Montana Creeds: Logan by Linda Lael Miller

his sides as though he might carry out the original threat. “You’re as crazy as your dad was.”
    “I’m back,” Logan announced, after taking a cautious sip of the steaming brew. “And except for buying grub at the supermarket and taking my dog to the vet for a checkup, this is my first stop.”
    “Is there a compliment lurking in there somewhere?” Jim frowned.
    “Sit down. You cast a shadow like a mountain with the sun behind it.”
    “I’m working,” Jim pointed out. But he pulled back a chair and sat.
    “You’re a priority. There’s your compliment.”
    “Gee, thanks. I get married. No best buddy since kindergarten to stand up with me. I get divorced. Nobody to drown my sorrows with. But I’m a ‘priority’?”
    “Take it or leave it,” Logan said. “Best I can do.”
    At last, Jim relented. A grudging grin flashed across his chiseled Native-American face. “You just passing through—looking for a fight with one or both of your brothers maybe? Or did you finally come to your senses and decide that
somebody
ought to come back here and look after that ranch?”
    Logan put a tip on the table for the waitress, who was ogling them from the other side of the service counter. During the millisecond it took to lay the money down, Jim’s face changed. Went dark again.
    “You’re not going to sell out to some movie yahoo, are you?”
    Logan shook his head. “I’m staying for good.” That refrain was becoming familiar, like a commercial heard once too often on the radio or the TV.
    Again, the dazzling smile. All those white teeth and all that handsome-savage bullshit had sure gone overwith the women when they were young and on the prowl. It probably still worked, Logan reflected.
    “You mean it?” Jim asked.
    “I mean it.”
    “You meant it when you promised to be best man in my wedding, too,” Jim pointed out.
    “I was in Iraq,” Logan said.
    “You
were in Iraq?”
    “Didn’t I just say that?”
    “Just because you say something, Creed, that doesn’t mean it’s true.”
    “When my stuff gets here, I’ll show you the documentation. Honorable discharge. Even a couple of medals.”
    Jim gave a low whistle. “So
that’s
why you dropped out of the rodeo scene. You always got a lot of play on ESPN. Then, all of the sudden, you’re just not there. You got drafted?”
    “I enlisted,” Logan said. “Can we not talk about Iraq right now?”
    Jim frowned, obviously confused. He was a veteran himself, and in buddy world, guys swapped war stories. “Why not?”
    “Because I need booze to even
think
about combat, let alone talk about it, and given my illustrious history, not to mention the high incidence of alcoholism in the Creed clan, I try to limit myself to the occasional beer.”
    “Oh,” Jim said. “Bad, huh?”
    “Bad,” Logan admitted.
    “You were special forces, right?”
    “Right. And this constitutes talking about Iraq. I’m stone-cold sober and I’d like to stay that way.”
    “Okay,” Jim agreed hastily, putting up both hands, palms out. “Okay.”
    Logan stood. “I just came by to say hello and let you know I’m back. My dog’s in the truck and I have contractors to meet with, plus I promised to stop by Cassie’s before I head for home.”
    Jim grinned, rising, too. “You have a dog
and
a truck? You really
are
going redneck.”
    “Nah,” Logan said, giving the waitress a wave as he turned to go. “I still have both my front teeth.”
    “Not for long,” Jim quipped, “if either of your brothers gets a wild hair to come back home the way you did.”
    Jim was only joking, but the words jabbed at a sore spot in Logan. It was too much to hope that Dylan’s and Tyler’s personal roads might turn and wind homeward, and the three of them could come to some kind of terms, but Logan hoped it would happen, just the same.
    His friend walked him to the front doors of the casino, slot machines flashing and chinging all around them. Logan wondered how anybody could