married Dylan a while back.”
Kristy came down the porch steps, through the open gate in the picket fence, which sagged a little on its hinges. When Hal hauled himself slowly out of the car, Kristy greeted him with a hug.
“We’ve all missed you,” she told him. “Welcome back.”
Lily peeled herself off the car seat and got out to stand in the road, while Tess scrambled out of the back.
“Hi, Lily,” Kristy said. “It’s good to see you again.” Her dark blue eyes drifted to Tess, who was just rounding the front of the car. “And you must be Tess.”
Tess nodded eagerly, probably pleased that someone in this strange new place knew her. “My daddy died in a plane crash,” she said. “When I was four.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kristy said gently.
“Are there any kids my age in this town?” Tess asked. “I’d sure like to play with some of them, if there are.”
Kristy smiled, and her gaze met Lily’s for a moment, then went immediately back to Tess’s upturned face. “I can think of several,” she said. “In the meantime, though, let’s get your grandfather inside. Lunch is on the table.”
Weary gratitude swept through Lily. Just as she’d forgotten so much about Tyler, she’d also forgotten the nature of small towns like Stillwater Springs. When someone got sick or fell on hard times, people rallied. They aired out rooms and made beds up with clean sheets and set lunch out on the kitchen table.
“I’m plum tuckered,” Hal said. “Believe I’ll take a nap on my own bed.”
He went on inside, while Lily, Kristy and Tess followed at a slower pace.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Kristy said to Lily. “Briana—that’s my sister-in-law, Logan’s wife—and I got the keys from your dad’s next-door neighbor and spiffed the house up a little.”
Again, Lily’s eyes burned. In Chicago, she’d had millions of acquaintances and clients, but no close friends. Back in the day, she and Kristy had spent a lot of time together.
“You must be worn-out,” Kristy said, reading her face. “After lunch, why don’t you lie down and rest for a while, and I’ll take Tess over to the library for story hour.”
Lily had kept her guard up for so long, living in the big city, coping with all things hectic, that letting it down left her a little dizzy. “Would you like that?” she asked Tess. “To go to the library, I mean?”
“Yes,” Tess answered. Not a major surprise; the child had taught herself to read at three.
Lunch turned out to be fresh iced tea, tuna sandwiches and potato salad. Lily fixed a plate for her dad and took it to his room off the kitchen, and when she returned, she sat down with Tess and Kristy in that dearly familiar room and ate, actually tasting her food for the first time since she’d gotten the call about her father’s heart attack.
Kristy, she remembered, had gotten in touch soon afterward. And Dylan, an old friend, had come on the line moments later, to reassure her and offer her the use of a private plane.
“You look happy,” she told Kristy, when Tess had finished eating and rushed off to explore a little before washing up for the trip to the library.
“I am,” Kristy said, glowing. Then she reached across and squeezed Lily’s hand briefly. “Things will get better,” she promised. “You’re home, among friends, and your dad’s going to be fine.”
Lily laughed, but it was a halfhearted sound, weary and a little—no, a lot—skeptical. “If you say so,” she said. “Thanks for everything you did, Kristy. And thank Briana, too. Wherever she is.”
Kristy smiled, pushed back her chair and stood to begin clearing the table. “You’ll meet her soon enough,” she assured Lily. “She and Logan are building on to their house, and she had to go home to talk to the contractor.”
Logan was married, and building on to his house.
Kristy was obviously happy with Dylan.
And Tyler was probably still sleeping with waitresses—if he hadn’t graduated to sexy movie stars and supermodels.
As if she cared.
CHAPTER TWO
I F HIS BRAIN HADN’T SNAGGED on Lily Ryder and then gotten snarled like so much fishing line, Dylan wouldn’t have taken Tyler by surprise the way he did, there in the auto-repair shop. A hard slug to his right shoulder jerked him back to the here and now, pronto.
Tyler turned, ready to fight, but drew up when he saw Dylan’s side-slanted grin and the bring-it-on glint in his blue eyes.
“That city-slicker rig of yours break down someplace?” Dylan asked.
Tyler unclenched his right fist, let out a breath. Much as he would have liked to punch his middle brother, he figured it might scare Kit Carson, so he didn’t. The dog had been through enough. “I swapped it for a truck,” he heard himself say. “And that broke down.”
Dylan raised one eyebrow. “Need a ride?”
Tyler looked down at the mutt, resting watchfully at his feet, brown eyes rolling from one brother to the other. The poor critter looked as though he expected to be smashed between two giant cymbals at any moment.
“Yeah,” Tyler said, reluctantly agreeing to Dylan’s offer. “The tow truck’s out on another call, and I’m fifth in line, so it might be tomorrow before they can haul the Chevy in and fix it.”
After he’d told Vance Grant, the only mechanic on duty, that he’d check back in the morning, Tyler and Kit followed Dylan out into the afternoon heat. They made a stop at the supermarket, for dog kibble, coffee and a few other staples, and headed, by tacit agreement, for the ranch. In all that time, barely two words passed between them.
They were a good three miles out of town, in fact, Kit panting happily in the backseat of Dylan’s extended-cab pickup, before it occurred to Tyler to wonder how his brother had happened along at just the right—or wrong—time.
Reflecting on the question, Tyler idly rubbed his sore shoulder, where Dylan had slugged him. “Did you come into the shop looking for me?” he asked.
“Yup,” Dylan answered easily, without so much as glancing in his direction. The slight tilt of amusement at the corner of his mouth told Tyler he’d seen him nursing that arm, though. “Word gets around. Big news, when a Creed hits the old hometown.”
Tyler sighed. “Not much happens around here, if we’re news.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dylan said. “If you ever stuck around long enough to find out what’s going on around Stillwater Springs, that is.”
They’d run into each other a little over
