“You don’t own the Flying K,” he pointed out calmly.

“Yet.”

“Well,” J.D. drawled on a long sigh, affecting a boredom he didn’t feel. “We could sit around here all day and talk about nothing, but I’d rather eat pig shit than spend time with your kind, so if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got work to do.”

He waited just long enough to see the color rise behind Bryce’s tan before he started to rein his horse away.

“Am I to take it, then, that you wouldn’t be interested in coming to my little party tonight, Mr. Rafferty?”

“Yep.”

“Too bad,” Bryce said tightly, his smile looking like plastic. He jerked his gaze to Mari as Rafferty rode past him toward the back of his band. “I hope Mr. Rafferty’s opinion doesn’t extend to you, Mari. We’d love to have you join us. Bring your guitar if you like. There’ll be some music people there. Could be an opportunity for you.”

Mari felt she was straddling the fence metaphorically as well as physically, caught between two very different factions of acquaintances. She could feel a dozen pair of eyes on her like spotlights. The one pair she didn’t feel was J.D.’s, and the absence was somehow weightier than all the other stares combined.

“Thank you for the invitation,” she mumbled, her voice little more than a whisper. “I’d love to.”

She ignored the feeling that she was betraying Rafferty. She didn’t owe him any allegiance. She owed Lucy. And the dark-haired man sitting on a bay horse had once known Lucy MacAdam very well indeed. Ben Lucas, king turd on the Sacramento shit pile of trial attorneys. Mari knew him by sight, and she knew him by reputation. What she didn’t know was what the hell he was doing with Evan Bryce.

“We’ll look forward to seeing you tonight, then.” Bryce started to rein his horse around, pulling up as his gaze fell on Will. “Mmm, my, this is a little awkward,” he said, feigning embarrassment. “You would be welcome too, of course, Mr. Rafferty, but as your ex-wife will be there, I think this could be uncomfortable for Samantha. You understand.”

Will said nothing, his gaze fixed on Sam, willing her to look at him. She turned the other way. Ex-wife. Ex-wife. The word flashed in his head like a red neon light. They weren’t divorced… yet. Was that how Sam thought of him? As her ex-husband?

J.D. sat like a sentinel at the back of Bryce’s cadre, showing them the figurative door. He watched impassively as Bryce led the way, saying nothing until Samantha started past him. He tipped his head and spoke her name. She ducked behind the cover of her curtain of hair, avoiding his eyes. He tightened his jaw and turned to Orvis Slokum, who was fumbling with the lead of the pack mule, getting himself hopelessly tangled.

Orvis had been born a loser and gone downhill from there. He was scrawny and grubby with a ferret’s face, thin hair, and bad teeth, and no matter if he meant well, he always managed to do the wrong thing. He had been a screwup as a ranch hand and piss-poor robber. Still, J.D. wished he had had more dignity than to take up with the likes of Bryce.

“Sad to see you come to this, Orvis,” he sighed, as if even prison were preferable.

Orvis fumbled some more with the lead rope, his horse getting nervous as the rest of its stablemates headed back for the trail. Not liking the horse bumping against him, the pack mule pinned its long ears and tried to bite the brown gelding, narrowly missing Orvis’s skinny leg. Orvis split his attention between the contrary mule and his former employer, not quite sure which one scared him more. “Sorry you feel that way, Mr. Rafferty,” he mumbled. “Mr. Bryce, he pays real good.”

The mule pinned its ears and raised up a little on its hind legs. The horse hopped up and down. Orvis turned gray, eyes bugging out of his head. The lead rope seemed like a live tentacle wrapping itself around him. “Whoa, mule! Whoa!”

Rolling his eyes, J.D. leaned over and jerked the rope away, untangling it with a flick of his wrist. “There’s more important things in this world than money, Orvis.”

As he tossed the rope back to Orvis, the mule bolted and ran after its pals. Orvis wheeled his horse around, nearly falling off, and galloped away in hot pursuit, one hand clamped on top of his head to keep his bedraggled hat from flying off.

J.D. shook his head and turned back to his own people. Lyle and his two boys and Chaske were halfway to the house. Tucker hung back, looking uncertain. J.D.’s concern was with the two who remained rooted to their spots.

Will roused himself and climbed through the bars of the fence. He turned toward the house, but his gaze was fixed on his shiny red and white pickup. He wanted to get out, away, go anywhere his wife wasn’t and his brother wasn’t and people didn’t look at him with pity or contempt. The Hell and Gone came to mind.

He would go to the Hell and Gone and in a little while he wouldn’t be wondering why the sight of his wife riding around with Evan Bryce and company made him feel as if he’d been dropped on his head from ten stories up. He wanted out of the marriage. He should have been glad to see her out living it up. What he needed was a drink or two to numb the shock and then he would be able to think straight again. Maybe he’d go downstairs to Little Purgatory and play a hand of stud while his mind stewed on what to do about this latest turn of events.

J.D. cut off his escape route to the truck. “We got a big problem here, little brother,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice.

“Drop it, J.D.” In his own head he sounded twelve all over again, a shaky layer of false bravado over a mess of anger and fear. He didn’t look up. He didn’t blink. His eyes were burning. He clenched his fists at his sides and caught himself wishing, as he had wished back then, that he were able to beat the tar out of J.D., just for the sake of doing it. But J.D. had always been bigger, stronger, better, smarter.

“Will-”

“Just drop it. Please.” It nearly crushed him to add that last weight to his humiliation, but he did it. He ground his teeth and waited, not breathing again until J.D. backed his horse away and let him pass.

J.D. watched him climb into the pickup and tear out of the yard, then turned his attention to Mari. She still sat atop the fence, looking like a waif in her faded jeans and too-big denim shirt, the wind inciting her wild hair to riot. Her eyes were locked on his face, and he steeled himself against their effect.

“Bryce a friend of yours?” he asked carefully.

“I wouldn’t call him that, no. We’ve met.”

“And you’ll go drink his champagne and rub elbows with his famous friends?”

“For my own reasons.”

His gray eyes narrowed. She thought he was probably trying to look tough, blank, uncaring, but she thought she could feel his disappointment, and it meant more to her than it should have.

He shook his head. “You need to hang out with a better class of losers, Mary Lee.”

He picked his reins up and rode off toward the barn, leaving Mari sitting on the proverbial fence. She watched him go, cussing herself for caring what he thought. Behind her, the cattle bawled incessantly, the noise making it impossible for her to think straight. At least that was the excuse she chose as she climbed down off the rail and headed to the barn.

J.D. left the mare in the cross ties and walked out the end of the barn. From there he could see nothing but wilderness. Mountains, trees, sky, grass laced with wild-flowers. It was a view that usually soothed him. He looked at it now and felt as if he were seeing it for the last time. Something like fear snaked through him, a feeling so unfamiliar, so unwelcome, he refused to recognize it for what it was. But he couldn’t do anything to stop its catalysts from hurling through his mind. Bryce’s smiling face was branded into the backs of his eyes as surely as the Rafter T was burned into the hides of his cattle. Bryce, grinning like the goddamn Cheshire cat, as if he had a fifth ace. And, by Christ, he did, didn’t he? He had Samantha.