Dark Paradise (12 page)

"Jeezo Pete."

"That's why you're single," J.D. joked, turning toward the house.

"Yeah, well, what's your excuse, hotshot?"

"I'm too smart."

"For your own good."

J.D. thought about that as he climbed the broad steps to the old

clapboard ranch house with its wide, welcoming front porch. He planned

to dodge matrimony for as long as he could. He didn't have time for

courtship rituals and all the related nonsense. When he couldn't put it

off any longer, he supposed he would go find a sensible woman with a

ranching background, a woman who understood that the land and the

animals would always come first with him. They would marry out of a

mutual desire to raise a family, and the next generation of Raffertys

would grow up on the Stars and Bars, learning the duty and the joy of

life here.

There was nothing romantic about his plan. Growing up he had seen

firsthand the folly of romance. His father had lost his heart twice.

First to J.D.'s mother, Ann, who died of cancer. J.D. had been only

three at the time. He had no memories of the woman herself, only of

sensations - comfort and safety, softness. But he remembered vividly her

death and the way it devastated his father.

Then along came Sondra Remick. Much too soon. Much too pretty. Much too

spoiled. And Tom Rafferty lost his heart again to a woman. Totally.

Utterly. Beyond all pride or reason.

In the end, he damn near lost everything. Sondra had eventually left him

for a more exciting man. Because of her infidelities, Tom had had a

strong case against her as an unfit mother, and might have ended up with

full custody of her darling Will. That was the only thing that had stood

in her way of suing him for divorce and taking away half of everything

he owned, including the Stars and Bars. They fought bitterly over his

refusal to release her from her marriage vows, but he was unrelenting.

He would not let her go. His obsession for her went too deep. In

retrospect, J.D. thought he probably could not have let go even if he

had wanted.

They had stood right there on this porch, J.D. and his daddy, looking

down across the ranch yard at the sturdy old buildings, the corral, the

horses, the valley and mountains beyond. Lines of strain were etched in

Tom Rafferty's face like scars, his eyes were bleak with hopelessness.

He looked like a man waiting to die.

"Never love a woman, son," he mumbled as if he were remembering words

told to him by someone long ago. "Never love a woman. Love the land."

Citizens for the Eden Valley ordinarily met in the Community center, kind

euphemism for a room off the fire station garage filled with rickety

folding chairs and mismatched card tables people had donated over the

years.

That this meeting was being held in the Mystic Moose Lodge was a bad

sign as far as J.D. was concerned. The enemy had invited them into its

camp. Some saw it as an Overture of friendship, an invitation to work

cooperatively with the newcomers. J.D. wasn't so optimistic.

The meeting room was bright and clean with ruby carpeting on the floor

and rustic beams across the ceiling. It smelled pleasantly of fresh

coffee instead of diesel fuel and exhaust fumes like the community

center. The tables were draped in hunter-green linen. The chairs were

all new. J.D. chose to stand at the back of the room.

There were perhaps a hundred people in attendance, milling around,

buzzing premeeting gossip. Most of them were lifelong citizens of New

Eden. Businessmen and women from the community. Ranchers who had, like

J.D., quit work hours early to clean up and put on freshly pressed

western shirts, Sunday trousers, and good boots.

Scattered among the common folk were new Hollywood types, artists,

environmental activists, even Bryce.

J.D.'s hackles went up at the sight of Bryce working the room. He made

the rounds, singling out the mayor, the chairman of the citizens

commission, the banker's wife, dazzling them with his smile, and

removing any wariness they might have had with a phony show of concern.

As if he gave a damn about the people of New Eden.

What Bryce cared about was power. That had seemed glaringly apparent to

J.D. the first time they had met from the way Bryce threw money around

to the way he surrounded himself with people who believed he was

important. J.D. refused to be impressed by him, an affront that had set

the tone for their acquaintance. Bryce wanted to be king of the mountain

along the south face of the Absaroka range, but J.D. wouldn't play the

game.

No Rafferty had ever bowed to a king - real or otherwise. No Rafferty ever

would.

As if he sensed J.D.'s eyes on him, Bryce looked up and their gazes

caught and held for one burning moment. A slow smile pulled across

Bryce's mouth. His eyes gleamed with amusement. The look clearly said

I've got the keys to the kingdom within my grasp, Rafferty, and you

can't do a damn thing to stop me. Then he moved on to kiss another cheek

and shake another hand.

"Hey, J.D." Red Grusin stuck out a hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't see much of you these days."

As owner of the Hell and Gone, Red had never seen much of him. J.D. had

better things to do than sit around a honky-tonk and drink beer. "Will

spends enough time with you all for the both of us," he said with a half

smile.

For all he knew, that was where Will was at that very moment. His

brother had yet to make an appearance in the meeting room.

Grusin chuckled. He was a big man with skinny legs and a thick chest and

belly that made him look as if he were wearing an umpire's padding

beneath his shirt. He had the hair and freckles his name indicated. His

cheeks and the end of his bulbous nose were perpetually pink.

"That's a fact. Why, just last night he hit the jackpot on the mouse

races. 'Course, that didn't hardly make up for what he lost downstairs

in the poker game," he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. His

blue eyes twinkled,just a little joke among friends - Will and his

weakness for wagering. "But it'll all come out in the wash, as my mama

always said."

"Will was in Little Purgatory last night?" J.D. asked, his voice as dead

calm as the air before a storm.

Grusin's jowly face dropped a little, and he swallowed hard as he

realized his slip.

"How much did he lose?"

Grusin made a face, his eyes dodging around the room as if he were

afraid the sheriff might overhear and suddenly decide to shut down the

illegal gambling that had been going on in the basement of the Hell and

Gone for the last two decades. "Don't worry about it, J.D. He'll win it

back. He's been on a bad streak and he's in the hole a little now, but-"

J.D. stepped a little closer in front of Red and stared at him hard.

"How much?" he whispered.

The older man's mouth worked as if he were chewing a mouthful of chalk.

"Sixty-five hundred," he mumbled. Don't worry about it, J.D."

His gaze scanned the room frantically for anyone near enough to rescue him,

landing on Harry Rex Monroe from the Feed and Read. Relief brightened his

face like a man having a vision. "Hey there, Harry Rex!"

J.D. just stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the floor and

breathing slowly through his mouth. Sixty-five hundred dollars. Will did

not have sixty-five hundred dollars. The bank held the mortgages on

everything they owned, practically down to their underwear, and Will was

whiling away his nights in Little Purgatory, throwing money down a rat

hole after busted poker hands.

"I heard talk of a ski resort on Irish peak . . . Some developer wants to

put up condos north of town."

"They'll turn the place into another goddamn Aspen with cappuccino bars

and prissy Swiss chalets and rents so high, everyone who works here will

have to drive in from someplace else."

Random lines of conversation penetrated the fog. J.D. forced himself to

pay attention, forced his brain to function. He had come here for a

reason. Will could be dealt with later.

He felt ill, but damned if he would show it.

Lyle Watkins, who was his neighbor to the south of the Stars and Bars,

stood staring down into his coffee cup.

He looked thin and miserable, as if worry had been eatin' away at him

beneath his skin. "Yeah, well," he snapped suddenly, breaking in on the

antidevelopment talk of his fellow ranchers. "You can't feed your kids

on pride and scenery."

"Can't feed them at all if these damned actors bring in buffalo and elk

herds infected with brucellosis," J.D. said calmly.

Lyle dodged his gaze, rubbing his fingertips against his coffee cup as

if it were a worry stone. "Ain't nobody proved Bryce's herds are

infected."

"I don't want the proof to be my cattle dropping over. Do you, Lyle?"

Watkins tightened his lips and said nothing. A sense of foreboding crept

into J.D.'s chest and tightened like a fist. He swore softly under his

breath. "You're selling out."

The words were barely more than a whisper. Lyle flinched as if they

struck him with the force of hammer blows.

Humbled. He stared down at the floor.

"Deal's not done yet," he intoned, the weight on the toes of his boots,

his head hanging with shame. He had been one of the first and the

loudest to decry the buyout of ranchers by people who wanted the land

for their own private playgrounds, and now he was giving in, giving up,

betraying his neighbor.

"I can't afford not to.
 
Got to think of Debbie and the kids."

"Jesus, Lyle," J.D. said, desperation running through him. "How long has

your family been on the place?
 
Seventy-eighty years?"

"Long enough-"

"Who?"

Watkins shook his head a little and started to move with the rest of the

crowd toward the chairs as Jim Ed Wilcox began blowing into the

microphone at the podium. J.D. grabbed him roughly by the arm, ignoring

the stares the others directed his way.

"Dammit, Lyle, I asked who," he demanded through his teeth.

The fact that Watkins didn't want to answer was answer enough. J.D. felt

as if he'd had the wind knocked out of him. He stared hard at this man

he had known all his life, the neighbor he had worked with side by side

at brandings and roundups, and felt as if a member of his own family had

turned on him.

"Bryce." He growled the name in disgust.

Lyle Watkins looked up at him, his tired eyes soft with apology. "I'm

sorry, J.D.," he whispered. "He's got more money than God. Me, I don't

have two nickels left to rub together." He lowered his voice another

decibel, his eyes cutting from side to side to make certain no one else

could hear his confession. "I sell the place to him, or it goes to the

bank. That's all there is to it."

"The hell it is."

Watkins pulled away and headed for a chair, not looking back. J.D.

stared after him, furious, stunned, frustrated. He didn't even hear the

opening remarks of the chairman. He just stood there behind the last row

of chairs, his mind spinning, his eyes on Evan Bryce, who sat at the

table up front with all the local dignitaries, as J.D. called them. If

Lyle Watkins sold the Flying K, Bryce would own everything from Irish

Peak south to the edge Of Yellowstone--everything except the Stars and

Bars and the little chunk of property that had belonged to Lucy MacAdam.

Bryce sat up there in his faded denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled

up to reveal his tan forearms. Christ, the man had Probably never done

an honest day's work in his life. Nobody was even sure where all his

money had come from. Or where he had come from, for that matter.