go. Briana and the kids were folding up their picnic blanket. The younger boy, Alec, approached with a slice of bologna for Sidekick.
“You a cowboy?” the kid asked, taking notice of Logan’s worn boots while the dog feasted on lunch meat, downing rind and all.
Logan thrust a hand through his hair. “I was, once,” he said, aware of Briana—now, where the devil had she gotten a name like that?—looking on.
“My dad’s a cowboy,” Alec said. “We don’t see him much.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Logan replied.
“He rodeos,” Alec explained. “Mom divorced him online after he left us off in front of Wal-Mart and didn’t come back to get us.”
Something bit into the pit of Logan’s stomach. He felt fury, certainly—what kind of man abandoned a woman and two little boys and a dog?—but a disturbing amount of relief, too. Once again, his gaze strayed to Briana, who was just opening her mouth to call Alec off. Damn, but she was delectable, all curves and bright hair and smooth, lightly freckled skin.
“Mom takes real good care of us, though,” Alec went on, when Logan didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Old Jake hadn’t been the father of the year, either, but for all his womanizing, all his drinking, all his brawling, he’d worked steadily and hard up there in the woods, felling trees. On his worst day, he wouldn’t have left his woman or his kids to fend for themselves.
“Bet she does,” Logan managed to respond, as Briana drew closer.
“She’s a supervisor over at the casino,” Alex stated, speeding up his words as his mother got nearer.
Briana arrived, placed a slender hand on Alec’s T-shirted shoulder. Both boys had dark hair and eyes, in contrast to their mother’s fair coloring. A picture of her ex-husband formed in Logan’s mind. He was probably a charmer, one of those gypsy types, with a good line and a sad story.
“That’s enough, Alec,” Briana said calmly. She kept her eyes averted from Logan’s face, as though she’d suddenly turned shy. “We have to go home now. You have chores to do, and lessons.”
Alec wrinkled his nose. “Mom home-schools us,” he told Logan. “We don’t even get a summer vacation.”
Logan arched an eyebrow, perched his hands on his hips. Resisted an urge to rub his beard-stubbled chin self-consciously.
“That,” Briana said, squeezing the boy’s shoulder gently, “is because you goof off so much, you have to put in extra time.”
“I wish we could go to school in Stillwater Springs, like the other kids,” Alec lamented. “They get to play baseball. They ride a bus and go on field trips and everything.”
Briana’s face tightened almost imperceptibly, and that flush rose again, along the undersides of her cheekbones. “Alec,” she said firmly, “Mr. Creed is not interested in our personal business. Let’s run along home before the mosquitoes come out, okay?”
“Mr. Creed” was, in fact, interested, and out of all proportion to good sense, too. “Logan,” he said.
Briana checked her watch, nodded. “Logan,” she repeated distractedly.
“Can Josh and me call you ‘Logan,’ too?” Alec asked, his voice hopeful.
A woman who home-schooled her children might have some pretty strict ideas about etiquette. Logan didn’t want to step on Briana’s toes, so he said, “If it’s all right with your mother.”
“We’ll see,” Briana said, still flustered. Then, like a hen, but without the clucking, she gathered her brood and herded them off toward the creek. Dylan’s place was just on the other side of a rickety little wooden bridge, hidden from sight by a copse of birch trees in full summer leaf. The black dog waddled after them.
Logan felt strangely bereft, watching them go. Sidekick must have, too, because he gave a little whimper of protest.
Logan bent, reassured the dog with a pat on the head. “Let’s go home, boy,” he said. “By now, word will have gotten around that I’m back, and we’re bound to get company.”
But neither of them moved until Briana, the boys and the dog disappeared from sight.
Logan paused, thinking he ought to stop by Jake’s grave before he left, but he was afraid he’d spit on it if he did. So he headed toward the orchard instead, Sidekick hurrying to keep up.
Sure enough, Cassie Greencreek’s eyesore of a car sat beside the house. It sort of classed up the place, which was a sad commentary by anybody’s standards.
Cassie was waiting for him. She’d settled herself on the top porch step, looking resplendent in a purple polyester dress big enough to hide a Volkswagen. Her waistlength black hair was streaked with silver now, and her brown eyes glinted with a combination of welcome and bad temper.
“Logan Creed,” she declared, receiving the dog graciously when he went to greet her. “I never thought you’d have the nerve to come back here, after all the goings-on at Jake’s funeral.”
Logan grinned sheepishly, pausing on the weedchoked walk. Spreading his hands in the time-honored here-I-am gesture.
“When was the last time you shaved?” Cassie demanded, making room for Sidekick on the step. “You look like some saddle-bum.”
Logan laughed at that, drew near and bent to kiss the old woman’s upturned face.
“I love you, too, Grandma,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOUSE THAT had sheltered Briana Grant, her sons and her dog for just over two years looked the same as ever, in the gathering dusk, and yet it was different, too.
A strange little thrill, not in the least unpleasant, danced in the depths of her abdomen as she looked around.
Same noisy, dented refrigerator, its front all but hidden by Alec and Josh’s artwork.
Same worn-out linoleum floors.
Same old-fashioned harvest-gold wall phone with the twisty plastic cord. Beneath it, on the warped wooden counter, the red light on the answering machine winked steadily.
What had changed?
It wasn’t the house, of course. She was different, altered somehow, and on a quantum level, too, as if the very structure of her cells had been zapped with some dangerous new energy.
What the hell? she wondered, biting down hard on her lower lip as the boys engaged in their usual cominghome chaos—Josh logging on to the computer at the desk under the kitchen window, Wanda barking and turning in circles around her water dish, Alec diving for the answering machine when he saw that the tiny red light was blinking.
“Maybe Dad called!” Alec shouted, punching buttons.
“Maybe the president called,” Josh mocked bitterly.
“Shut up,
