by Tami Hoag
There was nothing romantic about his plan. Growing up he had seen firsthand the folly of romance. His father had lost his heart twice. First to J.D.'s mother, Ann, who died of cancer. J.D. had been only three at the time. He had no memories of the woman herself, only of sensations—comfort and safety, softness. But he remembered vividly her death and the way it devastated his father. Then along came Sondra Remick. Much too soon. Much too pretty. Much too spoiled. And Tom Rafferty lost his heart again to a woman. Totally. Utterly. Beyond all pride or reason.
In the end, he damn near lost everything. Sondra had eventually left him for a more exciting man. Because of her infidelities, Tom had had a strong case against her as an unfit mother, and might have ended up with full custody of her darling Will. That was the only thing that had stood in her way of suing him for divorce and taking away half of everything he owned, including the Stars and Bars. They fought bitterly over his refusal to release her from her marriage vows, but he was unrelenting. He would not let her go. His obsession for her went too deep. In retrospect, J.D. thought he probably could not have let go even if he had wanted.
They had stood right there on this porch, J.D. and his daddy, looking down across the ranch yard at the sturdy old buildings, the corrals, the horses, the valley and mountains beyond. Lines of strain were etched in Tom Rafferty's face like scars, his eyes were bleak with hopelessness. He looked like a man waiting to die.
“Never love a woman, son,” he mumbled as if he were remembering words told to him by someone long ago. “Never love a woman. Love the land.”
Citizens for the Eden Valley ordinarily met in the community center—a kind euphemism for a room off the fire station garage filled with rickety folding chairs and mismatched card tables people had donated over the years. That this meeting was being held in the Mystic Moose Lodge was a bad sign as far as J.D. was concerned. The enemy had invited them into its camp. Some saw it as an overture of friendship, an invitation to work cooperatively with the newcomers. J.D. wasn't so optimistic.
The meeting room was bright and clean with ruby carpeting on the floor and rustic beams across the ceiling. It smelled pleasantly of fresh coffee instead of diesel fuel and exhaust fumes like the community center. The tables were draped in hunter-green linen. The chairs were all new. J.D. chose to stand at the back of the room.
There were perhaps a hundred people in attendance, milling around, buzzing premeeting gossip. Most of them were lifelong citizens of New Eden. Businessmen and women from the community. Ranchers who had, like J.D., quit work hours early to clean up and put on freshly pressed western shirts, Sunday trousers, and good boots. Scattered among the common folk were new faces—Hollywood types, artists, environmental activists, Evan Bryce.
J.D.'s hackles went up at the sight of Bryce working the room. He made the rounds, singling out the mayor, the chairman of the citizens' commission, the banker's wife, dazzling them with his smile, undermining any wariness they might have had with a phony show of concern. As if he gave a damn about the people of New Eden.
What Bryce cared about was power. That had seemed glaringly apparent to J.D. the first time they had met—from the way Bryce threw money around to the way he surrounded himself with people who believed he was important. J.D. refused to be impressed by him, an affront that had set the tone for their acquaintance. Bryce wanted to be king of the mountain along the south face of the Absaroka range, but J.D. wouldn't play the game. No Rafferty had ever bowed to a king—real or otherwise. No Rafferty ever would.
As if he sensed J.D.'s eyes on him, Bryce looked up and their gazes caught and held for one burning moment. A slow smile pulled across Bryce's mouth. His pale eyes gleamed with amusement. The look clearly said I've got the keys to the kingdom within my grasp, Rafferty, and you can't do a damn thing to stop me. Then he moved on to kiss another cheek and shake another hand.
“Hey, J.D.” Red Grusin stuck out a hand and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don't see much of you these days.”
As owner of the Hell and Gone, Red had never seen much of him. J.D. had better things to do than sit around a honky-tonk and drink beer. “Will spends enough time with you all for the both of us,” he said with a half smile. For all he knew, that was where Will was at that very moment. His brother had yet to make an appearance in the meeting room.
Grusin chuckled. He was a big man with skinny legs and a thick chest and belly that made him look as if he were wearing an umpire's padding beneath his shirt. He had the hair and freckles his name indicated. His cheeks and the end of his bulbous nose were perpetually pink. “That's a fact. Why, just last night he hit the jackpot on the mouse races. 'Course, that didn't hardly make up for what he lost downstairs in the poker game,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. His blue eyes twinkled. Just a little joke among friends—Will and his weakness for wagering. “But it'll all come out in the wash, as my mama always said.”
“Will was in Little Purgatory last night?” J.D. asked, his voice as dead calm as the air before a storm.
Grusin's jowly face dropped a little, and he swallowed hard as he realized his slip.
“How much did he lose?”
Grusin made a face, his eyes dodging around the room as if he were afraid the sheriff might overhear and suddenly decide to shut down the illegal gambling that had been going on in the basement of the Hell and Gone for the last two decades. “Don't worry about it, J.D. He'll win it back. He's been on a bad streak and he's in the hole a little now, but—”
J.D. stepped a little closer in front of Red and stared at him hard. “How much?” he whispered.
The older man's mouth worked as if he were chewing a mouthful of chalk. “Sixty-five hundred,” he mumbled. “Don't worry about it, J.D.” His gaze scanned the room frantically for anyone near enough to rescue him, landing on Harry Rex Monroe from the Feed and Read. Relief brightened his face like a man having a vision. “Hey there, Harry Rex!”
J.D. just stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the floor and breathing slowly through his mouth. Sixty-five hundred dollars. Will did not have sixty-five hundred dollars. The bank held the mortgages on everything they owned, practically down to their underwear, and Will was whiling away his nights in Little Purgatory, throwing money down a rat hole after busted poker hands.
“I heard talk of a ski resort on Irish peak . . .”
“. . . Some developer wants to put up condos north of town.”
“They'll turn the place into another goddamn Aspen with cappuccino bars and prissy Swiss chalets and rents so high, everyone who works here will have to drive in from someplace else. . . .”
Random lines of conversation penetrated the fog. J.D. forced himself to pay attention, forced his brain to function. He had come here for a reason. Will could be dealt with later.
$6,500. He felt ill, but damned if he would show it.
Lyle Watkins, who was his neighbor to the south of the Stars and Bars, stood staring down into his coffee cup. He looked thin and miserable, as if worry had been eating away at him beneath his skin. “Yeah, well,” he snapped suddenly, breaking in on the antidevelopment talk of his fellow ranchers. “You can't feed your kids on pride and scenery.”
“Can't feed them at all if these damned actors bring in buffalo and elk herds infected with brucellosis and TB,” J.D. said calmly.
Lyle dodged his gaze, rubbing his fingertips against his coffee cup as if it were a worry stone. “Ain't nobody proved Bryce's herds are infected.”
“I don't want the proof to be my cattle dropping over. Do you, Lyle?”
Watkins tightened his lips and said nothing. The silence curled like a fist of foreboding in J.D.'s chest. He swore softly under his breath. “You're selling out.”
The words were barely more than a whisper. Lyle flinched as if they struck him with the force of hammer blows.
“Deal's not done yet,” he mumbled. He stared down at the toes of his boots, his head hanging with the weight of his shame. He had been one of the first and t
he loudest to decry the buyout of ranchers by people who wanted the land for their own private playgrounds, and now he was giving in, giving up, betraying his neighbor.
“I can't afford not to, J.D.,” he said miserably. “You know what the market's been like. And I got Debbie and the kids to think of.”
“Jesus, Lyle,” J.D. said, desperation running through him like a sword. He felt as if he was standing on a narrow ledge and another piece had just crumbled out from under his boots. “How long has your family been on the place? Seventy—eighty years?”
“Long enough.”
“Who?”
Watkins shook his head a little and started to move with the rest of the crowd toward the chairs as Jim Ed Wilcox began blowing into the microphone at the podium. J.D. grabbed him roughly by the arm, ignoring the stares the others directed his way.
“Dammit, Lyle, I asked who,” he demanded through his teeth.
The fact that Watkins didn't want to answer was answer enough. J.D. felt as if he'd had the wind knocked out of him. He stared hard at this man he had known all his life, the neighbor he had worked with side by side at brandings and roundups, and felt as if a member of his own family had turned on him.
“Bryce.” He growled the name in disgust.
Lyle Watkins looked up at him, his tired eyes soft with apology. “I'm sorry, J.D.,” he whispered. “He's got more money than God. Me, I don't have two nickels left to rub together.” He lowered his voice another decibel, his eyes cutting from side to side to make certain no one else could hear his confession. “I sell the place to him, or it goes to the bank. That's all there is to it.”
“The hell it is.”
Watkins pulled away and headed for a chair, not looking back. J.D. stared after him, furious, stunned, frustrated. He didn't even hear the opening remarks of the chairman. He just stood there behind the last row of chairs, his mind spinning, his eyes on Evan Bryce, who sat at the table up front with all the local indignitaries, as J.D. called them. If Lyle Watkins sold the Flying K, Bryce would own everything from Irish Peak south to the edge of Yellowstone—everything except the Stars and Bars and the little chunk of property that had belonged to Lucy MacAdam.
Bryce sat up there in his faded denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his tan forearms. Christ, the man had probably never done an honest day's work in his life. Nobody was even sure where all his money had come from. Or where he had come from, for that matter. Hollywood was all anyone knew for sure, and God knew big money didn't get made down there by the sweat of any man's brow.
He has more money than God. God was exactly the role Bryce wanted to play here, J.D. thought bitterly. Bryce fielded questions from the audience with all the aplomb and paternal benevolence of a supreme being, telling them everything would be wonderful, their financial cups would runneth over, and all would be bliss in Eden.
To the credit of the citizens of New Eden, not everyone bought the routine. People rose readily to debate the issues. When one person pointed out that development would bring jobs to the valley, another countered that the jobs would be low-paying service occupations. When one charged that the influx of tourists was a disruption to a way of life, another argued that the town would die without those tourist dollars. Cattlemen spoke out angrily about the political clout wielded by radical left-wing environmentalists who owned second homes here and were fighting to stop everything from grazing on federal land to eating red meat. Environmentalists fought back, slamming the cattle industry for overgrazing and destroying wildlife habitat.
Jim Ed Wilcox, chairman of the committee, cut in as the debate edged toward an exchange of blows. He broke in again when a new argument heated up between a Mormon rancher from over on Bitter Creek and the owner of the New Age rock shop, or whatever the hell it was—a tall, fierce-looking woman named M.E. who was some kind of Broadway actress when she wasn't playing around in Montana. The rancher accused her of practicing witchcraft. She accused him of having a negative energy field and a constipated mind. Wilcox shouted them both down and, when order had been restored, introduced another of the people at the front table.
Colleen Bentsen was a squarely built woman with a cap of soft brown curls and large tortoiseshell glasses. She was dressed in a blue silk tunic and slacks with a wildly patterned scarf swathed around her shoulders and pinned in place with what looked to J.D. like a chunk of welder's solder. She took her place behind the podium as two men carried a draped object in from a side door and set it on the table beside her.
“Good evening, everyone,” she said so softly that Jim Ed got up and bent the neck of the microphone down, making it screech in protest. A blush bloomed on the woman's cheeks. She cleared her throat demurely and started again. “As many of you know, I am a sculptor. I came to New Eden two years ago and made this my permanent home. It troubles me to see so much dissention over the issue of new people coming here. I feel what we all need is a spirit of cooperation. As a symbol of that spirit, I have decided to donate to the town a sculpture that embodies the theme of cooperation and blends harmoniously the rough elements of the ranching community with the influx of sophisticated and artistic qualities from the outside.”
She unveiled the model with a flick of the wrist, snapping the white cloth from it. Half the room gasped in awe and wonder. The other half stared in dumbfounded astonishment. J.D. fit squarely into the second group. It didn't look like anything to him but a big hunk of smooth metal and a big hunk of jagged metal twisted together, like something that could be found on the road in the aftermath of a major car wreck.
There was a smattering of enthusiastic applause for the piece, which, Miss Bentsen said, would stand as a focal point in front of the county courthouse. She would begin work on the project immediately, and would create the piece on the site so people could witness the progress.
“I expect that's a nice gesture, Miz Bentsen,” J.D. said neutrally, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room. “But I don't see how a big ol' hunk of metal is gonna help me pay taxes that have been raised to the moon because of inflated land prices. A gesture doesn't keep my neighbors from selling out prime ranch land to people who think food is manufactured in a room out back of the A&P. Bottom line here is, we dig our heels in now and hang on to what's ours, or in five years we'll all be steppin' and fetchin' for rich folk. That's not what my ancestors came west for a hundred-some years ago.”
While the sculptress turned scarlet with embarrassment, Bryce rose gracefully from his chair, steepling his bony fingers in front of him in a scholarly pose. His pale eyes locked on J.D. “Mr. Rafferty, are you saying only natives should be allowed to live in Montana? That this land and freedom you so cherish shouldn't be offered to anyone born in another state?”
J.D. narrowed his eyes. He didn't raise his voice above its usual low growl, and yet each word snapped in the air like the crack of a whip. “I'm saying I won't sell my heritage to some slick-ass smart-mouth rich boy so he can impress his witless, feckless friends from Hollywood.
“I can't stop people from coming here, but they can damn well respect my way of life and leave me to it in peace. I won't be bought out. I won't be run off. And I sure as hell won't stand by and smile while speculators turn this place into some kind of snotty elitist playground.”
He settled his Stetson on his head, signaling to one and all that the argument was over as far as J. D. Rafferty was concerned. “If I want to live in an amusement park,” he said softly, firmly, “I'll move to Disneyland.”
Will sat at the bar, one arm on the polished surface, fingers absently stroking a sweating mug of imported beer. He swiveled sideways on his stool to survey the place. It was a little tony for his tastes. A fire crackled in the stone fireplace, chasing off the chill of the spring evening. Soft guitar music drifted out of hidden speakers, calm enough to lull a man to sleep.
Will preferred the Hell and Gone down the street for its noise and truculence and nightly mouse races. The juke there played country as loud as thunder an
d nobody talked below a shout. The liquor was better in the Moose, but hell, after two or three, what difference did it make?
About half the tables in the Mystic Moose lounge were filled with newcomers and vacationers, pretty people in expensive clothes. One exotic-looking blonde sitting alone at a nearby table caught his eye, returning his stare with open boldness, but Will looked past her. He hadn't come in to get himself picked up by some rich bitch looking for a cowboy to lay. He had come in because his wife moved among the clientele with a serving tray and a smile that was softer than silk and warmer than the sun.
Damn, but she was a pretty thing. Somehow, he hadn't managed to realize just how pretty until after they had split up. He had always thought of Sam as cute—when he thought of her at all. A cute kid, a tomboy with a crush on him. Now he looked at her as she bent to set a glass of wine in front of a customer and her jeans snugged up tight against her bottom, and he wished to hell they'd never gotten married. He would have loved nothing better than to charm his way into her bed tonight, but he couldn't do that, things being what they were.
He shook his head and swilled his beer. He liked his life a whole lot better without complications.
Samantha felt his eyes on her the instant she set her tray on the bar, and her heart jumped up into her throat. Two weeks had passed since Will had moved back out to the Stars and Bars. She hadn't seen him up close since their last fight.
The memory of the blonde from the Hell and Gone warred with the image of him sitting there on the bar-stool, looking too handsome for his own good, his eyes too blue and his smile too tempting. The pressure made her heart feel as if it were swelling and cutting off her air.