Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  “We'll need to talk about it, Del,” J.D. said, his heart feeling like a rock in his chest. He had tried to bring the subject up more than once since they had gotten the cattle settled, but Del had dodged it every time and J.D. hadn't had the heart to force it. He couldn't stand to see the sick worry in his uncle's eyes, or the shame.

  Del pulled up suddenly and pivoted his roan around so he could look out over the knob to the wide, flower-strewn meadow where the cattle grazed and beyond to the next mountain and the next, their shapes turning hazy and indistinct as the sun slid behind the farthest of them. He stared out at it all from beneath the brim of his hat, stared hard, as if he were memorizing every last detail.

  He didn't want to talk about what had happened. He didn't even like to remember it, though the memory was always right there, hovering like a fog just beneath the plate in his head. It descended at night and tormented him, visions of the blondes with their features melding together until he couldn't tell one from the other. . . .

  He had wanted only to do the right thing, to help save the ranch, to make J.D. proud of him. But he saw the looks his nephew sent him when he didn't think he was paying attention, and they were full of pity and shame and regret.

  “You ought to go back down, hadn't you, J.D.?” he said, hoping against hope J.D. would say yes and simply leave, leave him be as if nothing had happened.

  J.D. sighed. “Del—”

  “You won't send me away, will you, J.D.?” he asked flat out, then sat there, shaking inside, as he waited for an answer.

  He kept his eyes on the view, afraid to look away from it, afraid that if he looked away, it would vanish. His hand crept up against his will and he rubbed his scar as if the smooth disk of flesh were a lucky penny. He wanted to tell his nephew what it had been like for him during that black period in the V.A. hospital, what it had been like to never see the sky or the mountains, to never watch the sunset except through a window with chicken wire imbedded in the glass. He wanted to explain how he couldn't tolerate the lack of space and how the other patients crowded in on him and made it impossible for him to keep his mind together and focused on each individual moment, which was what he needed to do to stay sane. He wanted to tell J.D. what it meant to him to have this place and to have his duties on the Stars and Bars. But when he opened his mouth, all that came out was, “I'd die.”

  J.D. clenched his jaw against the surge of pain for the old soldier sitting beside him. So much had been taken from him—his youth, his prospects, his face, his mind. All he had left was his job and his place on the land, and a small well of pride in being able to handle those simple responsibilities.

  God help me, I can't take that away from him.

  But he had shot a woman, and he had proved that what was left of his mind could not be trusted in the face of stress. What if he happened across legitimate hunters and perceived them as a threat?

  His courage running out on him, Del swung his horse back around and started up the mountain. “There's chores need doing.”

  J.D. followed slowly, accountability weighing him down like an anchor.

  The truck was in the yard when they arrived at the cabin, but it wasn't Tucker who sat on the tailgate tossing a Frisbee for the dogs. J.D.'s heart slammed into his sternum as she raised her head and looked right at him.

  “Mary Lee . . .” he mumbled.

  Her left arm was in a sling. She looked thinner. Her cheekbones were a little more prominent than they had been, the hollows beneath them deeper. Her jewel-blue eyes seemed impossibly large and deep beneath her dark brows. She wore black leggings and hiking boots and an old denim shirt that would have fit him. She eased herself down off the tailgate and swept back a chunk of streaky blond hair that had blown across her face.

  “Never fear,” she said, her mouth kicking up on one side in a wry smile. “Tucker and your lasagna are inside.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, realizing too late how that sounded.

  Her chin came up a little. “I came to see Del.”

  Del jerked around at the post where he was tying his horse, his eyes open wide, his mouth tugging back on the dead side in a grimace of shock.

  Mari offered him the warmest smile she could find. “Hey, Del. I came to thank you.”

  He narrowed his eyes and looked at her sideways, fussing with his reins. “There's no need.”

  “Yes, there is,” she insisted. “You saved my life.”

  Del looked down at his boots and rubbed his jaw. He wished she hadn't come back. He wished everyone would just go away and leave him to his shame and let him alone about what had happened. He didn't want to have to say anything about it. If he told, then J.D. would have to put him away for sure. But he couldn't take credit if it wasn't his due; that wouldn't be right.

  “No, ma'am,” he said softly.

  J.D.'s attention swung from Mary Lee to his uncle. He stepped down off his horse and stood very still, watching Del, waiting.

  Mari's brows tugged together. “Yes, you did, Del. You shot the woman who was trying to kill me. She would have killed me and Samantha too. You saved us both.”

  He wagged his head from side to side, not meeting her eyes. His hands were suddenly nervous. He jammed them at his waist, dropped them, crossed them, wiped the saliva that trailed down his jaw. “No, ma'am,” he said, breathing as if he had just run to hell and back. “The fact is, I couldn't tell. I saw blondes and I knew they weren't the same, but then they were, and I couldn't tell—”

  He broke off, stared off across the yard, seeing it all again in his fractured mind, image upon image as if he were looking through a prism. The blonde and the blonde, tangled and then apart, their features interchanging. He had wanted to do something. Needed to do the right thing. He couldn't remember anything about the instant he pulled the trigger. That second was gone from his mind as if it had never happened.

  Mari closed the distance between them without hesitation and took hold of one of his hands, squeezing it hard. “No,” she said strongly. He looked down at her, his gray eyes full of torment. “You knew. In your heart you knew. You saved my life, Del. Don't you let yourself think otherwise.”

  He stared at her, wanting to believe, wishing he could believe. He knew her now. She was the talker. The good blonde. She had told him he could be a hero; now she claimed he was. Had he known? In that final hair-breadth of a second, had he known? Maybe. He wished so, but wishing wouldn't make it true.

  Mari let go his hand and dug her fingers into her shirt pocket, pulling out a small brass star that hung from a red-striped ribbon. She had gone down to Miller Daggrepont's office, dug the medal out of one of his many boxes of “collections,” and paid his secretary Inez a dollar for it. It seemed an awfully small price for what it meant.

  “I got this for you,” she murmured, holding it up against his chest. “I found it in an antiques shop in town. I'm not sure where it comes from or what it was originally meant for, but I mean for you to wear it because you're my hero.”

  Del looked down at the little medal she held against him with her small, pale hand. He had some from the war, but he kept them locked in a box with the other mementos of that time because people didn't like that war and they used to make him feel ashamed that he'd gone. He had only meant to do the right thing, but he guessed he didn't always know what that was, even back then.

  “You did good, Del,” the little blonde whispered. “Please believe that.” Her eyes were full of tears. She raised up on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss against his cheek.

  Blushing, he took the star and pinned it to his shirt. “Thank you, ma'am,” he murmured. “I'll be proud to wear it.”

  He tipped his hat to her and without another word went to see about his horse.

  Mari watched him walk away with the roan in tow. She could feel J.D.'s gaze on her, but she didn't turn to meet it. Her emotions were running too high. She didn't trust herself not to blurt out that she loved him or some other equally ill-timed revelation. S
he had to have some pride. Pride was valued here, and she was a part of this place now.

  “That's one of the finest things I've ever seen anybody do, Mary Lee,” J.D. said softly.

  “Well,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. “I'm not at all sure he deserved it, but he needed it, and even if he saved my life by accident, I wanted to give him something back.”

  He hooked a knuckle under her chin and turned her face up to his. Her eyes were like liquid sapphire. Tears left a trail on her cheeks that gleamed in the fading glow of sunset. He had probably known prettier women in his life, but at that moment he could not think of one more beautiful. “You're a wonder, Mary Lee. You never do what I expect.”

  “Maybe I'm not who you want to think I am,” she said.

  “No. I'd say you're someone more,” he murmured. Better, truer, more honest, stronger, braver. She was everything he would have labeled himself once. Christ, he hated irony. He wasn't so sure anymore that he was any of those things.

  “Would you like to find out?” Mari asked. Her heart beat like a fist at the base of her throat, fluttered like a butterfly caught in a net. She could see in his eyes what his answer would be, and even tempered with regret it hurt. “Won't take a chance on a city girl, huh?” she said with a smile more tremulous than wry.

  “It's not that,” he said as he let his hand drop from her chin. He turned away and faced the west, where the sky was aflame and the mountains were cast in silhouette beneath it. “It's the wrong time and maybe I'm the wrong man. Maybe I'm not who you want to think I am either. I don't know anymore.”

  “I do,” she said, coming to stand beside him. “I know exactly who you are. I know you're proud and stubborn, that you'd do anything for the people you care about. I know you can be pompous and arrogant, and I know there's no one on this planet harder on you than you are on 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 ball peen 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.

  “I can see you're overjoyed,” Mari 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. “Mary Lee, 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 Mary Lee'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.”

  “Easy!” 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 bein' 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 Mary Lee, 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 Mary Lee, 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 Mary Lee 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 o
ut 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.

  CHAPTER

  34

  THE DAYS found a pleasant, monotonous rhythm. Mari 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 anything 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 Mari'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.