THE MULE eyed her, openly dubious.
“You don’t think I can do this, do you?” Mari 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 ties.
Mari 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 Mari 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. Mari’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 Mari’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. Mari 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.
Mari’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. Mari 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. Mari 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.
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 somethin’ you’d rather not.”
Mari 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 somethin’?”
“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 hat. “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 woman to the ranch-leastways a woman who wasn’t a veterinarian or a cattle broker or some such. It was a cinch this little mop-headed blonde wasn’t anything of the sort.
He grinned his tight little grin, tickled at the prospect of J.D. showing something other than contempt for a female. “Well, why don’t you climb on down off that lop-eared creature and I’ll get you a ringside seat, Miz Jennings.”
“I’d like that.”
Mari swung her leg over the mule’s back and dropped to her feet, wincing as pain shot up from her toes to the roots of her hair. As pleasant as the ride had been, she was damn glad to have the chance to try to put her knees side by side again-not that it seemed even remotely possible. She felt as bowlegged as Tucker Cahill looked.
Putting off taking those first few steps, she stuck a hand out to the old cowboy. He gripped her fingers with a gloved hand as strong as a vise and gave her a shake. “You can call me Mari,” she said with a grin. “Anybody ever tell you you look like Ben Johnson, the actor?”
Tucker cackled with glee. “From time to time. You just climb up that rail over yonder, Mari, and you’ll see what branding is all about. I’ll see to your mule here.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. You’re a guest at the Stars and Bars. We don’t get many, but we treat ’em right.”
Mari thanked him as he walked away, Clyde in tow, going off toward a long, weathered gray barn. Gritting her teeth as she forced her aching legs to move, feeling as ungainly as if she were trying to negotiate stilts, she made her way to the corral and climbed up to sit on the top rail. The organized chaos going on below was mesmerizing to watch. After a few minutes, Tucker climbed up beside her, standing on one of the lower rails and laying his arms across the top one.
“I had no idea ranchers still branded cattle,” she said, fairly shouting to be heard above the din. “I would have guessed that went out with bustles and steam engines.”
“Old ways are sometimes best. No one’s come up with a better way to work cows than from the back of a good ol’ quarter horse. No one’s come up with a better system for marking cattle than a brand. Lotta open territory in these parts. Cattle wander off, mix in with other herds.”
He pointed out J.D. moving through the herd in the far holding pen on a pale gray horse, telling her with no small amount of pride that there wasn’t a man for a hundred miles around who knew more about how to get the most out of a horse than J.D. “Knows the cattle business inside and out too. He’s up on all the latest-electronic sales networks, computer tracking herd progress, stuff an old duffer like me don’t know from diddly. Had two years of college before his daddy died. Yes, ma’am,” he said, nodding, “J.D.’s a fine rancher and a fine hand and a good man right down to the ground. You won’t find a soul around here to tell you different.”
His ringing endorsement sounded suspiciously like a sales pitch. Mari found it sweet and did her best to tame her amusement.
“He’s run this place since he was a kid,” Tucker said, fixing his gaze on the man J.D. had become in the years since. “And I mean that. Tom-J.D.’s daddy-God rest him, never had his heart in the job. He gave his to women and it’d liked to killed him. Did kill him in the end, after Will’s mama left.”
Mari studied the old man’s weathered profile, a million questions rushing through her mind. She was probably better off not knowing about Rafferty’s past. If she didn’t know what made him so difficult, so distrustful, so damned hard to deal with, then her soft heart couldn’t feel sympathy or goad her into trying to heal his past hurts, or any of the dozen other foolhardy things she would likely do. But she couldn’t stop herself from being curious, or overly sentimental, or stupidly romantic. You’ll never change, Marilee…
And so the question tumbled out. “What about J.D.’s mother?”
“Died when he was just a little tyke. Cancer, God rest her. She was a fine woman. Poor Tom was just lost without her-at least until Will’s mama breezed onto the scene. Then he was just plain lost.”
And J.D. was lost in the shuffle. Tucker Cahill didn’t say that, but Mari pieced together the fragments he had given her and came up with the picture: J.D., just a boy, taking on responsibilities far beyond his years while his father wandered around in a romantic fog. If it was an accurate picture, it explained a great deal.
In what was probably a futile attempt at self-preservation, she derailed Tucker onto an explanation of the process of sorting the cattle through the pens and chutes.
The men perched above the chutes controlled the gates that determined which pen an animal would be directed to depending on age and sex. In the branding corral, calves were being run one at a time into a squeeze chute, which tipped onto one side, forming a table. Will Rafferty and an old man with a long gray braid worked at the squeeze chute, vaccinating, notching ears, castrating bull calves, and marking all with the Rafter T brand of the Stars and Bars. The whole process took little more than a minute per animal.
She watched them do half a dozen before Will looked over and caught sight of her. A big grin split his dirty face, and he abandoned his post without a backward glance.
“Hey, Mary Lee!” he called, striding across the corral with the grace of Gene Kelly, arms spread wide in welcome. “How’s it shaking?”
“It about shook loose on the ride up here,” she said dryly.
He laughed, swinging up onto the fence and turning his red baseball cap frontward on his head, seemingly all in one motion. He settled himself a little too close beside her, close enough that Mari could smell sweat and the scent of animals on him, close enough that she could see his blue eyes were shot through with the telltale threads of a hangover. She frowned at him, unable to sidle away because of Tucker on her left.
The old cowboy leaned ahead and shot a hard look at Will. “J.D. catches you slacking, boy, he’ll chew your tail like old rawhide.”
Behind the layers of sweat and grime, Will’s mouth tightened. “Yeah, well, J.D. can just go to hell. I been working hard as he has since sunup. I’m taking five. It’s not every day we get a pretty lady for company up here in the back of beyond.”
“No, they’re scarce as hen’s teeth,” Tucker admitted, clambering over the rail and lowering himself into the corral. He jammed his hands at the low-riding waist of his jeans and gave the younger man a significant look. “Especially the ones your brother invites.”
Will pulled a comic face of exaggerated shock, eyes wide in his lean face as he stared at Mari. “J.D. invited you? My brother J.D. invited you?”
“Not exactly,” Mari grumbled, scowling as she watched Tucker hobble away toward the squeeze chute to take up Will’s place. “I invited myself. He didn’t tell me no.”
“Well, that’s something too, let me tell you. J.D. runs this place like a damn monastery. He doesn’t want some evil woman turning our heads from our work.”
Lucy came immediately to mind, but Mari bit her tongue. “What about your wife?”
“What about her?”
“Does she fall under the ‘evil woman’ heading?”
“Sam? Hell no. She’s a good kid.” Sweet, trusting, in need of someone to love her. The description ran through his mind, through his heart like an arrow as he watched the monotonous routine in the branding corral. Every time he thought of Sam, he felt as if he’d been kicked in the head-a little ill, a little dizzy. He’d been doing his damnedest not to think about her since the night he had seen her in the Moose.
“Kid? What is she, a child bride?”
“Naw, she’s twenty-three.” He picked absently at the rusty fungus that clung to the top of the rail. “I’ve known her forever, that’s all. It’s hard not to think of her like a kid sister.”
Which might explain why he wasn’t living with his wife, Mari thought. If she had a husband who treated her like a kid sister, and chased anything in a skirt besides, she figured she’d dump him too.
“So,” Will said, slapping a hand on her thigh, “whatcha doing here, Mary Lee? Looking for trouble?” He bobbed his eyebrows and grinned. “That’s my middle name.”
“I guessed as much.” She pried his fingers off her leg and scooted away a foot, fixing him with a look. “I came to see how a ranch works.”
“I’ll tell you how a ranch works.” Bitterness crept in around the edges of his voice. “Day and night, week after week, month after month, year after year, until death or foreclosure.”
“If you don’t like it, why don’t you quit?”
He laughed and looked away, not sure whether it was her suggestion or his answer he found so funny. A part of him had wanted nothing more than to be rid of the Stars and Bars ever since he was a boy. But that part of him was forever tangled with the boy who looked up to his big brother. And the part of him that didn’t want to be a screwup was forever tripping over the part that longed to tell J.D. to go to hell. The cycle just tumbled on, like a rock down an endless mountainside.
“You don’t quit the Stars and Bars, gorgeous,” he muttered, staring off across the chutes to the back pen, where J.D. was sorting cattle. “Not if your name is Rafferty.”
J.D. worked the herd from the back of a washed-out gray mare. This was only her second year working cattle, but her talent was bred bone-deep. She kept her head low and her ears pinned as she danced gracefully from side to side, cutting calves away from their mothers and sending them into the chutes, sorting out young heifers and sending them into another holding pen to wait. The mare ducked and dodged, adjusting her speed as necessary. Her reins hung loose, her movements guided by intuition and the subtle touches of J.D.’s spurs against her sides.
J.D. sat easily in the saddle, one gloved hand on the pommel, shoulders canted back, bracing himself against the sudden moves of the horse beneath him. His mind was working on three levels at once-studying the cattle, assessing the performance of the horse, and wondering if Mary Lee would really show up.
He cursed himself up one side and down the other for letting a woman take his thoughts away from his business. He didn’t need the distraction of thinking about her or the distraction of seeing her standing outside the fence. If he wanted a distraction, he could wonder what the hell he would do a year from now, when Lyle Watkins and his boys would no longer be around to help work the chutes. Tucker and Chaske would be another year older, too old for a full day of this kind of work. God only knew where Will would be. His only other neighbor would be Bryce.
Bryce wouldn’t offer to trade work. J.D. doubted Bryce knew what real work was. He wouldn’t know or care about the code that had always existed between neighbors here. Like the rest of his kind, Bryce had brought his own set of values and priorities with him to Montana, all of them foreign to J.D.
The little mare pulled herself up and blew out a heavy breath, drawing J.D. back to the matter at hand. The group of cattle he had been working was sorted. They would brand and vaccinate this lot, break for dinner, then start all over again.
He would hand the mare over to Tucker to cool her out and to give the old man a break. Tucker didn’t like to admit his age, but J.D. saw it creeping up on him a little more every day, bending his back a little more, stiffening joints that had already taken too many years of abuse. In another job, Tucker Cahill would have been forced to retire by now, but there was no such thing as retirement for a cowboy. Cowboy was who a man was as much as what. Tucker Cahill wouldn’t retire any more than he would quit having blue eyes and a crooked pecker.
Besides, the Stars and Bars was Tucker’s home as much as if he were a Rafferty, J.D. thought. He had spent the best years of his life and then some working this ranch for damn little pay, and he would stay here until the pallbearers carried him off feetfirst. It was up to J.D. to make that possible. It was his responsibility to take care of the old man, to see to it that he had a roof over his head and food in his belly and a purpose in his life, just as it had been Tucker’s role to play surrogate father when Tom Rafferty had been too lost in his obsession to do the job.
The weight of that and every other responsibility pressed down on his aching shoulders for a minute. Just a minute. He didn’t allow any longer, couldn’t afford the time. Brooding didn’t get a job done.
He turned the mare toward the out gate and was struck by the sight of Mary Lee sitting up on the far rail of the branding corral, laughing at something Will said to her. Will made a wild gesture with his arms, his wide, handsome grin lighting up his face as he entertained his audience of one.
Jealousy stormed through J.D. like a charging bull. He would never have called it that out loud, but a spade was a spade. From the day Sondra and Tom had brought him home from the hospital, Will had been the center of attention, a magnet for any spotlight. He basked in even the smallest glow, and everyone laughed at him and was charmed by him. No one seemed to care that he aspired to nothing or that he gambled away two months’ worth of bank payments at a crack or that he was about as trustworthy and reliable as a stray tomcat.
Letting himself out the gate without dismounting from the mare, J.D. jogged the horse around the outside of the pens and pulled up when he reached the pair perched on the top rail. He shot Mary Lee a narrow look, withering her smile on the vine, then dismissed her without a word and turned to Will.
“You sit here hanging your butt over the fence while a man pushing seventy does your job for you? What the hell are you thinking about?”
Will’s face set in hard, tight lines to mirror his brother’s look. “I was thinking I hadn’t had two minutes’ rest since I landed on my feet this morning. I was thinking it might be polite to say hello to our guest-”
“Yeah, right,” J.D. sneered. “Like a fox just wants to say hello to a quail-”
“Well, hell, J.D., if you’re jealous, maybe you ought to do some-”
With a jab of a spur J.D. jumped his horse ahead and sideways, pinning his leg against the fence. Ignoring the pain, he cuffed Will across the kidneys with the back of his arm, knocking him from his perch into the corral.
“I’m mad as hell, that’s what I am,” he snapped. “Get off your lazy ass for once and do your job instead of letting an old man take up the slack for you.”
Will glared at him over the bars of the fence. His cap had come off in the fall and his dark hair spilled across his forehead. His face was almost as red as the T-shirt he wore, embarrassment and rage pumping his blood pressure up.
“Fuck you, J.D.!” he spat out. “I work like a goddamn dog around here-”
“When you’re not out playing rodeo or down in Little Purgatory.”
“-not that I ever see anything for it-”
“No shit, you lose it all playing poker-”
“You’re not my boss and you’re not my keeper, and if I want to take five stinking minutes to talk to somebody, I’ll do it!”
Mari watched the exchange from the uncomfortable position of outsider. She had the distinct feeling their fury had its roots in something deeper than her ability to distract Will from his work. She knew all about sibling rivalries and resentments. Growing up the odd one out among the Jennings girls, she had felt her share of ill feelings toward Lisbeth and Annaliese. The Rafferty brothers undoubtedly had their own version of the same story. Will, the gregarious, charming rascal, and J.D., so stern, so rigid-it wasn’t hard to imagine them clashing. She just didn’t particularly want to be an eyewitness while it happened, or the spark that touched it off.
“Hey, guys, look,” she said, straddling the fence, raising her hands in a peacemaking gesture, “I didn’t come here to make trouble-”
J.D. shot her a glare. “Well, you damn well managed to do it anyway, didn’t you?”
“Don’t blame Mary Lee,” Will snapped. “It isn’t her fault you’re an ornery son of a bitch.”
“No, and it isn’t her fault you think with what’s between your legs instead of what’s between your ears.”
“If my being here is a problem,” Mari said, “I’ll just go.”
“Your being in Montana is a problem,” J.D. snarled half under his breath.
The remark cut. Mari held herself rigid against the urge to wince; she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She raised her chin a notch, looking down her nose at him. “Yeah, well, when somebody dies and makes you king, you can have me and all my kind exiled.”
J.D. set his jaw and turned away from her, not liking the fact that he felt even a little chastened by her words. A whole host of uncomfortable and unfamiliar feelings crawled like ants inside his skin. He shouldn’t have jumped on Will in front of the whole crew. Work in the branding pen had come to a standstill while everyone watched them and waited for the outcome.
This was what happened when a woman came prancing around; men lost their heads.
“Now, boys,” Tucker said diplomatically, ambling away from the empty squeeze chute. He clamped a hand on Will’s shoulder, turned his head, and spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Maybe what we all need is a good hot meal and a chance to sit on something that ain’t movin.’ I got a big ol’ pan of my famous lasagna in the oven. Ought to be ready about now. Why don’t we all go on up to the house?”
J.D. had no appetite for food or for company. He started to tell the others to go on, when his mare raised her head and stared off toward the northwest, ears up. She whinnied loudly, a call that was immediately answered by several different equine voices.
From the cover of pine and fir trees emerged a group of riders. There were six in all and a pack mule bringing up the rear. Even from a distance J.D. could make out Bryce at the front of the entourage. The sun gleamed off his long pale hair and wide white smile. He rode a handsome chestnut that danced beneath him, impatient with the leisurely pace of the rest of the group.
It took them several minutes to close the distance, but no one at the ranch said a word while they waited. At least not until the riders were close enough for all their faces to be made out.
Will’s breath caught hard in his lungs as he recognized Sam riding among the pack on a leggy Appaloosa. Her eyes locked on his for a second, then she glanced away, pulling her horse back to hide behind a dark-haired man on a bay.
“Hello, neighbor!” Bryce called as he rode up, his grin brimming with bonhomie.
“Bryce,” J.D. acknowledged, not even bothering to tip his hat to the ladies in the company, though he ran his gaze across each face.
The strong-featured blonde who was often with Bryce rode beside him now, her gaze bold and amused as she met J.D.’s eyes. Behind her was a skinny, giggling redhead in a man’s white dress shirt that she hadn’t bothered to button at all, just tied in a knot at her midriff. She leaned over in her saddle and whispered something to a dark-haired man who had “city” written all over him in spite of his western-cut shirt. Bringing up the rear with the pack mule loaded down with picnic baskets was Orvis Slokum, who had worked on the Stars and Bars for a time before he had tried his hand at robbing convenience stores. Bryce had hired him right out of prison and got his name in the paper for being a great humanitarian.
Beside Orvis, obviously trying to make herself invisible, was Samantha. She ducked her head, staring down as if the cap of her saddle horn had suddenly become the most fascinating thing in the world. But there was no mistaking the way she sat a horse or the long curtain of black hair that fell over her shoulder to obscure one side of her face.
J.D. cut a glance out of the corner of his eyes at Will, who had turned chalk white beneath the morning’s layer of dirt.
“What’s going on here?” Bryce asked, looking amused by the quaintness of it all. “A big roundup or something?”
“Work,” J.D. growled, curling his fingers over the pommel of his saddle. “You may have heard of it once or twice.”
Bryce laughed, unoffended. “Mr. Rafferty, I concede you know more about ranching than I do. But then, I know more about getting rich than you, don’t I? My friends and I are out enjoying the fruits of my past labors as it were, taking a little tour of my land.”
A muscle ticked in J.D.’s jaw. “You got a mite lost.”
The smile that curled the corners of the man’s mouth was almost feral. “Not at all.” He let the remark hang for a second, but went on before J.D. could call him on it. “We’re only passing through on our way to the Flying K.”
J.D. could hear Lyle Watkins clear his throat in embarrassment. He wanted to look to his old neighbor with accusation. See what you’re letting in here? But he wouldn’t look away from Bryce.
“We just thought we would do the neighborly thing and stop by to let you know,” Bryce said.
J.D.’s fingers curled a little tighter on the swell of his saddle. He wanted to yell at the man to get the hell off his land. He could feel the shout building in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down. Control. He’d lost his cool once already today. He wouldn’t lose it now, not with this man.
“You don’t own the Flying K,” he pointed out calmly.
“Yet.”
“Well,” J.D. drawled on a long sigh, affecting a boredom he didn’t feel. “We could sit around here all day and talk about nothing, but I’d rather eat pig shit than spend time with your kind, so if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got work to do.”
He waited just long enough to see the color rise behind Bryce’s tan before he started to rein his horse away.
“Am I to take it, then, that you wouldn’t be interested in coming to my little party tonight, Mr. Rafferty?”
“Yep.”
“Too bad,” Bryce said tightly, his smile looking like plastic. He jerked his gaze to Mari as Rafferty rode past him toward the back of his band. “I hope Mr. Rafferty’s opinion doesn’t extend to you, Mari. We’d love to have you join us. Bring your guitar if you like. There’ll be some music people there. Could be an opportunity for you.”
Mari felt she was straddling the fence metaphorically as well as physically, caught between two very different factions of acquaintances. She could feel a dozen pair of eyes on her like spotlights. The one pair she didn’t feel was J.D.’s, and the absence was somehow weightier than all the other stares combined.
“Thank you for the invitation,” she mumbled, her voice little more than a whisper. “I’d love to.”
She ignored the feeling that she was betraying Rafferty. She didn’t owe him any allegiance. She owed Lucy. And the dark-haired man sitting on a bay horse had once known Lucy MacAdam very well indeed. Ben Lucas, king turd on the Sacramento shit pile of trial attorneys. Mari knew him by sight, and she knew him by reputation. What she didn’t know was what the hell he was doing with Evan Bryce.
“We’ll look forward to seeing you tonight, then.” Bryce started to rein his horse around, pulling up as his gaze fell on Will. “Mmm, my, this is a little awkward,” he said, feigning embarrassment. “You would be welcome too, of course, Mr. Rafferty, but as your ex-wife will be there, I think this could be uncomfortable for Samantha. You understand.”
Will said nothing, his gaze fixed on Sam, willing her to look at him. She turned the other way. Ex-wife. Ex-wife. The word flashed in his head like a red neon light. They weren’t divorced… yet. Was that how Sam thought of him? As her ex-husband?
J.D. sat like a sentinel at the back of Bryce’s cadre, showing them the figurative door. He watched impassively as Bryce led the way, saying nothing until Samantha started past him. He tipped his head and spoke her name. She ducked behind the cover of her curtain of hair, avoiding his eyes. He tightened his jaw and turned to Orvis Slokum, who was fumbling with the lead of the pack mule, getting himself hopelessly tangled.
Orvis had been born a loser and gone downhill from there. He was scrawny and grubby with a ferret’s face, thin hair, and bad teeth, and no matter if he meant well, he always managed to do the wrong thing. He had been a screwup as a ranch hand and piss-poor robber. Still, J.D. wished he had had more dignity than to take up with the likes of Bryce.
“Sad to see you come to this, Orvis,” he sighed, as if even prison were preferable.
Orvis fumbled some more with the lead rope, his horse getting nervous as the rest of its stablemates headed back for the trail. Not liking the horse bumping against him, the pack mule pinned its long ears and tried to bite the brown gelding, narrowly missing Orvis’s skinny leg. Orvis split his attention between the contrary mule and his former employer, not quite sure which one scared him more. “Sorry you feel that way, Mr. Rafferty,” he mumbled. “Mr. Bryce, he pays real good.”
The mule pinned its ears and raised up a little on its hind legs. The horse hopped up and down. Orvis turned gray, eyes bugging out of his head. The lead rope seemed like a live tentacle wrapping itself around him. “Whoa, mule! Whoa!”
Rolling his eyes, J.D. leaned over and jerked the rope away, untangling it with a flick of his wrist. “There’s more important things in this world than money, Orvis.”
As he tossed the rope back to Orvis, the mule bolted and ran after its pals. Orvis wheeled his horse around, nearly falling off, and galloped away in hot pursuit, one hand clamped on top of his head to keep his bedraggled hat from flying off.
J.D. shook his head and turned back to his own people. Lyle and his two boys and Chaske were halfway to the house. Tucker hung back, looking uncertain. J.D.’s concern was with the two who remained rooted to their spots.
Will roused himself and climbed through the bars of the fence. He turned toward the house, but his gaze was fixed on his shiny red and white pickup. He wanted to get out, away, go anywhere his wife wasn’t and his brother wasn’t and people didn’t look at him with pity or contempt. The Hell and Gone came to mind.
He would go to the Hell and Gone and in a little while he wouldn’t be wondering why the sight of his wife riding around with Evan Bryce and company made him feel as if he’d been dropped on his head from ten stories up. He wanted out of the marriage. He should have been glad to see her out living it up. What he needed was a drink or two to numb the shock and then he would be able to think straight again. Maybe he’d go downstairs to Little Purgatory and play a hand of stud while his mind stewed on what to do about this latest turn of events.
J.D. cut off his escape route to the truck. “We got a big problem here, little brother,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice.
“Drop it, J.D.” In his own head he sounded twelve all over again, a shaky layer of false bravado over a mess of anger and fear. He didn’t look up. He didn’t blink. His eyes were burning. He clenched his fists at his sides and caught himself wishing, as he had wished back then, that he were able to beat the tar out of J.D., just for the sake of doing it. But J.D. had always been bigger, stronger, better, smarter.
“Will-”
“Just drop it. Please.” It nearly crushed him to add that last weight to his humiliation, but he did it. He ground his teeth and waited, not breathing again until J.D. backed his horse away and let him pass.
J.D. watched him climb into the pickup and tear out of the yard, then turned his attention to Mari. She still sat atop the fence, looking like a waif in her faded jeans and too-big denim shirt, the wind inciting her wild hair to riot. Her eyes were locked on his face, and he steeled himself against their effect.
“Bryce a friend of yours?” he asked carefully.
“I wouldn’t call him that, no. We’ve met.”
“And you’ll go drink his champagne and rub elbows with his famous friends?”
“For my own reasons.”
His gray eyes narrowed. She thought he was probably trying to look tough, blank, uncaring, but she thought she could feel his disappointment, and it meant more to her than it should have.
He shook his head. “You need to hang out with a better class of losers, Mary Lee.”
He picked his reins up and rode off toward the barn, leaving Mari sitting on the proverbial fence. She watched him go, cussing herself for caring what he thought. Behind her, the cattle bawled incessantly, the noise making it impossible for her to think straight. At least that was the excuse she chose as she climbed down off the rail and headed to the barn.
J.D. left the mare in the cross ties and walked out the end of the barn. From there he could see nothing but wilderness. Mountains, trees, sky, grass laced with wild-flowers. It was a view that usually soothed him. He looked at it now and felt as if he were seeing it for the last time. Something like fear snaked through him, a feeling so unfamiliar, so unwelcome, he refused to recognize it for what it was. But he couldn’t do anything to stop its catalysts from hurling through his mind. Bryce’s smiling face was branded into the backs of his eyes as surely as the Rafter T was burned into the hides of his cattle. Bryce, grinning like the goddamn Cheshire cat, as if he had a fifth ace. And, by Christ, he did, didn’t he? He had Samantha.
He blinked like a man in deep physical pain, rubbed his hands over his face, and swore a litany of curses under his breath. What the hell could he do? He couldn’t stop Lyle from selling his land. He couldn’t stop Samantha from seeing who she wanted. He couldn’t stop Will from running off half-cocked to do who knew what fool thing next. He couldn’t do a damn thing. The wolves were closing in and he couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop them. The knowledge shook him right to the core.
Mari stood in the shadows just inside the barn, holding her breath, caught between stepping out and sliding away. She had little doubt J.D. would not appreciate her intrusion on the moment. He stood there with his hands braced on a section of split rail fence, looking out over an open meadow. The naked vulnerability in his face struck her like a physical blow. It was like seeing the Lone Ranger unmasked and realizing he was just a regular man. She wanted to reach out to him, to offer him a touch, some comfort. She knew instinctively he wouldn’t want it, and that knowledge made her heart ache.
Oh, Marilee, what are you getting yourself into here?
Trouble with a capital J.D.
She moved backward down the aisle on tiptoe, then coughed loudly and came ahead, scuffing her feet on the cement as she went. When she reached the end of the barn again, J.D. was trying to settle his iron-man mask back in place. He cleared his throat and shot her a scowl.
“Thought you were leaving.”
“Can’t go anywhere without Clyde,” she said, catching herself dropping her pronouns as if she had lived there her whole life.
“Who-? Oh, the mule.” He made no move toward the barn, just stood there leaning against the fence, pretending nothing at all was the matter.
“I’m not much for parties as a rule,” Mari said, stepping up beside him. She tried to mirror his stance and found herself staring at a fence rail. Undaunted, she climbed up onto the lowest bar and hooked her arms over the top, a position that put her eye level with Rafferty. “I don’t like much of anything I have to shave my legs for.”
“So don’t go.”
“I’m just curious about a couple of things, that’s all. I had sort of lost touch with Lucy since she moved here. I’m curious about the crowd she ran with.”
“So go see them,” J.D. growled. “Do what you like.”
“It’s not a matter of what I like. Lucy left me everything she had in the world. I feel a certain obligation.”
J.D. sniffed, dry amusement kicking up one corner of his mouth. He knew all about obligation. He clung to his while the world came apart around him.
“Has Bryce asked you about selling yet?” he said.
“Not really.”
“He will.” He turned and studied her, his eyes narrowed. “Will you sell it?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a ruthless, obnoxious little son of a bitch who doesn’t give a damn about anything but getting what he wants.”
Mari arched a brow. “I could say the same thing about you-except the little part.”
He didn’t bat an eye. At that moment it was difficult to reconcile the image before her with the one she’d seen from the shadows. This man didn’t look as if he had ever been afraid in his life. He looked like bullets would bounce off his chest.
“Will you sell it to me?” he asked bluntly.
“I told you, I haven’t decided to sell it at all.”
He stepped over and very deliberately planted a hand on either side of her on the rail. Mari twisted around to face him, her heart beating a little harder as he leaned close. His gaze held hers like a deer in headlights.
“Don’t play games with me, Mary Lee,” he warned.
“I’m not interested in games,” she whispered, her heart pounding harder behind her breastbone.
For a moment J.D. looked into those big deep blue eyes, looking for lies, looking for reasons not to trust. Then he felt as if he were drowning in them, and lies and Bryce and everything else went right out of his head. Losing himself seemed a welcome option at the moment. He pressed his lips over hers and submerged himself into a blissful oblivion.
Mari kissed him back, bracing her hands on his shoulders. They were like rock beneath the damp cotton of his shirt. Her fingers kneaded the muscle, moving up the back of his thick neck and down again. All the while their tongues slid against each other, their lips clung, their breath mingled with the taste of strong coffee and dust.
She wanted him. She wanted to comfort him and offer him something soft and gentle…
Then somewhere in the last bastion of sanity she thought of what kind of games he might be playing. He wanted her land and he wanted her body, and she was damn sure he would want nothing else she had to offer. She was an outsider. She didn’t belong.
As if he sensed her sudden shift of mood, J.D. raised his head and looked at her, his eyes the color and intensity of hot charcoal. She couldn’t find her voice anywhere, and simply shook her head. His face tightened. He stepped back, and she stepped down from the fence, not at all certain that her knees wouldn’t give out.
“I don’t play games,” she said again. But as she walked away from him into the dim interior of the barn, she had the terrible feeling she was already caught up in a game with rules she didn’t understand and stakes that were far too high.