Mari opened her eyes slowly. She lay tucked beside J.D., her cheek pressed to the hollow of his shoulder, one leg tangled with his. His arm was around her, holding her loosely. The light in the room had faded to the dark grainy texture of an underexposed black and white photograph. Rain still fell beyond the log walls. It ran in sheets over the skylight. It was the only sound. Soothing. Melancholy.

Day was slipping into night. She had no idea what time it was, how much time had passed. She didn’t know whether Rafferty was awake. His breathing was deep and regular. He didn’t say a word. Mari flexed the fingers of her left hand, tangling them in the coarse dark hair that grew across the hard planes of his chest. His heartbeat was slow and even.

What was he thinking? What was he feeling? What did this mean to him?

She wouldn’t ask for fear he would answer her. She didn’t want to hear him say it in that same callous tone he had used the night they met. We had sex. Friendship didn’t enter into it.

Was that all it meant to him? A release. Scratching an itch.

Did she want it to mean more?

That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. She was supposed to be living for the moment, not looking for a future with a man she barely knew. They weren’t exactly a match made in heaven. He was stubborn and ornery and bound and determined that she didn’t belong here.

Pain seeped through her like a wash of salt across old wounds that never healed. All she had ever wanted was someplace to belong. All she had ever looked for was somewhere to fit in. J.D. said she didn’t belong here. He wouldn’t let her fit into his life, not beyond this. He would leave her on the outside looking in. He would come and go from her life at will, but he didn’t want her in his.

She had told herself she would live in the moment, float on in that odd state of limbo, but she wasn’t made that way. In her heart of hearts she wanted more, had wanted more all along.

The joke’s on you, Marilee.

The loneliness that enveloped her was a chill that went soul deep.

“You cold?” His voice was deep and soft as rumpled velvet.

Mari bit her lip and nodded, feeling close to tears. Ridiculous. She had no business crying. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat as J.D. pulled the tattered coverlet around her.

“You’re quiet,” he murmured. “Too quiet.”

He crooked a knuckle under her chin and tilted her face up. She sat and turned away from him, but not before he caught a glimpse of those huge, deep eyes, luminous with tears. The sight kicked him in the gut with all the power of a horse.

“Mary Lee? What’s wrong? Was I too rough? Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Not yet. She stood as he reached for her, his fingertips grazing her bare back.

This room had seen its share of action from the vandals. Clothes that had hung in the closet were strewn across the floor. Mari spied a terry-cloth robe near the foot of the bed, picked it up, and shrugged it on. It swallowed her whole, the sleeves falling well past her fingertips. Fine. She wanted to cocoon herself, insulate herself.

Tucking her hair back behind her ear, she wandered to the dormer window and stared out at the rain-drenched mountainside and the gathering darkness. J.D. watched her from the bed. She could feel his gaze on her, steady, powerful, willing her to turn around. When she didn’t, he got up and came to her, completely unconcerned with his naked state.

“I was thinking about Lucy,” she said, feeling bleak and raw inside. “Wondering if you ever… were together in this room.”

“Lucy doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

“My mistake.” She tried for sarcasm in her laugh and winced at the hollowness of it. “I forgot. It wasn’t anything personal. Just sex.”

“I told you once, I won’t pretend I liked her.”

“What about me, J.D.?” She looked up at him, too proud, too hurt, leading with her chin. “Will you pretend you like me?”

He swore under his breath. “What’s this about, Mary Lee? You want a promise from me? You want pretty words? You got the wrong cowboy.”

She shook her head and looked back out the window. She didn’t have the right to ask for anything more than what he’d given. She was a big girl. She’d known from the start what J.D. wanted; he’d been very plain about it. It wasn’t his fault her moment of self-revelation had come too late.

“Give me a break here, Rafferty. It’s been a tough week, you know,” she said softly.

J.D. stepped up behind her and slid his arms around her, fitting her against his body, enveloping her in his strength. “Tired?” he asked, pressing his lips to her temple.

The tears burned hot behind her eyes. He couldn’t know how tired she was-tired of being the odd one out, tired of being confused. She had come to Montana to rest, to rejuvenate, to pass some time with a friend. Instead, she was being put through tests of endurance and strength. Her nerve endings felt raw, exposed. Her friend was dead and she wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

But the questions wouldn’t go away. There was no one else to find the answers. No one else cared.

“These vacations are hell on a person, you know.” The words were little more than a rasp through the knot of tears in her throat.

“Come here,” J.D. whispered, turning her around in his arms. He cradled her head against his chest, fingers tangled in the hopeless wilderness of her hair. He rubbed her back and murmured to her, and his heart squeezed at the sound of her grudging tears. He didn’t question the tenderness that ached through him like a virus; he ignored it. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a moment in time.

A moment he wouldn’t have given Lucy MacAdam or any woman who had come before her. A moment some nameless, lonely part of him wanted to go on forever.

“You caught me fresh out of handkerchiefs,” he said.

Mari sniffed and laughed, amazed that he would come up with a sense of humor when she needed it most. “That’s okay,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “It’s not my robe.”

He caught hold of the end of a sleeve and gently dried the tears from her cheeks. “I suppose you burned yours in a symbolic gesture against terry cloth.”

“Another joke! Careful, Rafferty, you’ll strain yourself.” She shot him a wry look. “You’re being awfully nice. What’s your angle?”

“I reckon I owe you,” he answered, dancing around the truth. “My uncle took a shot at you. You didn’t have any business going up on that ridge after I told you not to, but I don’t guess you deserved to get the bejesus scared out of you either.”

“Your compassion is overwhelming.”

He didn’t smile at her sarcasm. He studied her face, lifting a hand to touch the bruise on her cheekbone. “You got this when you fell off the mule?”

“That one and a few others. I suppose I should be glad I didn’t break my neck.”

You should be glad Del didn’t want you dead. The words scrolled through his brain, but J.D. kept them to himself, them and the sense of dread that rose inside him.

“He just wants to be left alone,” he said. “The war tore him up inside, ruined his mind.”

“Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?”

“He was for a few years. It nearly killed him being locked up like that. The doctors didn’t help him. No one gave a damn. Finally I just brought him home. He’s family. He belongs on the Stars and Bars.”

“Just like that? A lot of people wouldn’t want him around. A lot of people wouldn’t want the responsibility.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what’s wrong with this country. People have no integrity anymore, no sense of accountability.”

Except J. D. Rafferty. The thought brought a pang of tenderness to Mari’s heart. J. D. Rafferty, the last cowboy hero, the last honest man. He had a code of honor and a way of life that had died out everywhere but in Clint Eastwood movies. He was a hard man; it wouldn’t be wise to romanticize that. But then she thought of him going to take his uncle out of some bleak V.A. hospital. He couldn’t have been more than a teenager at the time, and yet he had taken that responsibility. As he had taken responsibility for the ranch. She thought of what Tucker had told her about him, thought of the child he had never been, thought of the man he had become and the vulnerability he showed no one. Dangerous thoughts. As dangerous to her heart as Del Rafferty had been to her health and well-being.