Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  “You don't know me, Rafferty,” she murmured. “You're too busy slapping labels on me to see who I am.”

  A muscle tightened in his jaw. He said nothing.

  “I'll go make that coffee,” she said softly, tightly, turning away so he couldn't see her eyes. “It's instant. I hope you're not fussy.”

  “As long as it's black and hot,” he said, following her downstairs, guilt riding him every step of the way. He tried to shrug it off, resenting the intrusion, resenting the implication that his judgment wasn't infallible. Just another reason to get the hell out, he thought. But he followed her into the kitchen instead of turning for the door.

  “My specialty: hot, black sludge. Other court reporters used to call me up and order pots of it when they were pulling all-nighters on transcripts.”

  “That's a good job, isn't it—court reporter?”

  “Sure, if you're an independently wealthy perfectionistic masochist.”

  She put water on the stove and got two mugs down from the cupboard. One was blue with white line drawings of cartoon rabbits having sex, the other was brown with cartoon dogs in the same line of pursuit. That Lucy, such a classy broad.

  “That wasn't fair,” she said, sighing as guilt nudged her with an elbow. “It's a great job for the right person. I wasn't the right person. Surprise!” She flashed a big, phony, prom-queen smile.

  J.D. leaned against the counter and watched her with narrowed eyes. “What will you do now that you've given it up?”

  “Well, my mother speculates I'll get a job in a seedy bar, fall into the drug culture, and end up on the streets selling my body for pocket change. I'm slightly more optimistic.”

  He didn't chuckle. He didn't so much as clear his throat. He just waited for a straight answer. Mari rolled her eyes as she filled the mugs and stirred in Folgers crystals. “So I guess you were absent the day they passed out the senses of humor.”

  The corners of his mouth flicked up. “Working.”

  “I should have known.” She handed him his mug and blew on her own before hazarding a sip. It tasted like crank-case drippings that had been boiled and strained through dirty sweat socks. Heavenly. All she needed was a cigarette, an impossible deadline, and a lawyer in dire need of mouthwash breathing down her neck and she'd be right at home. She shuddered at the thought.

  “I don't know what I'm going to do next,” she confessed, leaning back against the counter. “That was one of the things I was supposed to ruminate on during my fun-filled summer vacation in the Garden of Eden.”

  She sighed, sipped, stared at Rafferty's belt buckle—a tarnished silver oval with a bronze rope edge and a figure of a calf roper in the center. The words FRONTIER DAYS CHAMPION 1978 were engraved on a ribbon of bronze that arched above the roper. He would have been sixteen or seventeen at the time. She wondered what he had been like as a teenager, as a child. She couldn't imagine him any way but serious and hard as nails. The idea of those somber gray eyes and unsmiling mouth on a little boy made her heart ache. She thought of him losing his mother to cancer, losing his father to grief and then to another woman. She wanted to put her arms around him and just hold him. She called herself a fool.

  “I don't have to make up my mind tomorrow,” she said, more to distract herself than to make conversation. “I have enough to live on for a while from the sale of my equipment. God, once Lucy's estate is settled, I'll have enough to live on until my teeth fall out,” she said, struck anew by the shock. “I suppose most people would be overjoyed by that prospect. I feel . . . I don't know . . . sleazy.”

  J.D. arched a brow. “You feel sleazy because she left you money and property?” Lucy wouldn't have felt guilty. Lucy would have grabbed what she could get her claws into and run away laughing.

  “We were pals, not relatives. What'd I ever do to deserve all this?” she asked, waving a hand to encompass the house, the ranch. Her dark brows tugged together above her eyes as she bit her lip and shot him a troubled glance. “Maybe what bothers me most is wondering what Lucy did to deserve it.”

  He shrugged and gulped another shot of battery acid. “You'd know more than I would. She was your friend.”

  “You don't have any idea what she was into?”

  “Trouble, I expect. She was the kind who liked to poke sticks at rattlesnakes just for fun.”

  Mari frowned. “Yeah, well, I'm afraid one of them might have killed her.”

  J.D. set his cup down on the counter with a sharp clack. “Jesus, Mary Lee, will you give it up? It was an accident. Accidents happen.”

  “And it was just a coincidence that this house was broken into, then Miller Daggrepont's office was broken into, then my hotel room was broken into?” She shook her head, then impatiently snagged a rope of wild hair and tucked it behind her ear. “I don't buy it. I think there's something going on, and if I could find a couple more pieces to the puzzle, I might know what it is. I don't believe Lucy just went riding up on that ridge for the hell of it. I think she was up there for a reason, and I think someone killed her for a reason.”

  “What difference does it make now?” he said roughly. “Dead is dead.”

  Mari gaped at him. “I can't believe you said that! Mr. Code of Honor. Mr. Integrity. What difference does it make?” she sneered, gesturing sharply with her small hands. The too-long sleeves of her robe swayed from side to side. “There's a big fucking difference between misdemeanor negligent endangerment and felony murder. How can you condone letting someone skate with a fine when a woman's life has intentionally been ended?”

  J.D. tightened his jaw and looked past her, coffee and shame churning in his stomach. He couldn't condone murder. He just wished like hell he could forget Lucy MacAdam had ever existed, let alone had her existence taken from her. He wished she had never come here, that she had never bought this land on the edge of his world, that her friends hadn't come here—Mary Lee included. Christ, especially Mary Lee. She distracted him and poked at his conscience and tied him in knots. What the hell did he need with any of that?

  “I've got work to do,” he growled, and started for the door.

  Mari stuck out an arm to block his escape from the kitchen. She stared up at him, feeling sick inside—angry and frightened for her heart and ashamed of herself because of that fear.

  “Did she really mean so little to you that you don't even care if her killer is punished?” she asked softly, her voice a strained rasp. And if Lucy meant so little to him, then what do you think you mean to him, Marilee?

  J.D. thought of Del, he spoke of Sheffield. His eyes stayed on the Mr. Peanut tin that stood on the mantelpiece across the great room, smirking at him. “He's been punished, Mary Lee. Leave it alone and get on with your life.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, right,” she whispered bitterly. “What's one dead sex partner when another will come along and take her place?”

  He looked down at her, something wrenching in his chest as he took in the fierce anger and fiercer pride. Tears shimmered in her eyes, magnifying them, making them look like huge liquid jewels. She stuck her chin out defiantly, asking for it.

  He didn't need her. Didn't want her here. He didn't need the feelings that were spooking him, making him feel like a trapped wild horse.

  “You said it,” he growled, “not me.”

  Mari stood in the kitchen, not moving. Dimly, she heard the front door slam, heard his truck come to life and rumble out of the yard and start up the mountain. She wondered vaguely why she hadn't heard him drive in last night. Too lost in her music, she supposed. Too bad. She might have steeled herself against him if she'd had fair warning. But probably not.

  At any rate, all thoughts were peripheral to her pain. Her focus was inward, on the smoldering knot of emotions that crowded her chest. Tangled and painful, a ball of raw nerve endings; she wanted no part of it. She wanted no part of Lucy's violent death. She wanted no land, no windfall that chained her to that death. She didn't want trouble. She didn't want pain. Most especially, she didn't want to
be falling in love with a man as hard, as uncompromising as J. D. Rafferty.

  Falling in love. It seemed impossible, a bad joke, a bizarre dream. He was arrogant, bad-tempered, hard to the point of cruelty. What was to love?

  The vulnerability in those world-weary gray eyes when he looked out across the land that had been his family's home for a hundred years, land that was being taken away piece by piece. The gentleness of his big, rough hands when he touched an animal. The gentleness of those hands when he touched her. The fierce tenderness of his lovemaking. The loyalty to an uncle most people would have shipped out of sight and out of mind. His determination to carry the weight of the world on his broad shoulders and never utter a word of complaint.

  He was a complex man, not some cardboard cowboy. He was all sharp angles and hard edges protecting an inner core most people would never try to reach. He wasn't just pride and bravado. He was a man whose way of life was being threatened. He was a man used to controlling his own destiny, and now that control was being wrested from him by strangers. He was a man who had been raised to show no weakness, but she knew he was afraid—for his home, for his livelihood.

  For his heart?

  It was dangerous to hope so. Dangerous and fool-hardy. She hadn't come here looking for love, just acceptance. She didn't want to love a man who made it a chore and a challenge. Every step would be a fight and she was so weary of fighting. Fighting her parents, fighting her own nature, fighting to fit in where she didn't belong. She just didn't want to fight anymore. She wanted life to be simple and sunny.

  But life was neither of those things. Life was as complex as Rafferty, full of hard edges and shadows, and she couldn't sit back and let it pass. She had come to Montana as a first step of being true to herself. Part of that truth was Rafferty. Part of that truth was loyalty to her friends. She had a friend who was dead, and if she didn't find out why, no one else would. No one else cared.

  Anger shimmered through her all over again as she thought of J.D.'s attitude. He'd never made his feelings for Lucy a secret, but she hadn't expected him to be so callous. He wanted to pretend a woman he had been intimate with had never existed, to bury her memory and ignore the circumstances of her death.

  Because he was that cold, that unfeeling? Or because he didn't want anyone to know what had really happened?

  Del. Was J.D. protecting his uncle? Could Del have shot Lucy in cold blood? Would he even have known what he was doing? His world was peopled by ghosts. His days were nightmares and he clung to the ragged edge of sanity by callused fingertips.

  Head pounding, Mari wandered to the doors of the deck. She pulled them open and leaned a shoulder against the frame and looked out over the valley as the first light of dawn pinked the sky. Fog blanketed the low ground in thin, gauzy strips and ribboned among the dark trunks of the trees. The scene was like a photograph, sepia-toned and faded, like a memory. The coolness kissed her face with the scent of pine and cedar and damp grass. Down along the creek an elk raised its head from the water and its high, eerie call carried up the hillside.

  Tears leaked from the corners of Mari's eyes and trickled down her face. She loved it here so much. Why couldn't it simply be the haven she wanted?

  “Why does it have to be so hard?” she whispered aloud, the words laced and strained with pain, with confusion.

  No one answered her. Not God. Not inner wisdom. The valley was silent. The elk moved on. She was alone.

  Her guitar stood next to the door, tucked into the small corner where the wall met the kitchen cabinets. She reached for it like a child reaching for a security blanket. She pulled it into her arms and hugged it tight as she wandered out onto the deck.

  “It's just you and me, old pal,” she whispered, lovingly caressing the strings.

  She climbed up onto the table and sat with her legs crossed, oblivious of the dew that had gathered thick on the glass, the oversize green robe tucked around her like a blanket. Closing her eyes, she lay her head down close to the body of the guitar and began to play. The piece was poignantly sweet, achingly tender, full of longing, brimming with need. It asked no questions, voiced no opinions. It was feeling, pure and simple, raw and painful. Everything her heart felt. Every bruise upon her soul. And when it was over, she just sat there in the quiet and hurt.

  “That was damn pretty, Mary Lee.”

  Bolting from her meditation, she jerked around, eyes wide. Will stood leaning against the corner of the house. Propped up by it was more like it. His shirt was torn, his face was bloody, his right eye was ringed with purple swollen flesh, and there was a gash in his forehead. He tried to give her a crooked smile, but winced halfway into it.

  “Oh, my God!” Mari gasped, scrambling down from the table. “What happened?”

  “Had a little accident,” Will said, grimacing as he straightened away from the wall.

  He didn't add that he was lucky to be alive. At the moment he didn't feel lucky. He felt as if the entire batting rotation of a major league baseball team had gone after him, swinging for homers. His head hurt, his ribs hurt, he had a wrenched knee, and had popped his old bum shoulder out of joint. A good hard slam up against a tree trunk had remedied the latter problem, but it still hurt like holy hell.

  “A little accident?” Mari cried, anxiously looking him up and down. “You look like you took on a Mack truck!”

  “It was a Ford,” he said, rubbing his tongue over the edges of the three teeth he had chipped. “It looks worse than I do. Lucky for me I've got nine lives.”

  “I'd say you just used one of them up, tomcat. What are you doing here? You should be in a hospital!”

  “Well . . .” He started to sigh, but his lungs stiffened up at the pain. “Do you think I could sit down while I explain this? I just walked the better part of a mile to get here.”

  “Jesus! You can sit in my car while I take you to the hospital.”

  “No. No hospital. I'm suffering enough. Trust me, Mary Lee, if I didn't die during the night, I'm not going to. No hospital. All I want is a ride home, if you'd be so kind.”

  She rolled her eyes and muttered something wholly unflattering about cowboys as she took him into the house and seated him at the pine harvest table in the great room. Will watched through a haze of pain as she ran off in search of first-aid supplies. She came back with a towel and washcloth, a bowl of warm soapy water, a bottle of alcohol, and a box of Band-Aids. She scowled at him as she set about cleaning the gore from his face.

  “Spill it, Rafferty.” She wrinkled her little nose. “God, I guess maybe you already did. You smell like a brewery.”

  “Beer tends to slosh a bit when the truck is rolling.”

  “If someone lit a match, we could use you for a torch. What the hell is the matter with you, driving drunk? Do you have a death wish, or were you just out to kill and maim some innocent victims?”

  “I don't need a lecture, Mary Lee,” he growled. “Ouch! Damn, that hurts!”

  “Sit still and stop whining. If you weren't already so beat up, I'd beat you up myself.”

  “Don't bother. J.D. is gonna kick my ass good.” He spread his hands and bared his teeth in a parody of his infamous grin. “See the Amazing Will Rafferty fuck up again! He dazzles! He mystifies! He takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'!”

  Mari gave him a look. “I fail to see the humor in nearly getting yourself killed.”

  “It's subtle. More like irony, really. Pull your robe together, Mary Lee. I'm getting a free show here. Not that I mind, but I'm in no condition at the moment.”

  She stepped back, fuming, and tightened the belt around her small waist. “If you're not in imminent danger of death, I guess I can go get dressed. Make yourself a cup of coffee if you can stand up. I'll be right back.”

  “You got any aspirin?” he called as she started up the stairs.

  “In my purse.”

  He dragged the handbag across the table and rummaged through it, fumbling through a mind-boggling array of junk until he came up
with a little travel tin of Bayer aspirin and a brown prescription bottle of Tylenol with codeine. He tossed the aspirin back in and went for the good stuff, washing the pills down with half a can of Pepsi from the fridge. On his way back to the table he caught a glimpse of himself in a cracked mirror with a willow twig frame.

  “Whoa, you look like the butt end of ugly, son,” he grumbled, frowning at the discoloration around his eye and the angry-looking cut on his forehead.

  Of course, he could have looked like the dead side of alive. That was what his truck looked like. All that pretty, shiny metal, crunched and ruined. It broke his heart. He remembered crying over it some as he had lain half conscious among the wreckage. Mostly he remembered thinking about Sam and how this wreck was symbolic. He remembered wondering if she would ever know he had died while trying to smash into the man who was taking her away from him. Now he wondered how long it would be before she found out their insurance rates were taking another jump toward the moon.

  She wouldn't have to help pay for it after she divorced him.

  Ex-wife. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.

  Groaning, he sank back down on his chair and sat with his elbows on his thighs and his hands hanging down between his knees.

  Mary Lee came trotting down the steps in tight jeans and an oversize lavender sweatshirt with the Mystic Moose logo across the front in tasteful white print. If she had run a comb through her hair, it didn't show.

  “Look, Will,” she said, caught somewhere between contrition and resignation. “I'm sorry I jumped all over you. I'm sure you feel bad enough as it is. It's just that I like you and I hate to see people I like doing things that can get them killed. I just lost one friend. I don't want to lose another.”

  “That's okay.” He watched as she went into the kitchen and dug through a grocery bag on the counter. She came up with a box of doughnuts and a packet of paper napkins. “Nobody knows more than I do how stupid this was. 'Course, J.D. will claim he knows more and he will proceed to tell me all about it until I wish the truck had blown up with me inside it.”