Dark Paradise (3 page)

him. She couldn't hurt him. He had her. The panic that thought bred

nearly choked her.

"Listen to me," J.D. ordered sharply. Then he gentled his tone as skills

from other parts of his life kicked in. He knew better than to fight

fear with force. "Easy," he murmured to her in the same low, soothing

voice he used with frightened horses. "Listen to me now. Just take it

easy. I'm not here to hurt you."

"Yeah?
 
Well, you're doing a pretty damn good imitation of it," she

snapped, squirming. "You're pushing my spleen into my lungs."

Immediately he loosened his grip but still held her firmly against him.

"Just settle down. Just take it easy."

Marilee craned her neck around to get a look at his eyes.

Men could say anything, but their eyes seldom lied. She had learned that

in the courtroom and in the offices of countless lawyers. She had taken

down testimony word for word, lies and truths, but she had learned very

early on to read the difference in the witness's eyes. The pair boring

down on her were tucked deep beneath an uncompromising ledge of brow.

They were the gray of storm clouds, and slightly narrow, as if he were

permanently squinting against the glare of the sun. They gave little

away of the man, but there was nothing in them that hinted at lies or

violence.

She relaxed marginally and he rewarded her by easing her down so that

her feet touched the floor. Air rushed back into her lungs and she

sucked it in greedily, trying not to lean back into him for support. She

was already too aware of his body, the size and strength of it, the heat

of it. His left hand encircled her upper arm, the knuckles just brushing

the outer swell of her breast. The fingers of his right hand splayed

over her belly, thumb and forefinger bracketing the inner and under

contours of the same breast. The contact sent electric currents of alarm

and awareness zipping through her. A shift of inches and he would be

cupping her, filling his hand. Her nipples tightened, an automatic,

autonomic response.

He smelled of hard work, leather, and horses. Concentrate on that,

Marilee. He smells like a horse.

As he murmured to her in his low, soothing voice, his breath drifted

like a warm breeze across the shell of her ear and the side of her face.

Butter mint. She couldn't think of a single psychopathic killer who had

been described as having butter mints on his breath.

"You gonna be still?" J.D. asked softly, his voice swimming through a

rising tide of unexpected, unwanted arousal.

Her curvy little body was pressed back into his, reminding him just how

soft a woman could be. His line of sight down over her shoulder gave him

an unobstructed view of the rise and fall of her breasts as she

struggled to slow her breathing. The loose vest she wore had slipped

back during the struggle, revealing small, plump globes covered by thin

white cotton. The outline of a lacey bra was unmistakable, reminding him

just how delicate a woman's underwear could be.

She was soft and warm beneath his touch. All he needed to do was turn

his hand a fraction and he could fill his palm with the weight of her

breast. His fingers flexed involuntarily against her rib cage, ready and

willing. The scent of her rose up to tease his nostrils - a light, powdery

perfume that reminded him just how good a woman could smell. The curve

of her neck beckoned him to lower his head and sample the taste of her.

His blood pooled, hot and thick in his groin. Her backside brushed

against him and he choked off a groan at the base of his throat.

Damn. He'd gone too long without. That was clear enough. He didn't allow

himself to indiscriminately want women. He had too many more important

things to focus his attention on. He shouldn't have even considered the

possibility with this one. A friend of Lucy MacAdam's.
 
He didn't have

to know any more about her than that to know she was trouble.

Trouble was, he hadn't considered. His hormones were reacting all on

their own. He was a man who prided himself on his control. He didn't

like the idea that after thirty-two years, his body could crack that

control in a heartbeat.

He dropped his hand away from her belly abruptly and took a half-step

back, distancing himself from temptation.

Marilee turned to face him, her sneakers crunching on the kindling that

had once been an end table constructed of raw twigs. Still trembling,

she planted one hand on her hip and snagged back a tangled mass of hair

from her eyes with the other, anchoring it at the back of her neck.

She was shaken by and vaguely ashamed of the lingering sense of sexual

awareness that hummed through her.

The man had practically attacked her. There was nothing in the act that

should have been condoned or responded to sexually. She didn't know him,

didn't know that he wasn't responsible for Lucy's . . . absence. She had

no business finding him attractive even - on a subconscious level. But as

he stared at her with those gray eyes, his face a rough-hewn sculpture

of masculinity, his massive shoulders set, hands jammed above his lean

hips, one muscular leg cocked, the heat of powerful magnetism glowed

deep inside her in a place she had heretofore been blissfully unaware

existed.

"Who are you?" she demanded, wary.

"J.D. Rafferty." He bent to pick up the hat he'd lost in the scuffle,

never taking his eyes off her. "I live up the hill a ways."

"And you're in the habit of just walking into people's homes?"

"No, ma'am."

"But you saw me come in, so you just thought 'Hey, what the hell?
 
I

might as well go scare the shit out of her'?" He narrowed his eyes.

"No, ma'am. The lawyer asked me to look after the stock. I saw you come

in, saw the lights. Didn't want anything funny going on while I was down

here."

Marilee cast a damning glance around the room, stricken anew by the

utter destruction. "Looks to me like something already happened, Mr.

Rafferty. And I don't happen to think it's particularly funny."

"Kids," he muttered, staring at the broken frame of a bentwood rocker.

He detested waste, and that was waste. Vandalism was a waste of time,

energy, property. Waste and disrespect. "Town kids get a little tanked

up. They go riding around, looking for trouble. Don't usually take 'em

long to find it. This happened a week ago. I called the sheriff. A

deputy came out and wrote it up, for what that's worth."

Putting off the inevitable, Marilee went to the ficus that had foiled

her escape and righted it carefully, her hands gentle as she stroked the

smooth trunk and touched the dying leaves.

"I didn't catch your name while you were kicking my shins black and

blue," Rafferty said sardonically.

"Marilee. Marilee Jennings."

"Mary Lee-"

"No. Marilee. It's all one word."

He scowled at that, as if he didn't trust anybody who had such a name.

Marilee almost smiled. Her mother wouldn't like J.D. Rafferty. He was

too rough. Crude, Abigail would say. Abigail Falkner Jennings thrived on

pretention. She had given all her daughters pretentious names that only

snooty people didn't stumble over - Shirley, Anne, Marilee.

"She's dead," he declared bluntly.

She would have put the question off a while longer, would have thought

of other things for another moment or two. Her fingers tightened on the

trunk of the ficus as if trying to hold something that had already

slipped beyond her grasp.

"Happened about ten days ago." Ten days. Ten days ago she had been crying

over a man she didn't love, giving up a career she'd never wanted,

breaking ties to the family she had never fit into. Lucy had been dying.

She brought a hand up to press it over her trembling lips. She shook her

head in denial, desperation and tears swimming in her eyes. Lucy

couldn't be dead, she was too ornery, too cynical, too wise. Only the

good die young, Marilee. She could still see the sharp gleam of

certainty and caustic humor in her friend's eyes as she'd said it.

Jesus, Lucy should have lived to be a hundred.

. . . hunting accident

Rafferty's words penetrated the fog only dimly. He sounded as if he were

talking to her from a great distance instead of just a few feet away.

She stared at him, her defenses raising shields that deflected the

harshness of the subject and focused her attention on unimportant

things.

His hair - it was sensibly short and the color of sable. He had a little

cowlick in front at the edge of his high, broad forehead. His tan - it

ended in a line of demarcation from his hatband. Somehow that made him

seem less dangerous, more human. The paler skin looked soft and

vulnerable. Stupid word for a man with a six-gun strapped to his

hips - vulnerable.

"Hunting?" she mumbled as if the word were foreign.

J.D. pressed his lips together, impatience and compassion warring inside

him. She looked as fragile as a china doll, as if the slightest bump or

pressure would shatter her like the lamps and pots that lay scattered on

the floor. Beneath the tangled fringe of flaxen bangs and the soft arcs

of dark brows, her deep-set blue eyes were huge and brimming with pain

and confusion.

Something in him wanted to offer comfort. He labeled it foolishness and

shoved it aside. He didn't want anything to do with her. He hadn't

wanted anything to do with Lucy, but she had drawn him into her web like

a black widow spider. He wanted this place, that was true enough, but he

didn't want this. He had plainly and purely hated Lucy MacAdam. Couldn't

figure why someone hadn't shot her on purpose years before. The woman

before him was her friend, another outsider, which made her tainted by

both association and circumstance. The sooner he was rid of her, the

better.

He steeled himself against her tears and settled his hat firmly on his

head, an insult she would probably never fathom.

"Lucy didn't go hunting," she mumbled stupidly.

"It was an accident. Some damned city idiot shot without looking."

Ten days ago. It seemed impossible to Marilee that she could have lived

ten days oblivious of the death of a friend. Shot. God, Lucy had been

shot! People moved to the country to avoid getting shot, to escape city

violence.

Lucy had come to paradise only to be gunned down. It was ludicrous.

Marilee shook her head again, trying to clear the dizziness, only making

it worse. "W-where is she?"

"Six feet under, I reckon," he said brutally. "I wouldn't know."

"But you were her friend-"

"No, ma'am."

He moved toward her slowly, deliberately, his expression dark and

intense. Marilee's pulse kicked up a notch, but she held her ground. The

news had stunned her. Beneath the layer of numbness she was very aware

of Rafferty - the heat of his big, muscular body, the raw, powerful

sexuality that hummed around him, the hard gleam in his eyes - but she

seemed incapable of moving away from him.

He came too close. Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to

look at him. Close enough to make her skin tingle.

"We had sex," he said bluntly, his voice low and rough and silky at

once. "Friendship never entered into it."

Marilee's heart fluttered at the base of her throat. Arousal pulsed hard

between her legs and shame surged through her in an attempt to burn it

out, but the response was instinctive and immune to morality.

Rafferty raised a hand and traced his thumb down her cheek to the corner

of her mouth. Holding her gaze, he probed gently, parting her lips,

rubbing the lower one slowly, methodically, back and forth. "How about you,

Marilee?" he whispered.
 
"You want to give a cowboy a ride?"