Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

“Oh, well, then,” Will drawled sarcastically, stretching his arms out in an expansive gesture. “Then we can all go home. St. John has spoken.”

“Save your lip for someone who wants to hear it. Let’s go.”

Will shook his head, only mildly incredulous at his brother’s high-handedness. “Contrary to what you seem to think, big brother, you are not my keeper. I have my own truck, you know.”

“Yeah. And some night you might even be sober enough to drive it home.”

“I’m driving it home tonight,” Will said tightly.

“Before or after you lose another grand or two in Little Purgatory?”

Will squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” J.D. said, his gaze cutting around them to make certain no one was within earshot. He signaled the bartender for a refill on the Jack and leaned heavily against the bar. “Jesus, Will,” he whispered. “How could you? Sixty-five hundred!”

“I had a straight, J.D.,” he said, cupping his hands in front of him as if he could call up a vision of the cards across them. “I had it right there and I kept looking at that pot and thinking, Judas, that’s the loan on my truck, that’s three payments to Stark Implement, that’s a down payment on that hay ground across the valley…”

“It’s sixty-five hundred dollars you could just as well have flushed down the toilet.”

Will glared at him. “Thanks, J.D. Make me feel worse about it than I already do. I was trying to win.”

“But you didn’t, Will.” He held his tongue as the bartender refilled his glass. He tossed the whiskey back and set the glass down with a dull thunk. “You never do.”

Will reached for his beer mug and J.D. slid it beyond his grasp. His temper was simmering. He felt as if everything in his world was slipping beyond his control, sliding through his hands like wet rope. “We got cattle to move in the morning. Remember that. If you’re not downstairs by four-thirty, I’ll haul your sorry ass out of whatever bed I find it in and tie it on a horse. You hear me?”

“I hear you fine.”

J.D. leaned down into his brother’s face, his voice a razor-edged whisper. “You might try to remember once in a while that the Stars and Bars is your responsibility too. Responsibility, not a toy, not something you bet on in a goddamn poker game. Responsibility. Look the word up in the dictionary if you have to, college boy.”

Tossing some crumpled bills on the bar, Will slid off his stool. “I’m out of here. I don’t need to take this bullshit from you.”

He headed for the front lobby of the lodge, his mind turning to thoughts of the Hell and Gone and drowning his troubles in Coors and the charms of a cowgirl with a tight ass and loose morals.

J.D. stalked across the room to a side door that led out into the parking lot, tipping his hat to Samantha as he went.

Neither of them paid the least bit of attention to the pair of eyes that had taken in every detail of their argument.

Sharon Russell sipped her scotch and smiled to herself. Dissension among the Rafferty ranks. Bryce would be pleased.

Outside, J.D. was able to breathe a little better. The Jack Daniel’s seeped into his bloodstream and calmed him a bit. He turned away from the refurbished lodge and focused on a view he had loved since boyhood. The night sky was a sheet of deep blue velvet studded with diamonds. A wedge of moon was scaling the peaks of the Absarokas to the east, spilling its white glow down the forested slopes.

As he stood there, staring up at it, the anger that seemed so much a part of him these days slipped away, the tension ebbed. The madness of life receded for a moment, and he was left with something that was real and enduring. The mountains would always be here. The moon would always rise. Not wanting to think beyond that, he stepped off the veranda and headed toward his truck at the back of the lot.

He didn’t want to think about Will and the resentment that always managed to seep into their conversations from both sides. He didn’t want to think about the mental slip he’d made in calling Will “college boy.” He didn’t want to think why he should consider it a slip at all, the showing of a weakness.

It wasn’t Will’s fault J.D. hadn’t been able to finish his time at Montana State. That was Tom’s fault for dying-which was Sondra’s fault for breaking him. Nor was it Will’s fault he had gotten a full ride to the university in Missoula. That had been Sondra’s doing too. She had insisted her baby get a complete education; had seen to it with the money of her lover. Never mind that Will had majored in partying and minored in rodeo and let his grades skid down the shitter.

The memory set J.D.’s teeth on edge. Waste. God almighty, how he hated waste.

The sound of music caught his ear and he pulled up short, glancing at the lodge. Lights glowed through the array of French doors along the back of the bar. From farther down the street came the drift of noise from the Hell and Gone. But this music was softer, warmer, nearer. He walked on, scanning his surroundings with a narrow gaze.

A split rail fence marked the back of the parking lot. Beyond that lay the rumpled hills that formed the feet of the mountains, dotted with trees and rock outcroppings that loomed in the stark contrast of moonglow and shadows. J.D. slipped between the rails of the fence and walked out into meadow, his senses filling with the scent of grass and wildflowers, the sounds of a warm, smoky voice and the sweet, tender notes of a guitar. A woman’s voice, low and strong. The song she sang was poignant and reflective, poetic in a way that went far beyond simple rhyme. It was the song of a woman trying to navigate her way through life despite the obstacles and her own stubbornness, despite mistakes and missed opportunities.

The beauty and the truth of it stopped J.D. from walking up on her. He just stood there and listened as she sang of the moon and St. Christopher. And when it was over and her fingers had plucked out the final notes, he almost backed away out of respect. Then it struck him who she was. Mary Lee Jennings.

She sat on a small boulder, the guitar cradled across her middle and a tall bottle by her side. She wasn’t alone. Zip, his cattle dog, sat at the base of the rock, staring up at her, his ears perked attentively. It was Zip who noticed him first and bounded toward him with a jubilant yip.

Mari followed the dog with her eyes, her heart slamming into her breastbone when she saw the man standing no more than a dozen feet away. The brim of a pale gray hat shaded his face, but almost instantly she recognized the set of his shoulders and the stance he had taken with his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans. It seemed odd that she should know him by such subtle signs when she had met him only twice.

“You missed your calling, Rafferty,” she said, her tone wry. “You would have made a great spy the way you sneak up on people.”

J.D. ignored the commentary. He waded a little closer through the lush grass, until he could almost read the label on the bottle that sat beside her. “You always sit and sing to the moon?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No, ma’am. Not around here.”

She raised a shoulder in a careless shrug and tugged a hand back through her tangled hair to anchor it behind one ear. A lazy smile turned the corners of her mouth. “Oh, well. At least I’m not naked.”

The joke was almost lost on him as the image filled his head. He could too easily picture her sitting there on that smooth boulder in nothing but pale creamy skin and her moon-silvered mop of hair.

Mari sensed the tension in him. It was telegraphed to her on a wavelength of instinct she didn’t understand, nor did she care to understand at the moment. Not at this time and certainly not with this man. Pretending ignorance, she lifted the bottle that sat beside her and held it out to him.