headstones and rotting wooden markers, she spread the picnic blanket on a soft piece of ground and got out the juice and sandwiches. Her old dog, Wanda, a portly black Lab, watched placidly as the boys raced through the last blazing sunlight of that warm June day.
“I don’t even know any of the people buried here,” Briana told Wanda. “So why do I break my back pulling weeds and planting flowers for a bunch of dead strangers?”
Wanda regarded her patiently.
For the past two years, since the night her now-ex husband, Vance, after a lengthy argument, had abandoned her, along with the boys and Wanda, in front of the Stillwater Springs Wal-Mart store, Briana had been busy surviving.
At the time, she’d thought Vance would circle the block a few times in their asthmatic old van, letting off steam, then come back for them. Instead, he’d left town. By the time he’d shown up again, three months later, magnanimously ready to let bygones be bygones, Briana had filed for a DIY divorce, found a place to live and landed a job at the tribal casino, serving free sodas and coffee for tips. At first, the few dollars she’d earned in an eight-hour shift had barely put food on the table, but she’d worked her way up to clerking in the players’ club, then dealing blackjack. Finally, she’d become a floor supervisor, making change and paying out the occasional jackpot.
Floor supervisors made a decent wage. They also had health benefits, sick leave and paid vacations.
She’d made it on her own, something Vance had had her convinced she couldn’t do.
Soon after they’d all moved into the house across the creek, Alec and Josh had come across the cemetery in their wanderings, and she’d come to check the place out, make sure it was safe for them to play there. Briana was big on safe places, though they’d proved pretty elusive so far. At thirty, she was still looking for one.
Nothing could have prepared her, she supposed, for the effect the first sight of that forgotten country graveyard had had on her. Lonely, overgrown with weeds, strung from end to end with the detritus of a thousand teenage beer-and-reefer parties, the place had somehow welcomed her, too.
Ever since, tending to the abandoned cemetery had been her mission. She and the boys had cleaned up the grounds, scythed the grass and then mowed it, planted flowers and straightened markers. The work parties always ended with the boys playing tag to run off their excess energy, then a picnic supper.
She hadn’t expected today to be different from any of the ones that had gone before it, which only went to show that she still had the capacity to be surprised.
A lean, shaggy-haired man in jeans, boots and a T-shirt came strolling out of the woods, a reddish-brown dog at his side, and stopped in his tracks when he saw Briana.
She felt an odd little frisson of alarm—and something else less easily defined—at the first glimpse of him.
His hair was dark, and though he was slender, he was powerfully built.
Wanda gave a low, uncertain growl, but didn’t move from her customary spot on the picnic blanket.
“Hush,” Briana said, aware that the boys had stopped their game and were gravitating toward her, curious and maybe a little worried.
The stranger smiled, spoke quietly to his dog and kept his distance.
Alec went straight to him. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Alec Grant. That’s my mom, Briana, and my brother, Josh, aka Ditz-butt. Who are you?”
“Logan Creed,” the man replied, with a slight smile. “Nice to meet you, Alec.” He was looking at Briana, though, his gaze speculative, but languid, too. He took in all five feet, seven inches of her, clad in worn blue jeans and a pink ruffly sun-top, with green eyes and freckles and her long, strawberry-blond hair pulled back, as always, in a French braid. Inspected her as if he might have to identify her in a lineup later on.
Briana hesitated, uncomfortable as she registered the familiar last name, then advanced, working up a neighborly smile. She put out a hand as she introduced herself. “Briana Grant.”
“We know somebody named Dylan Creed,” Alec said. Her younger son had never met a stranger, a fact that both pleased and troubled Briana. The don’t-talkto-people-you-don’t-know lecture was wasted on Alec. “Mom and Josh and me take care of his house. He’s got a bull, too. Cimarron.”
Up close, Logan Creed was even better-looking than he had been from a distance. His hair, a little too long, was ebony, and his eyes were a deep, searching brown, full of intelligence and a few secrets. His cheekbones were high, hinting that there might be native blood somewhere in his background. He looked nothing like his blue-eyed, fair-haired brother, Dylan, and yet there was a resemblance—something in his temperament, perhaps, though she knew little enough of that yet, admittedly, or the way he stood.
“So Dylan hired a caretaker, did he?” he asked lazily. “And he owns a bull?” His gaze moved past Briana to the graveyard. “Is my kid brother paying you to look after the cemetery, too? If so, he ought to give you a raise. The place looks a lot better than it did the last time I was here.”
Briana blushed a little, unsure how to answer, and still feeling oddly exposed under this man’s steady regard. Dylan hadn’t mentioned the cemetery when he’d hired her, outside of Wal-Mart on that fateful night. He’d been in town briefly, on some kind of personal business, and happened to see Vance toss a couple of twenty-dollar bills out of the truck window and speed off with his tires screeching.
Sizing up the situation, Dylan had probably felt sorry for Briana, the kids and the dog. He’d handed her a set of keys, given her directions to the place and strolled off without a backward glance. Warned her about Cimarron, a white bull recently retired from rodeo life; said a neighbor fed the animal and Briana ought to stay clear. She’d taken a cab to the ranch, furious with Vance and really hoping he’d come back after he’d cooled off and find them gone. Serve him right.
Instead, he’d kept right on going.
The next day, a load of groceries had arrived, via a delivery service, along with a note from Dylan saying there was an old Chevy truck parked in the barn and she could use it if she could get it running. Since then, they’d had no communication beyond the occasional e-mail or phone call. When something needed fixing and the job was beyond Briana’s limited home-repair skills, Dylan was quick to send a check, and Briana was careful to provide a receipt, though he’d never asked for one.
Now, Josh stepped up, stood close to her side. The polar opposite of Alec, Josh considered everyone a stranger and thus potential trouble, and proceeded accordingly until they’d proved themselves. “Nobody pays us to take care of the cemetery,” he said. “We do it because it needs doing.”
Logan’s smile came suddenly, and it set Briana back on her heels a little. She added very white teeth to the inventory she’d taken of him earlier, while he was taking her measure. “Well,” he said, “I appreciate it. And that’s as good a reason to do a thing as any.”
Cautiously mollified, Josh softened a little, but he didn’t quite smile. He was letting Briana know, by his stiff stance and knotted fists, that he’d protect her, and Alec and Wanda, too, if necessary. Thanks to Vance, Josh was half again too manly for a ten-year-old, too serious and too sad.
“Where do you live?” he asked Logan solemnly.
Logan cocked a thumb over one shoulder. “At the main ranch house,” he said.
“Nobody lives there,” Josh argued.
“Josh.” Briana sighed.
“Someone lives there now,” Logan replied affably. “Sidekick and I moved in today.”
Josh looked at the copper-colored dog. “He’s skinny. Don’t you feed him?”
“He and I just recently met up,” Logan answered. His voice was easy. “He’ll fill out as time goes by.”
Wanda bestirred her considerable bulk and ambled over