Could he explain the contusions, abrasions, broken bones? Incurred in the fall from her mount. Period. Had she been sexually assaulted? Didn’t know, had no call to look, and what kind of dumb-ass question was that anyway? The woman was killed in a hunting accident. End of story. End of conversation.

He had been more interested in his job of castrating yearling horses than in discussing post-mortem exams. He offered no support or sympathy.

Mari drove away from the interview feeling defeated and nauseated, the smell of blood in her nostrils and the image of a German shepherd trotting across the ranch yard with discarded horse testicles held like a prize in his mouth burned indelibly into her brain. She shuddered now as it came back to her. That wasn’t something the average court reporter got to see every day. Thank God. Turning her mind back to Lucy was almost a relief.

What was she doing up on that mountainside in the first place? Whom had she gone to meet?

J.D.?

The thought brought a sick, hollow feeling to her stomach. Lucy died on Rafferty Ridge. She’d been sleeping with J. D. Rafferty. Del Rafferty saw ghosts and could shoot the balls off a mouse at two hundred yards.

Del might have seen Lucy as a threat. She was an outsider who had bought a piece of Montana at the foot of the Stars and Bars, just one of many who would try to encroach on his sanctuary.

What if Del had killed her? What good could come of proving that? To lock him up would be a sentence worse than death. It wouldn’t bring Lucy back. It would destroy whatever fragile thread there was between her and J.D.

And just what do you think will come of that thread anyway, Marilee?

Nothing. It wasn’t strong enough to bind them. She wasn’t looking for that anyway. God knew, he wasn’t.

And where does that leave you, Marilee?

Alone. The odd one out. Drifting in limbo in a dark paradise.

Staring out over the valley, listening as an elk called, she plucked out the poignant opening bars of a Mary-Chapin Carpenter song. “Not Too Much to Ask.” It was just a song. Something to sing, to occupy her mind and her fingers. She told herself it didn’t come from her own heart, the words of longing and jaded hope. She didn’t need to be anything to J. D. Rafferty. She didn’t want to know about the past that had toughened the armor around his heart. She played it only because playing had always calmed her mind and soothed her.

Her voice carried out on the cool evening air, strong and warm and honest. Too true to everything she was feeling.

A silver mist floated above the stream, as soft and smoky as her voice. Far up the valley the elk called again. A coyote answered in a faint voice. The evening star winked on above the mountains to the west.

J.D. hesitated in the deep shadows along the side of the house. He stood there, transfixed, mesmerized by her voice-the aching tenderness, the world-weariness, the complex shades of emotion and experience.

With a handful of keenly chosen notes on the guitar, she segued from a love song to a portrait of a place. A place of mountains and water. A land of sky. Simple strengths and dying traditions. Horses in high grass. Elk beside a stream. Sagging porches and an old church in need of paint. A feeling of innocence and wisdom and stillness. Of desperately clinging to a time that was already gone, and mourning for its passing.

With just a few simple sentences she unerringly painted this place. His land, his feelings, his fears. The words touched him in a way no woman ever had. They reached inside and cradled a part of him he never let anyone near-his heart. For a few moments he leaned against the rough logs of the house and allowed himself to exist in her words. Allowed himself to hurt. Allowed himself to need something he couldn’t even name. And when the song was over and the guitar ran out of notes, he just stood there and ached at the sense of loss.

Slowly he stepped from the shadows. Mari turned and looked at him, her eyes wide and dark.

“Taking a night off from the social whirl, Mary Lee?” he asked, but he sounded more weary than wry, the edge of his mood dulled by feelings too heavy to ignore.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice husky with cynical humor, her pretty mouth kicking up on one corner. “I usually try to sit one out when I’ve got a concussion. People with head injuries tend to drag a party down.”

J.D.’s gaze sharpened as he tried to discern whether or not she was joking. In the faint light that came from inside the house he could see the lines of strain in her face. She looked gaunt, fragile, her skin as pale and translucent as a lily’s petal.

“I don’t suppose it’ll make the papers until Thursday-seeing how that’s the only day the paper is printed,” she said, looking vaguely embarrassed as she set her guitar aside and climbed down off the table. A filmy skirt swirled around her calves. The sleeves of her denim jacket fell to her fingertips. “I got beat up last night.”

“You what!”

He charged forward a step, looking as if he thought he ought to pick her up or sit her down or do something, but the emotions that compelled him were obviously too foreign to decipher and so he did nothing but stare at her. Mari found his reaction sweet, but she didn’t let herself dwell on it.

“Someone thought it would be cute to hide in my hotel room and smack me in the head with the telephone when I came in.” She said it simply, as if she hadn’t been terrified. Inside, the residual fear quivered like a tuning fork. “I wasn’t amused.”

“Jesus Christ, Mary Lee!”

He took the last step to close the distance between them and brought his hands up to cradle her face and turn it to the light. She winced as his fingertips slid back into her hair and grazed the tender spot.

The feelings that tore through him were unfamiliar, unwelcome, but too strong to hold back. He couldn’t stand the idea of anyone physically hurting her. She was little, delicate… his. Maybe not forever, but for as long as she stayed here. The protective instincts he reserved for his family and his land surged past all barriers to include Mary Lee.

“Who was it?” he demanded.

She gave a little shrug. “Sorry. I hate to sound like a bigot, but all those guys in ski masks look alike to me.”

“Are you all right?”

The rough concern in his voice touched Mari in a place more sensitive than her injury. The vulnerability, the loneliness, the longing for something beyond her reach, rose like a tide.

“No,” she whispered. She tried for a smile. It trembled and fled. “I could stand to be held for a while.”

He slid his arms around her and gathered her into him, wrapped her carefully in his strength. Mari burrowed her face into his shoulder and breathed deep. Ivory soap underscored by a subtle male musk. He had showered before coming down. His shirt was soft and smelled of sunshine. Above all, he was warm and strong and she fit against him perfectly. As if she belonged there.

She slipped her hands around to the small of his back, absorbing the feel of washed cotton and hard muscle through her fingertips. “This is nice,” she whispered.

“Did they steal anything?”

“I don’t have anything worth stealing.” Except my heart. She felt it slipping away.

“He didn’t hurt you… otherwise?” Christ, if some bastard had raped her-

“No. No,” she whispered, hugging him. “I don’t think it was me he was after, but I’d rather not talk about that just now.”

Mari tilted her head back. The light that spilled out from the house was just bright enough to highlight the chiseled planes and hard ridges of J.D.’s face. No sculptor could have better captured the essence of the West. Everything about it-and about him-was etched into his face-his pride, his arrogance, his integrity, his toughness. A pair of lines slashed across his broad forehead like taut stretches of barbed wire. His nose was a bold, straight blade, nothing fancy, a no-nonsense kind of nose. Above the rock that was his jaw his mouth was habitually a tight, compressed line.