Montana Creeds: Tyler (21 page)

“Tomorrow it is,” Tyler said. “My place or yours?”

“I'll stop by around six, like before,” Logan answered. Then he turned to the boy, waiting to head for the foothills. “Maybe you'd like to spend the night here with us,” he added.

Davie rolled his eyes, then gave a long, low whistle after cutting a sly look in Tyler's direction. “Another hot date?”

Tyler felt his neck go red and knew Logan had noticed, even before he grinned.

“Better yet,” Logan said.

And they left it at that. He and Logan did, at least.

“I'd appreciate it,” Tyler told Davie, catching up as they eased their horses into an easy trot across the pasture, “if you'd stop referring to Lily as a ‘hot date.'”

“Well, she's hot,” Davie reasoned cheerfully. “And she's a date. Therefore—”

“Therefore, nothing. You're thirteen,” Tyler reminded the kid. “Try to keep that in mind, will you?”

Davie was in a chatty mood. He also sat a horse like he'd been born on one—a Creed trait, whether he had the right DNA or not. “Oh, believe me, I never forget. It's a royal pain in the ass, being thirteen, and from what I've seen at school, the only thing worse is being
fourteen
.”

In spite of his worries, which were considerable, Tyler had to laugh. He remembered a lot about those ages, and Davie was right. Both of them sucked—they didn't call them the 'tween years for nothing.

For a while, they rode in companionable silence, Davie thinking his own thoughts, Tyler doing the same. Part of him was right there, in the moment, but his mind did some wandering, too. He couldn't help wondering what Logan was about to lay on him, and the anticipation of meeting Lily later was hard to keep under wraps.

They'd reached the lower hills when they stopped, by tacit agreement, to rest the horses.

Davie stood in the stirrups to stretch his legs, and if it hadn't been for that damned spider tattoo and all those piercings, he'd have looked like a regular cowboy.

“You're mighty comfortable on a horse,” Tyler observed, looking out over the ranch and enjoying the panorama. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd been riding all your life.” He could see the main house, with its fancy new barn, and the beginnings of Dylan's con
struction project, too. There were cattle grazing in the pastures, and sunlight sparkled on the wind-rippled grass, and the way Tyler felt, he might have slipped through a time warp and gone back a hundred years.

Before Jake.

Before his mother.

Before that summer with Doreen.

“Guess I'm just a natural,” Davie bragged. “In fact, I've been thinking I might take up rodeoing. Dylan says I could qualify for the junior divisions. I just have to pick my event. Did you know he's got a bull?”

Tyler sat easy in the saddle, glad to be back. While he was away, chasing women and money, he'd come dangerously close to forgetting who he was.

Now, he was settled in his own hide, where he belonged. His hair was a little too long, he was driving an old truck and he had a good dog. He liked all that just fine.

And then there was Lily.

“Forget the bull,” Tyler told Davie, in case the kid had any ideas about practicing up for the rodeo on that ornery old white-hided devil. “Cimarron's a mean one, famous for stomping in cowboys' rib cages, among other things. Even Dylan couldn't ride him.”

“But I could sign up for the rodeo? Try my hand at it?”

Tyler was touched by the boy's eagerness, and worried because he knew from bitter experience that cowboying was a rough life. If a man wasn't among the top riders on the circuit, he'd have a hard time scratching out a living. It was a winner's game, and losing was the order of the day for most cowboys.

“Not with that tattoo and all those little silver rings in your hide,” Tyler said, hedging.

“There's a rule against tattoos?” Davie sounded hesitant now. Which might be a good thing.

“No,” Tyler answered. “There's no rule against tattoos, or piercings, either. But the other cowboys would josh you right out of the arena, most places.”

“The tattoo's temporary,” Davie said. “Good for six months if I don't wash my neck too often.”

Again, Tyler laughed.

“And I guess I could quit wearing these rings.”

“Guess so,” Tyler said moderately. He didn't know a lot about kids, except for what he'd gathered by being one once, but he figured if he showed too much enthusiasm for scrubbing off the spider and letting all those little holes grow shut, Davie would dig in his heels.

Especially if he really was a Creed.

“If I do it—go cowboy, I mean—will you get a satellite hookup so I can watch some decent TV?”

Tyler grinned, shaking his head in mingled admiration and amazement. The kid definitely didn't lack for gall. “That depends on what you mean by ‘go cowboy,' I guess,” he said.

“Getting rid of the tattoo and the rings and ditching all my Goth gear,” Davie said. Mischief danced in his eyes. “Wearing jeans and boots and learning to talk like a hick.
That's
what it means to go cowboy.”

“Thanks for clearing that up,” Tyler said dryly, realizing how much he liked this kid, and how much he'd have missed him if Doreen had made him go back home.

That was what happened when a man let himself care,
Tyler supposed—about a lost dog, a thirteen-year-old boy…or a woman. It made him vulnerable, open to the kind of pain he hadn't had to risk when he'd kept his heart closed for business.

Davie was peering at him. “You all right?” he asked.

Tyler realized some of what he felt must have been showing on the outside. That was a new phenomenon, too.

Part of being home again, most likely. And being home meant more than just living on the ranch and getting his mail at the hole-in-the-wall post office in Stillwater Springs.

It meant being Tyler Creed, and nobody else, and taking the good with the bad.

“I'm all right,” he said.

“If you're worried about telling me my mom signed me over for a chunk of money, it's okay,” Davie volunteered. “I know it makes her look bad, but she's really just trying to put as much distance between me and Roy as she can.”

Tyler stared at Davie, stunned. “You
knew?
”

“Mom told me,” Davie said. “I called her at the casino last night, on your cell phone. She said she and Roy would be leaving town soon—she's giving her two-weeks' notice today—but she'll write to me and e-mail, too, once she gets a computer.”

Tyler took all that in, and still didn't know how to sort it out. “And this doesn't bother you?”

“I've been through worse,” Davie said. In Tyler's opinion, he was way too philosophical for a thirteen-year-old. “Your cabin is pretty much a dump, but you've
got Kit Carson, and that lake, and Logan said I can ride his horses anytime as long as there's somebody around to make sure I don't break my neck. So far, I haven't gone hungry. And living with you is one hell of a lot better than living with Roy.”

“What kind of ‘worse' have you been through, Davie?” Tyler asked, after a little silence.

Davie shrugged. “Before Roy, there was Marty. He was a world-class jerk. Used to get me by the hair and throw me out the front door when Mom was working. Said just looking at me pissed him off. He died of a heart attack or something—had some kind of fit at supper one night and just keeled over. Boo-hoo.”

There was no compassion in Davie's voice, but there was no self-pity, either. He was simply stating the facts of his life, grim as they were.

“Before Marty, Mom shacked up with some old coot with a sheep ranch down in Wyoming. Bill didn't hit me or anything, but he was so cheap he rationed out the food, and when he got tired of buying grub, he said I stole money from his wallet and kicked us out.”

“
Did
you steal money from his wallet?” Tyler asked. Life with Jake Creed was beginning to look like a picnic compared to all Davie had experienced.

“Yeah,” Davie said, in a no-big-deal tone of voice. “But only enough to get Mom and me some bus tickets after we hitchhiked to the next town. And to get us kicked out in the first place, of course.”

“Of course,” Tyler said dryly. “You're a piece of work, you know that?”

“So I've been told,” Davie replied lightly. He checked the position of the sun, like he was John Wayne leading the thirsty survivors of an Indian attack out of the desert or something. “We ought to get these horses back to the barn,” he said. “And I promised Josh and Alec they could watch me take out my eyebrow ring.”

“You were already planning that?”

“Not unless you agreed to the satellite-TV thing, I wasn't.” Davie stretched his legs again, smiled. “Do we have a deal or not?”

Tyler sighed. “We have a deal,” he said. “And if I ever catch you going through
my
wallet—”

Davie nudged his horse into motion, passed Tyler on the narrow trail leading down onto the plain. “You'll do what?” he asked casually. “Go postal? Beat me up? Drag me behind your truck for a few miles?”

“Ground you until you're thirty-seven,” Tyler answered. “
And
throw that damn TV of yours in the lake for good measure.”

Turning to look back at Tyler, Davie whistled in exclamation. He was still grinning, but he looked like what he should have been allowed to be all along: a kid. “Damn,” he said. “You play hardball. You'd really throw a perfectly good TV
in the lake?
”

“In a heartbeat,” Tyler said. “Satellite dish and all.”

“Can I sign up for the rodeo?”

“One thing at a time, kid. You got the TV. You got the satellite dish. Whether or not you can rodeo will depend on how you do in school this fall, and your general attitude between now and then.”

“Oh, here we go with the ‘attitude' thing,” Davie scoffed good-naturedly. He and Tyler rode side by side then, since the trail was wider. “What's wrong with my attitude?”

“Beyond being a smart-ass, you're doing okay in that department,” Tyler allowed.

“You'd be a smart-ass, too, if you'd had a childhood like mine.”

“Save it, Davie. I
did
have a childhood like yours, except for all the road trips.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No, Dr. Phil, I do not want to talk about it. Not right now, anyway.”

“Because you've got a hot date?”

“Attitude alert,” Tyler warned.

“Excuse
me,
” Davie replied.

Tyler gave him a look.

Davie was undaunted. “If you're going to marry Miss Lily, Marshal,” he drawled, doing a pretty good imitation of a character in a late-night Western, “you'd better fancy up the ole homestead. The lady's a class act. The kind who likes indoor plumbing.”

“I
have
indoor plumbing.”

“Which is why you bathe in the lake.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Not unless I'm asleep. Even then, I probably talk. It's a wonder I don't sleepwalk, too, the way I've been abused.”

Tyler wrapped the reins loosely around his saddle horn just long enough to play a few notes on an invisible violin.

Davie laughed. “I guess the old sympathy ploy won't work with you.”

“Guess not,” Tyler said.

They rode the rest of the way in cordial silence, and when they got back to Logan's place, two little boys—Josh and Alec, Tyler presumed—were perched on the top rail of the corral fence, waiting.

“Is he going to get satellite TV?” the smaller one called to Davie.

“Yep,” Davie answered, pretending to take a bow, even though he was still in the saddle. “I
told
you I was the master.”