Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

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 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 DAYSfound 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.

“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.