Bryce started for the door, eager to rejoin the party. Townsend was tedious. He wanted to turn his attention over to Samantha. Her innocence was genuine, her beauty fresh. He wanted to stand beside her and watch the wonder in her eyes as she took in the experience of meeting famous people and living the good life for the first time.

The judge’s voice bit into him as he reached the door.

“Bryce, do you know who killed Lucy?”

Bryce gave him a hooded look. “Of course. Sheffield. It was an accident… Wasn’t it?”

Mari sat on the deck, curled up in an Adirondack chair, covered with the serape from the sofa. Staring down at the moon-silvered creek, she let her mind tumble and race. She smoked the expensive French cigarettes one after another, not tasting them, just grateful for the nicotine. She would quit-just not tonight. She would have that fresh start-if her old life would ever give up and let go.

God, Townsend snorting coke, Lucas representing the man who shot Lucy. All of them slithering around in Bryce’s den of vipers. Watch yourself with Bryce, luv… Lucy enjoyed playing with snakes, but then, she had fangs of her own…

Snakes in the Garden of Eden. The image sent shivers crawling down her spine.

“What the hell were you into, Lucy?” she whispered, staring through tears at the Mr. Peanut tin she had brought out and set on the table.

In one hand she clutched the letter her friend had left behind. She didn’t try to read it. She only held it, as if it were a talisman, as if merely touching it might give her the power to see into its author’s past. But all that came was a sense of dread and a sense of confusion, and she didn’t know if she wanted to try to reach past either of them.

What she wanted was someone to confide in, a shoulder to lean on. She felt so alone. She had cut herself free of her family, free of everyone she had known. Somehow it only made her feel worse to think that no one from that life would have understood or helped her anyway. She could hear her mother’s voice ringing with disapproval. Well, Marilee, what do you expect? The people you run with. Honestly, it isn’t any wonder one of them was shot dead. If you’d listened to your father and me and gone to law school… if you’d married that nice Enright boy… if you were more like your sisters…

In the private theater of her mind she could see Lisbeth and Annaliese sitting primly, their legs crossed, arms folded, smug spite shining in their eyes. It was a cinch no one Lisbeth or Annaliese knew had ever been shot or had an affair with a married district court judge or screwed a top trial attorney on his desk while his client waited in the anteroom. They wouldn’t understand or offer support. She thought of Brad and knew his biggest concern would have been the possibility of her getting him an introduction to Ben Lucas.

She thought of the people she knew here. Drew would listen to her, but what would she say? All she had were fragments and hunches and bad feelings. Then there was the ugly possibility that he would tell her something she didn’t want to hear. What she wanted most was a pair of arms around her, reassurance, and the awareness of strength. Someone well-grounded in sanity. Someone there to catch her. Someone to hang on to.

J. D. Rafferty came to mind. She didn’t want him to, but he came anyway, which was just like him. What a joke that she would want to turn to him, she thought, trying in vain to muster up a sense of humor. He didn’t even want her in the state.

He wanted her only in his bed.

J.D. stood at the rail of the corral and watched the horses by moonlight. They ignored him now that his supply of butter mints had run out. The little palomino mare turned and looked at him every once in a while, curious about him, but the others all stood with their hind legs cocked and their ears back, dozing. For the horses that had worked, the day had been long and hard. They weren’t interested in losing any sleep over J.D.’s presence.

J.D. knew how they felt. Physically, he was beat, his body aching, muscles protesting even necessary movement. Mentally, he felt as though someone had taken a lead pipe after his brain. Spiritually, he had a big old stone tied around his neck, and he was going under in deep, deep water.

The sight of Will’s wife with Bryce’s crowd had scared the hell out of him. He had been able to fool himself up to then, believing he could thumb his nose at Evan Bryce, play his game, and beat him. But Bryce had just been toying with him, amusing himself. Now he was upping the ante and J.D. was playing with a busted hand.

If Samantha divorced Will-and God knew she had grounds for it-she could drag him to court and sue him for his part of the Stars and Bars. If she won, Bryce would be standing right there beside her, ready to stick his foot in the door. And once Bryce got a toehold, that would be the end. Four generations of Rafferty stewardship would be over, and J.D. would be the one who let it happen. The burden of guilt, the shame, would be his to bear. Beyond that, if he didn’t have the Stars and Bars, he had nothing at all.

He looked out over the horses to the hills and trees beyond, and felt as bleak as a sun-parched bone.

He would have nothing.

He had no one.

He thought of Mary Lee and couldn’t quite steel his heart against the insidious desire to pull her close and just hold her.

Fool.

“You were mighty hard on the boy today.”

J.D. glanced over as Tucker hobbled up to the fence and hooked a boot over the bottom rail. The old man met his glare, unblinking, then turned and spat a stream of Red Man into the dirt.

“He’s not a boy. He’s a man,” J.D. said. “It’s time he acted like one.”

“He’s going through hard times, J.D.”

“Aren’t we all? It’s a hard life.”

“You don’t make it any easier-on yourself or anyone else.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Tuck,” J.D. said wearily. Hanging his head, he looked down at the hands he dangled between the bars of the fence. Workingman’s hands, thick, tough, callused. “I’m hanging on by the skin of my fingertips. Like those idiot rock climbers who come out here on the weekends.”

Tucker was silent, working his chaw, thinking. The pharmacist’s palomino mare wandered over and sniffed at him, rubbing her nose against his beard stubble. He pushed her away with a gentle hand. “You’re not the only one hanging on, son. We’re right there with you-me, Chaske, Will.”

“What if he just lets go, Tuck?” J.D. said, for the first time giving voice to a fear that went deep and well beyond thoughts of the Stars and Bars. The thread that bound them as brothers had always been strained as their parents had pulled them in opposite directions. What if it broke? What would he feel? Relief?

“He won’t,” Tucker said with more conviction than he felt. He stepped back from the fence, spat, and wiped his chin on the sleeve of his shirt. “He won’t. He’s a Rafferty.

“You oughta get some sleep, son,” he ordered.

He moved off toward the house, his gait the pained shuffle of an old cowboy. J.D. stayed at the fence, knowing he would feel more peace with the horses than he would in his bed. In his bed his thoughts would drift toward Mary Lee and dangerous longings for things he could never have.

He turned toward Bryce’s place, imagining that he could catch snatches of music on the wind. She was there tonight, drinking Bryce’s champagne and laughing at his jokes. She was one of them, which quite simply meant she could never be anything more to him than temptation.

Too bad. On nights like this one it would have been nice to have someone to rub his shoulders and share his concerns, warm his bed and ease his needs. And the taste of Mary Lee Jennings lingered in his mouth, and the feel of her lingered against him. On nights like this one, when dawn seemed a long way off, temptation was damn hard to resist.