“Only when I’m contemplating bashing it over the head of an obnoxious man. Do you want the beer or not?”

His throat felt like a gravel pit, his mouth tasted of dust and horses. “Yeah, I guess I’d better disarm you.”

Mari rolled her eyes and headed for an old wooden buggy seat that had been converted into a bench and sat along the end of the barn. She plunked herself down, tossed him his beer, and popped the top on her own.

Rafferty eyed the spot beside her but chose to stand, propping himself up against the weathered siding of the barn. He looked exhausted. His shirt was sweat-stained and dirty, his jeans limp and creased. He had obviously splashed water on his face before riding down; she could see the line on his neck where clean left off and the dirt began. The shadow on his lean cheeks told her it had been a while since he’d taken the time to shave.

“Truce, okay?” she offered, raising her can in salute. “I don’t think either of us could survive a sparring match tonight.”

He tipped his head a little in concession, popped the top on his beer, and drank half of it in one long swallow. Mari’s gaze caught on the way the muscles of his throat worked.

“Hard day at the office?” she asked, more to distract herself than anything.

He shrugged. “The usual.”

“What’s ‘the usual’?”

“Finished rounding up the breeding herd for branding and vaccinations. Colts needed riding. Bulls had to be moved.”

Mari had a feeling the jobs entailed a great deal more than the few spare words he boiled them down to. He had a talent for understatement, Rafferty did. He compressed his conversation to the bare skin and bones of thought, leaving out all words that didn’t seem absolutely necessary. The trait was at once endearing and infuriating. She was used to the enlightened professional men of the nineties who, once they had learned it was okay to open up, never shut up. Brad had always been a virtual font of information about himself, his feelings, his interests, his career.

“Branding like in the cowboy movies? Rope ’em, throw ’em, stick a hot iron on their sides?”

He straightened almost imperceptibly, his jaw hardening. “It’s done for a reason,” he said tightly, offended by the suggestion that he would unnecessarily harm an animal. “You a vegetarian or something?”

“No. Just curious. Believe me, I seldom discriminate against anything edible-except liver. I don’t like liver. And I won’t eat anything people claim ‘tastes just like chicken.’ That almost always means it’s some kind of animal you wouldn’t eat if you knew what it was.”

“Rattlesnake,” J.D. said, one side of his mouth tugging into a reluctant smile. “Tastes just like chicken.”

She made a face and held her hands up to ward off the idea, shuddering visibly inside her gigantic jacket. “No thanks. I learned all about the food groups in the fourth grade. Mrs. Kaplan never said a word about a daily requirement of reptiles.”

He laughed, a sound that was rusty from disuse. Mari rewarded him with a smile. He eyed the empty place on the bench beside her, fighting with himself. He didn’t want to be amused by her or charmed by her. He wanted to bed her. He wanted to buy her land. Those things were simple, straightforward, safe. The other edged into dangerous territory. He pushed himself away from the barn, telling himself to back off, but his feet were rooted to the spot. “There’s chores need doing.”

“They’ll still need doing in ten minutes. Cut yourself some slack, Rafferty.”

“Slackers don’t last long in these parts.” His gaze strayed to the log house as he eased himself down onto the far side of the bench. Weary disillusionment crept into his eyes. His broad shoulders sagged a little in defeat. “Least they never used to.”

“How long has your family been here?” Mari asked quietly, mesmerized by the emotions playing in his gray eyes. She would have bet a dollar he would never give them voice, certainly not to her. All he ever wanted to show her was sexual aggression or orneriness-traits that made him easy to dislike… or should have. The idea of that macho attitude being a shield covering something more complex, even vulnerable, struck her as being as dangerous to her as the man himself, and yet she couldn’t keep herself from trying to peek around it.

“Four generations,” he said, his pride an unmistakable undercurrent in his low, soft voice. He still stared off toward the house, though she had a feeling he wasn’t seeing it. His profile was rugged and handsome in the last umber light of day, the face of a man who lived a hard life and was stronger for it. “Since the war,” he added.

He said it as if there had been only one in the last hundred fifty years, as if this corner of Montana had somehow existed out of time with the rest of the modern world. Sitting there in the ranch yard, the wild country all around them and no sign of civilization in sight, Mari was almost tempted to believe that could be true.

“The Civil War,” she clarified.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And the Raffertys were Southerners?”

“Yes, ma’am. From Georgia.”

His answer made her think of his manners. When he chose to display any, they were quaintly formal, the courtly manners of the old Deep South, polished Southern chivalry that had grown a little rough around the edges out in the wilderness. The thought that those customs had survived at all over four generations suggested they had been very carefully handed down, like cherished heirlooms, like his pride in his land and his fierce distrust of outsiders.

She turned sideways on the buggy seat and leaned a shoulder against the rough wall of the barn. “You’re very lucky,” she murmured, “to have that kind of sense of who you are and where you belong. I come from a place where almost no one is a native, where tradition is something we get out of Emily Post.”

“It’ll be that way around here soon enough.”

“Only if all the natives leave.”

“Plenty already have. Most can’t afford not to.”

“Because of people like Lucy buying land?”

“Nothing’s sacred to people with money.”

“You say that like they’re evil. Maybe they love it here as much as you do. Take it from me,” she said dryly, “belonging doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with birthright.”

J.D. said nothing. His feelings were too strong for words. No one could love this land more than he did. It was as much a part of him as his heart, his hands. He couldn’t imagine an outsider feeling that. He didn’t want to.

He cut a sideways glance at Mari. She seemed lost in thought, pensive, her plump lower lip caught between her teeth while she fiddled with the frayed ends of a tear in the leg of her jeans. Stray strands of blond hair fell against her cheek. He had to admit, she didn’t look much like any of her fellow newcomers. She didn’t dress to impress in designer western wear. She didn’t even wear makeup. She certainly didn’t bear much resemblance to Lucy with her expensive clothes and long, lacquered fingernails. There was no choking cloud of perfume hanging around her. He pulled in a deep breath and shifted positions, detecting a hint of lemon oil.

“You worked on the house all day?” he said, trying his best to sound nonchalant.

“Mmm…”

“Why?”

“Why? Because it needed to be done.”

“You fixing to move in, Mary Lee?”

“No. I-”

She heaved a sigh and looked across the yard to the house and the valley that lay beyond. It was hers. She still couldn’t get that into her head. This place was hers and she couldn’t accept it, yet she had pulled the plug on the life she’d led before coming here. Where did that leave her?

In limbo. What a curious place to be. A fog, where contact to the past had been severed and the future lay beyond the thick white mist. What else was there to do but float along in it, let it take her wherever? That was what her vacation to Montana was supposed to be about anyway-to shut down for a time, to live in the moment.