Dark Paradise (43 page)

church.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, started a new song, a new

train of thought.

Old train of thought.

Quinn didn't believe her. The odd pieces of truth and suspicion she had

collected over the last week didn't add up to anything when he looked at

them. Marilee felt as if she were looking at an abstract painting and

only she could see the zebra represented by the incongruous slashes of

color. It stood out to her more and more, the lines of it becoming

bolder, stronger, while everyone else saw only a jumble of unrelated

brush marks. More bits of information floated up from the depths of her

memory, adding detail and definition to the zebra.

Contusions, abrasions, broken bones. The notes from the brief coroner's

report flashed through her mind for the hundredth time that day. She had

blocked it all out after reading it that first day, but now the details

came back to her again and again. Cuts, bruises, a broken nose. Injuries

that may have been incurred in the fall from Clyde, but Marilee had

taken that same fall and come away with nothing more than a few bruises.

She closed her eyes and visualized the grisly scene as it must have

happened - the bullet striking Lucy in the back, pitching her forward, the

mule bolting out from under her, Lucy falling headlong. Into a deep

cushion of meadow grass. Where had the cuts come from?
 
How had she

broken her nose?
 
She might have landed on a rock, but that still didn't

explain the cuts or the dirty, broken fingernails.

After a brief nap plagued by disturbing dark images, Marilee had spent

much of the afternoon tracking down the county coroner to see if he

could answer any of her questions. As it turned out, he was a

veterinarian who had never wanted to take the job of coroner. No one in

the county wanted the job. It was traditionally passed down as a booby

prize to the newest person in the county with medical training - which

was, he had pointed out defensively, better than in some counties, where

the coroner ran a filling station or feed store. The job didn't require

a diploma of any kind. It was an elected position no one ever wanted to

run for. His job was to view corpses and fill out forms. He did not

perform autopsies. If one seemed necessary, the unfortunate victim was

shipped off to the medical examiner in Bozeman. He hadn't found it

necessary in Lucy's case. A half-wit could have seen what killed her.

Could he explain the contusions, abrasions, broken bones?
 
Incurred in

the fall from her mount. Period. Had she been sexually assaulted? Didn't

know, had no call to look, and what kind of dumb-ass question was that

anyway?
 
The woman was killed in a hunting accident. End of story. End

of conversation.

He had been more interested in his job of castrating yearling horses

than in discussing postmortem exams.

He offered no support or sympathy.

Marilee drove away from the interview feeling defeated and nauseated,

the smell of blood in her nostrils and the image of a German shepherd

trotting across the ranch yard with discarded horse testicles held like

a prize in his mouth burned indelibly into her brain. She shuddered now

as it came back to her. That wasn't something the average court reporter

got to see every day. Thank God.

Turning her mind back to Lucy was almost a relief.

What was she doing up on that Mountainside in the first place?
 
Whom had

she gone to meet? J.D.?

The thought brought a sick, hollow feeling to her stomach. Lucy died on

Rafferty Ridge. She'd been sleeping with J.D. Rafferty. Del Rafferty

saw ghosts and could shoot the balls off a mouse at two hundred yards.

Del might have seen Lucy as a threat. She was an outsider who had bought

a piece of Montana at the foot of the Stars and Bars, just one of many

who would try to encroach on his sanctuary.

What if Del had killed her?
 
What good could come of proving that?
 
To

lock him up would be a sentence worse than death. It wouldn't bring Lucy

back. It would destroy whatever fragile thread there was between her and

J.D.

And just what do you think will come of that thread anyway, Marilee?

Nothing. It wasn't strong enough to bind them. She wasn't looking for

that anyway. God knew, he wasn't.

And where does that leave you, Marilee? Alone. The odd one out. Drifting

in limbo in a dark paradise.

Staring out over the valley, listening as an elk called, she plucked out

the poignant opening bars of a Mary Chapin Carpenter song. "Not Too Much

to Ask." It was just a song. Something to sing, to occupy her mind and

her fingers. She told herself it didn't come from her own heart, the

words of longing and jaded hope. She didn't need to be anything to J.D.

Rafferty. She didn't want to know about the past that had toughened the

armor around his heart. She played it only because playing had always

calmed her mind and soothed her.

Her voice carried out on the cool evening air, strong and warm and

honest. Too true to everything she was feeling.

A silver mist floated above the stream, as soft and smoky as her voice.

Far up the valley the elk called again.

A coyote answered in a faint voice. The evening star winked on above the

mountains to the west.

J.D. hesitated in the deep shadows along the side of the house. He stood

there, transfixed, mesmerized by her voice - the aching tenderness, the

world-weariness, the complex shades of emotion and experience.

With a handful of keenly chosen notes on the guitar, she segwayed from a

love song to a portrait of a place. A place of mountains and water. A

land of sky. Simple strengths and dying traditions. Horses in high

grass. Elk beside a stream. Sagging porches and an old church in need of

paint. A feeling of innocence and wisdom. Of desperately clinging to a

time that was already gone, and mourning for its passing.

With just a few simple sentences she unerringly painted this place. His

land, his feelings, his fears. The words touched him in a way no woman

ever had. They reached inside and cradled a part of him he never let

anyone near - his heart. For a few moments he leaned against the rough

logs of the house and allowed himself to exist in her words. Allowed

himself to hurt. Allowed himself to need something he couldn't even

name. And when the song was over and the guitar ran out of notes, he

just stood there and ached at the sense of loss.

Slowly he stepped from the shadows. Marilee turned and looked at him,

her eyes wide and dark.

"Taking a night off from the social whirl, Marilee?" he asked, but he

sounded more weary than wry, the edge of his mood dulled by feelings too

heavy to ignore.

"Yeah," she said, her voice husky with cynical humor, her pretty mouth

kicking up on one corner. "I usually try to sit one out when I've got a

concussion. People with head injuries tend to drag a party down."

J.D.'s gaze sharpened as he tried to discern whether or not she was

joking. In the faint light that came from inside the house he could see

the lines of strain in her face.

She looked gaunt, fragile, her skin as pale and translucent as a lily's

petal.

"I don't suppose it'll make the papers until Thursday - seeing how that's

the only day the paper is printed," she said, looking vaguely

embarrassed as she set her guitar aside and climbed down off the table.

A filmy skirt swirled around her calves. The sleeves of her denim jacket

fell to her fingertips. "I got beat up last night."

"You what!"

He charged forward a step, looking as if he thought he ought to pick her

up or sit her down or do something, but the emotions that compelled him

were obviously too foreign to decipher and so he did nothing but stare

at her. Marilee found his reaction sweet, but she didn't let herself

dwell on it.

"Someone thought it would be cute to hide in my hotel room and smack me

in the head with the telephone when I came in." She said it simply, as

if she hadn't been terrified. Inside, the residual fear quivered like a

tuning fork.

"I wasn't amused."

"Jesus Christ, Marilee!"

He took the last step to close the distance between them and brought his

hands up to cradle her face and turn it to the light. She winced as his

fingertips slid back into her hair and grazed the tender spot.

The feelings that tore through him were unfamiliar, unwelcome, but too

strong to hold back. He couldn't stand the idea of anyone physically

hurting her. She was little, delicate . . . his. Dammit, she was his.

Maybe not forever, but for as long as she stayed here. The protective

instincts he reserved for his family and his land surged past all

barriers to include Marilee. He would have cheerfully wrapped his hands

around the throat of the man who had done this and torn his head off.

"Who was it?" he demanded.

She gave a little shrug. "Sorry. I hate to sound like a bigot, but all

those guys in ski masks look alike to me."

"Are you all right?"

The rough concern in his voice touched Marilee in a place more sensitive

than her injury. The vulnerability, the loneliness, the longing for

something beyond her reach, rose like a tide.

"No," she whispered. She tried for a smile. It trembled and fled. "I

could stand to be held for a while."

He slid his arms around her and gathered her into him, wrapped her

carefully in his strength. Marilee burrowed her face into his shoulder

and breathed deep. Ivory soap underscored by a subtle male musk. He had

showered before coming down. His shirt was soft and smelled of sunshine.

Above all, he was warm and strong and she fit against him perfectly. As

if she belonged there.

She slipped her hands around to the small of his back, absorbing the

feel of washed cotton and hard muscle through her fingertips. "This is

nice," she whispered.

"Did they steal anything?"

"I don't have anything worth stealing." Except my soul. She felt it

slipping away.

"He didn't hurt you . . . otherwise?" Christ, if some bastard had raped

her "No. No," she whispered, hugging him. "I don't think it was me he

was after, but I'd rather not talk about that just now."

Marilee tilted her head back. The light that spilled out from the house

was just bright enough to highlight the chiseled planes and hard ridges

of J.D.'s face. No sculptor could have better captured the essence of

the West.

Everything about it - and about him - was etched into his face - his pride,

his arrogance, his integrity, his toughness. A pair of lines slashed

across his broad forehead like taut stretches of barbed wire. His nose

was a bold, straight blade, nothing fancy, a no-nonsense kind of nose.

Above the rock that was his jaw his mouth was habitually a tight,

compressed line.

"You didn't come here to talk, did you, Rafferty?"

"No." A hint of a smile played at one corner of his mouth. "I came here

to get laid." The smile vanished like a ghost, and he touched her cheek

just below the bruise Clyde had given her. "But it won't kill me to do

without.
 
I don't reckon you feel up to it."

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured wistfully. "It might be nice to feel

wanted. Why don't you kiss me and find out?"

"You sure?" he asked, the concern in his voice and in his eyes almost

more than she could stand.

"Kiss me," she ordered.

He complied with the lightest, sweetest of kisses, as if he thought her

lips were made of spun glass. His care brought tears to her eyes. He was

so big, so tough, and yet he handled her so gently, showing her

something he would never tell her - that he cared . . . at least a little.