Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

“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. She 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?”