Read Online Montana Creeds: Tyler by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page A

the handful of pills on a paper towel, and handed them to him, along with a glass of water. Watched as he forced down his medication.
    â€œGood night, sweetheart,” he said, when he’d finished, and set his empty glass in the sink.
    When was the last time he’d called her sweetheart?
    The night Tyler handed her her heart in fragments, that was when. Had it really been that long?
    Lily closed her eyes and waited until Hal had left the room. Until she heard his bedroom door close, just down the hall from the kitchen.
    And then she cried, for little girls without fathers.
    And for big ones, too.

CHAPTER FOUR
    T HE FIFTEEN-YEAR GAP between their ages showed in Doreen’s haggard face in ways it hadn’t way back when. She looked thin in her casino-waitress uniform, and lines in her forehead were etched deep. She was developing jowls, and her mouth was hard, the lipstick too red and slightly off-center.
    Still, her weary eyes softened a little when she recognized Tyler, standing in one of the casino’s several restaurants. Davie sat in a booth nearby, nursing a soda and pretending to read one of those glorified comic books that pass as a novel.
    He doesn’t look much like me, Tyler thought, with distracted regret. But, then, he hadn’t looked much like Jake Creed, either. Secretly, he’d fantasized that his mother had been fooling around, conceived him with some lover, but he doubted his own fantasy. Poor Angie didn’t seem to have the strength to defy Jake that way. Or maybe she’d just loved her husband too much to cheat.
    In the end, that love had destroyed her.
    â€œTyler,” Doreen said, almost breathing the name.
    â€œDoreen,” Tyler replied, with a nod. Now that he wasface-to-face with the woman who might have borne his child without bothering to let him know, all the things he’d planned to say, all the things he’d rehearsed on the way into town with Kit Carson riding shotgun, deserted him.
    â€œI could take a break in half an hour,” she said.
    Tyler merely nodded again. He’d left Kit Carson at Cassie’s to spare the dog a long wait in the Blazer, so he had time. He could cool his heels awhile.
    Doreen hesitated for a few moments, looking from Tyler to Davie and back again. Then she sighed and turned to walk away, take another order for another plate of nachos, another mug of beer.
    Everything about her, the way she moved, the way she spoke, said she was miserable. Hated her life, but didn’t know how to escape it.
    Unlike Angela Creed. She’d found a way out, and devil take the grief she’d left behind.
    Tyler approached Davie’s table.
    â€œMind if I join you?”
    Davie didn’t look up. Just shrugged.
    The cover of the graphic novel showed a woman being devoured by some hideous beast, and Davie seemed absorbed.
    Tyler sat down across from Davie, signaled another waitress, ordered coffee. He liked a beer once in a while, but with Jake Creed for a father and a wild youth not that far behind him, a man tended to moderate his alcohol intake. He wondered briefly if Logan and Dylan took the same care not to overdo the booze.
    â€œGood book?” he asked.
    â€œWhat do you care?” Davie shot back.
    â€œDo all those hooks and rings hurt?” Tyler persisted, frowning at the eyebrow piercings. The silver ring through Davie’s lower lip made him a little queasy, and after some of the bar brawls he’d been in, that was no small matter.
    â€œHurt when they did it,” Davie allowed, sounding defiant and, at the same time, interested. “What are you doing here?”
    â€œI came to talk to your mother,” Tyler said.
    â€œAbout what?”
    Tyler wasn’t about to bring up the paternity question—not before a word with Doreen, anyway. “Just things. Dylan tells me Sheriff Huntinghorse wanted to send you to a foster home, and you said you’d run off if he did.”
    There was no