Читать книгу Montana Creeds: Dylan - Linda Miller Lael - Страница 8

FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, after half an hour trying to spoon room-service oatmeal into Bonnie’s tightly closed mouth and finally giving up, Dylan checked out of the hotel and went looking for a Wal-Mart.

Bonnie needed a car seat, and a whole slew of other things.

So he put her into a shopping cart, and the two of them wheeled around. He guessed at her clothes sizes, and she kicked up a fuss when he went to try some shoes on her, but after a brief struggle, he won. In the toy department, he snagged a doll almost as big as Bonnie herself, mounted on a plastic horse no less, but she didn’t show much interest in that, either.

“Toys,” an older woman told him sagely, leaning in to whisper the wisdom, “have to be age-appropriate.”

“Age-appropriate?” Dylan pushed his hat to the back of his head.

The woman tapped the box containing the new doll, sitting tall and straight on her horse. “This is for children five and up. Your little girl can’t be any older than two.”

“She’s small for her age,” Dylan replied automatically, because he didn’t like other people telling him what to do, even when they were right. But once the meddlesome shopper had rounded the bend, he put the doll back on the shelf and rustled up a soft pink unicorn with a gleaming horn and a fluffy mane. According to the tag, it would do.

And Bonnie took to it right away.

After making a few more selections, and paying at the checkout counter, they were good to go. Dylan made a couple of calls from the truck and located a pediatrician on the outskirts of the city.

Jessica Welch, M.D., operated out of an upscale strip mall. She was good-looking, too, with long, gleaming brown hair neatly confined by a silver barrette at her nape. Not that it mattered, but when Dylan met a woman—any woman—he noticed things about her.

“Who do we have here?” Jessica Welch, M.D., asked, chucking Bonnie, who had both arms clamped around Dylan’s neck, under the chin.

Bonnie threw back her head and screamed out one of those ear-piercers that go through a man’s brain like a spike. Ever since Dylan had hauled her into the waiting room, a full forty-five minutes before, she’d been clinging to him. He’d been the only father present, and the looks he’d gotten from the various mothers waiting with quieter, better-behaved kids weren’t the kind he was used to getting from people of the female persuasion.

Dr. Welch was unmoved. Screaming children were not uncommon in her day-to-day life, of course. “This way,” she said.

Dylan and Bonnie followed her down a short corridor and into a small examining room. Bonnie didn’t let up on the shrieking, and she’d added kicking and squirming to the fit; hostilities were escalating.

“I guess she thinks she might get a shot or something,” Dylan said, completely at a loss. By then, Bonnie had knocked his hat off, and she was pulling his hair with both hands.

Dr. Welch simply smiled. “Let’s have a look at you, Miss—?”

“Bonnie,” Dylan said. “Bonnie Creed.”

Bonnie Creed. He liked the sound of that.

The doctor examined the papers on her clipboard. “And you’re her father,” she said. It was rhetorical, a conclusion not a question, but Dylan felt compelled to answer all the same.

“Yes.”

“I would have known by the resemblance,” Dr. Welch said. As it turned out, she had a few tricks up her sleeve. By letting Bonnie listen to Dylan’s heart through a stethoscope, she got the kid to quiet down.

“Any significant health problems?” the doctor asked, finishing up with the routine stuff, like looking into Bonnie’s ears with that little flashlight-type thing and peering down her throat.

“Not that I know of,” Dylan said. “She’s been—er—living with her mother.”

“I see,” Dr. Welch replied solemnly.

“I was hoping you could tell me what to feed her and stuff like that,” Dylan went on. He felt his ears burning. By now, the doctor was probably wondering if she should notify the authorities or something.

“I take it you haven’t been around Bonnie much,” she said thoughtfully.

“It was kind of sudden. Sharlene decided she couldn’t take care of her anymore, and left her with me.” He probably looked and sounded calm, but if Dr. Welch drew her cell phone, he and Bonnie would be out of there in a flash and speeding for the open road. Damn. He should have called Logan. Then he’d have some kind of legal backup at least—

“I’ll need a number where I can contact you, Mr. Creed.”

Dylan gave her his cell number and hoisted a reaching Bonnie off the end of the examining table and back into his arms.

“Two-year-olds,” Dr. Welch went on, with a sudden smile, “usually prefer a semisoft diet—some baby food, not the infant variety. Anything that’s easy to chew.”

“No bottles or anything?” Dylan asked.

“One of those sippy cups, with the lid,” the doctor said. “Bonnie needs a lot of milk, and juice is okay, too, provided you watch the sugar content.”

Dylan figured he ought to have been taking notes. What the devil was a sippy cup, anyhow? And didn’t just about everything have sugar in it?

He kept his questions under his hat, having already made a fool of himself. If the doc didn’t take him for a child abductor, it would be a miracle.

Dr. Welch gave Bonnie a couple of shots—the kid barely noticed—ferreted out a list of healthy foods for children and sent them on their way. Dylan paid the bill, and he and Bonnie left. Until they were fifty miles north of Vegas, he checked the rearview mirror for a squad car every few minutes.

AS IT HAPPENED, Dylan didn’t have to call Logan, because Logan called him—at an inconvenient time, as usual.

Logan was getting married to Briana Grant, that was the gist of it, and there was no talking him out of it, Dylan learned, when he took his brother’s call on his cell phone, seated in a truck-stop restaurant somewhere along the winding road homeward. Bonnie, in the provided high chair, kept flinging strands of spaghetti at him—she was covered in the stuff, and so was he.

And he was losing patience. “Look, Logan, I—” He paused when Bonnie stuck her whole head into her plate and came up looking like some pasta-Medusa. “Stop that, damn it—”

Bonnie merely giggled and preened a little, like all that goopy spaghetti was a wig she was modeling.

“Are you with a woman?” Logan asked.

“I wish,” Dylan said. “I’ve got to hang up now—I said stop it—but I’ll get there when I can. If I don’t show up in time, go ahead without me.”

After that, Dylan barely registered what his brother said.

Logan asked him to get word to Tyler, he remembered that much, and relay the message that he wanted to talk to their younger brother, in person.

As if. Tyler was in pissed-off mode. There would be no getting through to him, and Dylan said so, in so many words.

Then Bonnie started throwing spaghetti again.

This time, she hit the woman in the next booth square in the back of the head.

Dylan ended the phone call, no closer to asking Logan for help than he had been in the first place, scooped up the demon child, tossed the bills to pay for the meal onto the cashier’s counter and fled.

Now, he’d have to find a place to hose the kid down.

He cleaned her up with baby wipes, purchased along with the unicorn, a plastic kid-toilet, the little tennis shoes and the new outfit she’d pretty much ruined.

“Potty,” she said, as they pulled out of the truck stop and onto the highway. “Daddy, potty.”

“There’s no way we’re going back in there,” Dylan said. “We’re probably banned from the place, thanks to you. Eighty-sixed, for all time and eternity.”

“Potty,” Bonnie insisted. Besides Daddy, that seemed to be the only word she knew. He’d sneaked her into at least four different men’s rooms since they’d left South Point that morning. Held her on the seat so she wouldn’t fall in and looked the other way as best he could.

Her lower lip started to wobble. “Potty,” she said pitifully.

“Oh, hell,” Dylan muttered. He pulled the truck over, located the miniature pink toilet, and set it down behind some bushes. Then he unfastened Bonnie from her car seat and carried her, spaghetti stains and all, to the john.

He turned his back.

She must have gotten her pants down on her own, because he heard a cheery little tinkle. When he finally turned around, she was grinning up at him, her hair crusted in spaghetti sauce, and grunting ominously.

Dylan had ridden the meanest bulls on the rodeo circuit, and until he and Cimarron, the bull to end all bulls, met up, he’d never been thrown. He’d held his own in bar brawls and backstreet fights where losing meant getting your head slammed against the curb. Bluffed his way past the toughest poker players at the toughest tables in the toughest towns in America.

But a little girl pooping—now, that was a new one.

“Wipe!” she crowed, upping her known vocabulary to three words.

“Not a chance,” Dylan said. But he got some more baby wipes out of the truck and handed them to her.

She must have used them, because when she came past him, her pants were up and she was pulling the potty-chair behind her. Gnarly as the whole experience had been, Dylan felt a rush of pride. The kid was independent, for a two-year-old. She’d even thought to dump the evidence.

“We need a woman,” he told her, once they were back in the truck and he’d used yet another baby wipe to wash her hands and fastened her into the car seat, which was so complicated it might have been invented by NASA. “Any woman.”

But it wasn’t any woman who came to mind.

It was Kristy Madison.

No way, he told the image.

After that, they drove for hours, and a little past three in the morning, they hit the outskirts of Stillwater Springs, Montana.

Dylan owned a house on the family ranch—Briana and her kids had been living there up until recently, when they’d moved in with Logan, but there had been a break-in and some vandalism, and he didn’t know if Logan had arranged for repairs yet.

So he headed for Cassie’s place.

When they pulled into her driveway, light glowed through the buckskin walls of her famous teepee. Dylan had spent a lot of happy hours in that teepee, with Logan and/or Tyler, pretending to be Indians plotting a raid on a white settlement.

Now, with Bonnie asleep in her car seat and clinging to that naked, inked-up doll like it was her last friend, the pink unicorn spurned, he got out of the truck and headed toward the teepee.

Cassie, a bulky and singularly beautiful woman and the closest thing to a grandmother he’d ever had, sat watching low, flickering flames in the fire pit inside the teepee. It might have been a picturesque scene, if she’d been wearing tribal gear, but double-knit pants, bulging at the seams, neon-green high-top sneakers and a sweatshirt with a picture of Custer on the front, with an arrow through his head, lacked the punch of a fringed leather dress and moccasins.

Custer was a nice touch, though. From his benignly confident expression, the arrow didn’t bother him much.

“Dylan,” Cassie said, looking up. And she didn’t sound surprised.

“I need help,” he told her. No sense beating around the bush with Cassie; she could see right through a person.

She smiled. Nodded. Moved to rise.

He extended a hand to help her up.

Led her to the truck.

She drew in a breath at the sight of Bonnie, still sleeping the sleep of the just. “Yours?” she whispered.

“Mine,” he confirmed and, once again, he felt that same swell of pride.

“Where is her mother?”

“God knows.” Dylan got Bonnie out of the car seat, her head bobbing against his shoulder. “I’m going to petition for full custody, but I need Logan’s help to do that.”

“There are a lot of lawyers in this world,” Cassie pointed out quietly. “Why Logan?”

“Because this could be—well—tricky.”

“Dylan Creed, did you steal that child from her mother?” They’d reached the gate by then, and Cassie led the way up the walk, onto the porch. Jiggled the knob on the door.

Evidently, she couldn’t see through him. Not always, anyway.

“No,” Dylan said. It was late—or early—and he was too wrung out from the long drive and the stress of looking after a two-year-old to go into the story. “Give me a little credit, will you? I’m not a criminal.”

“But you’re looking over your shoulder for some reason,” Cassie whispered, switching on a lamp in the familiar living room of her small, shabby house. She took Bonnie from him, murmured soothingly when the little girl fussed in her sleep.

“I don’t have legal custody,” Dylan answered. “Until I do, I’m keeping a low profile, in case Sharlene changes her mind. I’ll tell you the rest in the morning.”

Cassie stared into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded again. “All right,” she said, making for the spare bedroom. “I’m putting this child to bed. There’s cold chicken in the refrigerator if you’re hungry.”

Grateful, Dylan let himself drop onto the couch, and before he knew it, the sun was up and Bonnie was standing beside him, tugging playfully at his hair.

He grinned, glad to see her. She was wearing one of Cassie’s massive T-shirts, tucked up here and there with safety pins, to make it fit, and she was clean.

God bless Cassie. Despite her obvious misgivings, she’d given Bonnie a much-needed bath, and probably fed her, too.

“Daddy,” Bonnie said angelically, stroking his beard-stubbled cheek with one very small hand.

And if Dylan hadn’t known before that he’d do anything to keep and raise this child—his child—he knew it then.

“DDYLAN’S OUT AT CASSIE’S place,” Kristy’s hairdresser, Mavis Bradley, told her, when she came in for a lunch-hour trim. “I saw his truck parked in her driveway when I came in to work.”

A thrill went through Kristy, part dread, part anticipation. She waited it out. If Dylan was in town, he’d soon be gone. That was his pattern. Come in, stomp somebody’s heart to bits under his boot heel and leave again.

“And Cassie was at the store, not an hour later, buying training diapers and toddler’s food in those plastic cartons that cost the earth,” Mavis rattled on, before Kristy could come up with a response. “That’s what Julie Danvers told me, when she came in to have her nails done.”

Kristy took a moment to be glad she’d missed Julie. There was some bad blood between them, at least on Julie’s side, because Kristy had been briefly engaged to her husband, Mike, and he hadn’t taken the breakup well. Now they had two children, a big house and a thriving business, and Mike was a candidate for sheriff. It was a mystery to Kristy why that particular water hadn’t gone under the proverbial bridge.

“Interesting,” Kristy said, because she’d known Mavis since first grade, and she’d just keep prattling on until she got some kind of reaction. Everybody for miles around knew Kristy and Dylan had been passionately in love, once upon a time, and Mavis certainly wouldn’t be the last person eager to tell her Dylan was back.

“Now what would Cassie need with stuff for a little kid unless—”

“Mavis,” Kristy broke in. “I have no idea.”

“Think you’ll see him?”

Kristy actually shrugged. No use pretending she didn’t know who Mavis was asking about. “Maybe around town,” she said, with a nonchalance she certainly didn’t feel. “We’re old news, Dylan and I.”

“So are you and Mike Danvers,” Mavis parried coyly, “but Julie gets her panties in a wad every time he mentions your name. Which, apparently, is quite often.”

Kristy had to be careful how she answered that one. Everything she said would go out over Mavis’s extensive network within five minutes after she’d paid for the haircut and left. “That’s silly. Mike and Julie have been married for a long time. They have two beautiful children and a great life. So Mike mentions my name once in a while? Stillwater Springs is a small town. He probably mentions a lot of people’s names.”

“Well,” Mavis said doggedly, “I’d think you’d at least wonder about why Cassie might buy diapers, and there’s Dylan Creed’s truck parked in front of her house so early in the day that he must have rolled in during the night—”

“I don’t wonder,” Kristy lied, and very pointedly. If Dylan had a child, it would be the height of unfairness on the part of the universe. She was the one who longed for a houseful of kids. Dylan had never wanted to settle down—he’d just pretended he did, for obvious reasons. “What Dylan Creed does—or doesn’t do—is simply none of my concern.”

“Hogwash,” Mavis said. “Your ears are red around the edges.”

“That’s because you’ve been poking me with the scissors at regular intervals. Are we nearly done here? I need to get back to the library.”

Mavis blew out a breath. “The library,” she scoffed. “You were a cheerleader in high school. You were a prom queen. And Miss Rodeo Montana, first runner-up for Miss Rodeo America. Who’d have thought Kristy Madison, of all people, would end up with a spinster-job? It reminds me of that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, when Donna Reed is this miserable old biddy because George Bailey was never born—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mavis!” Kristy was ready to leap out of the chair by that point. Tear off the plastic cape and march right out into the street with her hair sectioned off in those stupid little metal clips. “Some of us have moved beyond high school, you know. And what’s so terrible about being a librarian?”

Mavis softened. In the mirror facing the chair, her pointy little face looked sad. “Nothing,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Kristy said, immediately regretting her outburst. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that—”

“It’s just that,” Mavis continued kindly, “when anybody mentions Dylan Creed, you get peevish.”

“Then why mention him?” Kristy asked wearily.

Mavis squeezed her shoulder with one manicured hand. “I didn’t mean any harm. I was just thinking you might be glad Dylan was back. I know you’ve had a hard time, Kristy—losing your folks the way you did, and the ranch and Sugarfoot, practically all at once. I’d like to see you happy again—and you were happy with Dylan, until that blowup the day of his dad’s funeral. So would everybody else in Stillwater Springs—like to see you happy, I mean.”

Kristy fought back tears, not because of the sad memories, but because she was touched. Mavis, in her own clumsy way, did care about her, and so did a lot of other people. “I am happy, Mavis,” she said. “I have my job, my house, my cat—”

“Well, I’ve got a job and a house and four cats,” Mavis argued cheerfully, “but it’s my Bill that makes my heart go pitter-pat.”

“You’re lucky,” Kristy said. And she meant it. Mavis had been married to the same man since the day after her high school graduation and though she and Bill had never had children, it was common knowledge that they were still as deeply in love as ever.

Mavis finished the haircut without mentioning Dylan again, which was a mercy, and Kristy rushed back to the library to grab a sandwich in her tiny office behind the information desk. It was Wednesday, and business was slow enough that her two volunteer helpers, Susan and Peggy, could handle the traffic.

Story hour was coming up at three, though, and it was Kristy’s baby. She still hadn’t chosen a book, and that stressed her a little. She was a detail person, and few details were more important to her than doing her job well.

So she finished her sandwich and went out into the main part of the library, headed for the children’s section. It was always tricky, deciding what story to read, because the kids who gathered in a circle under the mock totem pole in the tiny play area ranged in age from as young as three to as old as twelve. The rowdy ones came, after swimming lessons over at the community pool, still smelling of chlorine and sunshine and always a little soggy around the edges, and the ones with working mothers invariably arrived early.

Harried, Kristy went from book to book, shelf to shelf.

Finally, she fell back on an old standby, one of the Nancy Drew mysteries she’d loved in her own youth. The boys would snicker, and the little ones wouldn’t understand a word, but she knew just listening was part of the magic.

Yes, today, it would be The Secret in the Old Clock.

It would do the girls good to hear about smart, proactive Nancy and her lively sidekicks, George and Bess. And it wouldn’t hurt the boys, either. Call it consciousness raising.

The time passed quickly, since Kristy stayed busy logging in a pile of returned books, and when she looked up from her work, she saw at least a dozen kids gathered in the play area, waiting.

“Showtime,” Susan whispered, smiling. “I’ll finish the returns. And I can stay right up till closing time tonight, too. Jim’s off to Choteau with his bowling league.”

Susan, in her midfifties, was supercompetent. Her staying meant Kristy could leave at five o’clock, instead of nine, like a normal person, and paint at least part of her kitchen before she nuked something for supper and tumbled into bed with Winston to read awhile and then sleep.

“Thanks,” Kristy said, giving her friend a shoulder squeeze.

Carrying The Secret in the Old Clock, she made her way to the play area, took exaggerated bows when the kids clapped and cheered. They always did that, mainly because they liked to make noise in the library, where it was normally forbidden, but Kristy got a kick out of the whole routine anyway.

She settled down on the floor, cross-legged. “Today,” she announced, “Nancy Drew.”

True to form, the boys groaned.

The girls giggled.

The latch-key kids were just happy to see an adult.

Kristy made a production of opening the book. That, too, was part of the show. Always a flourish—kids liked that. Her own mother had made reading—and being read to—so much fun, using a different voice for each character and sometimes even acting out parts of the story.

And when she looked up, ready to begin, her heart jammed itself into the back of her throat and she couldn’t say a single word.

Dylan Creed had appeared out of nowhere. He was sitting, cross-legged like Kristy, at the edge of the crowd, holding positively the cutest little girl Kristy had ever seen within the easy circle of his arms.

Kristy swallowed.

There was no doubt the child was his—the resemblance made Kristy’s breath catch.

Dylan’s blue eyes danced with mischief as he watched her.

She cleared her throat. “Chapter One,” she began.

And then she froze up again.

One of the bigger boys started a chant. “Nan-cy! Nan-cy!”

All the other kids picked it up. Even the angelic being in Dylan’s lap clapped her plump little hands together and tried to join in.

Dylan let out a sudden, piercing whistle.

Silence fell.

The little girl turned and looked up at him curiously.

“The lady,” Dylan said, “is trying to read a story. So you yahoos better settle down and listen.”

Somehow, Kristy managed to get through three chapters of the book, but it was a lackluster performance, for sure. Her gaze kept straying to Dylan and the little girl, and every time that happened, she felt her neck heat up.

At last, mothers started wandering in and collecting their charges. Kristy tried to look busy, but that was hard, given that she was still sitting on the floor with nothing but a book to fiddle with. Worse, her legs had gone to sleep, and she knew if she stood up too suddenly, she’d probably fall on her face.

In front of Dylan Creed.

Why didn’t he just leave, like everybody else?

“Nice job,” he said, and Kristy was startled to realize he was sitting right beside her. The little girl was playing with the large plastic blocks the Friends of the Library had provided for the play area.

Was he making fun of her?

Kristy swallowed again. Gulped, was more like it.

“She’s beautiful,” she croaked, inclining her head toward the child.

Dylan nodded. “Her name is Bonnie,” he said.

What do you want? That was what Kristy would have asked if she hadn’t been too chicken, but what tumbled out of her mouth was, “I heard you were passing through.”

Great.

Now he’d think she’d been panting for any Dylan Creed news that might come her way.

“I’m not passing through,” Dylan replied, watching Bonnie with a soft light in his wicked china-blue eyes. “I’m planning to stay on—tear down that old house of mine, now that Briana and her boys don’t need it anymore, and build a new one. I’m going to have a barn, too, and some horses. Maybe even run some cattle with Logan’s herd.”

Why was he telling her all this? Did he think she cared?

Did she care?

No, no, a thousand times no.

Get a grip, she told herself.

Okay, so Bonnie could have been her little girl, as well as Dylan’s, if things had turned out differently. But they hadn’t, and that was that.

She had a house and a job and a perfectly good cat.

An excellent life, damn it.

“That’s nice,” she said, easing her legs out straight and giving them subtle shakes to get the circulation going again so she could stand up and walk away with some degree of dignity. Go about her business. Tell Susan she had a headache and wasn’t staying until five.

But that would be a lie.

It was her heart that ached, not her head.

“How have you been, Kristy?” Dylan asked.

What was this, Be Kind to Former Lovers Week? “Fine,” she said.

One corner of his mouth tilted upward in a sad little grin. “Up until the last time I talked to Logan, I thought you were married to Mike Danvers.”

The name fell between them like a lead weight.

Kristy recovered quickly, but not quickly enough. Something moved in Dylan’s eyes while she was coming up with her response, even though it only took a split second. “It wouldn’t have worked out for Mike and me,” she said.

“Like it didn’t work out for us,” Dylan said, and try though she might, Kristy couldn’t get a bead on his tone.

“We were young,” she heard herself say. “The world was falling apart. Your dad had just been killed in that logging accident, and both my folks—”

“Daddy!” Bonnie whooped suddenly, shrill with joy. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

She ran at Dylan and he scooped her up in his arms.

“Potty!” Bonnie yelled triumphantly.

Dylan sighed. “Would you mind taking her to the women’s room?” he asked Kristy.

Glad of an excuse to break out of his orbit, if only for a few minutes, and hoping to God her legs had woken up, Kristy got to her feet, took Bonnie by the hand and escorted her to the bathroom.

Because so many of the children who came to the library were small, Kristy was used to that particular duty. But this was Dylan’s little girl. He’d conceived this beautiful moppet with some nameless, faceless woman—not with her.

Damn it. When they’d made love all those times, before the rodeo and death and a lot of other things came between them, they’d always ended up choosing names afterward. They’d call a boy Timothy Jacob, for their fathers. A girl, Maggie Louise, for their mothers …

When she and Bonnie stepped out of the restroom, Dylan was waiting in the corridor, leaning against the wall with that indolent grace that seemed to emanate from his very DNA.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

He hoisted Bonnie up into his arms. “Good to see you again, Kristy,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.

“You, too,” Kristy said. Fortunately, he left before the tears sprang to her eyes.

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

Good to see you again …

You, too.

Kristy ducked back into the women’s restroom, turned on the cold-water faucet and stood splashing her face until the burning stopped. But she still heard the voices, hers and Dylan’s, though this time, they came from the long ago.

When the moon strays off into space, Dylan Creed, and the last star winks out forever, I will still love you.

He’d smiled, and stroked her hair, and kissed her, sending fire skittering along her veins all over again. You read too much, he’d teased. I love that about you. Our kids will have a chance at being smart, with you for a mother.

You’re smart, too, Dylan, she’d protested, meaning it.

Not book-smart, he’d replied. I can’t talk in poetry the way you do.

Does it matter? she’d asked, her heart brimming with tenderness.

Nothing matters but you and me, Kristy.

Nothing matters but you and me.