Dark Paradise (80 page)

yourself. I know you value integrity and honesty and fair play, and I

know you think you violated your own code of honor. I know you're a

chauvinist and you'll probably never say the things a woman would like

to hear from you.

"I know exactly who you are, Rafferty. And I've

managed to fall in love with you anyway."

The word struck him like a ballpeen hammer between the eyes. Love. The

thing he had avoided as judiciously as outsiders. The emotion that had

run his father into an early grave. He had grown up believing it

couldn't be trusted. It would leave or turn on a man or swallow him

whole. He had never wanted it. Liar.

He had lain awake nights wanting it, aching for it, never ever naming

it. It scared the hell out of him. It scared the hell out of him to want

it now, to want it from this woman. She wasn't from his world, a world

that was disintegrating around him. He couldn't offer her anything but

debt and a hard life. That didn't seem like an enticement to make a

woman stay. He had already seen that it wouldn't make a woman happy. His

mind raced ahead to envision her dissatisfaction, then raced back to see

his father growing weak as Sondra drained all the pride out of him. He

had sworn he wouldn't go through that, not for anyone. He had

obligations and responsibilities. He had the land.

Martyr.

The words jabbed him like knives - love, liar, martyr poking at his

conscience and his temper. Christ, why couldn't he just be left alone?

Why couldn't the world outside his own just keep away?
 
And why did this

woman have to complicate something as simple as sex with emotions as

volatile as dynamite?

"I can see you're overjoyed," Marilee said, channeling her hurt into

sarcasm. "You look like you'd rather have jock itch. Thanks, Rafferty,

you're a real jerk. And I still love you - how's that for masochism?"

Disgusted, she turned and started for the truck. J.D. reached out and

caught her by her good shoulder. "Marilee, it couldn't work. Don't you

see that?"

"Why?" she challenged.

"We're too different. We don't want the same things-"

"How dare you presume to know what I want," she said angrily. "You don't

know anything. You don't know anything about what I want or who I am

because you're so damn busy trying to fit me into one of your little

pigeonholes - outsider, seductress, troublemaker. Well, here's a news

flash for you, Rafferty: I'm more than the sum of your stupid labels.

I'm a woman and I love you, and when you decide you can handle that, you

know where to find me."

Once again she started for the truck, her feet heavy, her heart

squeezing the life out of her pride.

J.D.'s voice stopped her. "You're staying?"

She looked back at him and sighed at the suspicion in his narrowed eyes.

"I'm staying. For good. Forever. I know I'm not from this place, but

that doesn't mean I can't belong here. You may not like that, but it's

how this land was settled. Those Raffertys who came here from Georgia

weren't natives either. They managed to fit in eventually. I will too,

on my own terms, in my own way."

She climbed into the cab of the truck and slammed the door just as

Tucker walked out of the cabin. The old cowboy looked from the woman to

J.D., spat a stream of Red Man into the dirt, and shook his head. He had

gladly joined in Marilee's conspiracy, but he had hoped for a better

outcome than this.

"They don't make steel any harder than your noggin," he muttered

irritably as he hobbled across the darkening yard.

J.D. scowled at him. "Stay out of it, Tuck."

"I'll not stay out of it," he snarled. "I stood back and watched your

daddy make some big mistakes that you and Will have paid for all your

lives. Damned if I'll do it again."

"I'm just avoiding the same mistake."

"No. Your daddy's mistake was looking at Sondra and seeing only what he

wanted to see, and what he wanted to see was good things. What you want

to see is trouble. Your daddy took a hard road because he loved foolishly.

You'd rather take the easy road and avoid it altogether."

J.D. gaped at him, his pride stinging at the accusation.

Tucker didn't bat an eye at his outrage. "You can love the land all you

want, J.D., and when you die, they'll bury you in it. But it won't give

you comfort and it won't give you children, and it won't stick by you

when you're being a mule-headed, mean-tempered son of a bitch. It can't

give you tenderness and it can't give you love, and I ought to know

because I've given my whole life to it and I don't have a damn thing to

show for it but rheumatism. I had hoped you might have more sense than

to do the same."

He turned on his heel and doddered off toward the pickup on his bandy

legs, muttering to himself every step of the way. He clambered into the

cab and fired the engine. J.D. turned back to his view and refused to

watch as they drove out of the yard.

His appetite had gone. Restless, he climbed back on Sarge and rode down

the trail to Bald Knob, where he sat alone and listened to the coyotes

sing as the moon came up behind him over the Absarokas.

He had kneeled on this ground and held Marilee, knowing that he loved

her, knowing that she might die in his arms. Now she offered him her

love and he pushed it away.

Because it was best. Because it was smartest.

Because it's easiest and you're a damn coward.

He used to think he knew who he was and what he stood for, what he

believed in and what he didn't. He used to pride himself on doing what

was right, not what was easiest.

Was it right to cloister himself on this mountain?
 
Was it easier to

endure the loneliness of his self-exile than risk the heart he had

guarded so jealously since boyhood?

He thought of Marilee, risking her life to find the truth because she

thought it was the right thing to do, standing up to him because she

thought he was wrong.

She'd had the courage to abandon the life she knew in order to reach for

her dreams. He didn't even have the guts to admit he had dreams.

But he did. When the nights were long and lonely and the days ran

together with their endless monotony of duty and labor. Deep, deep

inside, where no one could see them or touch them or break them. The

dreams had always been there, so secret, they were little more than

shadows, even to him. But he never reached for them or spoke of them or

thought of them in the light of day.

Now Marilee was holding one out to him. A dream.

A gift. Her heart. Her love. And he just stood back and waited for her

to snatch it away.

What do you have without her, J.D.?

The land.

He looked out across it, moon-silvered and cloaked in shadow, beautiful

and wild, rugged and fragile. His first love. His whole life.

His whole empty, lonely life.

The days found a pleasant, monotonous rhythm. Marilee watched the sunrise

and ate saltines to fend off nausea.

She worked on stripping the house down to its bare essentials and

scrubbing away all hints of its former owner. Afternoons were spent on

the deck, working on songs and soaking up the beauty of her

surroundings. She napped in the Adirondack chair and spent most evenings

at the Moose, singing in the lounge.

Once a week she spoke with either Sheriff Quinn or one of the attorneys

who were chomping at the bit to take Bryce to court. They couldn't stick

him with any thing related to Lucy's death, but they were eager to make

an example of him on the wildlife charges twenty-nine counts worth. Ben

Lucas was pushing for a plea bargain that involved fines and community

service.

The U.S. attorney was talking about bigger fines, probation time, and

forfeiture of the ranch. Bryce had moved back to his home in L.A. in a

show of disdain for the prosecuting attorneys. It was Marilee's fondest

wish that they throw him in prison for the rest of his unnatural life,

but she knew that would never happen. The wheels of justice seldom ran

over men like Evan Bryce.

A month had passed since she had challenged J.D. to come find her when

he was ready. He had yet to take her up on it. She wondered ten times a

day when and how she should tell him that while they had not managed to

make their relationship work, they had managed to make a baby. She put

it off, thinking that maybe tomorrow he would show up and tell her he

loved her.

Foolish hope, but it was better than no hope at all. It was better than

thinking about what would happen if he never came back. She would have

to go to him, because he had a right to know, but what transpired in her

imagination after she made the announcement was most often the fight of

the century. He would insist on "doing right by her" because that was

the way he thought, and she would tell him to go do the anatomically

impossible because she was not about to settle for a marriage based on

obligation.

"Here's another fine mess you've got yourself into, Marilee," she

muttered on a long, weary sigh. She rubbed a hand absently over her

tummy, a gesture that was fast becoming habit. The life inside her was

far too small to be felt, but just the knowledge that it was there made

her feel less alone. Often she would close her eyes and try to imagine

their child - a dark-haired little boy with his daddy's stubborn jaw, a

little girl with an unruly mop of hair. Then she would think of raising

that child alone and her heart would ache until she cried. And then she

would think of J.D., living his life of emotional celibacy, his life

pledged to the ranch, his heart pledged to no one because he was afraid

of having it broken.

Or so she thought. Romanticizing again, Marilee . . .

"Well, at least I'll get a song out of it," she murmured, and jotted

down two lines in her court reporter's notebook.

She sat in the Adirondack chair, staring out at the magnificent beauty

all around her and pretending to smoke with cut-off lengths of striped

plastic drinking straws. The motion was soothing. The deep

breathing relaxed her. The beauty of the place healed her and offered a

kind of nameless comfort that soothed her heart.

In the background, Mary-Chapin Carpenter sang softly through the

speakers of a boom box, a voice as familiar and low and smooth and smoky

as her own.

The mountains in the distance were deep blue beneath the sky. That big

Montana sky, as blue as cobalt in this late part of the day, streaked

with mare's-tail clouds. A gentle breeze swept the valley, swirling the

tassels of the beargrass and needlegrass and red Indian paintbrush.

The heads of the globe flowers along the creek bobbed and swayed.

Overhead, an eagle circled lazily for a long while. A pair of antelope

wandered out from behind a copse of aspen trees and came down to the

creek to drink, casting curious looks at the llamas down the way.

Marilee absorbed it all, her mind processing the images into words,

snatches of melodies coming to her on the wind. She wrote down desultory

lines in the notebook with a felt-tipped pen that leaked. The afternoon

slipped away with the slow descent of the sun. From time to time she

heard Spike barking, then he would come check on her as if to let her

know he had things under control. When he tired of his reconnaissance

missions, he curled up beneath her chair and went to sleep.

And so it was he missed his opportunity to prove himself as a watchdog,

not rousing until the heavy footfall of boots sounded on the side porch.

He darted out from under the chair, then threw his head back and barked

so hard, his front paws came up off the deck.

Rafferty stepped around the corner of the house, planted his hands at

the waist of his jeans, and scowled down at the terrier. "What the hell