hoping he’d come back after he’d cooled off and find them gone. Serve him right.
Instead, he’d kept right on going.
The next day, a load of groceries had arrived, via a delivery service, along with a note from Dylan saying there was an old Chevy truck parked in the barn and she could use it if she could get it running. Since then, they’d had no communication beyond the occasional e-mail or phone call. When something needed fixing and the job was beyond Briana’s limited home-repair skills, Dylan was quick to send a check, and Briana was careful to provide a receipt, though he’d never asked for one.
Now, Josh stepped up, stood close to her side. The polar opposite of Alec, Josh considered everyone a stranger and thus potential trouble, and proceeded accordingly until they’d proved themselves. “Nobody pays us to take care of the cemetery,” he said. “We do it because it needs doing.”
Logan’s smile came suddenly, and it set Briana back on her heels a little. She added very white teeth to the inventory she’d taken of him earlier, while he was taking her measure. “Well,” he said, “I appreciate it. And that’s as good a reason to do a thing as any.”
Cautiously mollified, Josh softened a little, but he didn’t quite smile. He was letting Briana know, by his stiff stance and knotted fists, that he’d protect her, and Alec and Wanda, too, if necessary. Thanks to Vance, Josh was half again too manly for a ten-year-old, too serious and too sad.
“Where do you live?” he asked Logan solemnly.
Logan cocked a thumb over one shoulder. “At the main ranch house,” he said.
“Nobody lives there,” Josh argued.
“Josh.” Briana sighed.
“Someone lives there now,” Logan replied affably. “Sidekick and I moved in today.”
Josh looked at the copper-colored dog. “He’s skinny. Don’t you feed him?”
“He and I just recently met up,” Logan answered. His voice was easy. “He’ll fill out as time goes by.”
Wanda bestirred her considerable bulk and ambled over to sniff at Sidekick’s nose. Sidekick sniffed back. Then both of them lost interest in each other.
“I still think he could use one of our bologna sandwiches,” Josh insisted sagely. Then, as a concession, he added, “He looks pretty clean.”
“Half drained the well getting that done,” Logan said. “About exhausted the soap supply, too.”
Josh broke down and grinned.
It finally occurred to Briana that Logan must have come to the cemetery to visit someone’s grave. And a pilgrimage like that, especially after a long absence, might require privacy.
“Maybe we should go,” she said.
But Logan shook his head. “Stay right here and carry on with your picnic,” he told her. Then, addressing Josh, he added, “Sidekick can have that sandwich if the offer’s still good, but it’s only right to warn you that he might hurl. Seems to have a delicate stomach.”
Hurling being serious business to a ten-year-old, Josh nodded. “Dog food would be better,” he said. “We could lend you some of Wanda’s kibble if you need it.”
Logan chuckled, looked as though he’d like to ruffle Josh’s hair, but didn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “But we made a run to town for grub earlier, and we’re all set.”
Briana smiled, herded Wanda and the boys back toward the picnic blanket. Sidekick stayed with Logan, who went to crouch beside one of the graves.
“Can I take Sidekick some bologna?” Alec whispered.
“No,” Briana said, watching Logan. “Not now.”
“It’s a private moment, doofus,” Josh told his brother.
“Dogs don’t have private moments, stink-breath!” Alec countered.
“Be quiet,” Briana said, wondering why her hands shook a little as she poured drinks and unwrapped sandwiches.
LOGAN’S EYES burned as he ran the tips of his fingers over the simple lettering chiseled into his mother’s headstone. Teresa Courtland Creed. Wife and Mother.
He’d been three years old when his mom lost her battle with breast cancer, and there’d been a gaping hole in his life ever since. His dad, Jake Creed, never a solid citizen in the first place, had gone on a ten-year bender starting the day of the funeral. His grief hadn’t kept him from marrying Dylan’s mother six months later, though. Poor, sweet Maggie had died in a car accident four days after her son’s seventh birthday. True to his pattern, Jake had married again before the year was out—this time to Angela, an idealistic young schoolteacher with no more sense than to marry a raging drunk with two wild kids. Doubtless, she’d thought all Jake needed was the love of a good woman. She’d been a fine stepmother to Logan and Dylan, and had soon given birth to Tyler.
She’d lasted a whole five years, Angela had.
But Jake’s carousing had just plain worn her out. One fine summer day, she’d made a batch of fried chicken, told Logan and Dylan and Tyler to be sure to do their chores and say their prayers, and left.
Jake had turned the whole countryside upside down looking for her. Enraged, he was convinced she’d left him for another man, and he meant to drag her home by the hair if it came to that.
Instead, Angela had had herself a first-class nervous breakdown. She’d checked into a motel on the outskirts of Missoula, swallowed a bottle of tranquilizers and died.
Such, Logan thought, was the proud history of the Creeds.
After that, Jake had given up on marriage. When Logan was a junior in college, the old man had gotten himself killed in a freak logging accident.
Remembering the funeral made Logan’s stomach roll. As ludicrous as it seemed in retrospect, considering the havoc Jake’s drinking had wreaked on all their lives, the three of them had swilled whiskey, then gotten into the mother of all fistfights and ended the night in separate jail cells, guests of Sheriff Floyd Book.
They hadn’t spoken since, though Logan kept track of his brothers, mostly via the Internet. Dylan, four-time world champion bull-rider, was apparently a professional celebrity, now that he’d hung up his rodeo gear for good. He’d even been in a couple of movies, though as far as Logan could tell, Dylan was famous for doing not much of anything in particular.
Only in America.
Tyler, whose event was bareback bronc busting, was still following the rodeo. He’d been involved in a few well-publicized romantic scrapes, invested his considerable winnings in real estate and signed on as a national spokesman for a designer boot company. Though he was the youngest, Tyler was also the wildest of Jake Creed’s three sons. He had issues aplenty, between the way Jake had raised them and his mother’s death.
But his brothers’ stories were just that—their stories. Logan knew he’d have his hands full straightening out his own life, and while he regretted it, the fact was, the Creed brothers were estranged. And the estrangement might
