The Loner (17 page)

As the days passed and he refused even to speak with her on the phone, it had become increasingly clear that Jackson didn’t give a damn anymore about her or their marriage or their life together. He wanted that Creed bitch no matter what he had to give up to have her.

Eve had spent another distressing week going through the stages of grief at the death of her marriage, from denial to anger to bargaining to sorrow. She simply hadn’t been able to accept the loss of the man she’d loved body
and soul since the moment she’d laid eyes on him. And if she couldn’t have him, she was going to make damned sure no other woman would.

She’d been lying in bed alone, staring at the ceiling, feeling the humiliation of losing Jackson to
that woman
, when an idea for the perfect revenge had been born in her head. The plan she’d concocted required her own death, but that was a small price to pay for the anguish she knew Lauren Creed would suffer the rest of her life.

The difficult part had been figuring out how best to kill herself and make certain that Jackson was the most obvious—the only—suspect for her murder. It had taken a great deal of thought, a great deal of research, a great deal of planning. And a little help from someone with something to gain from her death.

Eve had gone through the stages of grief again, this time mourning not the loss of Jackson, but her own ultimate death. Over the past few days, she’d finally reached the plane of acceptance. She was ready and willing to die.

She felt great satisfaction in knowing that Jackson would probably figure out what she’d done but be unable to undo her careful planning. With any luck, he would tell
that woman
of his evil wife’s machinations, and the two of them would hold one another tightly in the few days of freedom he had left before they arrested him for murder, knowing that their chance for a life together had been ended by someone they’d both discounted as helpless to thwart them.

Eve was planting enough evidence to show premeditated
murder, enough to get Jackson the death sentence. Knowing Jackson, he’d have smart attorneys who’d argue mitigating circumstances, or maybe lessened mental capacity. She’d prepared herself for the possibility he would only end up with a long prison sentence.

But Jackson was old enough that even ten or fifteen years in prison would preclude any chance of happiness with
that woman
. His repaired heart wasn’t going to last forever. But it wasn’t even his aging body that would do him in. Eve knew that if a man like Jackson Blackthorne was kept in a cell, away from the sun and the wind and the land, he’d shrivel up and die inside.

Less than a week ago she’d finally set her plan in motion. She’d made a point of joining Jackson at the roundup every day. Had insisted on flying with their helicopter pilot so she could relearn the use of the controls, then kicked him out of the cockpit and flown herself for the past two days, even though she had no current FAA license.

The court would want to know why Jackson hadn’t stopped her. Unless he’d had a reason for wanting her to continue to fly…

She’d stolen his hunting knife with the serrated edge from the locked metal tool kit he kept in the back of his pickup and used it earlier this evening to sever the hydraulic line in the helicopter, then returned it to the locked box. She’d also siphoned off enough gas that the helicopter wasn’t going to explode on impact. She didn’t want any evidence accidentally burning up. She planned to hide a small homemade explosive device under the pilot’s seat that would conveniently
“malfunction,” leaving all the evidence of Jackson’s supposed tampering with the helicopter intact for investigators to find.

She’d taken a few pills from Jackson’s stash of heart medication—enough to give herself a heart attack—to dissolve in her thermos of coffee. She’d debated whether to use Jackson’s sleeping pills, but she wanted something that was certain to kill her quickly, so she wouldn’t be alive when the helicopter crashed. She would arrange to have Jackson personally hand her the thermos tomorrow morning before she got into the helicopter.

She could just hear the prosecutor explaining to the jury how Jackson Blackthorne had threatened his wife the night before her death. How he’d poisoned her in order to keep his fortune and continue sleeping with his mistress. How he’d cut the hydraulic line with his hunting knife so the helicopter would malfunction and appear to accidentally crash, and then arranged for it to explode in a fiery ball on impact to destroy the evidence that would prove he’d murdered his wife.

Oh, it would work, all right.

All that was left was the very public argument she planned to have with Jackson tonight at the barbecue being held to celebrate the last days of the roundup. All of their friends and neighbors would be there. She was sure she could get him to threaten her. It would be nice if she could enrage him enough to strike her. He’d never done it before, but maybe, if she said enough insulting things about
that woman
, she could incite him to it.

Eve looked at herself in the mirror over the dresser in her bedroom. She was still a beautiful woman. Her blond
hair was cut short in the current fashion, soft and beguiling around her face. Her blue eyes were striking, her figure trim and spare. She was dressed in a fringed fawn leather skirt and vest with a forest-green silk Western shirt and wore short, high-heeled boots with the Circle B brand tooled into the brown leather.

A woman as beautiful and talented as she was didn’t deserve to be abandoned by her husband. Not to mention the mental infidelity she’d suffered during the entire course of their marriage. She’d tried to remove her nemesis once before and failed. Now, even killing Lauren Creed would never bring Jackson back to her. And she couldn’t bear to live the rest of her life as a divorced woman.

When Eve was thirteen, her father had divorced her mother and married another woman. Her mother had become invisible to all their friends and neighbors, as though she’d never existed. She’d turned to drugs and alcohol and then showed up at public events, embarrassing Eve and infuriating her father. Following those awful confrontations, her mother had drunk more and indulged in more drugs, along with a series of disgustingly young lovers. Her mortifying decline had ended when she’d killed herself by slitting her wrists three years after the divorce.

Eve’s most vivid, most painful memory of that period in her life was overhearing her father say at her mother’s funeral, “She should have killed herself three years ago and spared us all the disgrace and indignity of watching her become a lush and a slut.”

Eve had no intention of emulating her mother’s decline.
Instead of debasing and degrading herself, pining away for a man who’d rejected her, she was going to take firm, positive action. She was going to have the revenge her mother had been denied.

Eve headed down the stairs. She wished it were possible to leave a letter for Jackson, explaining what she’d done. She wanted him to know how and why she’d arranged his ruin. She wanted him to know that she’d ended up hating him as much as she’d loved him once upon a time. And that no man was going to be allowed to spoil her life and get away with it.

She hesitated on the stairs as a thought came to her. She didn’t dare leave a letter for Jackson that could be used to exonerate him. But why not leave a note that wouldn’t be found for maybe twenty years? Even if Jackson was released from prison when it was found, he’d be seventy-seven. Much too old for a romance with the widow Creed, even if she’d waited all those years for him.

Oh, she liked it. Yes, she’d do that tonight before she went to sleep. Write a note and conceal it where it wouldn’t be found for twenty years. But where to put it? How to ensure it wouldn’t be found too soon…

The last place Billy Coburn wanted to be was the annual Circle B barbecue. But Summer had told him she’d never missed one, and she didn’t want to start now. Besides, she’d argued, what better opportunity for them to greet their neighbors as husband and wife?

Billy was certain the evening would be a disaster. Nobody in Bitter Creek knew him as anything but Bad Billy
Coburn, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do or say to the first man who slighted him in front of his new wife. Or worse yet, insulted Summer for getting involved with a no-account, no-good nobody like himself.

“Dance with me, Billy,” Summer said as they approached the crowd around a roaring fire, over which a beef carcass was roasting on a spit. A country band wailed over the noise of the gathering, dueling violins daring the two-stepping dancers to keep up with the frenetic pace of the tune.

“We’ll be trampled by that herd of buffalo,” he said.

“It’ll be fun,” she said, entreating him with a smile and teasing him with a look from beneath lowered lashes.

He put one hand to her waist and took her hand with the other. “You asked for it.”

A moment later they were racing with the crowd, her ponytail bouncing, his boots flying, as they danced in a joyous circle around the spitted meat, like ancient cave dwellers after a successful hunt.

The evening air was warm, and it didn’t take long before Billy felt the sweat making his shirt cling to his back. He watched beads of perspiration form above Summer’s bowed upper lip and dipped his head to kiss them away as he whirled her in a circle so tight and fast it made her laugh.

Billy grinned at her and felt his heart swell when she grinned back. He was sorry when the music ended. He’d already let her go when the band started playing the “Tennessee Waltz.”

He didn’t ask her if she wanted to dance again, simply slid his arm firmly around her waist and pulled her close,
closer than most of the other couples were dancing. He didn’t give a damn. They were supposedly newlyweds. Couples in love were entitled to break a few rules on the dance floor.

Although he’d been married to Summer for close to a month, he’d drawn an imaginary line down the center of the bed that first night, and neither of them had crossed over it. Dancing finally gave him a chance to hold his wife.

He noticed Summer wasn’t objecting. In fact, she pressed herself against him, and in the dancing boots she was wearing, she fit him in all the right places. He didn’t back off when he felt himself becoming aroused. He noticed she didn’t back off either, but her body felt less relaxed in his arms.

He bent and whispered in her ear, “I told you once before, a long time ago, what you do to me.”

“I don’t want to tease you, Billy,” she whispered back. “I mean, since this isn’t going anywhere. I mean, we agreed… sex wasn’t part of the bargain.”

That was plain speaking. But that was Summer. Honest to a fault. “I don’t mind if you don’t mind,” he said as he slid his hand down the arch of her back to the rise of her buttocks and urged her against the ridge in his jeans.

She leaned her cheek against his shirt, and he felt her shudder under his hand. He held her close and danced, letting the gentle sway of their bodies against one another feed the need inside him. By the time the dance ended, he was trembling with desire.

He didn’t want to let her go.

She looked up at him, her heart in her eyes, and said, “Billy, I think we should—”

Before she could finish, a hand slapped Billy on the back and a familiar voice said, “Never expected to see you here.”

Billy turned and recognized one of the kids he’d gone to school with all his life, a one-time partner in crime who was now a respectable rancher with a couple of kids. “Hi, Wade.”

Wade offered his hand and Billy shook it. “Going to introduce me to your beautiful wife?” Wade asked.

“You know Summer Blackthorne.”

“Know of her,” Wade said with a lurid grin as he tipped his hat to Summer. “Never met her. Hello there, pretty lady.”

“Hello,” Summer said, nodding and smiling back at Wade.

Billy felt himself getting hot under the collar as Wade continued ogling her. “Where’s your wife?” he asked.

Wade threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Over there with the other wives. The view is a heap nicer right here.”

Billy hadn’t expected to feel jealous. Hadn’t expected to feel the urge to punch Wade Johnson in the nose. Before he could act, Summer threaded her arm through his and said, “Nice meeting you, Wade. Billy and I need to say hello to my father.”

Billy was so surprised, he let himself be led away like a bull with a ring in its nose.

“What a moron,” Summer murmured as she glanced back over her shoulder. “I should have let you knock his teeth down his throat.”

Billy laughed. “I would have been happy to do it for you.”

Summer laughed along with him. “That would have been satisfying. But it’s not exactly the impression I was hoping you’d make tonight.”

He stopped and stared at her. “Brought your prize hog to market, have you?”

“Don’t be an idiot. People are naturally curious about the two of us. They can’t figure out why you’d pick someone like me for your wife.”

Billy stared at her, then grinned and shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me.”

She beamed at him. “I know. Now if I could just convince all these other people how amazing I am, they’d understand the attraction.”

“You started to say something at the end of the dance, before we were interrupted. What was it?”

Summer made a face. “It was nothing.”

He tipped her chin up. “I was hoping it was something.”

“I was going to say I’m tired of trying to stay on my own side of the bed. It’s impossible anyway, when the mattress sags in the middle.”

“I thought we agreed—”

“You set the terms,” she said.

“And now you want to change them?”

“I might.”

His body ached, wanting her. It would be so easy to agree with her, to make their marriage a little more real than it was. To add sex.

Only for him, it wouldn’t be just sex. It would be making love. And he wasn’t sure he could take that chance. He already felt a knot in his stomach every time
he thought of what he’d do when their two years together were up. How would he be able to handle the situation if they became lovers? Was the pleasure now worth the pain later?