Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  Live it up, sweetheart. Life's too short to play by someone else's rules. Take it from someone who knows.

  Yours in a peanut tin,

  Lucy

  She read it twice. It didn't make any more sense the second time. All she managed to do was increase the ache of loss and the feelings of abandonment and guilt.

  She slipped the letter under the feet of Mr. Peanut and curled up in the chair, her gaze fixed, unfocused on the beauty that lay before her. And she thought of Lucy, so brassy, so tough, surrounded by important people . . . alone in the world with just a drinking buddy for a friend. Full of secrets and hidden pain. Dying alone. Left on a mountainside, forgotten.

  Foul was a kind word for the mood J.D. was in. As days went, this one had started out bad and gone downhill from there. In the morning Will had shown up just as J.D., Tucker, and Chaske were getting ready to ride out. It had been clear that if he'd spent any time in a bed the night before, he had not been sleeping. His eyes were as red as tomatoes, his pallor a shade of gray generally reserved for corpses. He was in no shape to get on a horse. So, naturally, J.D. had badgered him onto one and then made him ride drag all morning, eating the dust of a hundred fifty cows and their bawling calves.

  Will hadn't uttered a word of protest. Tucker had done enough complaining on his behalf. Cut the boy some slack. Give the kid a break. He's going through a rough patch. Have a heart, J.D.

  Will didn't need any slack as far as J.D. could see. What he needed was for someone to knock some sense into him. He needed a good kick in the pants. He had needed that his whole life, but their daddy hadn't cared enough to do it. He had conceded Will to Sondra. And Sondra didn't let anyone lay a finger on her baby. Of course, Sondra's say-so had never meant spit to J.D.

  “You can't hit me, J.D.,” Will challenged, his lower lip jutting out, trembling just a little despite the fierce gleam in his eyes. He offered up the only real threat an eight-year-old boy could use to ward off his big brother. “I'll tell Mama.”

  J.D. circled around him, his shoulders hunched, his hands curling into fists. Anger was like a red-hot poker inside him, burning, turning his blood to steam in his veins. He was sick of his little brother's threats. He was sick of his little brother, period. Always slacking, always screwing up and never taking the blame. “I'll hit you if I want, you little snot-nosed mama's boy. And if you tell, I'll whup you all over again. You left that gate open and I had to spend the whole goddamn day chasing horses.”

  “You swore! You'll go to hell!”

  “You'll be there first, brat.”

  Will started to dart away, quickness being his best defense. But J.D. was quicker, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and wrestling him to the ground. They tussled in the dirt like a pair of tomcats, howling, arms and legs in a tangle, punching and kicking. Will fought with all the wild fury of someone who knew the odds were stacked well against him, jabbing at his brother with fists and boots and elbows.

  J.D., who, at twelve, was in the first growth spurt of early adolescence, was taller by a foot and heavier by half. He was too aware of the disparity as he twisted his little brother over in the dirt and rolled on top of him. He loomed over Will, knees on either side of his heaving rib cage, and wished to God the little snot was bigger. He wanted nothing more than the chance to let out all the pent-up anger and pain that had been storing up inside him practically since the day Will was born, but he couldn't hit something that was so much smaller than him. Picking on little guys was for bullies and cowards, and Tucker had told him no Rafferty had ever stooped so low.

  Reining back the tangle of feelings inside, he spit in the dirt beside his brother's head and got up off him. Will scrambled to his feet, glaring, tears streaking mud down his face. J.D. curled his lip in his best sneer. “Go run and tell Mama, you little jerk.”

  “You're a jerk first!” Will shouted, running after him as J.D. turned and headed for the corral.

  “Yeah, I'm everything first,” J.D. grumbled. “First to do the chores, first to clean up all your messes, first to ride after the stock you let out.”

  First and forgotten. That was what he was. Will was the little prince, the apple of his mama's eye. And J.D. was slave labor, doing all the jobs Daddy neglected. The afterthought of a marriage Tom Rafferty had mourned deeply, then forgotten.

  He stopped at the gate and unwrapped the chain with angry movements, bruising a knuckle in the process. His eyes burned, and he sucked on the joint and fought off a pain that had little to do with his injury.

  Will looked at him sideways, his anger melting into contrition. “I didn't mean to leave the gate open, J.D.,” he admitted in a small voice. “I don't want you mad at me all the time.”

  “Why do you care what I think, worm boy?”

  “'Cause you're the only brother I got.”

  J.D.'s hands stilled on the bars of the gate. They were family. That was what mattered more than anything between them. They were Raffertys. Raffertys stuck together and took care of their own. That was important, especially now. He had heard the late-night conversations between his parents. Sondra telling Daddy how unhappy she was on the Stars and Bars, how she wanted out. She wanted to break them up, to leave and take Will with her. But Daddy said they were family and family had to stick together. No one could take a Rafferty off the Stars and Bars. Nothing mattered more than family—except the land.

  He looked down at Will, a suspicious emotion knotting like a fist in his chest. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I guess that works both ways.”

  He shook the memory off, disgusted with himself. God knew, he had more important things to do than reminisce about childhood. The day was sliding away and he had spent half of it beating his head against a brick wall. He shifted in his saddle now and urged his gelding into a canter, eating up the distance to the gate of the holding pasture.

  Will rode out to meet him. If his color was better than it had been in the morning, it was impossible to tell for all the dirt on his face. Both he and the gray horse he straddled looked as if they had been ridden long and hard and were equally grateful to drop down into a walk.

  “I just brought in the last of them,” he said as he turned his gelding around and fell in step with J.D.'s mount. “Tucker went up to the house to start supper. Chaske's seeing to the horses. Anything more for today, boss?”

  Will fielded the narrow look J.D. tossed him with a weary version of his infamous grin. He'd been in the saddle for the better part of ten hours, chasing animals that were too ornery and too stupid to live. He felt as if each and every one of them had trampled over his body on their way to the holding pen. He was beat and dirty. Razzing J.D. was going to be the only high point of his day.

  On paper, they were equal partners in the ranch. In reality, J.D. was, always had been, and always would be boss of the Stars and Bars. Even when their father had been alive, Will had felt that the real power had lain in J.D., dormant, but strong, far stronger than Tom Rafferty had ever been. All their father's energy had gone into the useless effort of trying to keep Sondra chained to a life she hated. The ranch, for all he had been bound to it by tradition, had never come first with him. But it was J.D.'s mistress, his first love, his only love outside the horses he nurtured and trained.

  Will had never felt anything close to his brother's love of the land. To him it was an anchor, something he had been shackled to by an accident of birth. He had never challenged J.D. for control, had always felt more like a cowboy than a rancher. He did his job and gladly left the worry and the responsibility to fall on J.D.'s shoulders.

  That weight seemed to be sitting heavy on his brother now. There was a tightness around his mouth, a grim, angry cast to his eyes.

  “You talk with Lyle?” Will asked.

  “Yeah. For all the good it did. He said he'd hold off for a time, but his mind is made up. He's selling. It's just a matter of who. I told him I'd try to put something together.”

  “You can't outbid Bryce.”

  “I shoul
dn't have to.”

  “You can't expect Lyle to give you a bargain when Bryce is offering to make him rich. Loyalty goes only so far.”

  “Is that so?” He shot a hard glance at his brother, then turned to survey his cattle, not wanting to think about how far Will's loyalty would go.

  They sat at the pasture gate, their horses content to stand side by side with their heads hanging, nipping at each other in idle play. In the pasture beyond, the cattle that had been herded in during the course of the long day were grazing quietly. Calves slept, curled into lumps on the ground near their mothers, or played in groups, chasing each other, bucking and running.

  For a moment J.D. allowed himself to appreciate the quality of those animals. He had worked hard to establish a breeding program that would improve the size and grade of the Stars and Bars cattle. The cows were black angus, good mothers who were hardy and gave ample milk. Their calves, which ranged in color from near white to near black, were the result of crossbreeding with top-notch Charolais bulls, a cross that produced big, blocky animals that matured early and finished out well in the feedlots. But beyond their value, J.D. enjoyed just looking at them, knowing they had been bred here, knowing he was responsible for them, knowing that all the hard work had produced something good and worthwhile.

  He thought of Lyle Watkins and wondered what he was thinking on this spring afternoon as he looked over his cattle. If he sold out—when he sold out—everything his family had worked for on the Flying K would simply cease to exist.

  “It doesn't mean that much to everybody, you know,” Will said, his voice low, as if he were blaspheming in church.

  J.D.'s jaw tightened. He straightened in his saddle, the old leather creaking a protest. “It's got to mean that much,” he said. “Or what the hell are we doing here?”

  With nothing more than the pressure of his legs and a shift of his weight, he turned his horse around and rode away.

  CHAPTER

  7

  J.D. SAW the fire from a good distance up the hill. Swearing, he nudged Sarge into a gallop. Lucy MacAdam was proving to be as much of a nuisance in death as she had been in life. He cursed himself briefly for taking on the task of looking after her place, but if Miller Daggrepont hadn't come to him, he would have gone to Bryce, and J.D. didn't want Bryce getting any kind of a foot in the door. He intended to have first crack at buying the property. If that meant he had to put up with the headache of looking after the animals and calling the sheriff after vandals trashed the place, then that was a small enough price to pay.

  The sight of orange flames through the curtain of the trees put everything else out of his mind. Panic sparked instantly. If a fire weren't contained immediately, there was every chance that it would sweep across acres of forest and grassland, charring everything in its path. He braced himself back in the saddle as the big gelding skidded down the steep trail. Berry bushes and saplings slapped at him and snatched at his clothes. Then they broke onto clear, flat ground and the horse exploded beneath him, hurtling toward the MacAdam place with his ears pinned and his neck stretched, his powerful body rolling beneath J.D.

  He lost sight of the flames as the ground dipped and the trail bent around a thick copse of tamarack. His brain raced, leaving the business of staying astride to reflexes developed almost from infancy. He had to formulate a strategy to fight the blaze, wondered how he would summon help, wondered if Bryce would still want the place if it burned to the ground.

  Mari stood in the corral, watching the flames lick high into the air. She felt a certain solemnity for the ceremony and a tickle of giddy excitement that stemmed from exhaustion and cognac. She had used the liquor to help start the blaze, then stood back and took a swig in honor of Lucy's last wishes. It went down like liquid gold, burned in her belly, and spread its own fire through her, numbing the raw feelings and lending a certain romantic glow to the proceedings. She tossed the bottle into the blaze and saluted, then jumped back with a shriek as the glass popped and the remaining alcohol went up in a hot burst.

  Sheepishly she glanced at the Mr. Peanut tin, which stood on a gatepost and oversaw the bonfire from a safe distance, top hat tilted to a jaunty angle. Through the wavy haze of heat it appeared to be moving, wiggling like a hula dancer, dancing in celebration.

  Lucy would have approved of the festivities wholeheartedly. In fact, Mari had planned on her friend standing beside her for the ceremonial burning of the business suits. The bonfire signaled her change of direction as she stood at this crossroads of her life. In one direction lay the life her family had herded her down, a straight and narrow path paved in concrete and stripped of scenery, a toll road that took something essential out of her at each gate. In the other direction lay the great unknown, all the mysteries of life, all the possibilities her soul had yearned for. It was bumpy and hilly and wound through uncharted territory that may be a little scary but promised never to be dull. On the road less traveled there were no expectations, no standards to fall short of, no boundaries, no burdens—except her own hesitancy.

  She imagined her faintheartedness vaporizing in the flames. The funeral pyre of the pinstripes and peplums was a symbol of her decision. No one wore panty hose on the road less traveled.

  Mr. Peanut seemed to wink at her from the other side of the heat waves.

  Suddenly, a horse burst from the wooded slope beyond the gate, huge and red, ears pinned, eyes rolling, mouth opening wide as it abruptly changed gears from a dead run to a sliding stop. The head came up and the powerful haunches angled beneath him, scraping the dirt of the ranch yard, stirring an enormous, billowing cloud of dust. Mari watched, mouth agape, as the rider stepped down while the horse was still in motion. He hit the ground running, his hat flying back off his head.

  Rafferty.

  He barreled toward her, his face set in furious lines. Barely slowing down, he grabbed up a bucket, dunked it in the water trough outside the gate, and kept on running in a beeline for her pyre.

  “No!” Mari launched into motion, lunging toward him, arms outstretched to try to push the bucket aside. They collided ten feet from the fire, Mari bouncing off J.D. like a rag doll that had been hurled at the side of a moving bus. Crying out, she stumbled and went down on her hands and knees in the dirt, only able to watch in horror as he attacked her tribute.

  The water splashed into the center of the blaze, dousing the magnificent flames like a blanket. Rafferty kicked the edges of it, scooping the powdery dirt of the corral into it with his boots and with his hands, suffocating the peripheral flames and sending up mushroom clouds of black smoke tinged with dust.

  Mari's heart sank with the dying flames. She sat back on her heels, tears pooling in her eyes as he ran to the water tank and returned with another sloshing bucket. The fire hissed its last agonized breath as he doused it. Her fire. The symbol of the death of her old life. Her tribute and sendoff to her old friend. Ruined. Snuffed out, the way her old life had tried to snuff out the fire inside her; snuffed out as Lucy had been snuffed out. The anger and the frustration and the cognac swirled inside her, rose up like a tide, and Mari rose with it.

  “You stupid son of a bitch!” she hollered, hurtling herself at him as he backed away from the detritus of her grand gesture. “You stupid shit-for-brains! That was mine!”

  She hit him hard in the back, knocking him off balance, pummeling him with her small fists. J.D. dropped the bucket and twisted around, catching a knuckle in the mouth. Swearing, he stumbled sideways, trying to fend off her blows with his hands and forearms. She came at him like a wildcat, teeth bared, eyes narrowed, all hiss and claw, her tangled hair tumbling into her face.

  “Knock it off!” he bellowed, staggering back.

  Mari lunged at him again, half jumping on him, arms swinging wildly as all rational thought burned away in the face of her temper. She caught him leaning back, and they both tumbled into the dirt, coughing and swearing at the dust that gagged and choked and blinded.

  “That was mine!” she sho
uted again. “Mine!” Her first real act of liberation, her homage to her friend, and he had ruined it. She lashed out in retaliation in every way she could—hitting, kicking—

  “Ouch! You bit me!” J.D. shouted, outraged, overwhelmed by the sheer force of her fury.

  His own anger kicked in as her knee came perilously close to ramming his balls up to his tonsils. Grunting, he twisted and rolled, tumbling her beneath him, pinning her with his weight. Gritting his teeth, he tried to catch her fists as she rained blows on his head and shoulders, grabbing one and then the other and pinning them to the ground beside her head.

  “Dammit, I said, quit!”

  His voice boomed in her ears. Mari strained and struggled in one final burst, but to no avail. J. D. Rafferty outweighed her by eighty pounds at least, every ounce of it muscle, and all of it pressed down on her, stilling her against her will.

  Mari glared up at him, too aware that she was powerless against him. Powerless beneath him. His breath came in ragged pants, gusting against hers, his mouth no more than inches from hers. Even through the static of her fury, the memory of his kiss came back—carnal, possessive . . . insulting, insolent.

  J.D. met the blue fire in her eyes and it triggered something primal in him. Or maybe it was the way she felt beneath him. Or the memory of the way she tasted in the moonlight.

  Damnation, he had gone too long without.

  “You have a real way about you, Rafferty,” she snarled. “Where'd you go to charm school—the World Wrestling Federation?”

  A growl was the only reply he gave her as he shoved himself to his feet. Mari scrambled up, trying to shake the dirt out of her clothes. It had gone up her blouse and down the back of her jeans, working its way into private cracks and crevices. It was in her hair and in her teeth.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” J.D. demanded, swinging an arm in the direction of the charred remains of her fire.