by Tami Hoag
A quick reconnaissance of the customers told her she was the only woman in the place who wasn't wearing a pink uniform. Regardless of shape or size, the men all had the look of men who worked outdoors and made their living with their hands—creased, leathery faces, narrow eyes that gave her hard, direct looks, then slid away almost shyly.
She ordered all the fat and cholesterol on the menu, not in any mood to count calories. She hadn't had a substantial meal in weeks, and she had a long day ahead of her. Better to face it on a full stomach. While she waited for Nora to bring the food, she gazed out at the wedge of town she could see through the front window.
There was an old-fashioned hardware store across the street with a wide front porch and an old green screen door. Shiny new spades and rakes and pitchforks leaned against the weathered white clapboard. A sign in the window advertised a special on wheelbarrows. Next to the hardware store was a drugstore that had been established in 1892 according to the ornate gold lettering on the front window. Next to the drugstore, gaudy spandex in neon colors hung like pieces of indecipherable modern art in the window of Mountain Man Bike and Athletic.
The sight of the bike shop was jarring, but not nearly so jarring as the sight of a money-green Ferrari purring down the street. Incongruities.
“Here to buy land?” Nora asked as she set down a plate heaped with golden pancakes and another loaded with bacon and a Denver omelette.
“No, I'm . . .” It didn't seem right to say she was on vacation in the wake of Lucy's death. “It's more of a pause at a life crossroads.”
The waitress arched a thinly plucked brow and considered, accepting the definition with a nod of approval. “Guess I've seen a few of those myself.”
Mari snapped off an inch of bacon and popped it in her mouth. “I came to visit a friend for a while, but that isn't going to work out after all.”
Nora hummed wisely. “Man trouble, huh?”
“No. She's—um—she's dead.”
“Mercy!” Her dark eyes went wide in a quick flash of surprise. Then she pulled her practicality back down around her like a skirt that had been caught up by a sudden gust of wind. “Well, yeah, that'd put a damper on things, wouldn't it?”
“Yeah.” Mari forked up a chunk of omelette and chewed thoughtfully, letting a moment of silence pass in Lucy's honor. “Maybe you knew her,” she said at last. “Lucy MacAdam? She'd been living here for about a year.”
Several other diners glanced her way at the mention of Lucy's name, but her attention was on the waitress. She already thought of Nora of the Rainbow Cafe as being honest and dependable, a woman who would know the score around whatever town she called home.
“No . . .” Nora narrowed her big brown eyes in concentration and shook her head as if trying to shake loose a memory to connect with the name. “No . . . oh, wait. Was she that one got shot up on Rafferty's Ridge?”
Rafferty. The name gave Mari a jolt that was like an electric shock.
“Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry,” Nora cooed in sympathy, giving her a motherly squeeze on the shoulder. “I didn't know her. That crowd she ran with don't come in here much.”
“What crowd?”
“That Hollyweird bunch. Bryce and all them. Don't you know them?”
“No. I never met any of Lucy's friends here.” She had heard bits and pieces about them, details Lucy dropped extravagantly into her few letters and conversations, like brightly colored gemstones, designed to dazzle and impress. Celebrities. Important people. Movers and shakers who came to New Eden for some trendy communing with nature. The kind of crowd Lucy would be drawn to for the excitement, the novelty, the notoriety. She had always thrived on being at the center of the storm.
“Well, that's a strike in your favor with me,” Nora said dryly. “They're big tippers, but I don't go much for their attitudes. I'm not some trick poodle for them to come in here and snicker at. They can just take all their money and go play somewhere else as far as I'm concerned.”
“Come on, Nora,” a warm male voice sounded from the booth behind Mari. She craned her neck around and looked up as a cowboy rose and slid his arms around the waitress. He was trim and athletic with silky dark hair falling across his forehead and sky-blue eyes brimming with mischief. He grinned a grin that would have put Tom Cruise to shame. “You tellin' me you don't want a part in Clint Eastwood's next big western?”
A grudging blush bloomed on Nora's cheeks even as she set her features into a scowl. “I'm tellin' you to keep your hands to yourself, Will Rafferty.”
He ignored her command, rocking her from side to side in time with the crooning of Vince Gill on the jukebox. He laid his lean cheek against hers and his eyes drifted shut dreamily. “He'd go for you, you know. You're five times better looking than Sondra Locke ever was. He'd make you a star, Nora Davis.”
“I'll make you see stars,” Nora snorted. She pulled her order pad from the pocket of her starched apron and smacked him in the forehead with it.
“Ouch!” Will stepped back, making a pained face, rubbing at the spot where the binding had nailed him.
Nora cut him a look. “You're married, Romeo, in case you forgot.” She snatched up her coffee urn and walked away, turning back when she was three tables away, a sassy smile canting her wide painted mouth. “And I am ten times better looking than Sondra Locke with her stringy hair and runny red nose and no eyelashes.”
Will Rafferty threw back his head and laughed, delighted. “Nora, you're a wonder!”
“Don't you forget it, junior,” she drawled, sashaying off toward the kitchen, her wide hips swinging.
From under her lashes Mari studied the man standing beside her. Rafferty. He had to be a relative. There was a strong family resemblance in the square jaw and chin, the straight browline. He was younger than the man she had met last night—probably around her own age—and slighter of build, not nearly so imposing physically. He had the lithe, athletic look of a dancer. But the biggest difference was that this Rafferty had no trouble smiling.
He turned the power of that bright white grin on her, blue eyes on high beam, a dimple biting into his cheek. The smile was irresistibly incorrigible. Mari half expected to see canary feathers peeking out from between his teeth. It was the kind of smile that made sensible women do foolish things. She felt her knees quiver, but the weakness never made it to her head. She considered herself temporarily immune to charming men. One of the few benefits of getting dumped.
“Will Rafferty.” He introduced himself with a flam-boyant little half-bow, then held a hand out to her in greeting. “Welcome to the Garden of Eden.”
“Marilee Jennings. Are you supposed to be Adam or the snake?” she asked with a wry smile as she shook his hand.
“Cain.” He slid into the seat across from her and bobbed his eyebrows. “As in ‘raisin' Cain.' ”
“A comparison your wife finds amusing?”
The smile tightened and he glanced away. “We're separated.”
Mari reserved comment and forked up a spongy cube of pancake.
“So you were a friend of Lucy's, huh?”
“We used to hang out together when she lived in Sacramento. Did you know her?”
“Yes, ma'am.” He stole a strip of bacon from her plate and bit the end off it, his blue eyes, as bright as neon, locked on hers once again. “She was something.”
He didn't specify what. Mari wondered if J.D. was the only Rafferty who had known Lucy in the biblical sense. Lucy wouldn't have cared that Will Rafferty was married, only that he was cute as sin and filled out his jeans in a way that pleased her roving eye. Lucy said it wasn't up to her to be any man's conscience. Her attitude toward infidelity had always bothered Mari. Come to that, her attitude toward sex in general had been too liberal for Mari's tastes. Lucy had called her a prude. She wasn't; she just didn't like the idea of needing a score card to keep her lovers' names straight.
“Nora said that Lucy was—that the accident happened someplace called Rafferty Ridge,” she said. �
�Are you that Rafferty?”
“One of,” Will replied, sneaking a triangle of toast out from under the edge of her half-eaten omelette. “Do you always eat this much?”
“Do you always mooch food off strangers' plates?”
He grinned. “Only when I'm hungry.” She slapped his hand with her fork as he reached for another piece of bacon. “The Stars and Bars is up the hill a ways from Lucy's place. That's Rafferty land. Most of that ridge is ours. Some's BLM land—that's Bureau of Land Management—some's Forest Service—”
“You have to be related to J. D. Rafferty, then.”
“Yep. That's what my mama always told me,” he said with a devilish grin. “He's my big brother. I never had any say in the matter. You've met St. John, have you?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Mari grumbled.
She tucked a tumble of wild hair behind her ear and polished off her second cup of coffee. Nora swept in and refilled her cup, shooting Will a look. He blew her a kiss and chuckled with good humor when she rolled her eyes.
“He scared the shit out of me, told me point-blank my friend was dead, and went on to make it clear to me that he wasn't the least bit sorry about any of it.”
“Yep.” Will sat back in the booth and stretched his arms out in front of him, working a kink out of his shoulder. “That's J.D. He got all the tact in the family.”
Mari sniffed and speared the last piece of bacon just as Will's fingertips brushed over it. “Must have been a defective gene,” she said caustically. “No offense, but your brother is about the biggest jerk I've run into.”
“None taken,” he said, his face glowing with unholy glee. “He can be an abrasive son of a gun.”
“He could give lessons to concrete.”
The sound of someone rising in the booth behind her sounded to Mari like the ominous roll of thunder. Her heart sank like a rock into the morass of heavy food she'd consumed as J. D. Rafferty stepped into view. He stood beside her table, looming like an oak tree, not so much as sparing her a glance. Slowly he settled a pale gray hat in place and pulled the brim low, his unwavering gaze on his brother.
“You done shooting your mouth off?” he said quietly, his low voice setting off discordant vibrations inside Mari. “We got work to do.”
“That's what I love about you, bro,” Will said, the finest razor's edge in his tone as he slid from the booth. “You're just a great big bundle of fun.”
“Fun?” The corner of J.D.'s mouth curled in derision. “What's that?”
The air between and around the two brothers was suddenly charged with enough electricity to make hair stand on end. Mari watched with guarded fascination as some tense, silent communication passed between their eyes. Will broke contact first, turning for the door without a word.
J.D. turned toward Mari, his gaze heating from gray ice to molten pewter as it lingered on her lower lip. Mari fought the urge to squirm in her seat. It was all she could do to keep from covering her mouth with her hand.
Rafferty met her eyes and smiled, the slight curve of his lips radiating male arrogance. “You don't have to like me, Mary Lee,” he murmured.
His meaning was crystal clear. Mari glared at him, wishing they weren't in quite so public a place so she could feel free to rip him up with her opinion of him. Still, she couldn't let him get away unscathed. She gave him a look of utter disgust and mouthed Fuck you.
The gray eyes darkened, the smile took on a feral quality. “Anytime, city girl.”
“When hell freezes over.”
He leaned down close, his eyes never leaving hers. He curled his big hands into the fabric of her old denim jacket and pulled the edges closed. “Better button up, sweetheart. I feel a cold spell coming on.”
Mari shoved his hands away. “It's called rejection, slick,” she said through her teeth. “Have the local schoolmarm look it up for you.”
J.D. stepped back, chuckling at her sass. He tipped his hat ever so slightly, conceding the round but not the war. “Miz Jennings.”
Mari said nothing. She felt used and furious. Will Rafferty had set her up and egged her on to get a rise out of his brother. And J.D. . . . She decided the initials stood for Jackass Deluxe.
Nora appeared beside the booth, rag in hand, and leaned across the table to wipe away the crumbs Will had left. “Those Raffertys are enough to give a girl cardiac arrest,” she said matter-of-factly. “They don't make men like that anymore.”
“No,” Mari said, scowling as she watched J. D. Rafferty through the front window. He climbed into a battered blue and gray four-by-four truck with STARS AND BARS emblazoned across the bug guard. “I thought they broke the mold after the Stone Age.”
CHAPTER
3
IT WAS a joke. Lighten up, will you?”
J.D. didn't say a word as he climbed into the cab of the battered Ford pickup. He nursed the engine to life carefully. The old truck had 153,000 hard miles on it. It needed to go a few more. There was no extra cash for buying new pickups. What money didn't get eaten up this year by Will's gambling or by the astronomical property taxes they had to pay because of the influx of elitists to the Eden valley would be sunk right back into the operation.
Fortify and strengthen. A siege mentality. Well, by God, if they weren't in a war, he didn't know what else to call it.
And in this war, Miz Marilee Jennings stood squarely on the other side of the DMZ.
“She's a friend of Lucy MacAdam's,” he said tightly, pronouncing the name macadam, like the pavement. She had been that hard, that abrasive. Even in bed she had had sharp edges.
He backed the pickup away from the curb and headed north on Main, automatically glancing in the rearview mirror to check the feed sacks. Zip, their black and white border collie, stood with his front paws on a stack of plump bags and surveyed the passing scenery with a big grin on his face. Behind them a maroon Jaguar purred impatiently. J.D. eased off on the gas.
“So she's a friend of Lucy's,” Will snapped irritably. “So what?”
The sun cutting through the clouds pierced his eyeballs and rejuvenated the hangover he had fought off with mass quantities of caffeine and food. He pulled a pair of mirrored sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and slid them on.
“So she's one of them.”
“Jesus. She came to visit a friend who turns out to be dead. Give her a break.”
“Why? Because she's pretty? Because she's a woman?” Disgust bent J.D.'s mouth into a sneer. “I swear, if it wears a bra, it can lead you around by your dick and you'll just go grinning like a jackass eating sawbriars.”
“Oh, Christ, will you lay off?” Will exploded, the volume of his own voice setting hammers swinging inside his temples. He fought off the need to rub the ache, not wanting to exhibit any sign of physical weakness in front of J.D. “You know what your problem is?”
“I'm sure you'll tell me.”
“You live like a goddamn monk. Maybe if you went out and got a little every once in a while you wouldn't begrudge the rest of us.”
“I get as much as I want. I just don't go around shooting my mouth off about it.”
Behind his shades, Will's gaze sharpened. “Or maybe you want her for yourself? Is that it, J.D.?” He hooted, wincing at the needles the laughter stabbed into his brain. “That's it! Ha! She doesn't seem like your type. More like mine. 'Course, damn near every type is my type.”
J.D. leveled a deadly stare at him as they idled at the town's one and only stoplight. “You'd do well to keep your eyes in your head and your pants zipped. You're married, ace.”
The words were both accusation and reminder. Will wanted neither the censure nor the guilt that rose at the prodding. He knew damn well he was married. The knowledge was like a yoke around his neck. He may not have remembered the ceremony. Even the drive to Reno was hazy—it had been a hell of a party that had led up to the event. But he was very much aware he had come back with a wife. Nearly a year after the fact, the idea still scared the hell out of him. A w
ife. A commitment. He didn't want it, couldn't handle it, wasn't ready. The excuses piled up at the back of his throat in a sour wad.
In a soft, unguarded corner of his heart he wondered fleetingly how Samantha was faring without him.
“Shit,” he snarled half under his breath.
He fell back against the seat, jerked an old University of Montana baseball cap off the gun rack behind him, and pulled it on, settling the brim just above the rims of his sunglasses. As if he were in disguise. As if he thought he could hide his character flaws from his brother with a costume. Will Rafferty incognito as Everyman. Christ, as if J.D. couldn't see through that in two seconds. J.D. could see through bullshit the way Superman could see through steel. He wondered how long it would take before J.D. found out about the sixty-five hundred and the busted flush of last night's poker game in Little Purgatory. He figured he had maybe a day and a half to live.
J.D. studied his brother from the corner of his eye as they headed out into the rolling green velvet countryside. Half brother, really, though he had never been one to use the term. The only child of Tom Rafferty's second marriage, Will was J.D.'s junior by four years. Twenty-eight going on seventeen. The joker, the charmer, this generation's wild Rafferty. He had a natural disdain for responsibility that rubbed hard against J.D.'s grain. But then, Will was his mother's son, and J.D. had never thought much of Sondra either. She had pampered and indulged Will in exchange for the kind of unconditional love and blind forgiveness J.D. had never been willing to give her.
He had seen Sondra for what she was early on—a spoiled city girl who had fallen in love with the idea of loving a cowboy but had quickly fallen out of love with the realities of ranch life. She had taken out her unhappiness on her husband, punishing Tom Rafferty for her own failings and miseries, and punishing his eldest son for seeing past her pretty golden façade. Will had been too young to know the difference. J.D. had never been that young.