Dark Paradise (26 page)

Rafferty's horse stood waiting patiently, tied to a rail of the corral,

one hind leg cocked, his eyes half closed, his lower lip drooping. A

pair of chipmunks had scampered into the corral to inspect the new pile

of debris.

They ran over it and through it, chattering a mile a minute.

Marilee just stood there, trembling, Rafferty's promise ringing in her

ears. They would end up in bed together.

Live for the moment, Marilee.

And if the moment included Rafferty?

Where would it lead them?
 
Scary thing about the road less traveled: you

couldn't always see around the bend.

The hinges of the barn door creaked a protest. Marilee jerked around and

blinked against the thickening darkness, wondering how long she had been

standing there, mulling over the possibility of having an affair with a

man she barely knew.

He came toward her slowly, deliberately, his gaze holding hers. And he

stepped too close, as he always did.

A shiver of awareness skittered over her.

"What's it gonna be, Marilee?" he asked quietly. His eyes were the gray

of velvet in the waning light. "Is tonight the night?"

She held herself rigid, afraid if she move at all it would be to nod her

head. "I'm not ready."

He bent his head and kissed her, slowly, deeply, intimately. Their lips

clung as he pulled back.

"Get ready," he growled.

He went to his horse, tightened his cinch, and swung up into the saddle,

pointing the big gelding toward the trail to the Stars and Bars.

"Hey, Rafferty," Marilee called, uprooting her feet and moving to stand

alongside him. "Mind if I come up tomorrow and see what branding is all

about?"

Impulse pushed the question out of her. She bit her lip and waited for

his answer, her hands jammed deep in the pockets of her jacket, as if

she were bracing herself against a stiff wind.

He stared down at her, his face little more than a silhouette in the

fading light. "Suit yourself."

She gave him a lazy, lopsided grin. "I usually do."

She watched him ride away at a slow jog, feeling a little giddy, a

little foolish, a little too pleased that he might allow her to take a

peek at his world.

"What the hay, Marilee," she said, turning back toward the house, moving

toward it on shaky legs. "Live for the moment."

Midnight. The dead of night. The time of ghosts and hunters.

He couldn't always tell the difference. The images ran together and

through each other. The hounds, the corpses, the dog-boys and tigers.

They crashed through the woods, making a racket only he could hear. It

was as loud as the blasting of an M-16 inside his head, echoing and

amplifying off the metal plate. The spotlight exploded before his eyes

and behind them.

The blonde was there. He was sure of it. He could hear her laughter and

her screams. His head swam and pounded with the sounds and the images.

He squeezed his eyes shut and still they came in - through his ears and

his fingertips. He felt the tiger ripping open his chest. The blood

flowed inward instead of out, and the visions rushed in on the tide and

up his throat, choking him.

He cowered behind the contorted body of a whitebark pine, clutching his

rifle and weeping like a woman. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe,

couldn't think, couldn't escape in any way. He was crying too hard to

take a shot.

Sobbing soundlessly, his mouth torn open as if to scream, but no sound

coming out. It all remained within him.

The rage, the fear, the madness. And he gripped the rifle and held on.

His only anchor to the real world. His only friend in the night.

The blonde laughed. The tiger screamed. The dog-boys did their dirty

deeds.

He clutched his rifle and prayed to an empty sky.

Please, please, fade to black. Fade to black . . .

The mule eyed her, openly dubious.

"You don't think I can do this, do you?" Marilee said, hefting the

western saddle in her arms. It weighed a ton.

When her mother had sent her to riding lessons at Baywind Stables, it

had been in breeches and boots with a little velvet hunt helmet under

her arm. The saddle she strapped on her rented mount was small and

light. The mount she strapped it on was petite with a dainty head and

kind eyes.

Clyde sized her up and all but laughed at her. His eyes were keen and

clear, showing a sharp, cynical intelligence that boded ill. He flicked

one long ear back and tossed his big, homely head, rattling the snaps on

the cross tie.

Marilee adjusted her hold on the saddle and pulled together her nerve.

"Think again, rabbit ears. If Lucy could do this, I can damn well do it

too."

It occurred to her that perhaps Lucy hadn't done this.

She may have had her hired hand saddle the animal for her. No matter

now. The only hands Marilee had were the two on the ends of her arms.

Standing on an old crate, she swung the saddle into place on the mule's

back and adjusted the saddle blanket, tugging it up at his withers. She

wrestled with the long latigo strap and fumbled at the unfamiliar task

of dealing with the western girth, trying to remember what Rafferty had

done the few times she had seen him loosen and tighten his saddle on his

big sorrel horse. She nearly gave up once, ready to jump on bareback,

but the thought of the uphill trail to the Stars and Bars and the fact

that it had been a decade since she had ridden made her renew her

efforts to get the saddle tightened down.

Once she had accomplished her task and managed to get the bridle on, she

led her noble steed out into the early morning sunshine and mounted with

some difficulty and little grace. She took a moment to settle herself,

trying to recall without much success how it had felt to be comfortable

on the back of a moving animal. Then she pointed the mule toward the

trail and they set off at a walk.

Nerves were forgotten almost instantly as they climbed the trail on the

wooded hillside. Marilee's surroundings captured her attention almost to

the exclusion of the mule. Impressions bombarded her senses - the smell of

earth and pine, the delicate shape and movement of aspen leaves, the

colors of wildflowers, the songs of birds, the patches of blue that

shone through the canopy of branches like bits of stained glass. She

breathed it in, soaked it in, taking mental notes and processing them

automatically through the creative side of her brain.

Fragments of song lyrics floated through her head on phantom melodies.

Clyde plodded onward, oblivious of the creative process but well aware

of his rider's distracted state. He took advantage of Marilee's

inattentiveness, nibbling on the leaves of berry bushes as he ambled

along. When they reached a clearing, he stopped altogether and dropped

his nose down into the fresh clover. Marilee started to pull his head

up, but the view from the ridge wiped everything else from her mind.

It was spectacular. Simply, utterly spectacular. The ranch lay below

them, and below that lay the valley, lush and green like a rumpled velvet

coverlet. The stream cut through it, a band of glittering embroidery,

shining silver beneath the spring sun. And far beyond the valley the

Gallatin range rose up, paragons of strength, huge, silent, their peaks

bright with snow.

From a treetop somewhere above her, an eagle took wing, its piercing cry

cutting across the fabric of the morning like a razor. The bird glided

toward the valley, a dark chevron against the blue sky.

Marilee's breath held fast in her lungs. She had grown up in a city, had

traveled to some of the more beautiful sites civilization had to offer,

but no place had ever captured her as surely as this place. She sat

there, a fine trembling running through her, to the core of her, feeling

like an instrument on which someone had struck a perfect note. It

vibrated in the heart of her, touched the very center of her, and tears

rose in her eyes because she knew just how rare a moment like this was.

She felt as if she had been waiting for it her entire life. Waiting to

feel that sense of belonging, that sense of finally sliding into place

after so many years of not fitting in.

It frightened her a little to feel it now. She had no way of knowing how

long it would last, didn't know if she should grab on to it with both

hands and hang on or let it pass. She thought of Rafferty and his

aversion to outsiders. She wasn't from here, had come only on hiatus

from the rest of her life. Just passing through. Just passing time. But

time stood absolutely still as she looked out over the valley and to the

mountains beyond.

She could have stayed forever right in that spot, suspended in that

moment.

But somewhere ahead on the trail cattle were being branded, work was

being done. Somewhere ahead on the trail was J.D. Rafferty. Marilee

tugged Clyde's head up out of the clover and urged him toward the Stars

and Bars.

She heard the commotion before she saw it. The bawling of cows and

calves filled the air, a frantic cacophony that sang of the confusion

and energy of the event. The mule pricked his long ears forward and

picked up the pace of his walk, the excitement reaching him even a

quarter mile down the road from the ranch. Marilee fixed her gaze on the

cloud of dust hovering over the corrals in the distance and nudged her

mount into a trot, posting in the saddle because it was the way she had

been taught. She supposed she looked ridiculous, bouncing up and down

on the back of a mule as if he were a prize-winning hunter, but she'd

never given a fig for appearances anyway, and this was hardly the time

to start.

As she neared the pens she tried to take in everything about the sight

at once - the maze of weathered board fences, the movement of the groups

of cattle, the men who perched above the chutes, tending to a job she

could only guess at. The air was filled with the scents of dust and

smoke, fresh manure and burning hide. The scene was something straight

out of a John Wayne movie, Technicolor bright, Surround-Sound loud.

"Better click those teeth together, ma'am, or you're liable to catch a

taste of something you'd rather not."

Marilee pulled herself away from the spectacle and looked down on

another walking, talking piece of western lore. The old cowboy who stood

beside her was as weathered as an applehead doll, his skin burned brown

and age-freckled from years in the sun. He had the stance of a man who

had put in too many miles in the saddle, a little bent, a little

twisted. His legs were bowed and spindly even though a fair amount of

belly spilled over the top of his belt buckle. He squinted up at her

from beneath the brim of a disreputable-looking gray hat, his blue eyes

merry and a smile tugging shyly at one corner of his mouth.

"Tucker Cahill at your service, ma'am," he announced.

Tipping his head away demurely, he shot a stream of tobacco juice into

the dirt, then glanced back up at her. "You lost or something?"

"Not if this is the Stars and Bars."

"It surely is."

"I'm Marilee Jennings. J.D. told me I could come watch the branding if I

wanted."

Tucker damn near swallowed his chaw. His eyebrows climbed his forehead

until they nearly disappeared beneath his bar. "Did he?
 
Well, I'll be

pan-fried and ate by turkeys," he muttered.

"Excuse me?"

He shook himself like a dog, trying to shake loose the shock of her

statement. He could hardly remember the last time J.D. had invited a