Dark Paradise (48 page)

Stopping Bryce from buying up the whole of the Absaroka range was his

responsibility. His whole damn life was nothing but responsibility. The

weight of it pressed down on his chest.

A dull pain stabbed behind his eyes. He brought his arm up around

Marilee's shoulders and checked his watch by the light of the bedside

lamp they had never bothered to shut off. Time to go. Past time. He had

never spent the night with Lucy, had never wanted to. But then, Marilee

wasn't Lucy. She was sweet and earnest, honest and quirky and loyal. He

could still hear the sound of her voice, smoky and low, singing about

this land, painting a picture that was startlingly sharp, taking a

handful of words and touching an emotion inside him that was deep and

nameless.

He stared down at the top of her head, at the small hand that lay curled

against his chest, and a fine tremor shuddered through him like the

precursor to an earthquake.

Her lashes fluttered upward and she looked at him with those big, deep

eyes.

"Is something wrong?" she asked in a voice that was half whisper, half

rasp.

"I have to go."

"It's the middle of the night."

"It's after four." He moved away from her and sat up, swinging his legs

over the edge of the bed, reaching for his shorts. "If I don't get a

move on soon, I'll be burning daylight. There's work to be done."

Marilee sat up and stretched, then pulled the coverlet around her. Her

head hurt. Having him leave hurt more.

That's bad news, Marilee. She combed her hair back behind her ear and

frowned.

"You want a cup of coffee before you go?"

J.D. hiked his jeans up and did the button and zipper.

"Go back to sleep. You didn't get much to speak of last night."

"Neither did you."

She climbed out of the bed and began a search for clothes. Her brain

throbbed like a beating heart as she bent to pick up the green robe she

had worn before, and she briefly reconsidered the option of remaining in

a prone position for another eight or nine hours. Her stubbornness won

out. If Rafferty was getting up, she would damn well get up too.

She shot him a look as he shrugged into his shirt.

"What do you take me for - some kind of city girl?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, well," she drawled, swaggering toward him with her fists on her

hips. "I can ride a mule, I've been to a honky-tonk, and I haven't

missed a sunrise in a week. So what does that make me?"

"City girl on vacation in Montana."

"Jeez," she grumbled, reaching up to do the snaps on his denim shirt.

"They'll whisk you away to be on Letterman yet."

Rafferty wasn't amused. "You are what you are, Marilee."

Her hands stilled on his shirtfront and she stared hard at a white pearl

snap. You are what you are. She was a misfit. She'd been a misfit all

her life, a social nomad looking for a place where she could blend in

without compromising her soul. She thought this might be the place, but

J.D. was telling her she would always be an outsider in Montana. Or was

he talking about his heart?

Either way, you lose, Marilee.

"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. Marilee 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 - tarnished silver

oval with a bronze rope edge and a figure of a calf roper in the center.

The words DAYS CHAMPION 1978 were engraved on a ribbon of bronze, that

arched above the toper. 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."

Marilee 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,

Marilee, 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."

Marilee 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 - Marilee included.

Christ, especially Marilee. 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.

Marilee 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, Marilee. 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."

Marilee 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.