Free Montana Creeds: Logan by Linda Lael Miller

a balding dentist with a slight paunch, and expecting her second child. He’d given her a settlement when his company took off, several years after their divorce, and she’d put it in trust for her children. Still, the last time he’d seen Susan, he’d known by the look in her eyes that she could barely restrain herself from spitting in his face.
    “Not so much,” he admitted. He still talked to Laurie sometimes—usually when she needed something. She’d used
her
divorce settlement to open a hair salon in Santa Monica, and the last time they’d spoken, she’d told him all about her recent wedding ceremony on a beach at sunset.
    She’d married herself. White dress, veil, cake and all.
    Still, it had to be an improvement over being married to
him,
Logan reflected ruefully. Except, if he did say so himself, for the sex.
    That had been beyond good, with both Susan and Laurie.
    It was also pretty much all he missed about being married.
    “Are they happy?” Cassie asked, ostensibly asking about his exes.
    He nodded. “Nothing like divorcing one of the Creed men to improve a woman’s outlook on life,” he said.
    Cassie laughed. Dusty light poured into the teepeeas she pulled the flap aside to step out. Sidekick preceded her—Logan followed.
    The sun dazzled him, made him fumble for his sunglasses, which he’d left on the dashboard of the Dodge.
    Another car pulled into the driveway, parked beside his truck.
    “That’s Elsie Blake,” Cassie said, with a philosophical sigh. “She’s going to ask if I see a man in her future, the way she does every time she comes for a reading. I ought to tell her she’d be better off marrying herself, like Laurie did.”
    Logan blinked. “You knew about that?”
    “Of course I did,” Cassie answered brightly, and the dismissal was as clear as if she’d flat-out told him to get his butt into his truck and go home already. “She mailed out announcements, with a picture of herself on the front, wearing a white dress. I sent her a toaster.”
    Logan was rolling his eyes as Cassie walked away.
    R USHING INTO the kitchen with a grocery bag in each arm, Briana surveyed her surroundings. The counters were clear, except for the vestiges of lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches, she guessed, by the burned crusts of bread—sneakers were neatly lined up just inside the back door and both boys looked angelic enough to light candles for a Vatican Mass. Only Wanda was her regular self.
    “Okay,” Briana said suspiciously, juggling the bags and heading for the table to set them down. “What have you guys been up to?”
    “I’ve been doing my history homework on the computer,” Josh said loftily, and whatever Web pagehe’d been looking at faded into cyber-oblivion at the click of the mouse.
    “And I swept the floor,” Alec volunteered. “After I did
my
homework, of course. Not that stink-face would let me use the computer.”
    “What did I say about name-calling?”
    The boys exchanged poisonous glares.
    “Don’t do it,” they chorused dolefully.
    Briana had been concerned that Alec and Josh might head for the orchard—it was infested with bears, to hear Logan tell it—or dash off to Cimarron’s pasture to play matador the moment she’d driven out of sight that morning. Instead, they’d probably watched something they weren’t supposed to on TV, or gotten into her secret stash of snack-size candy bars.
    Or both.
    “What are we having for supper?” Alec asked, as Briana began taking things out of the bags—milk, oversize cans of soup, packages of hamburger and chicken breasts, bread and fresh fruit, frozen potatoes compressed into little cylinders.
    “A casserole,” she said.
    Alec frowned in obvious disapproval while Wanda scratched hopefully at the back door, asking to be let out. “You
do
remember that we’re having company tonight?”
    Briana smiled hurriedly, went to open the door for Wanda, and then put away everything except the soup, two pounds of lean