Tyler chuckled. “I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “But once I see what kind of yard-bird you really are, I might let you use my laptop now and then.”
“And all I have to do is take care of the dog and cut some grass?”
“You’ve seen the grass. It’s waist-high. I think there’s a lawn under there someplace, but I can’t be sure.” Tyler paused, considered. “Fact is, I’m thinking of building on to the place.” Had he been thinking that? Not consciously, but now that the idea had presented itself, most likely prompted by Dylan’s mention of razing his old house to put up a new one, and what little he knew about the restorations going on at the main place, under Logan’s direction, he kind of cottoned to the prospect. “That would mean some carpentry. Maybe a little plumbing and electrical work, too.”
Davie looked worried. Maybe all that hard work would be a deal-breaker. “I don’t know anything about construction,” he finally said.
“That makes two of us,” Tyler said.
Cautious relief replaced the consternation in Davie’s face. “I wouldn’t mind learning, though. I always thought it would be kind of cool to be able to make bookshelves and stuff like that.”
Tyler glanced pointedly at the glorified comic book lying forgotten on the table. “You got a collection of those things?” he asked.
Davie gave a snort of amusement, tinged with bitterness. “No,” he said. “I got this one at the library. I mostly go there to use the computers, but Kristy said I ought to give reading a shot, and she never chases me off when I’m just looking for a place to hang out, so I checked this out.”
Tyler raised one eyebrow, intrigued. “I suppose she—Kristy, I mean—suggested something like White Fang or Ivanhoe, ” he said.
Davie laughed, and this time it sounded real. Almost normal. “Nope. She chose this one for me herself. Said it would be a good way to get my feet wet, find out how much fun reading can be.”
Tyler thought back to Kristy’s predecessor, Miss Rooley. She’d been a spinster, tight-mouthed and generally disapproving. She’d allowed him to hide out in the library, too, as a kid, when Jake was having a particularly bad day and Logan and Dylan weren’t around to get between him and the old man’s fists, but she’d demanded her pound of flesh. He’d been forced to read what Miss Rooley reverently called “The Classics,” always capitalizing the term with her tone.
At first, it was agony, slogging through tomes he barely understood. Then, he’d begun to enjoy it, though that was something he’d never wanted anybody to know, particularly his older brothers. Right up there with his secret penchant for Andrea Bocelli’s music. He liked the Big Band stuff, too—Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, that crowd.
As secrets went, these were pretty tame, but they were secrets just the same. And they would be harder to hide, with a kid living under the same roof.
“You like Kristy?” Tyler asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.
“She’s all right,” Davie allowed. “I’m supposed to call her ‘Mrs. Creed’ at the library.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said.
Mrs. Creed. There were two of them now, counting Logan’s bride.
It just went to show that those who didn’t learn from history really were condemned to repeat it.
Kristy had lived outside of Stillwater Springs all her life; she knew what it meant to marry a hell-raiser, which left her with no excuse for taking the risk. Briana, on the other hand, was an innocent victim, a stranger.
Had anybody warned her that the Creeds were notoriously bad at marriage? Showed her the three graves in the old cemetery out beyond the orchard, the final resting places of the last generation of Creed wives—all of them dead long before their time?
Watching Davie, Tyler thought the boy studied his face a little too intently, seeing too much. He looked as though he wanted to ask a question, but he gulped it back when they got unexpected company.
A big man loomed over the table, beer-belly straining at his wife-beater shirt. His arms were tattooed from fingertips to shoulder, he needed a shave and the billed cap pulled low over his face looked as though it had been run over by a semitruck with a serious oil leak.
Davie seemed to shrink in on himself, like he was trying to disappear.
Roy’s presence had exactly the opposite effect on Tyler.
He slid out of the booth and stood.
Doreen had always liked tattoos. Maybe that explained why she’d taken up with three hundred pounds of ugly, though some things went beyond reasonable explanation, and this creep was one of them.
Roy’s mean little pig eyes widened a little. Evidently, he’d been so focused on Davie, he hadn’t noticed that the boy wasn’t alone.
Now, he looked Tyler over with belligerent caution.
“Who are you?”
“His name’s Tyler Creed, Roy,” Davie piped up, obviously terrified. “We were just talking. He wasn’t doing any harm—”
Tyler put out one hand to silence the boy.
Roy, being a head shorter but bulky, looked up into Tyler’s face.
“A Creed, huh?” he said. “Know all about that outfit.”
Tyler folded his arms. Waited.
Roy pulled in his horns a little. “Look,” he said. “I just came to take the boy home. There’s no need for any trouble.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Tyler answered. “Not at the moment, anyhow.”
Roy clearly didn’t appreciate being thwarted; like all bullies, he was used to getting his way by acting tough. The trouble with acting tough was, as Jake had often said, the inevitability of running into somebody just a little tougher.
And that could make all the difference.
“I said I didn’t want any trouble,” Roy reiterated mildly. “I just want to take the boy home, where he belongs.”
“We’re still figuring out where he belongs,” Tyler said, just as mildly but with an undercurrent of Creed steel. “Right now, all I’m sure of is, he’s staying right here, and you’re not going to lay a hand on him.”
A dull crimson flush throbbed in what passed for Roy’s neck, though his head seemed to sit pretty much square with his shoulders. He tightened one grubby fist, too, wanting to hit somebody.
“You lookin’ for a fight, cowboy?” he asked Tyler.
“Nope,” Tyler said. “But I won’t run from one if the opportunity happens to present itself.”
The flush spread into Roy’s hound-dog face.
Evidently, Tyler reflected, Doreen had given up on teaching men how to treat a woman. This guy had no clue how to treat anybody.
Roy rubbed his beard-stubbled chin, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. Thought, Tyler figured, was probably painful for him, and thus avoided except in the most dire circumstances.
“You talked to Jim Huntinghorse,” Roy speculated peevishly. He glanced down at Davie, his expression so poisonous that the very atmosphere seemed polluted by it. “The kid lies. I never done nothin’ to him he didn’t deserve.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tyler spotted Doreen, peering around one of the slot machines edging the restaurant. On the one hand, he felt sorry for her. On the other, he was furious that she wouldn’t step up and protect her own child. She’d probably never had two nickels to rub together, but she’d had spirit once, she’d lived by her own rules, and she hadn’t just survived, she’d thrived . She’d had tattoos, for God’s sake, in an era when