A muscle tightened in his jaw. He said nothing.

“I’ll go make that coffee,” she said softly, tightly, turning away so he couldn’t see her eyes. “It’s instant. I hope you’re not fussy.”

“As long as it’s black and hot,” he said, following her downstairs, guilt riding him every step of the way. He tried to shrug it off, resenting the intrusion, resenting the implication that his judgment wasn’t infallible. Just another reason to get the hell out, he thought. But he followed her into the kitchen instead of turning for the door.

“My specialty: hot, black sludge. Other court reporters used to call me up and order pots of it when they were pulling all-nighters on transcripts.”

“That’s a good job, isn’t it-court reporter?”

“Sure, if you’re an independently wealthy perfectionistic masochist.”

She put water on the stove and got two mugs down from the cupboard. One was blue with white line drawings of cartoon rabbits having sex, the other was brown with cartoon dogs in the same line of pursuit. That Lucy, such a classy broad.

“That wasn’t fair,” she said, sighing as guilt nudged her with an elbow. “It’s a great job for the right person. I wasn’t the right person. Surprise!” She flashed a big, phony, prom-queen smile.

J.D. leaned against the counter and watched her with narrowed eyes. “What will you do now that you’ve given it up?”

“Well, my mother speculates I’ll get a job in a seedy bar, fall into the drug culture, and end up on the streets selling my body for pocket change. I’m slightly more optimistic.”

He didn’t chuckle. He didn’t so much as clear his throat. He just waited for a straight answer. Mari rolled her eyes as she filled the mugs and stirred in Folgers crystals. “So I guess you were absent the day they passed out the senses of humor.”

The corners of his mouth flicked up. “Working.”

“I should have known.” She handed him his mug and blew on her own before hazarding a sip. It tasted like crank-case drippings that had been boiled and strained through dirty sweat socks. Heavenly. All she needed was a cigarette, an impossible deadline, and a lawyer in dire need of mouthwash breathing down her neck and she’d be right at home. She shuddered at the thought.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do next,” she confessed, leaning back against the counter. “That was one of the things I was supposed to ruminate on during my fun-filled summer vacation in the Garden of Eden.”

She sighed, sipped, stared at Rafferty’s belt buckle-a tarnished silver oval with a bronze rope edge and a figure of a calf roper in the center. The words FRONTIER DAYS CHAMPION 1978 were engraved on a ribbon of bronze that arched above the roper. He would have been sixteen or seventeen at the time. She wondered what he had been like as a teenager, as a child. She couldn’t imagine him any way but serious and hard as nails. The idea of those somber gray eyes and unsmiling mouth on a little boy made her heart ache. She thought of him losing his mother to cancer, losing his father to grief and then to another woman. She wanted to put her arms around him and just hold him. She called herself a fool.

“I don’t have to make up my mind tomorrow,” she said, more to distract herself than to make conversation. “I have enough to live on for a while from the sale of my equipment. God, once Lucy’s estate is settled, I’ll have enough to live on until my teeth fall out,” she said, struck anew by the shock. “I suppose most people would be overjoyed by that prospect. I feel… I don’t know… sleazy.”

J.D. arched a brow. “You feel sleazy because she left you money and property?” Lucy wouldn’t have felt guilty. Lucy would have grabbed what she could get her claws into and run away laughing.

“We were pals, not relatives. What’d I ever do to deserve all this?” she asked, waving a hand to encompass the house, the ranch. Her dark brows tugged together above her eyes as she bit her lip and shot him a troubled glance. “Maybe what bothers me most is wondering what Lucy did to deserve it.”

He shrugged and gulped another shot of battery acid. “You’d know more than I would. She was your friend.”

“You don’t have any idea what she was into?”

“Trouble, I expect. She was the kind who liked to poke sticks at rattlesnakes just for fun.”

Mari frowned. “Yeah, well, I’m afraid one of them might have killed her.”

J.D. set his cup down on the counter with a sharp clack. “Jesus, Mary Lee, will you give it up? It was an accident. Accidents happen.”

“And it was just a coincidence that this house was broken into, then Miller Daggrepont’s office was broken into, then my hotel room was broken into?” She shook her head, then impatiently snagged a rope of wild hair and tucked it behind her ear. “I don’t buy it. I think there’s something going on, and if I could find a couple more pieces to the puzzle, I might know what it is. I don’t believe Lucy just went riding up on that ridge for the hell of it. I think she was up there for a reason, and I think someone killed her for a reason.”

“What difference does it make now?” he said roughly. “Dead is dead.”

Mari gaped at him. “I can’t believe you said that! Mr. Code of Honor. Mr. Integrity. What difference does it make?” she sneered, gesturing sharply with her small hands. The too-long sleeves of her robe swayed from side to side. “There’s a big fucking difference between misdemeanor negligent endangerment and felony murder. How can you condone letting someone skate with a fine when a woman’s life has intentionally been ended?”

J.D. tightened his jaw and looked past her, coffee and shame churning in his stomach. He couldn’t condone murder. He just wished like hell he could forget Lucy MacAdam had ever existed, let alone had her existence taken from her. He wished she had never come here, that she had never bought this land on the edge of his world, that her friends hadn’t come here-Mary Lee included. Christ, especially Mary Lee. She distracted him and poked at his conscience and tied him in knots. What the hell did he need with any of that?

“I’ve got work to do,” he growled, and started for the door.

Mari stuck out an arm to block his escape from the kitchen. She stared up at him, feeling sick inside-angry and frightened for her heart and ashamed of herself because of that fear.

“Did she really mean so little to you that you don’t even care if her killer is punished?” she asked softly, her voice a strained rasp. And if Lucy meant so little to him, then what do you think you mean to him, Marilee?

J.D. thought of Del, he spoke of Sheffield. His eyes stayed on the Mr. Peanut tin that stood on the mantelpiece across the great room, smirking at him. “He’s been punished, Mary Lee. Leave it alone and get on with your life.”

“Yeah. Yeah, right,” she whispered bitterly. “What’s one dead sex partner when another will come along and take her place?”

He looked down at her, something wrenching in his chest as he took in the fierce anger and fiercer pride. Tears shimmered in her eyes, magnifying them, making them look like huge liquid jewels. She stuck her chin out defiantly, asking for it.

He didn’t need her. Didn’t want her here. He didn’t need the feelings that were spooking him, making him feel like a trapped wild horse.

“You said it,” he growled, “not me.”

Mari stood in the kitchen, not moving. Dimly, she heard the front door slam, heard his truck come to life and rumble out of the yard and start up the mountain. She wondered vaguely why she hadn’t heard him drive in last night. Too lost in her music, she supposed. Too bad. She might have steeled herself against him if she’d had fair warning. But probably not.

At any rate, all thoughts were peripheral to her pain. Her focus was inward, on the smoldering knot of emotions that crowded her chest. Tangled and painful, a ball of raw nerve endings; she wanted no part of it. She wanted no part of Lucy’s violent death. She wanted no land, no windfall that chained her to that death. She didn’t want trouble. She didn’t want pain. Most especially, she didn’t want to be falling in love with a man as hard, as uncompromising as J. D. Rafferty.