Читать книгу: «Montana Creeds: Tyler», страница 5

CHAPTER FIVE

A FTER SERVING HER FATHER and daughter a healthy breakfast—grapefruit, whole-wheat toast and scrambled egg whites—Lily sneaked into her dad’s study to pick up the phone.

She’d call Tyler—she’d decided that while tossing and turning the night before. Tell him she couldn’t go out to dinner with him after all. Backpedal like crazy, tell an outright lie if she had to, say anything to get out of that hastily made date.

Except that she didn’t have his number.

She could get it from Kristy, of course. Call her or just walk over to the library and ask. Since Tyler was Kristy’s brother-in-law now, she’d surely know how to reach him.

Her eyes fell on her dad’s tattered address book. Hal had always disapproved of Tyler Creed, but now, after picking Ty up alongside the road the day before, it seemed the man was her dad’s new best friend. Maybe the number was right there, within easy reach.

It would be so much easier if she didn’t have to contact Kristy, either in person or over the telephone.

Lily had flipped to the C s—the book was jammed with tattered sticky notes, names and numbers scrawled helter-skelter on each one, all of them stuck in at odd and dizzying angles—and was scanning for Tyler’s contact information, when Hal walked in.

“Need something?” he asked, with a slight smile.

Lily swallowed hard. “Tyler’s number,” she said. There, it was out there. Let him make of it what he would.

“Don’t have it,” Hal said, still watching her, but more closely now. “By the way, Tess and I have taken a vote. It’s unanimous. Breakfast sucked.”

Lily closed the bulging address book, set it aside. Straightened her spine. “I suppose you would have preferred bacon and eggs?” she asked, sounding a little terse because she was embarrassed that he’d caught her going through his address book and gotten her to admit that she’d intended to call Tyler, of all people.

“ Preferred is not the word,” Hal said, grinning. “More like adored . Why do you want to call Tyler—as if I didn’t know?”

Lily’s face heated. He didn’t know. Hal probably thought she was jonesing to hear Tyler’s voice or something, like a besotted schoolgirl. Or hot to trot. “He asked me out to dinner,” she reminded him. “And I’ve decided not to go.”

Hal frowned. “Why?”

Lily countered with a question of her own. A stall tactic, for sure, and one that wouldn’t work for very long, if at all. “Weren’t you the one who always warned me that the Creeds were bad news, and taking up with them would lead to certain doom and destruction?”

“Lily, this is dinner, not an orgy.”

Lily bit back an instinctive response—being one-on-one with Tyler Creed, even in a public place, was the sexual equivalent of spontaneous combustion. The man could probably bring her to orgasm without even touching her—and she’d be a fool to let herself in for that.

Or a fool not to.

“My,” she said instead, still hedging, “how things have changed.”

“I was wrong about Tyler,” Hal said, catching her completely off-guard. He’d never been quick to admit to a mistake but, then, neither had she, to be fair about it. “Wrong about a lot of things. Go out with him, Lily. Wear a pretty dress and some perfume and enjoy the evening.”

Enjoy the evening. People from her father’s generation were so innocent, so naive.

Or were they?

“What about Tess?” she asked.

“She’ll be just fine here with me. She’s a smart kid. If I go into cardiac arrest, she’ll call 911.”

“What’s cardiac arrest?” Tess asked, appearing in the doorway of the study. She was wearing expensive pink shorts, a flowered sun-top and flip-flops, all gifts acquired on her last visit to Nantucket, with Eloise. A little frown creased the space between her eyebrows. “Is somebody going to put Grampa in jail?”

Lily smiled, in spite of herself. “Nobody’s going to put your grandfather in jail,” she said, to reassure the child. It was so easy to forget how literal children were. “And you look very pretty today, by the way. Do you have plans?”

“There’s a kid playing in the backyard next door,” Tess answered, letting the subjects of incarceration and emergency medical intervention lapse, for the moment at least. “I think it’s a boy, but I’m going to introduce myself anyhow.”

“A nice couple lives there now,” Hal put in, at Lily’s look of concern. In Chicago, she didn’t know a single one of her neighbors, nor did Tess. “They bought the place after the Hendersons retired and moved to Florida.” He smiled down at Tess. “The child in question,” he added, “is a girl, and her name is Eleanor. She’s seven years old, and visiting her aunt and uncle for the summer.”

“Is she nice?” Tess asked seriously.

“Well,” Hal responded, just as seriously, “she’s never soaped my windows or set fire to the shrubbery or let the air out of my tires. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you. Guess you’ll just have to march on over there and find out for yourself.”

“Guess so,” Tess said, with one of those sudden, dazzling smiles of hers. Lily realized, with some chagrin, that she hadn’t seen her daughter light up like that since before Burke’s death. “Can I have money for the ice-cream truck? I heard the bell a few minutes ago—it’s about three streets over, I think, and headed our way.”

“No,” Lily said.

“Yes,” Hal answered, at exactly the same moment, already reaching into his pocket for the requested loot. His eyes, less weary than the day before, lingered on Lily’s face even as he handed Tess a few small bills. “It’s summer,” he told his daughter quietly. “Tess is six, pretty in pink and hoping to make a friend. Give her a break, Lily.”

A speech about processed food and preservatives and questionable hygiene conditions in ice-cream trucks and packaging plants rose into Lily’s throat, but she held it back. Her father was right. Surely one cone dipped in chocolate wouldn’t compromise the child’s health and well-being.

“Okay,” Lily agreed, with a smile.

Both Tess and Hal looked so surprised at her acquiescence that Lily wondered what they took her for. Some kind of natural-food fanatic, obviously.

“Have fun,” she told Tess. “And don’t go any farther than the neighbor’s yard or the front sidewalk.”

Tess beamed, thanked her grandfather for the cash and fled.

“I’ll need a dress,” Lily said, thinking aloud. Since she’d come back to Montana to look after her sick father, she hadn’t brought any special clothes along—just jeans, T-shirts, shorts and a few nightgowns.

She blushed, realizing how eager she must have sounded. How excited. Cinderella, going to the ball.

“You look good in red,” Hal told her, pleased. “There’s a little boutique downtown—it caters mostly to tourists, but you ought to be able to find something pretty there.”

Lily’s native good sense returned. Some of it, anyway. “I’m not leaving you alone. You just got out of the hospital.”

“I’m in no danger of keeling over, Lily,” Hal said. “In fact, I could use a little solitude, if you want the truth. I’m used to living alone.” He paused, looked comically inspired. “And think of the other possibilities. You could pick up something ghastly for lunch. Sprouts, maybe. Or something made of congealed soybeans.”

Lily laughed. And it felt strange and new and good—a forgotten skill, just rediscovered.

“I won’t be gone long,” she warned, “so don’t be seeing any four-legged patients or digging through the freezer for hot dogs or toaster waffles while I’m out. For all you know, one of those magnets on your fridge is really a nanny-cam in disguise.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Hal joked.

Lily went to him, on impulse, and kissed his craggy cheek.

Five minutes later, after skimming a glaze of lip gloss over her mouth and combing her hair, Lily was in her rental car, headed for Main Street.

The boutique Hal had told her about was tiny, and pitiful by Chicago standards, but she found a red sundress with white polka dots in her size, tried it on and liked what she saw in the dressing room mirror. She bought the dress, a lacy little over-sweater of gossamer white lace and a pair of strappy sandals to complete the outfit.

The next stop was the grocery section at Wal-Mart, since the mom-and-pop market had gone out of business years before, and there was no tofu to be found. She’d planned to prove to Hal that tofu could be delicious, but evidently, there wasn’t a big market for it in Stillwater Springs, Montana.

So she selected the ingredients for a seafood salad instead, all fresh and touted as organic, added a package of chicken breasts for Tess and Hal’s supper, and was rounding a corner, intent on getting to the checkout lines ahead of three women with copious purchases, when she nearly crashed her cart into Tyler’s.

Since when did he shop at Wal-Mart in the middle of the morning?

Damn, he looked good though, even at that hour. He wore a white T-shirt and battered jeans, and a lock of his raven-dark hair tumbled, bad-boy style, over his forehead.

His gaze drifted lazily over Lily, and her toes curled inside her sneakers. She even caught herself wishing she’d worn something sexier than jeans and a tank top.

Reality doused her like so much cold water, flung from a bucket.

In a matter of hours, she was going to be alone with this man.

In grave danger of spontaneous combustion—if it didn’t happen right there in Wal-Mart, in front of God and everybody.

Heat climbed Lily’s neck, pulsed in her cheeks.

She’d tried so hard to make things work with Burke, especially in bed. How many times, though, had she reached the pinnacle by imagining that Tyler Creed, not her husband, was the one fondling her, suckling her breasts, driving deep inside her? Had she cried out his name, at the height of her release, instead of Burke’s?

Probably.

The thought filled her with shame—and a dense, sultry kind of heat.

She’d never made love with Tyler, though they’d certainly engaged in some heavy petting while they were dating. For all she knew, he was a dud in bed. And why was she even debating such a question, anyway?

“How’s your dad?” Tyler asked.

Lily bit her lower lip. Not such a tough thing to answer. It should be easy—as soon as she stopped fighting back the climax already building deep in her center.

“He’s—fine. Stubborn. I think he’ll be okay.”

“Good,” Tyler said.

Lily glanced at the contents of his cart. Power tools. Sheets and blankets. Sugary cereal and a big jug of whole milk. A small-screen TV.

Quite a combination.

He grinned, slow-heat style, watching her. Was he imagining her naked?

No, she was the one whose imagination was running wild.

Get a grip, she told herself.

He touched her hand, where she held on to the shopping-cart handle with a death grip. It was a simple, innocent brush of his fingertips, nothing more.

And Lily went over the top.

Smiled determinedly, broke out in a sweat. That special little muscle deep inside her flexed violently, then flexed again. It was all she could do not to groan aloud with the unexpected and purely inappropriate pleasure of it.

She’d just come in Wal-Mart, for God’s sake. Fully dressed. In the bright light of day.

Tyler didn’t know, did he? He couldn’t have guessed.

“The air-conditioning must be on the blink in here,” he said, but there was a look in his eyes that said he knew full well what had just happened, or at least suspected. That he’d set the whole thing in motion on purpose.

But that was impossible, of course.

Even for a Creed.

Wasn’t it?

“About tonight,” she choked out, when the aftershocks began to subside. She still sounded too breathless. “I really shouldn’t—”

“No getting out of it now,” Tyler broke in easily. “Your dad will be okay, and so will Tess, and it’s only dinner, Lily.”

It’s only dinner. Where had she heard that before?

And if Tyler could bring her to climax with a leisurely once-over and a touch of his hand, what would happen if he got her alone? What would happen in the restaurant?

Lily didn’t want to find out.

Much.

Desperately, she began making excuses to herself. She simply didn’t have random orgasms in public places. No, it was just that she’d gone without sex for so long, that was all, and then she’d let her thoughts head down the wrong road.

No, it would probably never happen again.

Damn it.

Just as Lily was about to press on to the nearest checkout line, neatly skirting any further conversation about their date that night, a barely adolescent boy appeared from two aisles over, sporting a spider tattoo on his neck and various piercings.

“I found the hammer,” he told Tyler, holding the tool up as evidence.

Lily felt an odd little quiver of dread in the pit of her stomach, something completely unrelated to the sweet tremors of pure female ecstasy she’d just survived.

“Lily,” Tyler said lightly, but with watchful eyes, “this is Davie McCullough. Davie, Lily Ryder.”

“Lily Kenyon, ” Lily corrected primly. Anything to establish some distance between herself and the heat mirage that was Tyler. Talk about shutting the barn door after the horse ran away.

“Hi,” Davie said. His obviously new jeans and striped T-shirt were at strange variance with the piercings and the tattoo.

Lily smiled. “Hello,” she answered.

“See you at six,” Tyler told her.

“Is this the hot date?” Davie asked.

Tyler rolled his eyes, but if he was embarrassed by Davie’s remark, it didn’t show. He was the legendary Tyler Creed, after all. He probably made women climax in discount stores all the time. No big deal.

“This is the hot date,” Tyler confirmed.

Lily blushed again, and then simply bolted, knowing anything she might have said would have been wrong, and probably gotten her in even deeper than she already was.

And Tyler’s low, knowing chuckle trailed in her wake.

“T HAT ,” Tyler told Davie, a beat after Lily raced away, “was not cool.”

Davie grinned unapologetically. “Oh, well, ” he said. “She is hot. And you did warn me that I might have to bunk in at your brother’s place if things went down the way you hoped they would.”

Tyler watched as Lily chose the longest line, knew she’d done so because it was the farthest away from where he was standing. She looked beyond good in those big-city blue jeans of hers, and it was a damn good thing, by his reckoning, that he had a full shopping cart to stand behind.

He’d seen Lily go over the edge, known by the blush in her cheeks and the dazed expression in her eyes that the mental trick Doreen had taught him had worked, and he’d gone hard as bedrock the moment she’d come undone.

This, along with the current state of his anatomy, came under the heading of Things Davie Didn’t Need to Know, so he was careful to stay behind the cart.

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” he told the kid.

“I have problems,” Davie retorted smugly. “I’m a Troubled Teenager. There’s no telling what I might say.” The kid admired Lily from afar as she lobbed salad greens and a package of what looked like chicken onto the rolling counter, shook his head. “Makes a man wish he was twenty years older.”

Tyler had to chuckle at that, even though a part of him wanted to get Davie by the scruff and hustle him out of Lily-viewing range. Which was Creed-crazy. Davie was only a kid, for all his big talk. “Pull your eyeballs back into your head, Cartoon Boy. She’s spoken for.”

Mercifully, Davie let the subject drop. Maybe because he’d won a round, on their second trip to Wal-Mart in twenty-four hours, by talking Tyler into buying him a TV.

Tyler, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to move on from the Lily encounter. Lily was primed, all right. If he could just get her naked, he could untie all those knots inside her. And when she turned loose for real, let herself go beyond the impromptu climax she’d just had to the genuine article, the universe would tremble on its foundations.

Not just for her, but for him, too.

Whoa, cowboy, he told himself silently. Thoughts like that weren’t going to make the lodgepole pushing at the front of his jeans go down, and he couldn’t hide his hard-on behind that shopping cart forever.

He needed to get some perspective.

Perspective, hell. He was already planning the call he meant to make to Dylan, as soon as he could get out of Davie’s earshot. Would you mind babysitting a thirteen-year-old?

He was already picturing Lily, crooning in his bed, arching her back under his hands and mouth, already imagining her afterward, when they’d both recovered, stripped to her delectable skin, bobbing in the cool, dark waters of Hidden Lake, just off the end of his ancient swimming dock.

Skinny-dipping with Lily Kenyon, as she’d so carefully reminded him.

Oh, yeah.

Welcome home, Tyler Creed.

Welcome home.

“H OW DO I LOOK ?” Lily asked nervously, at five-thirty that evening, modeling her red sundress in the kitchen of her dad’s house. Tess and her new friend, Eleanor, were sitting at the table, picking at the chicken breasts she’d broiled earlier, for their supper and Hal’s.

Both the girls seemed stricken to silence, as though they’d never seen a woman in a dress before, but Hal found words. “That’s some getup,” he said. Was that a twinkle she saw lurking in his eyes? “I’m glad you took my advice and went with red.”

“It’s only dinner,” Lily said. Hadn’t people been telling her that all day?

She wasn’t eloping with Tyler.

They probably wouldn’t even kiss, since they were virtually strangers to each other.

Hal laughed, shook his head.

Had she said something funny? And if so, when?

“My mom has a name for shoes like that,” Eleanor said sagely. Eleanor, like Tess, was a miniature adult, disguised as a child. The old-fashioned name suited her perfectly, in fact.

“They’re straight out of Sex and the City, ” Tess observed.

“Tess Kenyon,” Lily challenged, “what do you know about Sex and the City? ”

Being no dummy, Tess subsided. “Just that the older girls talk about it at school sometimes,” she said sweetly. “And that all the women in the TV show can run in really high heels.”

“That does it,” Lily said. “I’m blocking cable.”

“I don’t have cable,” Hal put in. “So no worries.”

“You look beautiful, Mom,” Tess said, with such sincerity and even wonder that Lily forgot all about the things her daughter might have been watching on TV when she wasn’t around. “Like a princess.”

“A princess in sexy shoes,” Eleanor said.

Eleanor’s parents, Lily had learned over the course of the long, lazy, front-porch afternoon, were going through a bad divorce. It was important to show tolerance and understanding, but there were limits.

“Can Eleanor spend the night?” Tess asked. “Her aunt said it was okay.”

“If it’s all right with your grandfather, yes,” Lily said. Then she turned her gaze to her dad. “No TV,” she added ominously. “Unless it’s Disney, or educational in some way.”

Hal sighed, raised both hands, palms out, in a gesture of benign surrender. “I was planning on a game of cutthroat Monopoly. Is that curmudgeonly enough for you?”

Lily gave him a look.

“Are you driving, or is Tyler picking you up?” Tess asked Lily. From her tone, she might have been forty, not six.

Lily’s cheeks felt hot again. She was a fool for even going on this dinner date at all, let alone not taking her rental car, but since she’d been in such a dither from the first encounter with Tyler, the day before yesterday, she hadn’t thought to suggest that they meet at the restaurant.

Was she trying to get herself seduced?

Did she want to let Tyler have his way with her, and to hell with the consequences?

It was a possibility she didn’t dare examine too closely.

“Tyler is picking me up,” she finally answered.

Eleanor and Tess high-fived each other.

And before Lily could respond to that, the doorbell rang.

Lily’s heart shimmied into her throat.

There was still time to back out. She could pretend to be sick, maybe even persuade Hal to lie for her, though the chances of that were slim to none.

But what kind of example would she be setting for Tess?

Lily patted her hair, pinned up in a loose twist at the back of her head. Hal smiled, reading the gesture for what it was, and Tess and Eleanor raced for the front of the house, giggling when they nearly wedged themselves into the first doorway.

Lily thought she was going to throw up.

Maybe it wouldn’t be lying to say she was sick.

The trouble was, no one would believe her. Not her dad, not the little girls who knew too much about sexy shoes, and certainly not Tyler.

She’d just have to go through with the whole thing, that was all.

Hope she could pass a pleasant evening with an old friend without letting her inner hussy come to the fore and climb Tyler’s frame like a monkey scrambling up the trunk of a palm tree.

Lily was still dealing with the Freudian aspects of that image when she saw Tyler, standing in her father’s foyer, wearing jeans and a freshly pressed white shirt, holding a black cowboy hat in one hand and looking shy.

There was something to be said, she decided, for illicit sex.

Something to be said for just getting it over with, out of the way, so she could think straight again. Recover her balance, get some perspective.

After nodding to Hal and the girls, Tyler took the tiny white sweater from her hands and draped it over her shoulders. Leaned to whisper in her ear even as he reached for the doorknob with one hand.

“It’s inevitable,” he said. “What do you say we skip dinner and get right down to business?”