Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

“Well, for starters, I have a fractured aura.”

“Ah, you’ve met M.E.” At her blank look he expanded. “M. E. Fralick, maven of the Broadway stage and patron of all things New Age.”

The name rang a dim bell, but it didn’t cut through the pounding in her temples.

“How about a cappuccino?” he suggested.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a G and T-with a capital G-and a large plate of anything edible.”

“A woman after my own heart. By the bye, my name is Andrew Van Dellen. Aside from playing waiter on occasion, I’m one of the lucky owners of the Mystic Moose.”

“Marilee Jennings,” she said, trying to offer a smile.

He straightened a bit and stared at her for a moment, brows knit. Humming a note, he tapped a forefinger against his pursed lips. “Marilee. Marilee Jennings?” The light bulb went on. “Oh, my God, you’re Lucy’s friend!”

Across the room, at the bar, Samantha Rafferty scooped up her serving tray, sloshing imported beer and Pellegrino. The bartender shot her a look, and tears instantly burned at the backs of her eyes. Not that she really gave a damn about the drinks. She had bigger things on her mind. This was just a job she was screwing up. How important was that, when her whole life was one big, balled-up mess?

If only she’d had the sense to go straight home last night. But no. Glutton for punishment that she was, she just had to take a few turns past the Hell and Gone, cruising the street in her ancient rusted-out Camero until Will stumbled out the door of the saloon with his arm around a buxom blonde.

The tears pressed harder, glazing across her vision. She clenched her jaw and held her breath as she set the drinks on the long table, heedless as to who had ordered what. What did any of them have to complain about? They were rich, they were movie stars, they didn’t have to drive around in a fifteen-year-old car in the middle of the night, looking for a cheating husband.

Damn you, Will.

Damn me for loving you.

Her vision blurred to a jumble of watery colors. As she bent to set down the last of the drinks, she misjudged the distance to the table and let go of a tall mug of beer too soon. The glass hit the table with a thunk and beer spewed out of it like water from a floodgate, drenching the tabletop. Several women at the table gasped. The man whose drink it was bolted backward, shooting up out of his chair as the beer ran off the edge of the table. Samantha gaped in horror at the mess that seemed so symbolic of her whole life, and burst into tears.

“No, no, sweetheart, don’t cry!” Evan Bryce laid a fatherly hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “It was an accident. No harm done.”

Mortified, Samantha mumbled behind the hands she had pressed over her face, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bryce! I-I’m s-so sorry!”

He slid his arm around her and gave her a comforting squeeze. “Hey,” he said with humor in his voice. “I’ve had beautiful young women do far worse things to me!”

The courtiers who sat around his table all laughed indulgently. Samantha wished the floor would open and swallow her whole. Evan Bryce was the most powerful among New Eden’s new power elite. He was some kind of celebrity, a producer or something. Samantha had seen him on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Entertainment Tonight . He was always on the awards shows or the judging panel at the Miss America pageant. The people who visited him at his ranch outside of town were like a Who’s Who of Hollywood and California politics. And she had managed to dump a pint of beer practically in his lap.

“Come on, now,” Bryce said, leading her toward the chair he had so hurriedly vacated. “You’ve obviously been working too hard, Samantha. Sit down. See that there’s no hard feelings.”

That he knew her name jolted her for an instant, until she remembered it was pinned to her chest. Stupid . The word lashed her like a whip. Stupid kid . She’d heard it from her father often enough when she’d been growing up, so that now, even though she had been living away from her family for over a year, it came back to her and crumbled the debris of her self-confidence into even smaller pieces.

“No, I couldn’t,” she mumbled, backing out of his grasp. She could feel the eyes of the others on her, and imagined she knew what they thought. They thought she was a hick, a stupid, silly half-breed girl who couldn’t even manage to keep a drink order straight. “I have work to do.”

Bryce pulled a face. “I don’t think Drew would begrudge you five minutes as my guest.”

“I don’t know, Bryce,” one of his friends said slyly. “He may get jealous. I think he’s had his eye on you.”

The rest of them laughed. Samantha took in their faces in a glance-beautiful beyond what was normally human, teeth too white and too straight, eyes gleaming with some kind of sharp emotion she knew nothing about.

“I have to go,” she blurted out. Then she wheeled and ran for the service door beside the bar, laughter ringing in her ears, her long black braid slapping her back like a whip as she went.

A long red-carpeted hall was at the rear of the building. Doors off it led into the kitchen, into Mr. Van Dellen’s and Mr. Bronson’s offices. Samantha went past these and hit the bar of the door that led outside. The stone terrace ran most of the length of the hotel, but the north end was divided from the rest by a tall, weathered lattice screen, giving the employees an area to slip out to for breaks.

Samantha thanked God it was empty at the moment. She had never been one to cry in front of people. Even Will. Even the night he’d left she had managed to keep the tears at bay until he was out the door.

Damn you, Will.

She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved Will Rafferty. Even in junior high she had secretly pined away over him, when she had been a lowly eighth-grader and he one of the coolest boys in the senior class. Will Rafferty with his devil’s grin and to-die-for blue eyes. Practically every girl in school had a crush on him. He was a rebel, a rascal, and a small-time rodeo star. And for a while he had been all hers.

The thought that that time was over, maybe for good, made her shake inside. She leaned over the split-wood railing at the edge of the terrace, doubling over in emotional pain, the tears crowding her throat like jagged rocks. It wasn’t fair. She loved him. He was the one thing she had ever asked for in her whole miserable life. Why couldn’t he love her back in the same way?

She knew he had married her on a whim. He had won a little money in the saddle bronc riding at the Memorial Day rodeo in Gardiner. She had won a little money in the barrel racing. They had ended up at the same celebratory party. Will, full of himself as always, caught up in the thrill of victory, and made uninhibited by innumerable shots of Jack Daniel’s, had declared his love for her. Three days later they had driven to Nevada in his new red and white pickup and tied the knot.

In her heart of hearts Samantha had suspected at the time he wasn’t truly serious about getting married, but she had grabbed the chance with both hands and hung on tight. Now she was living alone in the little cottage they had rented over on Jackson Street. She had her freedom from her family. She had a ring on her finger. And now she had nothing at all.

The loneliness that gripped her heart squeezed as hard as a fist.

“Can it really be all that bad?”

Samantha started at the sound of the soft voice, but there was no running away this time. She’d already made enough of a fool of herself. Evan Bryce took a position at the rail beside her. When he offered her a monogrammed linen handkerchief, she took it and dabbed her eyes. He didn’t watch, looking instead toward the mountains, giving her a kind of privacy, a moment to compose herself. She used it to study him.