“You got any aspirin?” he called as she started up the stairs.

“In my purse.”

He dragged the handbag across the table and rummaged through it, fumbling through a mind-boggling array of junk until he came up with a little travel tin of Bayer aspirin and a brown prescription bottle of Tylenol with codeine. He tossed the aspirin back in and went for the good stuff, washing the pills down with half a can of Pepsi from the fridge. On his way back to the table he caught a glimpse of himself in a cracked mirror with a willow twig frame.

“Whoa, you look like the butt end of ugly, son,” he grumbled, frowning at the discoloration around his eye and the angry-looking cut on his forehead.

Of course, he could have looked like the dead side of alive. That was what his truck looked like. All that pretty, shiny metal, crunched and ruined. It broke his heart. He remembered crying over it some as he had lain half conscious among the wreckage. Mostly he remembered thinking about Sam and how this wreck was symbolic. He remembered wondering if she would ever know he had died while trying to smash into the man who was taking her away from him. Now he wondered how long it would be before she found out their insurance rates were taking another jump toward the moon.

She wouldn’t have to help pay for it after she divorced him.

Ex-wife. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.

Groaning, he sank back down on his chair and sat with his elbows on his thighs and his hands hanging down between his knees.

Mary Lee came trotting down the steps in tight jeans and an oversize lavender sweatshirt with the Mystic Moose logo across the front in tasteful white print. If she had run a comb through her hair, it didn’t show.

“Look, Will,” she said, caught somewhere between contrition and resignation. “I’m sorry I jumped all over you. I’m sure you feel bad enough as it is. It’s just that I like you and I hate to see people I like doing things that can get them killed. I just lost one friend. I don’t want to lose another.”

“That’s okay.” He watched as she went into the kitchen and dug through a grocery bag on the counter. She came up with a box of doughnuts and a packet of paper napkins. “Nobody knows more than I do how stupid this was. ’Course, J.D. will claim he knows more and he will proceed to tell me all about it until I wish the truck had blown up with me inside it.”

He sounded so glum, Mari couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. And empathy. She may not have been as self-destructive as Will, but she certainly knew what it was to incur the disapproval of her family. She opened a Pepsi for herself and joined him at the table, setting the doughnut box between them.

He lifted a cinnamon doughnut and saluted her with his soda can. “Breakfast of champions.”

“Meets all the daily requirements for chemical additives and preservatives.” She chose powdered sugar for herself and nibbled at it, shaking down a miniature blizzard on her napkin. “You really ought to see a doctor.”

Will made a face. “I’ve been hurt worse falling out of bed.”

“You must be a fun date.”

“Wanna find out?” He tried to waggle his brows as the codeine kicked in. The pain was suddenly bearable, the numbness pleasant. He laughed a little at the look Mary Lee gave him. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re dancing with the boss hoss. So is this serious? Do I get to call you Sis?”

“Not.”

She seemed to take an inordinate interest in picking up doughnut crumbs from her napkin with the tip of her finger. Something about the tension around her mouth struck a warning bell. Her eyes had been red when she had first turned around and looked at him out there on the deck, as if she had been crying. Way to go, J.D., so smooth with the ladies. About as smooth as the business end of a porcupine. Poor Mary Lee.

“You drew a tough one, sweetheart,” he said softly, never thinking that she might not understand rodeo jargon, the dialect of the cowboy. “He’s married to the job, you know, to the land. I guess he figured that would be safest. Didn’t think the land could duck out on him. ’Course, we have since found out that the land is just a pretty whore that goes to the highest bidder. Ain’t that a kick in the butt?”

“Do you care?”

“Not the way he does. The ranch is a lot of things to J.D.-mother, lover, duty. For me it was the thing that tied my mama to a marriage she didn’t want. I never had much of a taste for duty.”

“But you stay anyway. Why?”

Why? That was a question he asked himself on a regular basis. Why not just leave? Why not just cut the ties and run free? He never came up with an answer. He never wanted to dig deep enough to find it. Too afraid of what he might unearth. What a coward you are, Willie-boy.

He didn’t answer. Mari didn’t press. She of all people respected the confusion that tangled around the human heart. Why had she gone to school instead of to seek her fortune as a songwriter? Why had she stayed on the job when she hated it? Why had she tried to sell herself on Brad Enright when she didn’t really love him?

Why couldn’t life be sunny and simple?

She sighed and dusted the powdered sugar off her hands. “You need stitches for that cut. Come on, cowboy,” she said, pushing to her feet. “I’m driving you in to see Dr. Charm.”

MACDONALD TOWNSEND paced back and forth along the length of the picture window in his study. The view out that window, a panorama of wild Montana beauty that included a spectacular slice of snow-capped Irish Peak, had cost him a considerable chunk of money. He didn’t so much as glance at it that morning. He was beyond admiring scenery. He was beyond enjoying much of anything about his getaway “cabin,” two thousand square feet of pine logs and thermal-pane windows and fieldstone fireplaces. On the other side of his study door Bruno, his German shorthair, whined and scratched at the woodwork. Townsend didn’t hear it.

His life was going to hell. It was as simple as that. He paused beside the heavy antique oak desk to light a cigarette, but his hands were shaking too badly to accomplish the task and he gave it up, too wired to try again. He knew what he needed, what his nerves were screaming for. There was a stash in the upper right-hand drawer of the desk, but he fought the need, desperate to break free of it. Sweat filmed his face. His nose was running. He pulled a damp, wadded-up handkerchief out of his hip pocket and wiped it across his upper lip, resuming his pacing.

His heart was racing like a rabbit’s, something that seemed to be happening more and more often. He didn’t know if it was the cocaine or the stress or both. They seemed to feed off each other, chasing around and around in a vicious circle that was taking him closer and closer to the point of no return.

He stopped and stared out the window, seeing nothing. How had he ever come to this? He’d had the world at his fingertips. His career had been poised perfectly on the ladder that would eventually take him to the Supreme Court. He was respected and admired. He had a wife who was respected and admired. There hadn’t been so much as a speck of lint on his record.

Then he met Lucy MacAdam. He dated the start of his decline into this hell in which he was living to the night they met, as if her appearance had been a portent sent from the netherworld. As if she had been a familiar of the devil sent to destroy him by leading him down the paths of degradation.

He still remembered that first meeting as if it had happened last night. He had seen her across the room at a party in the elegant home of Ben Lucas. Her gaze hit him like a laser beam. Then that patented smile canted the corners of her mouth, wry and knowing, as if she were fully aware of her evil power over men and delighted in it. His skin had tightened from the scalp down, tingling with raw sexual awareness. At the time her hair had been nearly platinum blond, cut in a jaw-length bob that perpetually looked as if a lover had just run his hands through it. She wore a simple gold metallic knit dress that began in a snug collar around her throat and hugged her figure like a glove, ending high on her slender thighs. She wore nothing beneath it. He had discovered that fact later in the evening, when she had led him by the necktie into a little-used guest bathroom.