Lily Ryder Kenyon is a widow with a six-year-old daughter,
a sick father and a successful career in merchandising in
Chicago. Lily is also back in Stillwater Springs, the home
of Tyler Creed, the boy who broke her heart, destroyed as
only a betrayed 17-year-old can be. Her dad told her she'd
get over Tyler; and she thought she had, until today.
Tyler, the youngest Creed brother and the one with the
hottest temper and the biggest chip on his shoulder, has
come home to Stillwater Springs. He's left the rodeo and
the big-money stunt work. He has come back to take on all
the old ghosts, one by one. Win or lose, the fight is on.
Being a Creed, he'd never had the good sense to be scared.
But Tyler is scared now -- of one little woman.
Lily makes him feel things he never thought possible. He
screwed up years ago, and he's come to realize just how
much, mostly in the area of his heart. He is being given a
second chance and he doesn't want to blow it this time.
Lily, being a passionate woman, can't resist this handsome
cowboy she once -- and still -- loves. The teenage boy she
lost her heart to has turned into the man she can't live
without. Sparks fly and the fireworks begin.
Can Tyler reconcile with his brothers, Logan and Dylan? Can
he find the love that Logan and Dylan have found in the
arms of the strong and beautiful women who love them in
return? Do Tyler and Lily have a chance at a future
together?
You must read LOGAN and DYLAN's stories first. Then return
home once again to Stillwater Springs, for TYLER's story.
You'll be glad you did. All three stories are warm and
gratifying and contain the charm of Linda Lael
Miller's western romances, unmatched by any other
author. They are adventures of the heart.
Whether winning championship belt buckles or dealing with
Hollywood types for endorsement deals, former rodeo star
Tyler Creed can handle anything. Except standing on the
same patch of land as his estranged brothers. Yet there
they are in Stillwater Springs, barely talking but trying
to restore the old Creed ranch—and family.
Lily Kenyon knows all about family estrangements and
secrets. The single mom has come home to set things right,
to put down roots for her daughter. What she doesn’t expect
is Tyler Creed, whom she’s loved since childhood. How the
handsome, stubborn cowboy who left home to seek his fortune
just might find it was always under the Montana sky….
Excerpt
Tyler Creed suppressed a grin as the old guy in the Wal-Mart
parking lot stared, dumbfounded, at the fancy set of keys
resting in his work-roughened palm. Blinked a couple of
times, like somebody trying to shake off an illusion, then
gave the brim of his well-worn baseball cap an anxious tug.
According to the bright yellow stitching on the hat, his
name was Walt and he was the world's greatest dad.
Walt looked at his ten-year-old Chevy truck, the sides
streaked with dry dirt, the mud flaps coated, and then
shifted to stare at Tyler's shiny white Escalade.
"I thought you was kiddin', mister," he said. "You really
want to trade that Cadillac, straight across, for my old
rig? It's got near a hundred thousand miles on it, this
junker, and every once in a while, a part falls off. Last
week, it was the muffler—"
Tyler nodded, weary of Walt's prattle but not about to show
it. "That's the idea," he replied quietly.
The aging redneck approached the Cadillac, touched the hood
with something like reverence. "Is this thing stolen?" Walt
asked, understandably suspicious. After all, Tyler
reflected, a man didn't run across a deal like that every
day, especially in Crap Creek, Montana, or whatever the hell
that wide spot in the road was called.
Tyler chuckled. "No, sir," he said. "I own it, fair and
square. The title's in the glove compartment. You agree, and
I'll sign off on it right now, and be on my way."
"Wait till Myrtle comes out with the groceries and sees
this," the old fella marveled, hooking his thumbs in the
straps of his greasy bib overalls, shaking his head once and
finally cutting loose with a gap-toothed smile. Walt needed
dental work.
Tyler waited.
"I still don't understand why any sane man would want to
make a swap like this," Walt insisted. "Could be, you're not
right in the head." He paused, squinted up into Tyler's
impassive face. "You look all right, though."
Involuntarily, Tyler glanced at his watch, an expensive
number with a twenty-four-karat-gold rodeo cowboy riding a
bronc inlaid in the platinum face. Diamonds glittered at the
twelve, three, six and nine spots, and the thing was as
incongruous with who he was as the pricey SUV he was
virtually giving away, but he'd never considered parting
with the watch. His late wife, Shawna, had sold her horse
trailer and a jeweled saddle she'd won in a barrel racing
event to buy it for him, the day he took his first championship.
"I don't know as I'm eager to trade with a man in a hurry,"
Walt said astutely, narrowing his weary eyes a little.
"You're runnin' from somethin', and it might be the law. I
don't need that kind of trouble, I can tell you. Myrtle and
me, we got ourselves a nice life—nothin' fancy—I worked at
the lumber mill for thirty years—but the double-wide is paid
off and we manage to scrape together ten bucks for each of
the grandchildren on their birthdays—"
Tyler suppressed a sigh.
"That's some watch," Walt observed, in no particular hurry
to finalize the bargain. The wise gaze took in Tyler's jeans
and shirt, newly purchased at rollback prices, lingered on
his costly boots, handmade in a specialty shop in Texas.
Rose again to his black Western hat, pulled low over his
eyes. "You win it rodeoin' or somethin'?"
"Or something," Tyler confirmed. His own brothers, Logan and
Dylan, didn't know about his marriage to Shawna, or the
accident that had killed her; he wasn't about to confide in
a stranger he'd met in the parking lot at Wal-Mart.
"You look like a bronc-buster," Walt decided, after another
leisurely once-over. "Sorta familiar, too."
You look like a forklift driver, Tyler responded
silently. He looped his thumbs in the waistband of his stiff
new jeans. "Deal or no deal?" he asked mildly.
"Let me see that title," Walt said, still hedging his bets.
"And some identification, if you don't mind."
Knowing it wouldn't matter if he did mind, Tyler
fetched the requested document from the SUV, pausing to pat
the ugly dog he'd found half-starved in another parking lot,
in another town, on the long road home.
"Dog part of the swap?" Walt asked, getting cagier now.
"No," Tyler said. "He stays with me."
Walt looked regretful. "That's too bad. Ever since my blue
tick hound, Minford, died of old age last winter, I've been
hankerin' to get me another dog. They're good company, and
with Myrtle waitin' tables every day to bank-roll her bingo
habit, I'm alone a lot."
"Plenty of dogs in need of homes," Tyler pointed out. "The
shelters are full of them."
"Reckon that's so," Walt agreed. He studied the title Tyler
handed over like it was a summons or something. "Looks all
right," he said. "Let's see that ID."
Tyler pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and produced a
driver's license.
Walt's rheumy eyes widened a little, and he whistled, low
and shrill, in exclamation. "Tyler Creed," he said. "I
thought I'd heard that name before, when I saw it on the
title to this Caddie of yours. Four times world champion
bronc-rider. Seen you on ESPN many a time. In some TV
commercials, too. Takes guts to stand in front of a camera
wearing nothing but boxer-briefs and a shit-eatin' grin the
way you done, but you pulled it off, sure as hell. My
daughter Margie has a calendar full of pictures of you—two
years out of date and she still won't take it down off the
wall. Pisses her husband off somethin' fierce."
Inwardly, Tyler sighed. Outwardly, he stayed cool.
"Myrtle and me, we'd be glad to have you come to our place
for supper," Walt went on.
"No time," Tyler said, hoping he sounded regretful.
Walt looked him over once more, shook his head again and got
his own paperwork out of that rattletrap truck of his.
Signed his name on the dotted line. "Just let me fetch my
toolbox out of the back," he said.
"I'll get my own gear while you're doing that," Tyler
answered, relieved.
The switch was made. Tyler had his duffel bag, his dog and
his guitar case in the Chevy before Walt set his red metal
toolbox in the back of the Escalade.
"Sure you won't come to supper?" Walt asked, as a woman
emerged from Wal-Mart and headed toward them, pushing a cart
and looking puzzled.
"Wish I could," Tyler lied, climbing into the Chevy. If he
drove hard, he and Kit Carson, the dog, would be in
Stillwater Springs by the time the sun went down. They'd lie
low at the cabin overnight, and come morning, he'd find his
brother Logan and punch him in the face.
Again.
Maybe he'd put Dylan's lights out, too, for good measure.
But mainly, heading home was about facing up to some things,
settling them in his mind.
"See you," he told Walt.
And before the old man could answer, Tyler laid rubber.
Five miles outside Crap Creek, the Chevy's muffler dropped
to the blacktop and dragged, with an earsplit-ting clatter,
throwing blue and orange sparks.
"Shit," Tyler said.
Kit Carson gave a sympathetic whine.
Well, he'd wanted to go back and find out who he'd have been
without the rodeo, the money and Shawna. This was country
life, for regular folks.
And it wasn't as if Walt hadn't warned him, he thought.
With a grimace, Tyler pulled to the side of the road, shut
the truck off and scooted underneath the pickup on his back,
with damage control on his mind. Just like the bad old days,
he reflected, when he and his dad, Jake, had played
shade-tree mechanic in the yard at the ranch, trying to keep
some piece-of-shit car running until payday.
Whatever Walt's other talents might be, muffler repair
wasn't among them. He'd duct-taped the part in place, and
now the tape hung in smoldering shreds and the muffler
looked as though somebody had peppered it with buckshot.
Tyler sighed, shimmied out from under the truck again and
got to his feet, dusting off his jeans and trying in vain to
get a look at the back of his shirt. Kit sat in the driver's
seat, nose smudging up the window, panting.
Easing the dog back so he could get his cell phone out of
the dirt-crusted cup well in the truck's console, Tyler
called 411 and asked to be connected to the nearest towing
outfit.
Lily Kenyon wasn't having second thoughts about staying on
in Montana to look after her ailing father as she and a
nurse muscled him into her rented Taurus in front of
Missoula General Hospital. She was having forty-third
thoughts, seventy-eighth thoughts; she'd left second
ones behind about half an hour after she and her
six-year-old daughter, Tess, rushed into the admittance
office a week before, fresh from the airport.
Lily had remembered her father as a good-natured if somewhat
distracted man, even-tempered and funny. Until her teens,
she'd spent summers in Stillwater Springs, sticking to his
heels like a wad of chewing gum as he saw four-legged
patients in his veterinary clinic, trailing him from barn to
barn while he made his rounds, tending sick cows, horses,
goats and barn cats. He'd been kind, referring to her as his
assistant and calling her "Doc Ryder," and it had made her
feel proud, because that was what folks in that small
Montana community called him.
In those little-girl days, Lily had wanted to be just like
her dad.
Now, though, she was having a hard time squaring the man she
recalled with the one her bitter, angry mother described
after the divorce. The one who never showed up on the
doorstep, sent Christmas or birthday cards, or even called
to ask how she was.
Let alone sent a plane ticket so she could visit.
Now, after seven long days of putting up with his crotchety
ways, she understood her mom's attitude a little better,
even though it still smarted, the way Lucy Ryder Cook could
never speak of her ex-husband without pursing her lips
afterward. Hal Ryder, aka Doc, seemed fond of Tess, but
every time he looked at Lily, she saw angry, baffled pain in
his eyes.
Once her father and daughter were buckled in, Hal in the
front and Tess in the special booster seat the law required
of anyone under a certain age and height, Lily slid behind
the wheel and tried to center herself. The day was hot, even
for July; the hospital had been blessedly cool, but the
vents on the dashboard of the rental were still huffing out
blasts of heat.
Sweat dampened the back of Lily's sleeveless blouse; without
even turning a wheel, she was already sticking to the seat.
Not good.
"Can we get hamburgers?" Tess piped from the backseat.
"No," said Lily, who placed great stock in eating healthfully.
"Yes," challenged her curmudgeon of a father, at exactly the
same moment.
"Which?" Tess inquired patiently. "Yes or no?" The poor kid
was nothing if not pragmatic—stoic, too. She'd had a lot of
practice at resigning herself to things since Burke's
"accident" a year before. Lily hadn't had the heart to tell
her little girl what everyone else knew—that Burke Kenyon,
Lily's estranged husband and Tess's father, had crashed his
small private plane into a bridge on purpose, in a fit of
spiteful melancholy.
"No," Lily said firmly, after glaring eloquently at her dad
for a moment. "You're recovering from a heart attack," she
reminded him. "You are not supposed to eat fried food."
"There's such a thing as quality of life, you know," Hal
Ryder grumped. He looked thin, and there were bluish-gray
shadows under his eyes, underlaid by pouches of skin. "And
if you think I'm going to live on tofu and sprouts until my
dying day, you'd better think again."
Lily shifted the car into gear, and the tires screeched a
little on the sun-softened pavement as she pulled away from
the hospital entrance. "Listen," she replied tersely, at her
wit's end from stress and lack of sleep, "if you want to
clog your arteries with grease and poison your system with
preservatives and God only knows what else, that's your
business. Tess and I intend to live long, healthy lives."
"Long, boring lives," Hal complained. Lily had
stopped thinking of him as "Dad" years before, when it first
dawned on her that he wouldn't be flying her out to Montana
for any more small-town, barefoot-and-Popsicle summers. He
hadn't approved of her teenage romance with Tyler Creed, and
she'd always suspected that was part of the reason he'd cut
her out of his life.
"I'd be happy to hire a nurse," Lily said, shoving Tyler to
the back of her mind and biting her lip as she navigated
thickening late-morning traffic. "Tess and I can go back to
Chicago if you'd prefer."
"Don't be mean, Mom," Tess counseled sagely. "Grampa's heart
attacked him, remember."
The image of a ticker gone berserk filled Lily's mind. If
the subject hadn't been so serious, she'd have smiled.
"Yeah," Hal agreed. "Don't be mean. It reminds me of Lucy,
and I like to think about her as little as possible."
Since Lily wasn't on much better terms with her mother than
she was with Hal, she could have done without that last
remark. She peeled her back from the seat and fumbled with
the air-conditioning, keeping one eye on the road. Her
cotton shorts had ridden up, so her thighs were stuck, too,
and it would hurt to pull them free.
Another thing to dread.
"Gee, thanks," she muttered.
"Nana's a stinker," Tess commented, her tone cheerful and
affectionately tolerant.
"Hush," Lily said, though she secretly agreed. "That wasn't
a nice thing to say."
"Well, she is," Tess insisted.
"Amen," Hal added.
"Enough," Lily muttered. "Both of you. I'm trying to drive,
here. Keep us all alive."
"Slow down a little, then," Hal grumbled. "This isn't Chicago."
"Don't remind me." Lily hadn't intended to sound sarcastic,
but she had.
"Is your house big, Grampa?" Tess asked, bravely trying to
steer the conversation onto more amiable ground. "Can I have
my mom's old room?"
Lily flashed on the big, rambling Victorian that had once
been her home, with its delightful nooks and crannies, its
cluttered library stuffed with books, its window seats and
alcoves and brick fireplaces. Remembering, she felt the loss
afresh, and something squeezed at the back of her heart.
"You can," Hal said, with a gentleness Lily almost envied.
She felt his gaze touch her, sidelong and serious. "Is there
a man waiting in Chicago, Lily—is that why you want to go back?"
Lily tensed, searching for the freeway on-ramp, wondering if
the question had a subtext. After all, Lily's mother had
left her father for another man, and he hadn't remarried
during the intervening years. Maybe he mistrusted women—his
only daughter included."
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