Dark Paradise (42 page)

no helping Will. He would be the victim of his own stupidity. So would

the colt.

J.D. watched, sick at heart, as the colt pitched and squealed, wild with

fright. Will somersaulted off and hit the dirt with a sickening thud.

The colt wheeled and ran away from the crowd and straight into the

corral fence.

He hurled himself up against it, trying desperately to clear the high

rail, tangling his forelegs between the bars in the process.

As the townspeople crowded around the groaning Will, J.D. went to the

aid of the horse, talking to him softly, trying to calm him, praying the

animal wouldn't break a leg in his scramble to free himself from his

predicament. The colt's copper coat was nearly black with sweat and

flecked with lather. Blood ran down the white stockings on his forelegs,

where he had scraped the skin away against the bars of the fence.

Chaske came and took the horse, frowning darkly at the damage that had

been done to the animal - physically and mentally. Every bit of work they

had done was ruined that quickly, that carelessly. J.D. started to

follow him toward the barn, but the old man shook his head and shot a

meaningful glance at the crowd gathered around Will.

"See to your brother first."

J.D. started to protest, but bit the words back as Chaske stared at him

long and hard.

Will was alive and moaning, soaking up the sympathies of the townspeople

like an obnoxious little sponge.

J.D. was more worried about the colt. Getting dumped was a common enough

occurrence; people seldom died Of it and it was generally their own

fault anyway. The colt, on the other hand, might never lose his mistrust

of people now. And that was all Will's fault.

He took up a stance where he could scowl down at Will. Sondra glared up

at him through her tears. She kneeled in the dirt beside her baby,

cradling his head in her lap, stroking his cheek as he cried softly and

held one arm against his middle. "How could you do this!"

J.D. all but jumped back at the attack. "It wasn't my fault!
 
I told him

he'd break his stupid neck!"

"You should have stopped him. My God, J.D., you're sixteen. Will's just

a little boy!
 
Don't you have any sense of responsibility at all?"

She couldn't have hit him any harder with an ax handle. Responsibility?

What would she know about responsibility?
 
She was the one who had left

her family for her own selfish reasons. She didn't know spit about

responsibility. And she'd bred a son in her own selfish image. J.D. knew

without question that Will would turn the story around so that none of

the blame would rest on his own head. It would all be J.D.'s

responsibility - like the chores and the house and every job Dad ignored

because he was too busy pining away for a wife who was as faithless as a

bitch in heat. And J.D. would take it and bear up and never say a word

to anyone, because he was a Rafferty, and that was his biggest

responsibility.

J.D. brought himself back to the present, shaking his head at the fog

that had shrouded his brain. It wasn't like him to look back. What was

done was done. It didn't matter anymore.

But as he looked across the pen at Will, he knew that wasn't true. It

did matter. It mattered a lot. The stakes had only gotten higher and

higher with the passage of time, until now everything hung in the

balance. The ranch sat on the pinnacle, teetering precariously. Will was

the weight that could tip it either way.

They hadn't spoken a word since the scene outside the Hell and Gone.

J.D. hadn't trusted himself. He knew his temper only made things worse,

but he could hardly look at Will these days without seeing red. From the

beginning he had been the one who loved the ranch, worked the ranch,

fought tooth and nail for the ranch, yet Will had the power to lose it

for him. Between his gambling and his womanizing, he seemed hell-bent on

doing just that.

The idea of not being in control of his own destiny made J.D. furious

and terrified in a way nothing else could. All their futures - his, Del's,

Tucker's, Chaske's were sliding into the hands of a man who had never

taken responsibility for anything in his life.

Will leaned against the side of the barn, bent over at the waist,

drinking from the hose. He had shown up in time for breakfast, refused

everything but black coffee, which he drank in silence, leaning back

against the kitchen counter. Mirrored aviator sunglasses shaded eyes

that were most probably bloodshot. He took them off now and sprayed

himself in the face with the water.

They had spent the day finishing inoculations and all the other

miscellaneous checks on the steers and heifers.

As predicted, the corral was a sea of mud, churned deep by the hooves of

thousand-pound animals. J.D. was covered with muck to his waist. He

could feel flecks of it drying on his face and the back of his neck.

Pushing himself away from the rail, he made his way toward the hose.

Will handed it to him, then stood back, settled his sunglasses into

place, and slicked his dark hair back with his hands, turning his

profile to the setting sun. He looked like a movie star bathed in golden

light. Tom Cruise come to play cowboy for a day in Hollywood's newest

fun spot. The analogy only fueled J.D.'s temper. He used the hose to

douse it, letting the cold well water pour over the back of his head and

down the sides of his face.

Tucker had already gone to the house to see about Supper. Chaske was

doing the chores. The day was winding down, the sun sliding toward the

far side of the Gallatin range. Down the hill from the pens, the cattle

dogs were hunting mice, bounding through the bluebells and needlegrass,

setting the tall stalks of beargrass bending to and fro like the stems

of metronomes. Somewhere in the woods beyond, a wild torn turkey

gobbled, advertising for a date.

J.D. turned the water off and straightened slowly, taking in all of

those things, feeling a sharp pang of longing in his chest, as if they

were already lost.

"We need to talk," he said quietly.

Will regarded him from behind the one-way glass of his aviator lenses.

There was no infamous grin, no joke, no dimples cutting into his cheeks.

"Translate that for me, J.D. You want to talk with me or at me?"

"We need to talk about Samantha."

He shook his head, turned, and looked out at the meadow where the dogs

were chasing each other. "I don't want to have this conversation."

"Neither do I."

The grin cut across his face then, as sharp as a scimitar. "Then let's

skip it."

"And pretend nothing's wrong?
 
You don't want to deal with it, so we

should ignore it?" J.D. shook his head, struggling to hold his temper

when what he wanted to do was wrap his hands around his brother's throat

and choke him until his eyes bugged out. "Do you have any idea how

serious this could be - her falling in with Bryce's crowd?
 
Do you even

have a clue, Will?"

"Yeah, I've got a clue," Will sneered. "She's my wife. How do you think I feel?"

"I can't imagine. You act like you don't give a damn what she does.

You're off to the Hell and Gone every night, trying to nail anything in

a skirt. Am I supposed to think you're heartbroken?"

"You don't understand anything," Will said bitterly, and started across

the yard for his truck.

J.D. grabbed his arm and hauled him back around.

"Don't pull that act with me," he growled, jabbing an accusatory finger

in Will's face. "You're not the innocent victim here; you're guilty as

hell! You married that girl, then you dumped her. Now she's in a

position to cut all our throats, and all you do about it is get drunk

and go dancing!"

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Get her back. Face up to your responsibilities. Act like a man for

once."

"Why should I?" Will taunted, his own temper simmering in an oily mix of

pain and inadequacy. "Why should I, when you're man enough for the whole

fucking state of Montana?
 
I could never measure up in your eyes no

matter what I did, so why should I bother?"

"Jesus. Is that all this is about for you?
 
Who's got the biggest dick?

Some shithead case of sibling rivalry?
 
I'm talking about our lives

here, Will."

"That is our life," he spat back. "Haven't you been paying attention for

the last twenty-eight years?"

J.D. stepped back with his hands raised as if to ward off the entire

conversation. "This is unbelievable," he muttered more to himself than

to Will. "We could lose the ranch and all you want to do is sulk over a

whiskey because you were born second! Christ almighty, don't you have

any pride at all?
 
Don't you have an ounce of self-respect?"

Will stared at him long and hard from behind his disguise, sure that

J.D. could see right through it, as he always did, always had. He stood

there, feeling stripped bare. The eternal screw-up, fooling everyone

with a wink and a grin. Except J.D. Never once had he fooled J.D.

Now the act was wearing thin all the way around. The curtain wasn't just

coming down, it was coming unraveled, and he was scared as hell that

when it was over, there would be nothing left to hide behind and nothing

left to hide.

"No," he said quietly, stunned by the truth of it. "I don't."

This time when he started for his truck J.D. let him go.

He stood there by the side of the barn, completely still, drained of

everything but fear. Around him was the only life he had ever wanted.

The ranch. The mountains. The horses and cattle. The coolness and the

quiet that crept out from under the trees as the sunlight drained away.

The squealing call of a bull elk. The eerie whirring sound of a

nighthawk diving through the twilight for its prey.

This was all he had ever allowed himself to want, all he had ever loved.

It hung now by a thread, swinging in the breeze.

Marilee sat on the glass-topped table, staring down at the valley bathed

in the soft velvet tones of twilight. She sat there as the sun went

down, staring, thinking, her fingers moving almost absently over the

strings of her old guitar.

Quinn didn't believe her. Did it matter?
 
Lucy was dead. Dead was

forever. Nothing could bring her back. If someone had killed her because

she had been blackmailing that person, wouldn't the story end there?
 
No

more Lucy, no more blackmail. End of plot. Marilee didn't know anything

about Lucy's schemes. She didn't want to know.

But what if Kendall Morton had killed Lucy?
 
He was still at large.

And if Del killed Lucy?
 
He had motive, means, opportunity. God knew, he

had the temperament for killing.

The government had trained him to kill.

Oh, Del.

Oh, J.D. . . .

He loved his uncle. He protected his family. A toughedged knight on a

big sorrel horse. The defender of his kingdom. The last man of honor. So

tough, so impenetrable. So vulnerable.

Don't start, Marilee. He's a lot harder than he is soft.

She didn't know why she was even thinking about him.

He didn't want her around; he wanted her only in bed.

She liked to think she was more liberated than to go for a man like

that. She liked to think she would have become a nun before she went for

a man like that.

What a shock that would have been to her mother, seeing as how the

Jennings clan were devout followers of the

show-up-Sunday-in-a-killer-outfit-no-one's-ever-seen Episcopalian