She imagined her faintheartedness vaporizing in the flames. The funeral pyre of the pinstripes and peplums was a symbol of her decision. No one wore panty hose on the road less traveled.

Mr. Peanut seemed to wink at her from the other side of the heat waves.

Suddenly, a horse burst from the wooded slope beyond the gate, huge and red, ears pinned, eyes rolling, mouth opening wide as it abruptly changed gears from a dead run to a sliding stop. The head came up and the powerful haunches angled beneath him, scraping the dirt of the ranch yard, stirring an enormous, billowing cloud of dust. Mari watched, mouth agape, as the rider stepped down while the horse was still in motion. He hit the ground running, his hat flying back off his head.

Rafferty.

He barreled toward her, his face set in furious lines. Barely slowing down, he grabbed up a bucket, dunked it in the water trough outside the gate, and kept on running in a beeline for her pyre.

“No!” Mari launched into motion, lunging toward him, arms outstretched to try to push the bucket aside. They collided ten feet from the fire, Mari bouncing off J.D. like a rag doll that had been hurled at the side of a moving bus. Crying out, she stumbled and went down on her hands and knees in the dirt, only able to watch in horror as he attacked her tribute.

The water splashed into the center of the blaze, dousing the magnificent flames like a blanket. Rafferty kicked the edges of it, scooping the powdery dirt of the corral into it with his boots and with his hands, suffocating the peripheral flames and sending up mushroom clouds of black smoke tinged with dust.

Mari’s heart sank with the dying flames. She sat back on her heels, tears pooling in her eyes as he ran to the water tank and returned with another sloshing bucket. The fire hissed its last agonized breath as he doused it. Her fire. The symbol of the death of her old life. Her tribute and sendoff to her old friend. Ruined. Snuffed out, the way her old life had tried to snuff out the fire inside her; snuffed out as Lucy had been snuffed out. The anger and the frustration and the cognac swirled inside her, rose up like a tide, and Mari rose with it.

“You stupid son of a bitch!” she hollered, hurtling herself at him as he backed away from the detritus of her grand gesture. “You stupid shit-for-brains! That was mine!”

She hit him hard in the back, knocking him off balance, pummeling him with her small fists. J.D. dropped the bucket and twisted around, catching a knuckle in the mouth. Swearing, he stumbled sideways, trying to fend off her blows with his hands and forearms. She came at him like a wildcat, teeth bared, eyes narrowed, all hiss and claw, her tangled hair tumbling into her face.

“Knock it off!” he bellowed, staggering back.

Mari lunged at him again, half jumping on him, arms swinging wildly as all rational thought burned away in the face of her temper. She caught him leaning back, and they both tumbled into the dirt, coughing and swearing at the dust that gagged and choked and blinded.

“That was mine!” she shouted again. “Mine!” Her first real act of liberation, her homage to her friend, and he had ruined it. She lashed out in retaliation in every way she could-hitting, kicking-

“Ouch! You bit me!” J.D. shouted, outraged, overwhelmed by the sheer force of her fury.

His own anger kicked in as her knee came perilously close to ramming his balls up to his tonsils. Grunting, he twisted and rolled, tumbling her beneath him, pinning her with his weight. Gritting his teeth, he tried to catch her fists as she rained blows on his head and shoulders, grabbing one and then the other and pinning them to the ground beside her head.

“Dammit, I said, quit!”

His voice boomed in her ears. Mari strained and struggled in one final burst, but to no avail. J. D. Rafferty outweighed her by eighty pounds at least, every ounce of it muscle, and all of it pressed down on her, stilling her against her will.

Mari glared up at him, too aware that she was powerless against him. Powerless beneath him. His breath came in ragged pants, gusting against hers, his mouth no more than inches from hers. Even through the static of her fury, the memory of his kiss came back-carnal, possessive… insulting, insolent.

J.D. met the blue fire in her eyes and it triggered something primal in him. Or maybe it was the way she felt beneath him. Or the memory of the way she tasted in the moonlight.

Damnation, he had gone too long without.

“You have a real way about you, Rafferty,” she snarled. “Where’d you go to charm school-the World Wrestling Federation?”

A growl was the only reply he gave her as he shoved himself to his feet. Mari scrambled up, trying to shake the dirt out of her clothes. It had gone up her blouse and down the back of her jeans, working its way into private cracks and crevices. It was in her hair and in her teeth.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” J.D. demanded, swinging an arm in the direction of the charred remains of her fire.

“None of your damn business.”

She stalked past him, feeling the need to put herself between him and the mess. The ceremony had been personal. She hadn’t planned on witnesses or conscientious objectors. The idea of Rafferty probing into it made her feel exposed, vulnerable. Vulnerable didn’t seem a very smart thing to be around a man like him. He was too tough, too forceful to show much in the way of understanding or compassion. She had seen that firsthand.

Of course, it was impossible to hide the evidence. It spread out behind her, a black, smoldering, oozing stain in the middle of the corral. She couldn’t hope to keep him from it. He walked around to the other side, scowling down into the ashes.

“What the hell-?”

With the toe of his boot he dragged a magenta gabardine sleeve from the cinders. He picked it up gingerly by the unburned end and dangled it down, grimacing as if there were still an arm inside it.

“It was a suit, okay?” Mari snapped, snatching it from him and tossing it back into the embers.

“You were burning clothes?” His gaze traveled down her with undisguised skepticism, taking in her old jeans and the baggy purple oxford button-down she wore open over an old Stanford T-shirt.

Mari ground her teeth. “I was cremating my past. It was symbolic.”

He stared at her as if she had just claimed to be from the moon.

“Men. You wouldn’t know symbolism if you sat in it. I’m at a life crossroads. I needed to make a grand gesture.”

“Yeah, well,” he drawled, “burning half of Montana to the ground would have been a gesture.”

“I didn’t burn anything that wasn’t mine.”

“What if the barn had caught fire? Or the house? Or-”

“What’s it to you?” Mari challenged, sticking her chin out as she glared up at him. “They’re mine too, so-”

“They’re what?” J.D. felt as if he’d just run blind into a brick wall. He actually fell back a step from the force of the mental blow.

A relapse of guilt deflated Mari’s truculence. She felt… unworthy, undeserving. She couldn’t remember the last time she had called Lucy just to shoot the bull. She seemed to shrink as the fight went out of her on a sigh. Raking back a handful of hair, she looked away from Rafferty toward the beautiful log house.

“It’s mine,” she said quietly. “Lucy left it to me.”

J.D. watched her carefully as he tried to digest the information. He wasn’t sure how to react. He wanted this land for himself, for the Stars and Bars, as an added buffer against the encroachment of outsiders-of Bryce in particular. He had hoped it would be offered for sale by Daggrepont to settle the estate, though that scenario held no guarantees the land wouldn’t go to Bryce. Still, Daggrepont was a local. Mary Lee Jennings was a wild card. There was no telling what she would do with it. The only thing he knew for certain was that she thought he was a jerk. And she was right. He’d been nothing but a bastard to her from the word go.