Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  Mari felt wilder than the weather, out of control of herself, as if her body had taken on a will of its own, making up for all the time she had spent bending to the expectations of others. The sensations were thrilling and frightening, overwhelming all thought. She gave herself over to them, gave herself over to J.D.

  He kissed his way down her body, lingering on the curve of her waist, the point of her hip, the sensitive spot just above the delta of curls on her groin. Mari moaned with a mix of pleasure and frustration and tried to urge him lower, but J.D. had other ideas. He slid his body up along hers in one long, exquisite caress and buried his face against the curve of her neck, murmuring hot, dark words in her ear.

  Burning with need, Mari took the initiative, setting off on an exploration of his body. He was powerfully built. His was the body of a man who had done hard physical work his whole life. Beautiful was too feminine a word; handsome too civilized. Male. Utterly male. Shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of his world. A chest thick and deep and rough with dark hair. A belly ridged with muscle. A horseman's powerful thighs and calves.

  He was tough, muscular, scarred in spots. Mari kissed those spots, wanting to offer him softness and comfort, knowing he would take only what he wanted—her body.

  Just sex, J.D. told himself, it's just sex. The disclaimer chanted through his mind over and over. The assurance didn't make the need any less or the urgency any tamer. It didn't even begin to loosen the tension at the core of him.

  He slid his arms around her, groaning at the feel of her breasts, the silk of her skin, amazed at the sense of rightness, of belonging inside her. Somewhere in his wary heart he thought dimly that he shouldn't allow himself to feel this way. But then all thought was swamped by sensation, absorbed by instinct.

  Their gazes held. They moved together.

  Thunder rumbled overhead. The rain washed across the skylight. None of it mattered. Only this ritual as old as time. Only having her take the essence of what made him male deep within the most feminine part of her.

  Over the edge. Into a free fall. And then there was stillness, within and all around.

  Mari opened her eyes slowly. She lay tucked beside J.D., her cheek pressed to the hollow of his shoulder, one leg tangled with his. His arm was around her, holding her loosely. The light in the room had faded to the dark grainy texture of an underexposed black and white photograph. Rain still fell beyond the log walls. It ran in sheets over the skylight. It was the only sound. Soothing. Melancholy.

  Day was slipping into night. She had no idea what time it was, how much time had passed. She didn't know whether Rafferty was awake. His breathing was deep and regular. He didn't say a word. Mari flexed the fingers of her left hand, tangling them in the coarse dark hair that grew across the hard planes of his chest. His heartbeat was slow and even.

  What was he thinking? What was he feeling? What did this mean to him?

  She wouldn't ask for fear he would answer her. She didn't want to hear him say it in that same callous tone he had used the night they met. We had sex. Friendship didn't enter into it.

  Was that all it meant to him? A release. Scratching an itch.

  Did she want it to mean more?

  That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. She was supposed to be living for the moment, not looking for a future with a man she barely knew. They weren't exactly a match made in heaven. He was stubborn and ornery and bound and determined that she didn't belong here.

  Pain seeped through her like a wash of salt across old wounds that never healed. All she had ever wanted was someplace to belong. All she had ever looked for was somewhere to fit in. J.D. said she didn't belong here. He wouldn't let her fit into his life, not beyond this. He would leave her on the outside looking in. He would come and go from her life at will, but he didn't want her in his.

  She had told herself she would live in the moment, float on in that odd state of limbo, but she wasn't made that way. In her heart of hearts she wanted more, had wanted more all along.

  The joke's on you, Marilee.

  The loneliness that enveloped her was a chill that went soul deep.

  “You cold?” His voice was deep and soft as rumpled velvet.

  Mari bit her lip and nodded, feeling close to tears. Ridiculous. She had no business crying. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat as J.D. pulled the tattered coverlet around her.

  “You're quiet,” he murmured. “Too quiet.”

  He crooked a knuckle under her chin and tilted her face up. She sat and turned away from him, but not before he caught a glimpse of those huge, deep eyes, luminous with tears. The sight kicked him in the gut with all the power of a horse.

  “Mary Lee? What's wrong? Was I too rough? Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” Not yet. She stood as he reached for her, his fingertips grazing her bare back.

  This room had seen its share of action from the vandals. Clothes that had hung in the closet were strewn across the floor. Mari spied a terry-cloth robe near the foot of the bed, picked it up, and shrugged it on. It swallowed her whole, the sleeves falling well past her fingertips. Fine. She wanted to cocoon herself, insulate herself.

  Tucking her hair back behind her ear, she wandered to the dormer window and stared out at the rain-drenched mountainside and the gathering darkness. J.D. watched her from the bed. She could feel his gaze on her, steady, powerful, willing her to turn around. When she didn't, he got up and came to her, completely unconcerned with his naked state.

  “I was thinking about Lucy,” she said, feeling bleak and raw inside. “Wondering if you ever . . . were together in this room.”

  “Lucy doesn't have anything to do with us.”

  “My mistake.” She tried for sarcasm in her laugh and winced at the hollowness of it. “I forgot. It wasn't anything personal. Just sex.”

  “I told you once, I won't pretend I liked her.”

  “What about me, J.D.?” She looked up at him, too proud, too hurt, leading with her chin. “Will you pretend you like me?”

  He swore under his breath. “What's this about, Mary Lee? You want a promise from me? You want pretty words? You got the wrong cowboy.”

  She shook her head and looked back out the window. She didn't have the right to ask for anything more than what he'd given. She was a big girl. She'd known from the start what J.D. wanted; he'd been very plain about it. It wasn't his fault her moment of self-revelation had come too late.

  “Give me a break here, Rafferty. It's been a tough week, you know,” she said softly.

  J.D. stepped up behind her and slid his arms around her, fitting her against his body, enveloping her in his strength. “Tired?” he asked, pressing his lips to her temple.

  The tears burned hot behind her eyes. He couldn't know how tired she was—tired of being the odd one out, tired of being confused. She had come to Montana to rest, to rejuvenate, to pass some time with a friend. Instead, she was being put through tests of endurance and strength. Her nerve endings felt raw, exposed. Her friend was dead and she wasn't sure why. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

  But the questions wouldn't go away. There was no one else to find the answers. No one else cared.

  “These vacations are hell on a person, you know.” The words were little more than a rasp through the knot of tears in her throat.

  “Come here,” J.D. whispered, turning her around in his arms. He cradled her head against his chest, fingers tangled in the hopeless wilderness of her hair. He rubbed her back and murmured to her, and his heart squeezed at the sound of her grudging tears. He didn't question the tenderness that ached through him like a virus; he ignored it. It didn't mean anything. It was just a moment in time.

  A moment he wouldn't have given Lucy MacAdam or any woman who had come before her. A moment some nameless, lonely part of him wanted to go on forever.

  “You caught me fresh out of handkerchiefs,” he said.

  Mari sniffed and laughed, amazed that he would come up with a sense of humor
when she needed it most. “That's okay,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “It's not my robe.”

  He caught hold of the end of a sleeve and gently dried the tears from her cheeks. “I suppose you burned yours in a symbolic gesture against terry cloth.”

  “Another joke! Careful, Rafferty, you'll strain yourself.” She shot him a wry look. “You're being awfully nice. What's your angle?”

  “I reckon I owe you,” he answered, dancing around the truth. “My uncle took a shot at you. You didn't have any business going up on that ridge after I told you not to, but I don't guess you deserved to get the bejesus scared out of you either.”

  “Your compassion is overwhelming.”

  He didn't smile at her sarcasm. He studied her face, lifting a hand to touch the bruise on her cheekbone. “You got this when you fell off the mule?”

  “That one and a few others. I suppose I should be glad I didn't break my neck.”

  You should be glad Del didn't want you dead. The words scrolled through his brain, but J.D. kept them to himself, them and the sense of dread that rose inside him.

  “He just wants to be left alone,” he said. “The war tore him up inside, ruined his mind.”

  “Shouldn't he be in a hospital?”

  “He was for a few years. It nearly killed him being locked up like that. The doctors didn't help him. No one gave a damn. Finally I just brought him home. He's family. He belongs on the Stars and Bars.”

  “Just like that? A lot of people wouldn't want him around. A lot of people wouldn't want the responsibility.”

  “Yeah, well, that's what's wrong with this country. People have no integrity anymore, no sense of accountability.”

  Except J. D. Rafferty. The thought brought a pang of tenderness to Mari's heart. J. D. Rafferty, the last cowboy hero, the last honest man. He had a code of honor and a way of life that had died out everywhere but in Clint Eastwood movies. He was a hard man; it wouldn't be wise to romanticize that. But then she thought of him going to take his uncle out of some bleak V.A. hospital. He couldn't have been more than a teenager at the time, and yet he had taken that responsibility. As he had taken responsibility for the ranch. She thought of what Tucker had told her about him, thought of the child he had never been, thought of the man he had become and the vulnerability he showed no one. Dangerous thoughts. As dangerous to her heart as Del Rafferty had been to her health and well-being.

  “He scared me, J.D. Not just when he shot at me. What if he killed Lucy?” she said softly.

  “He didn't.”

  “Can you really be that sure?”

  No, he couldn't, but he'd die before he said so. A part of him died just thinking it. Del was family. The Raffertys stuck together, come hell or high water. Lucy was gone; nothing would change that. “Let it go. It was an accident, Mary Lee.”

  But as they stood there, staring out at the rain, each lost in private thoughts, neither one of them really believed it.

  J.D. left at eight to go to a Montana Stockgrowers meeting in town. He would miss the bulk of the meeting, but he needed to talk with a couple of people about putting a deal together for the Flying K.

  Still wrapped in the terry robe, Mari stood on the porch and watched him drive away into the gloom of the rainy night. A thick fog hugged the ground, soft gray, eerily buoyant. It crept around the tree trunks like smoke and drifted down across the ranch yard. Mari pulled the oversize robe tighter around her and shivered. It might have seemed romantic while J.D. was here. Alone it was just plain creepy.

  Her thoughts kept drifting to Del Rafferty, living alone on the side of the mountain. Del and his guns. Del and his visions. He didn't like blondes. He didn't like strangers. Staring up at the wooded hillside, she thought she could feel his tormented gaze on her. She could imagine him bringing her into focus behind the cross hairs of a rifle scope. Had he seen Lucy the same way?

  Stomach churning—from anxiety and starvation—she went back into the house. She needed to borrow some more clothes and go back to town. As peaceful as she found this place during the day, she didn't relish the idea of being there alone at night when her mind was filled with thoughts of madmen. She preferred her room at the lodge, not only for safety purposes but because she had yet to accept that this place belonged to her. She couldn't quite bring herself to take the gift. She couldn't see why she deserved it. She couldn't see what strings Lucy might have left attached to it.

  She found a pair of jeans a size too small, a T-shirt from Cal-Davis three sizes too big, and a pair of Keds that fit just right. Not high fashion, but no one at the Burger King drive-thru was liable to complain. She jogged down the stairs and started for the front door with visions of bacon cheeseburgers dancing in her head. But as she turned at the foot of the stairs, her attention caught on the broken door to the study, and another jumble of questions tumbled through her mind. Questions with names attached. MacDonald Townsend. Ben Lucas. Evan Bryce.

  Stepping over broken glass, she went in and flicked on a brass desk lamp that hadn't been smashed during the vandal's spree. The desk itself was ruined, the bronze eagle sculpture imbedded in the center of its splintered top. Another ficus had died a lingering death, uprooted from its pot. The stenotype machine Lucy had apparently kept for old time's sake sat undisturbed on an oak pedestal near the picture window. A monument to her past life. The floor was littered with papers that had been torn from a filing cabinet. Meaningless stuff—warranties, ownership papers, llama journals, tax files.

  Books had been hurled from the shelves built in along the back wall and lay scattered across the pine floor. Mari's gaze scanned the titles and authors' names absently. Lucy's tastes had run from courtroom thrillers to potboiler glitz novels to The Prince of Tides. There were law books and books devoted to enhancing sexual performance. One thick volume of the Martindale-Hubbell law directory lay on the floor beside a copy of Shared Intimacies.

  Martindale-Hubbell.

  You won't get into Martindale-Hubbell, but my name will live on in infamy. . . .

  The line from Lucy's letter played through her head. She picked up the book from the floor and fanned through the pages. Volume three, listing California attorneys P–Z. Another volume rested on the bookshelf—volume nine, which included listings for six states—Montana and five that began with the letter N. There was nothing out of the ordinary about either book. They were the standard tomes, bound in mustard-gold cloth with titles in tasteful, discreet gold-foil type. Between the covers was the usual listing of practice profiles, professional biographies, services, and supplies.

  A complete set would have been composed of fifteen volumes, plus indexes, but Lucy would have had no use for all of them. Mari wasn't even sure why she would have had the book for Montana when she had left the profession before moving here. She would have expected to find only the two fat volumes embracing the names of the zillion lawyers that infested California.

  Two volumes.

  “So where is A to O?” she whispered.

  She looked under the furniture, in the cold ashes of the stone fireplace, beneath the desk drawers that had been pulled out and dumped. There was no sign of Martindale-Hubbell volume two, California A–O.

  Mari looked around the room at the utter destruction, a chill radiating outward from the pit of her stomach. What if this hadn't been vandalism? What if it wasn't a drunk from the Hell and Gone who had broken into Miller Daggrepont's office? Daggrepont was Lucy's attorney. Lucy, who had known secrets about powerful people.

  We all have our calling in life. Mine was being a thorn in wealthy paws. . . .

  She thought of the ranch, the llamas, the cars in the garage, the fortune in clothes strewn across the bedroom floor. Money. Where had she gotten all the money?

  Only one answer made any sense at all. A terrible logic that allowed jagged puzzle pieces to fall into place.

  Blackmail.

  In her mind's eye she could see Lucy grinning her secretive, cynical grin, eyes glittering with sardonic a
musement.

  “Oh, God, Lucy,” she whispered, trembling. “What have you done?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  MILLER DAGGREPONT was a man who knew how and when to seize opportunity. He knew the value of patience and the advantages of remorselessness. He was a man of many talents and schemes, none of them large. The talents were just enough to navigate him through the small labyrinths of the schemes. The profits weren't huge, but they were growing.

  He had been helping himself to trust funds and estates for years. No one questioned him. He didn't take much from any one place. In his own larcenous heart he considered the ill-gotten gains “gratuities.” A street lawyer in a place like New Eden, Montana, didn't get a whole lot more. Most of his clients were ranchers whose wealth was tied up in land, livestock, and equipment. The new wealth in the Eden valley had come equipped with their own lawyers. Miller made out on divorces and the odd wrongful-death settlement. And his “gratuities.” And his schemes.

  He eyed the woman on the other side of his cluttered desk and smiled benignly. She had already put a fair amount into his piggy bank without having a clue. His avaricious brain buzzed with thoughts of what more she might give him.

  “Hey, there, little missy!” he boomed, slapping his fat hands against what little desktop showed through the mess of fishing flies and reels and documents that needed filing. “What brings you out on a night like this? It's a real toad strangler out there, hey? You decide to sell that land?”

  Mari forced a smile. Daggrepont's eyes were swimming behind the Coke-bottle lenses of his glasses. Not even that nauseating special effect could hide the gleam of greed. “No, not yet.”