“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 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.