by Tami Hoag
Could he explain the contusions, abrasions, broken bones? Incurred in the fall from her mount. Period. Had she been sexually assaulted? Didn't know, had no call to look, and what kind of dumb-ass question was that anyway? The woman was killed in a hunting accident. End of story. End of conversation.
He had been more interested in his job of castrating yearling horses than in discussing post-mortem exams. He offered no support or sympathy.
Mari drove away from the interview feeling defeated and nauseated, the smell of blood in her nostrils and the image of a German shepherd trotting across the ranch yard with discarded horse testicles held like a prize in his mouth burned indelibly into her brain. She shuddered now as it came back to her. That wasn't something the average court reporter got to see every day. Thank God. Turning her mind back to Lucy was almost a relief.
What was she doing up on that mountainside in the first place? Whom had she gone to meet?
J.D.?
The thought brought a sick, hollow feeling to her stomach. Lucy died on Rafferty Ridge. She'd been sleeping with J. D. Rafferty. Del Rafferty saw ghosts and could shoot the balls off a mouse at two hundred yards.
Del might have seen Lucy as a threat. She was an outsider who had bought a piece of Montana at the foot of the Stars and Bars, just one of many who would try to encroach on his sanctuary.
What if Del had killed her? What good could come of proving that? To lock him up would be a sentence worse than death. It wouldn't bring Lucy back. It would destroy whatever fragile thread there was between her and J.D.
And just what do you think will come of that thread anyway, Marilee?
Nothing. It wasn't strong enough to bind them. She wasn't looking for that anyway. God knew, he wasn't.
And where does that leave you, Marilee?
Alone. The odd one out. Drifting in limbo in a dark paradise.
Staring out over the valley, listening as an elk called, she plucked out the poignant opening bars of a Mary-Chapin Carpenter song. “Not Too Much to Ask.” It was just a song. Something to sing, to occupy her mind and her fingers. She told herself it didn't come from her own heart, the words of longing and jaded hope. She didn't need to be anything to J. D. Rafferty. She didn't want to know about the past that had toughened the armor around his heart. She played it only because playing had always calmed her mind and soothed her.
Her voice carried out on the cool evening air, strong and warm and honest. Too true to everything she was feeling.
A silver mist floated above the stream, as soft and smoky as her voice. Far up the valley the elk called again. A coyote answered in a faint voice. The evening star winked on above the mountains to the west.
J.D. hesitated in the deep shadows along the side of the house. He stood there, transfixed, mesmerized by her voice—the aching tenderness, the world-weariness, the complex shades of emotion and experience.
With a handful of keenly chosen notes on the guitar, she segued from a love song to a portrait of a place. A place of mountains and water. A land of sky. Simple strengths and dying traditions. Horses in high grass. Elk beside a stream. Sagging porches and an old church in need of paint. A feeling of innocence and wisdom and stillness. Of desperately clinging to a time that was already gone, and mourning for its passing.
With just a few simple sentences she unerringly painted this place. His land, his feelings, his fears. The words touched him in a way no woman ever had. They reached inside and cradled a part of him he never let anyone near—his heart. For a few moments he leaned against the rough logs of the house and allowed himself to exist in her words. Allowed himself to hurt. Allowed himself to need something he couldn't even name. And when the song was over and the guitar ran out of notes, he just stood there and ached at the sense of loss.
Slowly he stepped from the shadows. Mari turned and looked at him, her eyes wide and dark.
“Taking a night off from the social whirl, Mary Lee?” he asked, but he sounded more weary than wry, the edge of his mood dulled by feelings too heavy to ignore.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice husky with cynical humor, her pretty mouth kicking up on one corner. “I usually try to sit one out when I've got a concussion. People with head injuries tend to drag a party down.”
J.D.'s gaze sharpened as he tried to discern whether or not she was joking. In the faint light that came from inside the house he could see the lines of strain in her face. She looked gaunt, fragile, her skin as pale and translucent as a lily's petal.
“I don't suppose it'll make the papers until Thursday—seeing how that's the only day the paper is printed,” she said, looking vaguely embarrassed as she set her guitar aside and climbed down off the table. A filmy skirt swirled around her calves. The sleeves of her denim jacket fell to her fingertips. “I got beat up last night.”
“You what!”
He charged forward a step, looking as if he thought he ought to pick her up or sit her down or do something, but the emotions that compelled him were obviously too foreign to decipher and so he did nothing but stare at her. Mari found his reaction sweet, but she didn't let herself dwell on it.
“Someone thought it would be cute to hide in my hotel room and smack me in the head with the telephone when I came in.” She said it simply, as if she hadn't been terrified. Inside, the residual fear quivered like a tuning fork. “I wasn't amused.”
“Jesus Christ, Mary Lee!”
He took the last step to close the distance between them and brought his hands up to cradle her face and turn it to the light. She winced as his fingertips slid back into her hair and grazed the tender spot.
The feelings that tore through him were unfamiliar, unwelcome, but too strong to hold back. He couldn't stand the idea of anyone physically hurting her. She was little, delicate . . . his. Maybe not forever, but for as long as she stayed here. The protective instincts he reserved for his family and his land surged past all barriers to include Mary Lee.
“Who was it?” he demanded.
She gave a little shrug. “Sorry. I hate to sound like a bigot, but all those guys in ski masks look alike to me.”
“Are you all right?”
The rough concern in his voice touched Mari in a place more sensitive than her injury. The vulnerability, the loneliness, the longing for something beyond her reach, rose like a tide.
“No,” she whispered. She tried for a smile. It trembled and fled. “I could stand to be held for a while.”
He slid his arms around her and gathered her into him, wrapped her carefully in his strength. Mari burrowed her face into his shoulder and breathed deep. Ivory soap underscored by a subtle male musk. He had showered before coming down. His shirt was soft and smelled of sunshine. Above all, he was warm and strong and she fit against him perfectly. As if she belonged there.
She slipped her hands around to the small of his back, absorbing the feel of washed cotton and hard muscle through her fingertips. “This is nice,” she whispered.
“Did they steal anything?”
“I don't have anything worth stealing.” Except my heart. She felt it slipping away.
“He didn't hurt you . . . otherwise?” Christ, if some bastard had raped her—
“No. No,” she whispered, hugging him. “I don't think it was me he was after, but I'd rather not talk about that just now.”
Mari tilted her head back. The light that spilled out from the house was just bright enough to highlight the chiseled planes and hard ridges of J.D.'s face. No sculptor could have better captured the essence of the West. Everything about it—and about him—was etched into his face—his pride, his arrogance, his integrity, his toughness. A pair of lines slashed across his broad forehead like taut stretches of barbed wire. His nose was a bold, straight blade, nothing fancy, a no-nonsense kind of nose. Above the rock that was his jaw his mouth was habitually a tight, compressed line.
“You didn't come here to talk, did you, Rafferty?”
“No.” A hint of a smile played at one corner of his mouth
. “I came here to get laid.” The smile vanished like a ghost, and he touched her cheek just below the bruise Clyde had given her. “But it won't kill me to do without. I don't reckon you feel up to it.”
“Oh, I don't know,” she murmured wistfully. “It might be nice to feel wanted. Why don't you kiss me and find out?”
“You sure?” he asked, the concern in his voice and in his eyes almost more than she could stand.
“Kiss me,” she ordered.
He complied with the lightest, sweetest of kisses, as if he thought her lips were made of spun glass. His care brought tears to her eyes. He was so big, so tough, and yet he handled her so gently, showing her something he would never tell her—that he cared . . . at least a little. Her heart pounded at the idea. The tears burned her eyes. She felt too vulnerable, too fragile. What she wanted suddenly was passion hot enough to temper steel, hot enough to burn away the sense of defenselessness and hopelessness.
Rising up on her toes, she cupped the back of J.D.'s head with one hand and pulled him into the kiss, into her mouth. She kissed him deeply, hungrily, wildly. The sparks struck and flared instantly. J.D. pulled her against him, bending her back over his arm. He answered her aggression with aggression, opening her mouth wider with the pressure of his, thrusting his tongue deeper. His hand slipped between them, inside the open front of her jacket, and found her breast. Kneading, squeezing, fondling her through the soft fabric of the old chambray shirt she wore. Then his fingers hooked in the placket and the buttons gave way, dropping to the deck like discarded pearls, skittering and rolling.
Her hands wound into the fabric of his shirt, tugging it free of his jeans, tugging it open snap by snap so she could touch him. She loved touching him. The heat of his skin. The crisp silk of his chest hair. The hard ridges of muscle and ribs. She felt drunk on it, on desire. Dizzy. Floating. Then she realized dimly that he had lifted her up.
He settled her on the glass-topped table. Laying her down, he opened her jacket and shirt, baring her to the starlight. He bent over her and kissed her breasts, one and then the other. She arched into the contact.
He crushed the fragile fabric of her skirt in his fists and pulled it up into a drift across her waist. Too impatient to be civilized, he dealt with her panties by tearing them free. Spurred on by the need, he parted her legs roughly and buried his face against the hot moist flesh of her woman's body, ravenous for the taste of her.
When J.D. straightened away from her, chest heaving, Mari sat up and reached for him, drew him to her. She kissed him slowly, softly, deeply, savoring the taste of loving.
“I want you,” he growled, kissing her lips, her cheek, the side of her neck.
“I want you too,” she answered back, her voice as faint as a dream.
J.D. backed away from the table, drawing her with him. He dropped down into one of the armless deck chairs, pulling Mari onto his lap, straddling him. Mouths locked, teeth clashed, tongues dueled. Her hair tumbled forward across her cheeks and his, shrouding their faces like a curtain of rumpled silk.
J.D. closed his big hands on her hips, lifted her, and pulled her down on his shaft. Mari's fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders. She held herself stiff while the line between pleasure and pain blurred. Then slowly she began to move. As they came, J.D. crushed her in his embrace and she held on.
Afterward, she sank down against him, her arms looped around his neck. She felt utterly spent, physically and mentally drained of all energy. She had never felt so wanton or so helpless in the aftermath. J.D. held her. His heart beat strongly against her breast. She felt safe in the circle of his arms. She wished the sensation would last forever, but she knew it wouldn't. That knowledge lay like a rock in her heart.
“You all right?” His voice was a low purr.
“At the risk of sounding immodest,” Mari said, trying to stretch humor over the vulnerability, “I thought I was better than all right.”
“Mmm . . .” he growled, nuzzling the side of her throat. “Fishing for compliments, Mary Lee?”
“If you don't want to use up your daily quota of adjectives, I'll settle for a butter mint.”
He chuckled and fished one out of his shirt pocket. Their eyes locked as he slipped it into her mouth. Mari caught hold of his wrist and kissed his fingertip, then drew it between her lips and sucked gently. J.D.'s nostrils flared. He was still buried deep inside her. As their gazes heated and sparked, her body tightened around him.
Mari shivered, not at the night air, but at the desperate need to keep him with her—not just for a few moments of bliss, but much longer. A time she wouldn't set a limit on even in the deepest corner of her heart. She felt safe with him in a way that wasn't smart. She felt complete in a way that she prayed was false. But tonight, when she was feeling so beaten and so lost, she couldn't find the strength to let it go.
“Stay the night,” she whispered, terrified at the way the need made her voice tremble.
J.D. stared at her, knowing this moment was more than he would have allowed himself on any other night. She wanted more than he could give. He needed her more than he would ever admit.
Just tonight, he promised himself. It's just sex.
He didn't give the lie a chance to ring in his ears. He pushed past it with a hundred excuses.
“Stay the night,” she whispered.
J.D. lowered his mouth toward hers, his heart beating a little harder. “Try to make me leave.”
Del watched the lights go out in the downstairs of the house and come on in the bedroom that faced the yard. There was no shade at the window. He could see them clearly through the 6 2 44 sniper scope on the Remington 700. No night vision green haze. Amber light spilled out from the dormer into the ranch yard, falling just short of J.D.'s pickup. J.D. and the blond woman taking each other's clothes off. Kissing. Touching.
J.D. and the blond woman. Like before, but different, Del knew. A different blond woman; the talker, not the dead one. Still, he didn't like it. Not a bit. Things were getting too confusing. The blondes were running together in his mind, their features melding until they were almost interchangeable. Their images multiplied until he felt as if he had a swarm of fireflies in his head, swirling around, blinking on and off, distracting him from the business of maintaining his sanity. He needed to concentrate, but he couldn't. He needed to stay within himself, but he couldn't hold his mind steady enough. It kept exploding outward in a dozen directions at once. In his mind's eye he saw that happening as if his head were a pumpkin exploding upon the impact of a 168-grain .308 hollowpoint load. Boom! Pumpkin pudding. That was his mind.
He was breathing hard as he lowered the nose of the Remington. His vision blurred. He pressed his lips together as best he could. Still, spittle drooled down over the button of puckered flesh on his jaw and dripped onto his shirt. There was something he ought to do. He knew there was. The blondes were haunting him day and night. They were after J.D. J.D. said they were after the ranch.
There had to be something he could do. He'd been nothing but a burden since the 'Nam. During those glory days he would have known what to do. During that time his mind had been as sharp as a blade, his instincts honed to perfection. He'd been a hero, a machine, a human rifle with a hair trigger and a true shot. Now he couldn't hold his train of thought long enough to form all the right questions, let alone find the answers. The tracks ran together in his mind in an indecipherable tangle, like the rails at the big stockyards in Billings.
This blonde, that blonde, dead blondes. Tigers in the night. The dog-boys stealing through the trees to do their dirty business. How could he tell J.D. any of that when he didn't have the slightest clue what was real and what wasn't? It was all real to Del, but he knew his nephew didn't see dead girls in the night, or tigers on the mountain.
The shame of that trembled inside him like a fist that had been tightened and tightened until the knuckles turned white. If only he could do something to stop it all. If only he could make the blondes go away forever. If
only he could be strong again, his mind whole for just a little while. He didn't ask for much from this life. If he could just have this one thing for just a little while.
He would have asked, but there was no God to hear him or He would have answered years ago.
CHAPTER
17
THE CROWD in the Moose lounge was edgy and electric. Talk of the break-in rippled through the room. Being questioned by the sheriff's department had put an unexpected spark of excitement into a number of vacations. Strangers swapped interview stories and traded theories about the vanishing bandit. He was a local lunatic who had been lying in wait to attack the woman. He was a local lowlife who saw the well-heeled patrons of the Mystic Moose as easy targets. He was an infamous jewel thief who had followed his prey up from Hollywood. He was an infamous jewel thief by night who was a famous actor by day. He was Robin Hood, Jesse James, and Hannibal Lecter rolled into one, and it was all the more exciting that he hadn't been caught. Lodge management had assured there would be no repeat performance, and extra security people prowled the halls, only adding to the frontier atmosphere people had come here for in the first place.
Samantha listened to the stories and speculation as she worked the tables, a little worried about spending the night alone. She didn't sleep well by herself on the best of nights. She had grown up in a small house bursting at the seams with people. Nights had been filled with the sleep sounds of her brothers and sisters—bedsprings creaking, covers rustling, her sister Rae talking in her dreams, her father snoring, bare feet padding to the bathroom in the middle of the night. All those years she thought she would have given anything to sleep alone, in her own bed, in her own house. Now she dreaded the idea. The bed was too empty. The house was too quiet. Most nights she lay awake, staring in the dark at the space beside her, where Will should have been. Tonight she would lay awake and stare at Will's spot and wonder if the mystery bandit might break in and attack her. And if he did, would Will even care when he heard about it?