by Tami Hoag
Will sat in the cab of his pickup half a block down Third Avenue from the corner of Jackson. He had a clear view of his house. There was enough light from the streetlamp to see Sam sitting on the edge of the porch with Rascal in her arms.
He'd been sitting there a long while. Long enough to put away the better half of a pint of Jack and chase it down with half a dozen cans of Coors. The cans lay discarded at his feet, rattling merrily every time he shifted position. The sound reminded him of the cowbells on the bucking bulls at the rodeo. Appropriate. He had asked Sam to marry him at the rodeo in Gardiner . . . or was it Big Sky? The detail was lost in the murky slop that clouded his mind like pond water.
Crystal clear was the memory of Sam looking up at him after he'd asked her. That memory was sharp as a Polaroid. Painfully bright. She looked like a princess, radiant in the firelight. Dark, exotic eyes widening, those soft, full lips parting slightly in surprise. Hair hanging over one shoulder in a thick plait of black silk. He remembered clearly what was in her eyes. Hope. Deliverance. Love. Excitement. She had looked at him like a poor child finding Santa Claus. Like he was a hero. He'd never felt so important in his life.
What a fraud you are, Willie-boy. That was all he had ever been, an impostor, a con man. Prince Will, pretender to the throne of Rafferty. Nobody's hero. Nobody's husband. He didn't do commitment. He specialized in meaningless charm. The man with no substance. Style, guile, and a pretty smile.
He had fooled her into loving him. Married her without a hint of conscience. Hurt her with selfish intent, dealt heartache with a lavish hand. Why would she ever take him back? Any woman in her right mind would sooner cut his black heart out with a rusty knife and feed it to the coyotes.
Seeing Bryce kiss her had nearly spared her the trouble. He had been as faithless as a tomcat, remorseless and smug. But seeing that one kiss had turned it all right around on him and plunged the blade straight into his chest.
What did you expect, Willie-boy?
Had he thought she would wait forever? Had he expected her to pine away for him the way his father had done over his mother's betrayal? What had he thought?
That the trouble of his marriage would just go away so he wouldn't have to deal with it or take the blame or face the consequences.
What a bright, shining boy you are, Willie.
Teflon Man, shirking liability with a wink and a grin.
How you gonna get out of this one, smart boy?
What would J.D. do?
J.D. the hero. Man's man. Man of principles. Do the right thing. Do the hard thing.
What would J.D. do if he caught Evan Bryce kissing his woman? He'd kick Evan Bryce's ass all over Montana. That was his right, his obligation according to the code of the West. You didn't steal another man's horse, you didn't kick another man's dog, you didn't touch another man's woman.
If Evan Bryce was going to live in Montana, he had a few lessons to learn.
It felt good to transfer the anger. That was one thing Will knew he did with the proficiency of a great magician. He slipped out from under the weight of blame and dumped the load on Bryce's head. It was all Bryce's fault. Bryce was trying to steal his wife. Bryce was trying to steal his land. Never mind that Will had claimed to want neither. All he wanted now was a target for his anger that wasn't pinned to his own chest.
As Samantha got up and went into the house, he turned the key in the ignition and flipped the headlights on. The truck roared to life. Three-quarters of a ton of power and metal rumbled beneath him. His temper growled in the core of him, fueled by Coors and the Jack.
He kept to the side streets on the edge of town, avoiding the main drag and the deputies that patrolled it. Turning out onto the ridge road at the Paradise Motel, he hit the gas and let the truck fly. Seventy came and went in a roar. He ran the windows down and cranked the radio up. Travis Tritt spelled out T-R-O-U-B-L-E at the top of his lungs. Will howled and whooped, working up adrenaline, letting it run through his mind like madness.
The road ran straight for a long way. A blessing for a man whose equilibrium was saturated with booze. He concentrated on keeping the truck between the white lines that marked the edges of the tarmac and looked out ahead for the taillights of a Mercedes ragtop. The night was a black tunnel around him. The truck was a rocket, cutting through the void, jumping up and ducking down with the flow of the flight path until he felt disembodied. He was a pair of hands on a steering wheel, a brain with eyes attached, bobbing in midair; he was a pair of boots on the floor amid the empties, pushing the pedal past the point of sanity.
He came up on the Mercedes so fast, he zoomed past it and hit the brakes. The wheels locked up and the back end of the pickup started fishtailing. Will wrestled for control, his brain unable to take in all the facts, formulate a plan, and execute it in smooth order. The information came in too quickly. The messages departed brain-central too slowly. The Mercedes sped around him, horn blaring.
“Fuck!” Will screamed. “You fucking stole my wife, you son of a bitch!”
The taillights of the Mercedes winked mockingly in the distance.
“I'm gonna kick your ass all the way back to Hollywood, shithead!”
Bellowing a rebel yell out the window, he punched the gas and gave chase with a squeal of burning rubber. The truck ate up the ground and closed on the car as the road began to climb and snake its way up the ridge. The truck swayed from side to side on the winding road. The empty beer cans rolled back and forth across the floor.
Will felt as though he were riding a bronc that had too much buck for him. In over his head. Hanging on for dear life. He tried to stay focused on the car, on the idea of ramming Bryce off the road. But the Mercedes kicked in the afterburners and was gone, and Will was left riding a rank one with no hope for anything but a wreck.
He went into a sharp switchback with too much speed, jerked the wheel too hard, then overcompensated. Then everything was tumbling, like socks in a clothes drier, end over end over end over end. And the beer cans rattled in the midst of it all like alarm bells ringing too late to save anyone.
“Are you worried about Townsend?” Sharon poured herself a scotch from the decanter on the antique Mexican sideboard and wandered barefoot across the thick sea of carpet. Bryce stood by the windows, staring out, hands steepled before him as if in prayer. The only light in the room came from the spots that glowed in the display cases of Native American artifacts and from the light bars on the paintings.
He made a moue of dismissal. “He's nothing. He's finished.”
“He might try to drag us down with him.”
“With what? Even if the videotape surfaces, there's nothing that links it to us except the charges of a desperate man whose career will be going down in flames.” He shook his head. “No. I'm not worried about him.”
“What about the Jennings woman?”
“If she plans on making trouble, she's taking her time doing anything about it. I think she would have made a move by now.” He took Sharon's glass and sipped absently at the scotch, pressing his lips together as it slid like molten gold down his throat. He still faced the wall of windows, but his gaze turned inward, visualizing all the puzzle pieces but he couldn't make them fit together. “She's nothing like Lucy.”
“Disappointed?” Sharon asked, her voice sharp with irony.
Bryce swiveled a measuring look at her, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Still jealous? Lucy's dead, darling.”
“Hurray.” She snatched her glass back from him and lifted it in a toast. The scotch was gone in a single gulp.
“You're such a poor sport,” Bryce complained. “Do I complain when you're fucking other men?”
“Only if your view becomes obstructed.”
Bryce walked away from her, not in the mood to spar. His mind was working, calculating, zooming down a new trail. The excitement was intoxicating. A bubble of euphoria grew in his chest, making it difficult to breathe.
“I keep thinking about Samantha,” h
e admitted, smiling the Redford smile, though there was no one there to be impressed by it. “Drew tried to warn me away from her tonight.”
Sharon glared at him. “How quaint.”
She stalked back to the sideboard for a refill, but she just stood there with one hand around the neck of the decanter and the other twisting the stopper around and around like a screw.
“She has so much potential and she doesn't see any of it,” he said, amazed at that kind of innocence. Enchanted by it. “I could open doors for her that would lead her to the top of the world.”
The hand on the decanter tightened until Sharon could feel the cut of the crystal imprinting her flesh. “She's a means to an end,” she reminded him, not liking the tone of his voice.
He sounded beguiled, on the brink of obsession. The idea made her nervous. Bryce obsessed was Bryce unpredictable. And frankly, she was tired of his bouts of obsession with other women. She was the one who stood by him through everything. She was his partner. They had fought their way up from poverty together. It stung to have her loyalty and her sacrifices overshadowed by the bright glow of infatuation. Bryce turned his attention away from her and she suddenly found herself demoted to chauffeur, gofer, fifth wheel.
She would have to distract him from the fixation before it went too far, as it had with Lucy.
Bryce waved a hand impatiently. “Yes, that's all she was at first, but don't you see the possibilities? My God, her face could be on every magazine in the country. I could get her a movie deal—”
“I'm sure she'll jump at the chance to let you run her career after you've ruined her husband's life.”
“He's ruining his own life. Once I've convinced Samantha to step back away from him and take a good look at what he is and what he has to offer versus the life she could have with me—”
Sharon swung around and flung the scotch decanter at him. The missile went wide and exploded against the window frame, spitting liquor and bullets of crystal across the glass and onto the rug. As an attempt to get his attention, the action worked brilliantly. Bryce stared straight at her as she crossed the room with angry, purposeful strides. She narrowed her eyes to razor slits.
“She's a stupid child. She's nothing,” she snapped, her voice hoarse and masculine. She stopped within a foot of him, her whole body rigid with fury, hands knotted into fists held ready at her sides. Her upper lip twitched in contempt. “You're such a fool. There's so much more at stake here than your chance to play Professor Higgins. The girl is a means to an end. You want her husband's land; you can get it through her. That is the plan,” she said, speaking very clearly and deliberately, because she knew he tended to hear what he wanted to hear when he was falling into one of his preoccupations. “You don't need her for anything else. I can give you everything you need.”
“You can't give me the joy of rediscovering the world. You can't give me innocence,” he said cruelly. “You never had any.”
That quiet jab punctured her anger and deflated it. She seemed to shrink a little before his eyes, drawing inward on herself. “You bastard,” she hissed, tears rising, mouth trembling. “You rotten bastard. Can't you see I'm only trying to protect you?”
“From Samantha?” He laughed.
“From yourself.”
“Don't worry, cuz,” he said softly, reaching out to touch her cheek. He ignored her concern. His priorities were shifting. Nothing mattered but the new goal. “I never had any innocence either,” he murmured absently. “We're two of a kind.”
Sharon was crying now, her sobs a low keening sound stripping up the back of her throat. The glazed, preoccupied look in Bryce's eyes frightened her. Still angry with him, she turned her face into the palm of his hand and bit him hard, then kissed the impressions her teeth had made, licking the dents with the tip of her tongue.
“I'd do anything for you,” she whispered. “I'm worth a hundred stupid, naive girls. You need me.”
Bryce smiled distractedly and took her hand, interlacing their fingers. “We're partners.”
She could see his mind was elsewhere. On the girl, no doubt. And so the obsession had begun. Again. And there was nothing she could do about it but wait. Despair knotted in her chest. She stepped closer and kissed him, a blatantly carnal kiss that was unmistakable in its message. She was still here, available, willing. She would take what he would give her.
“Partners forever,” she murmured, stepping back. She lifted her chin and cloaked her hurt with pride and a wry look. “Amuse yourself with your little Indian princess. Sleep with her if you have to. But fall in love with her and I'll cut your heart out.”
Bryce chuckled. “I love it when you talk mean.”
“You love it when I am mean.” An irony she enjoyed. She could take out her frustrations on him and actually have him enjoy it. There were advantages to loving a man with a twisted mind. She sent him a feral smile as she took his hand and led him toward the stairs. “Tonight's your lucky night, cousin.”
CHAPTER
18
J.D. WOKE at four out of habit. Mary Lee was tucked up against him like a little woodland creature seeking warmth. Her nose was burrowed into the hollow of his shoulder. He had his arm curved around her in a way that seemed entirely natural and comfortable. If he canted his head an inch, he could kiss her hair. He already knew that it felt like raw silk and smelled vaguely of coconut and jasmine—just as he knew how every other inch of her felt and smelled and tasted. Every part of her was imprinted on his brain.
He had never thought of any woman as his. Had never wanted to. Had always guarded himself diligently against the risk. How this one had slipped under his guard, he wasn't sure. He should have been immune to her if for no other reason than her association with Lucy. But he couldn't look at her without wanting her, couldn't have her without wanting more.
That truth scared him deep. The fear was a cold rock in his gut. They couldn't have anything together but what they shared in the heat of passion. He couldn't allow it. All his energy, all his attention, had to go to the ranch now. He had to protect the land. He had to preserve the Stars and Bars and the way of life that had been entrusted to him. He couldn't afford a distraction like Mary Lee. He sure as hell couldn't afford a distraction whose best friend may have been killed by his uncle.
J.D. stared hard at the ceiling, trying to will that thought away. In the cold light of day, when reason was easy to come by, he could tell himself Del's only role in the drama had been finding the body, that the city boy Sheffield had killed her accidentally. By night, when the world was all dark and shadow, he couldn't stop thinking about the crazy things his uncle said.
Del was his responsibility. The Stars and Bars was his responsibility. Stopping Bryce from buying up the whole of the Absaroka range was his responsibility. His whole damn life was nothing but responsibility. The weight of it pressed down on his chest.
A dull pain stabbed behind his eyes. He brought his arm up around Mary Lee's shoulders and checked his watch by the light of the bedside lamp they had never bothered to shut off. Time to go. Past time. He had never spent the night with Lucy, had never wanted to. But then, Mary Lee wasn't Lucy. She was sweet and earnest, honest and quirky and loyal. He could still hear the sound of her voice, smoky and low, singing about this land, painting a picture that was startlingly sharp, taking a handful of words and touching an emotion inside him that was deep and nameless.
He stared down at the top of her head, at the small hand that lay curled against his chest, and a fine tremor shuddered through him like the precursor to an earthquake.
Her lashes fluttered upward and she looked at him with those big, deep eyes.
“Is something wrong?” she asked in a voice that was half whisper, half rasp.
“I have to go.”
“It's the middle of the night.”
“It's after four.” He moved away from her and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, reaching for his shorts. “If I don't get a move on soon, I'll be burni
ng daylight. There's work to be done.”
Mari sat up and stretched, then pulled the coverlet around her. Her head hurt. Having him leave hurt more. That's bad news, Marilee. She combed her hair back behind her ear and frowned.
“You want a cup of coffee before you go?”
J.D. hiked his jeans up and did the button and zipper. “Go back to sleep. You didn't get much to speak of last night.”
“Neither did you.”
She climbed out of the bed and began a search for clothes. Her brain throbbed like a beating heart as she bent to pick up the green robe she had worn before, and she briefly reconsidered the option of remaining in a prone position for another eight or nine hours. Her stubbornness won out. If Rafferty was getting up, she would damn well get up too.
She shot him a look as he shrugged into his shirt. “What do you take me for—some kind of city girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, well,” she drawled, swaggering toward him with her fists on her hips. “I can ride a mule, I've been to a honky-tonk, and I haven't missed a sunrise in a week. So what does that make me?”
“City girl on vacation in Montana.”
“Jeez,” she grumbled, reaching up to do the snaps on his denim shirt. “They'll whisk you away to be on Letterman yet.”
Rafferty wasn't amused. “You are what you are, Mary Lee.”
Her hands stilled on his shirtfront and she stared hard at a white pearl snap. You are what you are. She was a misfit. She'd been a misfit all her life, a social nomad looking for a place where she could blend in without compromising her soul. She thought this might be the place, but J.D. was telling her she would always be an outsider in Montana. Or was he talking about his heart? Either way, you lose, Marilee.