Montana Creeds: Dylan. Linda Miller Lael

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      He needed his clothes, and his shaving gear, and his laptop.

      “It’s Dylan,” he said, to Madeline’s hello.

      “You winnin’, sugar?” She’d cultivated a Southern drawl, but every once in a while, the Minnesota came through, with its faintly Scandinavian lilt.

      “I always do,” Dylan murmured, looking at his sleeping child.

      “Then we ought to celebrate,” Madeline crooned. “Find us a sexy movie on pay-per-view and—”

      “Look, Madeline, I can’t make it over there tonight. Something—er—came up—”

      “Where are you?” There was a snap in Madeline’s tone now. She wasn’t possessive—he’d have driven fifty miles out of his way to avoid her if she had been—but she had turned down other offers for the duration of his stay in Vegas, she’d made that abundantly clear, and she clearly wasn’t happy about being stood up.

      “I’m at South Point,” he began.

      “Damn you,” Madeline said, downright peevish now, “you picked up some—some woman, didn’t you?”

      “Not exactly.”

      “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

      “I’m with my daughter, Madeline,” Dylan said, patient only because he didn’t want to disturb Bonnie. “She’s two years old.”

      The croon was back. “Oh, bring her over here! I just love babies.”

      Dylan actually considered the offer, for a nanosecond. Then he remembered Madeline’s penchant for impromptu sex, the smell of stale pot smoke that permeated her condo and the bowl of colorfully packaged condoms in the middle of her coffee table.

      “Uh—no,” he said. “She’s pretty tired.”

      He sensed another huff building up beneath Madeline’s drawl. “Then why did you bother to call at all?” she purred. In a moment, the claws would be out, poised to rip him to bloody shreds.

      “I need my stuff,” Dylan admitted, ducking his head a little, the way he had on the playground when he was a kid, in anticipation of a blow. “If you’d just put it all in a cab and send it this way, I’d be obliged.”

      “I wouldn’t think of doing that,” Madeline said. “I’ll drop it all off on my way to the club.” Her slight emphasis on the last two words was a clear message—if he was going to be a no-show, far be it from her to sit home alone watching pay-per-view.

      “Madeline, you don’t have to—”

      “South Point? That’s where you said you are, isn’t it?”

      “Yes, but—”

      She hung up on him.

      Dylan sat down on the edge of his bed, opposite Bonnie’s, and propped his elbows on his thighs. Madeline would want to come straight up to the room, probably to see if he’d lied about the company he was keeping, and he didn’t want her waking Bonnie. But unless he could talk Madeline into sending his things up with a bellman, which didn’t seem likely, he’d have no other choice.

      He’d have to leave Bonnie alone to go downstairs, and that wasn’t an option.

      Twenty minutes later, the phone rang, causing Bonnie to stir in the depths of some baby-dream, and he pounced on it, whispered, “Hello?”

      “I’m downstairs,” Madeline said. “What’s your room number, sweetie?”

      Dylan suppressed another sigh. God, he hated being called “sweetie.” “Twelve-forty-two,” he said.

      Madeline, a leggy redhead, almost as tall as he was, at six feet, whisked her shapely self to his door with no measurable delay. Looking through the peephole, he saw that she was flanked by a bellman with a loaded cart. Her shiny mouth was tight, and her eyes narrowed slightly.

      Reluctantly, Dylan admitted her.

      She immediately scanned the room, her gaze landing on Bonnie, while the bellman waited politely to unload some of the stuff from the cart. Dylan handed him a tip and brought in the laptop, his shaving kit and his suitcase himself.

      “She is precious!” Madeline enthused, looming over Bonnie’s bed.

      “Be quiet,” Dylan said. “She’s had a rough day.” A rough life was more like it. As soon as he got rid of Madeline, he’d bite the bullet and call Logan. They’d made some progress lately, he and his older brother, but the ground could get rocky at any time, and asking big brother for help was going to be hard on his pride.

      Madeline put a shh finger to her plump mouth and batted her false eyelashes. Put her in a big Vegas headdress, with feathers and spangles, a skimpy costume, high heels and fishnet stockings, and Bonnie, if she chanced to wake up and see a stranger standing over her, would have nightmares about showgirls until she died of old age.

      He took Madeline by the elbow and gave her the bum’s rush toward the door. “Good night, thank you, and what do I owe you for the favor?”

      She patted his cheek. “We’ll settle up next time you come through Vegas,” she said. She paused. “The hotel could probably provide a babysitter, then we could—”

      “No,” Dylan said flatly.

      Blessedly, and none too soon, Madeline left.

      Dylan showered, shaved, brushed his teeth and headed for bed in his boxer briefs; he hadn’t owned a pair of pajamas since grade school.

      But he had Bonnie to think about now. He couldn’t go parading around in front of a two-year-old in his shorts—even if she was asleep.

      Fatherhood, he thought, was getting more complicated by the minute. Especially since he didn’t know jack-shit about it—his experience had been limited to a few brief visits with Bonnie whenever Sharlene deigned to light someplace for a month.

      He pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and then he crashed.

      He’d call Logan the next day, he promised himself. Or the next day, or the one after that …

      KRISTY MADISON BUSTLED around her big kitchen, opening a can of food for her white Persian cat, Winston, gathering her notes for that night’s book-club meeting at the library, grabbing her cell phone off the counter where she’d been charging it during a quick trip home for supper.

      She wished she could stay in tonight, soak in her big claw-foot bathtub and read a book, but the reading group had been her idea, after all. And it had turned out to be a popular one—twenty-six people had signed up.

      Privately, Kristy wondered how many of them simply wanted a close-up look at Briana, Logan Creed’s love interest. Before Briana had taken up with Logan, she’d been just another single mother, pulling down a paycheck at the casino on the outskirts of Stillwater Springs, homeschooling her two boys, Josh and Alec, and generally minding her own business.

      Kristy СКАЧАТЬ