LITMIR.BIZ

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Creed brothers, Tyler was the youngest, and the tallest, and the one with the hottest temper. His hair was as dark as Cassie’s, and he wore it long enough to brush his collar.

      He turned his head, saw Dylan and stopped bucking. Eased Bonnie off his back and got to his feet.

      His deep blue eyes were arctic as he straightened to his full height.

      As a kid, he’d had music in him, so much that it flowed out through the strings of his cheap guitar and just about everything he did. Between Jake’s drunken escapades and his mother’s suicide when he was still young, though, something had shut down inside him and never started up again.

      “Logan wants to talk to you,” Dylan said, because with Tyler, even “hello” was shaky ground.

      “So I hear,” Tyler answered. “Of course, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

      Cassie wooed Bonnie into the kitchen, promising her a cookie, after casting worried glances from one Creed brother to the other.

      “If you’re trying to get my back up, Ty, you’re going to have to do better than that. What brings you back to Stillwater Springs?”

      “I was about to ask you the same thing,” Tyler answered, turning to look when Bonnie’s giggle chimed from the kitchen. “Cute kid,” he added, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes warmed. “Bonnie, isn’t it?”

      “That’s right,” Dylan said, still waiting for the explosion. He and Tyler had had several run-ins over the years; the brawl after Jake’s funeral was only one of them. A couple of seasons back, they’d collided at the same rodeo, and Ty’s girlfriend, probably wanting to make him jealous, had been all over Dylan.

      He hadn’t taken the bait, but the girlfriend—he couldn’t recall her name—had ditched Tyler, stayed out all night and claimed she’d been with Dylan, in his hotel room. It wasn’t true—for one thing, there’d been another woman sharing his bed, and he wasn’t into threesomes—but Tyler, with that perennial chip on his shoulder, hadn’t believed him.

      There would have been a fight, right there behind the chutes that day at the rodeo, if ten other cowboys hadn’t jumped in to pull them apart.

      “I’ll be leaving now,” Tyler said. “I just came by to say hello to Cassie.”

      Dylan nodded. There had to be more to it, of course—Tyler hadn’t set foot in Stillwater Springs, as far as he knew, since Sheriff Book turned them all loose the morning after Jake was laid to rest—but he knew better than to try to get an answer out of his brother.

      “See you,” he said.

      “Not if I see you first,” Tyler replied. As kids, that had been a running joke. Now, Tyler meant it.

      A bleak feeling settled over Dylan. He and Logan were speaking, anyway, though they still had things to work through. But that wasn’t going to happen with Tyler, he could tell.

      Tyler was a loner, and he clearly intended to stay that way.

      “What’s he doing here?” Dylan asked Cassie, in the kitchen, after Tyler left. The SUV started up with a roar outside.

      She sat at the table, Bonnie on her knee, deftly spooning toddler grub into the kid’s mouth. “Why didn’t you ask him?” she asked. She’d been trying for years to get the three of them to reconcile and act like brothers, and despite an almost complete lack of success, she still seemed to think it could happen.

      “Might as well ask the totem pole down at the library,” Dylan said, opening the fridge and helping himself to a can of soda. Pre-Bonnie, he’d have had a beer, but since you never knew when you might have to rush a kid to the emergency room with some sudden malady, he figured he’d better lay off the brew.

      Cassie smiled to herself. “You’ve been to the library?”

      Dylan popped the top on the soda can and took a swig. “I can read, you know. I was dyslexic as a kid, but I’ve learned to compensate.”

      “That isn’t what I meant,” Cassie said sweetly. How many nights had she sat with him, at that same table, going over the “special lessons” he’d been assigned after a battery of reading tests?

      “Ah,” Dylan said. “Yes. Did I see Kristy—that’s what you’re asking.”

      “And?”

      “I saw her.”

      “Well, don’t overwhelm me with information, here.”

      Dylan sighed. “I saw her. She’s still a looker. She’s still got a way with kids. End of story.”

      “Or the beginning,” Cassie said, smiling at Bonnie.

      “Don’t get any ideas,” Dylan warned, though when it came to Kristy, he’d been getting ideas himself. Cassie couldn’t possibly know that, unless she used her X-ray vision.

      “Poor Kristy,” she said, looking solemn now, even sad. Frowning as she gazed over Bonnie’s head, past Dylan, to some unseen world only she could navigate.

      “What do you mean, ‘poor Kristy’?” Dylan asked, knowing he shouldn’t, but too worried to resist. When Cassie worried about people, they tended to meet with severe and immediate problems.

      “She could use a friend, that’s all,” Cassie mused.

      It wasn’t all, of course.

      Dylan set the soda can aside with a thump. He’d have tossed it, but Cassie recycled. “What’s going on?” he demanded quietly. “You didn’t have one of your dreams.?”

      “No,” Cassie said. “I just know these things.” She brightened. “Call it an old Indian trick.”

      “Cassie,” Dylan pressed. “Tell me.”

      “Go see her,” Cassie replied, looking up into his face. “She’s alone, at her place. I’ll look after Bonnie, give her a bath and supper and put her to bed.”

      “I can’t just show up on her doorstep, Cassie. What am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, my foster grandmother sent me’?”

      “You’ll think of something.”

      “I was planning on taking Bonnie out to the ranch.”

      “That can wait, Dylan. I’m not sure Kristy can.”

      “She’ll probably slam the door in my face.”

      “You’re a big boy. Deal.”

      Dylan sighed. He’d never taken Cassie’s so-called psychic abilities very seriously—she’d as much as admitted that she told her Tarot clients whatever she thought they wanted to hear—but there were times when her instincts struck too close to the bone for comfort.

      He bent, kissed the top of Bonnie’s head and left.

      Ten minutes later, he was knocking at Kristy’s door, still wondering what the hell he was going to say to explain being there in the first place.

      She was wearing old pants, a man’s shirt and a lot of yellow paint when she opened the door.

      And she’d been crying. Her eyes were puffy and her nostrils were red around the edges. Seeing Kristy in tears was devastating, but at least he wasn’t the cause of them this time—as far as he knew.

      “Everything okay?” Dylan asked, stricken. Just call him the Wordmeister, he thought glumly. He’d always been able to talk his way into—or out of—any situation—unless that situation involved Kristy Madison.

      “No,” she said. Her voice shook a little. Then she launched herself at him, wrapped both arms around his neck. “No!”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      DEAR GOD.

      It should have been against the law

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