by Tami Hoag
“Aren't you even gonna say hello, Sam?” he said softly.
She turned her head to look at him squarely, wishing he would see cool indifference in her eyes, knowing he would see pain instead. “What are you doing here?”
Good question. He bit the inside of his lip and tried to think of something clever, something that didn't sound as screwed up as he felt. He was the one who wanted out of the marriage; he couldn't very well tell her he missed her.
“It's a free country,” he said at last, all but wincing at how lame that sounded.
Samantha tightened her expression into a glare, hoping the hurt wouldn't show through. In her heart she had wanted him to say that he missed her, that he needed her, that he wanted to try again to make their marriage work. Over and over she had envisioned him coming to her and begging her forgiveness, telling her with tears in his eyes that he wanted her more than anything, that he wanted her to have his baby. That was what she wanted. And she kicked herself for it. She wasn't a dreamy young girl anymore; she was a woman with a husband who cheated on her without compunction.
“Well then, you're free to go on down to the Hell and Gone,” she said sharply. “I'm sure there's a bimbo or two waiting for you.”
Will's protest caught in his throat as she wheeled around and stalked away with a loaded tray in her hands. Heaving a sigh, he leaned both elbows on the bar and hung his head. “Hey, Tony,” he muttered to the bartender, “gimme a shot of Jack in the black, will you?”
J.D. intercepted the whiskey. He tossed it back, slammed the glass down on the bar and fixed his brother with a steely glare. “We're leaving.”
Will shot him a look. “What's your problem?”
“Besides you?”
“That meeting can't be over yet.”
“It is as far as I'm concerned.”
“Oh, well, then,” Will drawled sarcastically, stretching his arms out in an expansive gesture. “Then we can all go home. St. John has spoken.”
“Save your lip for someone who wants to hear it. Let's go.”
Will shook his head, only mildly incredulous at his brother's high-handedness. “Contrary to what you seem to think, big brother, you are not my keeper. I have my own truck, you know.”
“Yeah. And some night you might even be sober enough to drive it home.”
“I'm driving it home tonight,” Will said tightly.
“Before or after you lose another grand or two in Little Purgatory?”
Will squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” J.D. said, his gaze cutting around them to make certain no one was within earshot. He signaled the bartender for a refill on the Jack and leaned heavily against the bar. “Jesus, Will,” he whispered. “How could you? Sixty-five hundred!”
“I had a straight, J.D.,” he said, cupping his hands in front of him as if he could call up a vision of the cards across them. “I had it right there and I kept looking at that pot and thinking, Judas, that's the loan on my truck, that's three payments to Stark Implement, that's a down payment on that hay ground across the valley. . . .”
“It's sixty-five hundred dollars you could just as well have flushed down the toilet.”
Will glared at him. “Thanks, J.D. Make me feel worse about it than I already do. I was trying to win.”
“But you didn't, Will.” He held his tongue as the bartender refilled his glass. He tossed the whiskey back and set the glass down with a dull thunk. “You never do.”
Will reached for his beer mug and J.D. slid it beyond his grasp. His temper was simmering. He felt as if everything in his world was slipping beyond his control, sliding through his hands like wet rope. “We got cattle to move in the morning. Remember that. If you're not downstairs by four-thirty, I'll haul your sorry ass out of whatever bed I find it in and tie it on a horse. You hear me?”
“I hear you fine.”
J.D. leaned down into his brother's face, his voice a razor-edged whisper. “You might try to remember once in a while that the Stars and Bars is your responsibility too. Responsibility, not a toy, not something you bet on in a goddamn poker game. Responsibility. Look the word up in the dictionary if you have to, college boy.”
Tossing some crumpled bills on the bar, Will slid off his stool. “I'm out of here. I don't need to take this bullshit from you.”
He headed for the front lobby of the lodge, his mind turning to thoughts of the Hell and Gone and drowning his troubles in Coors and the charms of a cowgirl with a tight ass and loose morals.
J.D. stalked across the room to a side door that led out into the parking lot, tipping his hat to Samantha as he went.
Neither of them paid the least bit of attention to the pair of eyes that had taken in every detail of their argument.
Sharon Russell sipped her scotch and smiled to herself. Dissension among the Rafferty ranks. Bryce would be pleased.
Outside, J.D. was able to breathe a little better. The Jack Daniel's seeped into his bloodstream and calmed him a bit. He turned away from the refurbished lodge and focused on a view he had loved since boyhood. The night sky was a sheet of deep blue velvet studded with diamonds. A wedge of moon was scaling the peaks of the Absarokas to the east, spilling its white glow down the forested slopes.
As he stood there, staring up at it, the anger that seemed so much a part of him these days slipped away, the tension ebbed. The madness of life receded for a moment, and he was left with something that was real and enduring. The mountains would always be here. The moon would always rise. Not wanting to think beyond that, he stepped off the veranda and headed toward his truck at the back of the lot.
He didn't want to think about Will and the resentment that always managed to seep into their conversations from both sides. He didn't want to think about the mental slip he'd made in calling Will “college boy.” He didn't want to think why he should consider it a slip at all, the showing of a weakness.
It wasn't Will's fault J.D. hadn't been able to finish his time at Montana State. That was Tom's fault for dying—which was Sondra's fault for breaking him. Nor was it Will's fault he had gotten a full ride to the university in Missoula. That had been Sondra's doing too. She had insisted her baby get a complete education; had seen to it with the money of her lover. Never mind that Will had majored in partying and minored in rodeo and let his grades skid down the shitter.
The memory set J.D.'s teeth on edge. Waste. God almighty, how he hated waste.
The sound of music caught his ear and he pulled up short, glancing at the lodge. Lights glowed through the array of French doors along the back of the bar. From farther down the street came the drift of noise from the Hell and Gone. But this music was softer, warmer, nearer. He walked on, scanning his surroundings with a narrow gaze.
A split rail fence marked the back of the parking lot. Beyond that lay the rumpled hills that formed the feet of the mountains, dotted with trees and rock outcroppings that loomed in the stark contrast of moonglow and shadows. J.D. slipped between the rails of the fence and walked out into meadow, his senses filling with the scent of grass and wildflowers, the sounds of a warm, smoky voice and the sweet, tender notes of a guitar. A woman's voice, low and strong. The song she sang was poignant and reflective, poetic in a way that went far beyond simple rhyme. It was the song of a woman trying to navigate her way through life despite the obstacles and her own stubbornness, despite mistakes and missed opportunities.
The beauty and the truth of it stopped J.D. from walking up on her. He just stood there and listened as she sang of the moon and St. Christopher. And when it was over and her fingers had plucked out the final notes, he almost backed away out of respect. Then it struck him who she was. Mary Lee Jennings.
She sat on a small boulder, the guitar cradled across her middle and a tall bottle by her side. She wasn't alone. Zip, his cattle dog, sat at the base of the rock, staring up at her, his ears perked attentively. It was Zip who noticed him first and bounded toward him with a jubilant yip.
Mari
followed the dog with her eyes, her heart slamming into her breastbone when she saw the man standing no more than a dozen feet away. The brim of a pale gray hat shaded his face, but almost instantly she recognized the set of his shoulders and the stance he had taken with his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans. It seemed odd that she should know him by such subtle signs when she had met him only twice.
“You missed your calling, Rafferty,” she said, her tone wry. “You would have made a great spy the way you sneak up on people.”
J.D. ignored the commentary. He waded a little closer through the lush grass, until he could almost read the label on the bottle that sat beside her. “You always sit and sing to the moon?”
“Doesn't everyone?”
“No, ma'am. Not around here.”
She raised a shoulder in a careless shrug and tugged a hand back through her tangled hair to anchor it behind one ear. A lazy smile turned the corners of her mouth. “Oh, well. At least I'm not naked.”
The joke was almost lost on him as the image filled his head. He could too easily picture her sitting there on that smooth boulder in nothing but pale creamy skin and her moon-silvered mop of hair.
Mari sensed the tension in him. It was telegraphed to her on a wavelength of instinct she didn't understand, nor did she care to understand at the moment. Not at this time and certainly not with this man. Pretending ignorance, she lifted the bottle that sat beside her and held it out to him.
“Champagne? Compliments of the Mystic Moose.”
“You're staying here?”
She gave him a look. “While the place you sent me to had an undeniably unique ambience, I prefer not to listen while the trucker in the next room gets a lube job.”
He almost smiled at that. Dangerous thinking, letting her charm him. He focused on the bottle she held by the neck. “You always offer drinks to men you consider jerks?”
Mari had the grace to wince, though more for what she was about to do than for anything she'd said before. She needed information from J. D. Rafferty. It seemed only politic not to antagonize him, even if it did make her feel like a hypocrite, even if he deserved to be antagonized.
She slid down off the rock, holding both the champagne bottle and her guitar out away from her. The guitar she propped carefully against the boulder. The champagne she took with her as she moved toward him, holding it out as a peace offering. “Look, we got off to a bad start. Maybe we should just take it from the top, huh?”
J.D. narrowed his eyes, assessing her from head to toe. She wore a pair of old black leggings, a T-shirt from a Cajun bar in New Orleans, and a blue cotton shirt five sizes too big for her. She hardly looked dangerous, but his guard stayed up just the same. “Why? What do you want from me?”
“Civility?” Mari ventured, swallowing back the question she had held inside her most of the afternoon and evening. When he only went on watching her, she forced a laugh and shook her head. “Christ, you're a suspicious son of a gun.”
“I've got reason to be. I knew your friend Lucy, remember? She never offered a damn thing that didn't have strings attached. Why should I think you're any different?”
She put her head on one side and hummed a note of consideration, the champagne dulling the edges of her temper. “This is a first. I've never posed a threat to anyone before. Unless you count social embarrassment. My family has always lived in fear of me eating with the wrong fork at dinner parties—to say nothing of eating with my fingers, which I have an uncontrollable urge to do. My mother considered my lack of social grace a birth defect. I'm sure she would have organized a telethon for the cause if the shame hadn't been too much for her.”
He just stared at her for several moments until she began to wonder if she hadn't suddenly begun speaking in a language he didn't understand. A blush of embarrassment and champagne fizzies warmed her cheeks, and she anxiously shifted her weight from one sneaker to the other. Finally he said, “You always talk this much?”
“No. I am capable of deep and abiding silences. But not after half a bottle of champagne,” she confessed. “I tend to wax poetic and bay at the moon.”
He gave a snort that might have been disgust or a sinus condition, and started to turn away, motioning the dog to follow him.
“Wait!” Mari rushed to catch up, the grass and the lethargy of alcohol pulling at her feet. “I have to ask you something.”
He stopped, but didn't turn around, forcing her to step in front of him. His expression was inscrutable, but she could feel tension emanating from him. She wondered where the wariness came from, wondered if Lucy had been the one who jaded him. She thought of chickening out, but forced the words past the knot in her tongue before she could. “Who is Del Rafferty?”
“Why?”
“He found Lucy's body. Is he a relative of yours?”
“You thought you had to ply me with liquor for that?” J.D. sneered, letting his temper run freely through him and heat the blood in his veins. He welcomed it. This was the face of femininity he knew best—deceit.
She wanted something from him. Plain and simple. Like every other leech who had come into his domain from the outside world. They all wanted something—a piece of this, a scrap of that, a chunk, a rock, an acre, a ranch, a pound of flesh. They wormed their way in with smiles and platitudes and stroked with one hand while they stole with the other. They insulted his intelligence and mocked his basic honesty, and suddenly he wanted very badly that someone pay.
“Damned city bitches,” he snarled. “You don't know how to ask a straight question, do you? Everything has to be wrapped in some kind of disguise. Why didn't you just ask?”
“I did just ask!” Mari said, feeling at once both wrongly accused and justly convicted.
His lip curled in derision, he took a step toward her, looming over her. “‘Sorry, J.D., we got off on the wrong foot. Can we start again? Do you want some champagne?' ”
He snatched the bottle out of her hand and flung it aside, sadistically gratified by the way she jumped back, eyes wide. He wanted her scared of him.
“What else do you want to know, Mary Lee?” he demanded, backing her toward a cottonwood tree that grew at the edge of the parking lot. “What else?”
“N-nothing,” she stammered, stumbling back.
“Are you like your friend Lucy? You want to know what it's like to tease a cowboy?”
“No—”
“You want to know what it's like to fuck a cowboy?”
“No! I—”
“I'm more than willing to accommodate you. Or did Lucy already tell you all about it? Huh?”
“No, she never—”
He gave a rough laugh that held no humor. “Never was not a word in her vocabulary.”
Mari collided with the trunk of the tree, hitting her head hard enough to snap her teeth together. The rough bark bit into her through the fabric of her cotton shirt as she pressed back against it, as J.D. pinned her against it. There was nothing about his body that was softer than the tree. His thighs were like pillars flanking hers. His fingers were like bands of steel as they wrapped around her upper arms. He leaned down close, until she could see the glitter of anger in his eyes. Her pulse fluttered in her throat like a trapped bird.
“You want to find out, Mary Lee?” he whispered, his gaze boring into hers, penetrating in a way that was disturbingly intimate.
His breath came in warm, whiskey-scented puffs that seemed to go directly into her mouth. She wanted to slap him, but he had hold of her arms. She might have kneed him, but he was too close. And then there was the fact that she didn't feel as if she had an ounce of strength left in her body.
She managed to form the word no with her lips. It came out on a gossamer breath.
“Liar,” he growled.
He didn't assault. He didn't attack. He lowered his mouth to hers slowly, but Mari did nothing to stop him. She gasped a little at the first touch of flesh to flesh, and he took advantage, easing his tongue into her mouth slowly, deeply. She shudder
ed at the blatant carnality of it, but did nothing to stop him. She felt caught in the pull of some incredible magnet, unable to draw away, unable to stop her body from responding as he tasted her.
This is crazy, Marilee. He's a large, angry cowboy. You don't even like him.
The internal monologue fogged out as he slanted his mouth across hers and increased the pressure and the hunger of the kiss. He was heavy and solid against her, and impressively, undeniably male.
Hunger. God, he was hungry for this. Ravenous. Wild for the taste of her. He crushed her against the tree, wanting to sink into her, wanting to pull her down to the ground with him and into oblivion. He slipped a hand between their bodies and found her small, plump breast. His thumb brushed across the nipple that budded hard and tight beneath the soft cotton of her T-shirt. Need thundered through him neck and neck with anger and frustration, led on by the lure of sweetness and champagne.
He wanted her. Badly. Damn near beyond reason. Another woman he didn't trust or respect. Another outsider. Another of the jackals who had come to scavenge at his life.
The taste of desire soured in his mouth.
As he eased away from her marginally, Mari's senses came rushing back like a chill wind. In their short acquaintance, J. D. Rafferty had frightened her, offended her, embarrassed her, and now this. This went beyond assault, beyond humiliation. He had invaded her, robbed her of her sanity, stripped her of her good judgment.
Locating the hands she had wound into his shirtfront, she balled them into fists and hit him in the chest as hard as she could. She may as well have hit an elephant with a tennis ball. All she managed to do was annoy him.
“How dare you!” she demanded, breathless.
He looked down at her with slit-eyed disgust. “Don't pretend you didn't want it, Mary Lee. You didn't exactly try to fight me off.”
He was right, but that didn't lessen her outrage. He had no business touching her in the first place. “Those are your rules of dating etiquette? Screw anything that doesn't hit you in the head with a brick first? Where I come from, that's called rape. This is the nineties, Rafferty. In the civilized world men ask permission.”