plan to stay long. He’d get the java to go. He ran his gaze over Jim’s fine black suit. “You’ve come up in the world,” he said. “General manager. Who would have thought?”

“Who would have thought,” Jim retorted, softening a little, but not much, “that you’d leave town without saying goodbye to your best friend? No calls. No e-mails. No nothing.”

“When the judge let me out of jail after that brawl with Tyler and Dylan, he told me not to show my face in Stillwater Springs until I’d cooled down.”

“It took you twelve years to cool down?”

“Chip off the old block,” Logan said as he nodded his approval when the coffee arrived in a take-out cup and reached for his wallet.

Jim waved both the waitress and the money away.

“You can say that again.” Jim scowled, still glowering. He stood beside the table, showing no signs of sitting down, his big fists bunched at his sides as though he might carry out the original threat. “You’re as crazy as your dad was.”

“I’m back,” Logan announced, after taking a cautious sip of the steaming brew. “And except for buying grub at the supermarket and taking my dog to the vet for a checkup, this is my first stop.”

“Is there a compliment lurking in there somewhere?” Jim frowned.

“Sit down. You cast a shadow like a mountain with the sun behind it.”

“I’m working,” Jim pointed out. But he pulled back a chair and sat.

“You’re a priority. There’s your compliment.”

“Gee, thanks. I get married. No best buddy since kindergarten to stand up with me. I get divorced. Nobody to drown my sorrows with. But I’m a ‘priority’?”

“Take it or leave it,” Logan said. “Best I can do.”

At last, Jim relented. A grudging grin flashed across his chiseled Native-American face. “You just passing through—looking for a fight with one or both of your brothers maybe? Or did you finally come to your senses and decide that somebody ought to come back here and look after that ranch?”

Logan put a tip on the table for the waitress, who was ogling them from the other side of the service counter. During the millisecond it took to lay the money down, Jim’s face changed. Went dark again.

“You’re not going to sell out to some movie yahoo, are you?”

Logan shook his head. “I’m staying for good.” That refrain was becoming familiar, like a commercial heard once too often on the radio or the TV.

Again, the dazzling smile. All those white teeth and all that handsome-savage bullshit had sure gone over with the women when they were young and on the prowl. It probably still worked, Logan reflected.

“You mean it?” Jim asked.

“I mean it.”

“You meant it when you promised to be best man in my wedding, too,” Jim pointed out.

“I was in Iraq,” Logan said.

“You were in Iraq?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Just because you say something, Creed, that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“When my stuff gets here, I’ll show you the documentation. Honorable discharge. Even a couple of medals.”

Jim gave a low whistle. “So that’s why you dropped out of the rodeo scene. You always got a lot of play on ESPN. Then, all of the sudden, you’re just not there. You got drafted?”

“I enlisted,” Logan said. “Can we not talk about Iraq right now?”

Jim frowned, obviously confused. He was a veteran himself, and in buddy world, guys swapped war stories. “Why not?”

“Because I need booze to even think about combat, let alone talk about it, and given my illustrious history, not to mention the high incidence of alcoholism in the Creed clan, I try to limit myself to the occasional beer.”

“Oh,” Jim said. “Bad, huh?”

“Bad,” Logan admitted.

“You were special forces, right?”

“Right. And this constitutes talking about Iraq. I’m stone-cold sober and I’d like to stay that way.”

“Okay,” Jim agreed hastily, putting up both hands, palms out. “Okay.”

Logan stood. “I just came by to say hello and let you know I’m back. My dog’s in the truck and I have contractors to meet with, plus I promised to stop by Cassie’s before I head for home.”

Jim grinned, rising, too. “You have a dog and a truck? You really are going redneck.”

“Nah,” Logan said, giving the waitress a wave as he turned to go. “I still have both my front teeth.”

“Not for long,” Jim quipped, “if either of your brothers gets a wild hair to come back home the way you did.”

Jim was only joking, but the words jabbed at a sore spot in Logan. It was too much to hope that Dylan’s and Tyler’s personal roads might turn and wind homeward, and the three of them could come to some kind of terms, but Logan hoped it would happen, just the same.

His friend walked him to the front doors of the casino, slot machines flashing and chinging all around them. Logan wondered how anybody could work in the place, with all the noise.

“I’m off at six,” Jim said, as they parted. “Want to play some pool, swig some beer and catch up?”

“Not tonight,” Logan answered, remembering the unexpected invitation to have supper at Briana’s. She’d clearly been pissed off when he mentioned Dylan, and then she’d turned right around and offered him a meal. There was no figuring women. “Already made plans.”

“Soon, then,” Jim said. “I promise—no combat stuff. Unless you count a detailed description of my divorce as a war story, that is.”

Logan laughed, slapped Jim on the shoulder. “Any time after tonight,” he said. “You know where I live. Stop by when you get a chance.”

Jim nodded, and then Logan headed for his truck, and Jim went back inside the casino to do whatever the general manager of a casino did.

SO, BRETT TURLOW thought, just getting into his car after a brutal all-night poker game in which he’d lost his ass, he wasn’t the only one who’d returned to the old hometown after a long absence. Difference was, he’d come back with his tail between his legs. Logan Creed looked a mite too cheerful for that to be the case with him.

Brett slid behind the wheel of the dented Corolla he’d borrowed from his sister. Watched as Creed climbed into a respectably battered pickup truck, ruffled his dog’s ears and started the engine.

Most likely, Logan meant to sell the ranch, since nobody appeared to give a good goddamn about the place, and get on with his life.

That would be a good thing, if he left.

If Creed stayed, on the other hand, it meant trouble, pure and simple.

Bleary-eyed, half-sick because he hadn’t eaten in twelve hours and he’d gambled away most of his unemployment check, Brett made a mental note to ask around a little. Find out what Creed’s intentions were.

In the meantime, he needed to crash.

BRIANA STAYED clear of the coffee shop until Logan was gone. Then she wandered nonchalantly in to say hello to Millie, the sole waitress on duty, and snag a nonfat latte to keep her going through the morning.

She’d been up late the night before, on a jangling java-high, worrying that Vance would show up on Saturday, worrying that he wouldn’t. She needed caffeine, fast. Hair of the dog that bit her, so to speak.

The boys were still at home, warned on pain of death to stay away from Cimarron and the orchard, where there might be bears.

“Did you see that guy talking to Jim?” Millie enthused, automatically starting the latte. “Mucho cute.”

Briana felt a sting of proprietary annoyance and a boost to her spirits, both at once. “The cute ones are deadly,” she said lightly.

“Yeah,” Millie answered, looking back at Briana over one shoulder while the milk foamed under the sputtery nozzle on the fancy coffee machine, “but what a way to go. I’m going to ask Jim what his name is.”

“No need,” Briana said. “It’s Logan Creed.”

Millie’s eyes widened. “As in Stillwater Springs Ranch?”

“As in,” Briana confirmed. Like her, Millie was relatively new in town. She’d heard about the Creed brothers, though; they were almost folk heroes, like certain outlaws in the old west.

Famous for raising hell, mostly, from what Briana had been told.

“So you know him, then?” Millie fished, handing over the latte.

“I live on the ranch,” Briana reminded her friend. “That makes us neighbors.” She hugged the rest of the story—that Logan was having supper with her and the boys that night—close, like some delicious adolescent secret.

Silly.

Just then, Briana’s radio, buckled to her belt, crackled to life. A disembodied voice informed her that someone had just hit a jackpot on the newest bank of slot machines—time to attend to business.

She thanked Millie for the latte and hurried off.

The jackpot was a big one, it turned out. A little blue-haired lady off the senior citizens’ bus had struck gold on the Blazing Sevens, and Briana spent the next forty-five minutes handling the paperwork.

Jim, being the manager, paid out the booty in crisp hundred-dollar bills, beaming for the camera right along with the lucky winner.

After all the hoopla died down, Briana pulled her boss aside for a word. “I need Saturday off, if that’s possible,” she said.

Jim frowned. He was a good man, serious about his work and goal-oriented. There was even some talk that he might run for sheriff, if old Floyd Book retired early, on account of his heart condition.

“Saturdays are pretty busy,” he reminded her.

“I know,” Briana said.

He flashed her the grin that made a lot of women’s knees buckle. She and Jim had gone out a couple of times, after their separate divorces, but there was no spark, and when he got promoted to his present lofty position, they’d decided to stop dating and be friends.

“Hey,” he said. “I know you. If you’re asking for time off, it’s important.”

Was it important? Vance was supposed to arrive on Saturday, and she was nervous about his spending the day with the boys without her there. There was no physical danger—Vance had never raised a hand to her or their sons—but Alec and Josh could so easily be hurt in other ways.

“My ex-husband is coming back then,” she confided.

Jim’s grin faded. “Oh.”

Realizing what he was thinking—that there was a reconciliation in the offing—Briana blushed. “It’s nothing like that,” she said quickly. “I’m just worried about the boys being alone with him all day. Alec is suffering from a bad case of hero worship, and God knows what ideas Vance might put in his head, and Josh told me he’d rather run away—”

Jim put up a hand. “You can have Saturday off,” he interrupted. “I’ll fill in for you myself. But you owe me an extra shift.”

Briana nodded, deeply relieved. “Thanks, Jim.”

He smiled, but his dark eyes were worried. “Josh threatened to run away?”

Jim knew Briana’s sons, since they were in the casino coffee shop so often, and he’d been remarkably tolerant of their presence. Lots of bosses wouldn’t have been so understanding, but Jim had a boy of his own. Four-year-old Sam lived with his mother now, in Missoula, and didn’t visit often.

Briana patted his arm. “I don’t think Josh would really hit the road on his own, but I’d rather not take the chance.”

Jim heaved a heavy sigh, shoved a hand through his longish, blue-black hair. “Kids do stupid things sometimes,” he said.

Briana thought of the bull in Dylan’s pasture, and the bears that apparently fed in the orchard on occasion. She glanced at her watch. It was almost lunchtime; she’d call home from the employees’ lounge behind one of the casino’s three restaurants and make sure Alec and Josh were following orders.

“Yeah,” she agreed belatedly. “Sometimes they do.”

She and Jim parted, and she headed for the lounge, went straight to the pay phone. She needed a cell, but it wasn’t in the budget.

Josh answered on the third ring. “Alec is a buttface,” he said, without preamble.

“Be that as it may,” Briana answered, used to the running battle between her sons, “he’s your brother. What are you two up to?”

“Alec is doing his math, and I was on the Internet until you called. Wanda ate a woodchuck or something, and her farts are, like, gross.”

“I feel your pain,” Briana said cheerfully. “And how could Wanda have eaten a woodchuck?”

“I said ‘or something,’” Josh pointed out.

Briana smiled. “Joshua?”

“Okay, it was the bratwurst left over from night before last,” Josh said. “It wasn’t my idea to give it to her. Alec did that.”

Situation normal.

“Will you come and get us?” he asked. “It’s boring around here, when we can’t even go outside.”

“No time,” Briana said. “You’ll have to tough it out until I get home. I’m stopping off at the supermarket after work, so I might be a few minutes late.”

“Alec really thinks Dad’s coming on Saturday.”

Briana closed her eyes. “Maybe,” she said evenly. “Maybe he’s coming on Saturday.”

“With Dad, it’s always ‘maybe,’”

Josh replied.

“True enough. Do me a favor, though, and hold the remarks. It really upsets Alec.”

“He’s living in a fantasy world.”

“You’re Alec’s big brother,” Briana said. “Be nice to him.”

Josh sighed dramatically. “Okay, but only until you get home,” he said. “Then all bets are off.”

“Fair enough,” Briana said, with a smile.

Josh responded with a disgusted wail.

“What?” Briana asked anxiously, thinking the house had caught fire or a serial killer was trying to break down the back door.

“Wanda just cut one,” Josh lamented. “Again!” In the background, Alec whooped with manic delight.

“Butt-face!” Josh yelled.

“No name-calling, Josh,” Briana said. “You promised.”

“All right,” Josh countered, “but if you’re not here by five-thirty, I’m going to have to kill him.”

“I’ve only got one word for you, Joshua Grant.”

“What?”

“Babysitter,” Briana replied. Then she said goodbye and hung up.

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE WERE TWO CARS parked in front of Cassie’s ramshackle place at the edge of town, and she’d scrawled With a client on the whiteboard nailed up beside the front door. Logan took the marker, dangling from a piece of tattered baling twine, and added I was here. Logan.

That done, he turned and swung his gaze across the property.

Sidekick was sniffing around the edge of the teepee, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Stillwater Springs, Montana, had to offer. It was authentic, built in the old way, by Cassie’s father, of tree branches and buckskin, and she charged fifty cents per visit.

Logan approached, dropped two quarters into the rusty coffee can that served as a till—Cassie believed in the honor system and so did he—and ducked into the cool, semidarkness where he and Dylan and Tyler had played as boys.

Except for the long-cold fire circle in the center, rimmed by sooty stones, the teepee was empty. Gone were the ratty blankets he remembered, the gourd ladle and wooden bucket, the clay cooking pots. No sign of the mangy bearskins, either.

He sat down, cross-legged, facing the fire pit, and imagined the flames leaping before him. Sidekick took an uncertain seat beside him, leaned into his shoulder a little.

Maybe the animal knew that in the old times, he might have been on the supper menu.

Logan wrapped an arm around the dog, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Nobody’s going to boil you up with beans.”

Sidekick stuck close, just the same.

As Logan sat, he drifted into a sort of meditation, recalling other visits, sometimes alone, sometimes with his brothers. They’d always built a fire, filling the place with hide-scented smoke, and taken off their shirts. Sometimes, they’d even painted their chests and faces with cosmetics left behind by one or the other of their mothers.

Jake never threw anything away.

Except, of course, for three wives and three sons.

Something tightened inside Logan, and Sidekick seemed to feel it, as though the two of them were tethered together by some intangible cord. The dog gave a low, throaty whine.

The warp and woof of time itself seemed to shift as Logan sat there, waiting. It stretched and then contracted, until, finally, he could no longer measure the passing of seconds or minutes or even hours.

Outside, car doors slammed.

Engines started.

Sidekick eased away from his side, restless, and headed for the opening to look out.

And still Logan didn’t move.

He knew the bulky shadow at the entrance was Cassie, but he didn’t look up or speak.

“You’ll have to make peace with him, you know,” she said quietly.

Logan didn’t respond, even to nod, nor did he meet her eyes. He knew she was referring to Jake, the man he both loved and hated, with such intensity that most times, he couldn’t separate one emotion from the other.

“He won’t rest until you do,” Cassie went on. She stepped into the teepee then, sat down on the ground across from him, graceful despite her size.

Logan blinked, came out of the meditation, or whatever it was. He smiled. “Still telling fortunes, I see,” he said, referring to the client she’d been with when he arrived.

“It’s a living,” she said, with a little shrug and a partly sheepish smile.