“It’s really too bad you didn’t bring your guitar to the party the other night,” Bryce said, tilting his head and giving her a look of censure. “Rob Gold from Columbia would have loved you. Now he’s gone back to L.A.”

Mari shrugged, her excitement at the prospect of meeting a record exec tempered by the source of the information. “Some other time, maybe.”

“Maybe, nothing,” Bryce declared. “You ought to hop a plane and go to him. I can make a couple of phone calls if you like-”

And get me out of Montana. “Thanks anyway, but I don’t think this is the right time for me to jump into anything.”

“Opportunities don’t happen along every day.”

“No, well, I don’t have friends killed every day either. I’d like a little time to recover.”

He gave her his patronizing fatherly look, tipping his small chin down almost to the puff of chest hair billowing out the open placket of his white oxford shirt. “You’re loyal to a fault, sweetheart. Lucy’s probably looking down at you, snickering. She would have pounced on a plum like this. Lucy was never one to miss a chance to get ahead-was she, Drew?”

Their gazes locked for an instant. Mari watched them, a fist of tension clenching in her chest. Drew rose gracefully from the piano bench and took Samantha by the arm.

“Samantha luv, may I have a word?”

Samantha’s eyes went wide. “I’m off tonight, Mr. Van Dellen.”

“Yes, darling, I’m well aware,” he countered smoothly, drawing her away from Bryce and toward the side exit to the veranda.

Bryce let her go without a hint of objection. He dropped down on the bench in the spot Drew had vacated and took a long pull on his Pellegrino. His Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork in his throat. Pressing his lips together and blotting the residual moisture with the heel of his hand, he adjusted his position a quarter turn toward Mari and pretended to be gravely concerned.

“How are you doing, Marilee? We heard you had a run-in with a burglar the other night.”

“Yeah, or something.” She shrugged it off. “Lucky for me he hit me in the head. My head is generally considered hard to the point of being impenetrable.”

“Not a laughing matter, angel,” he said with a frown. “You could have been killed.”

“Could I?”

“It happens.” It was his turn to shrug, as if to say violent death was just one of those things, an unforeseen inconvenience on any tourist’s itinerary. “So when are you going to come out and spend a day at Xanadu? With all that’s happened, you could probably use an afternoon by the pool with nothing to worry about.”

With nothing to worry about except which of the snakes in Bryce’s pit might be a murderer. What a relaxing scene-stretched out in a chaise with a daiquiri in one hand, scanning the suspects through the dark lenses of a pair of Wayfarers. Bryce and his court of vipers: the coke-snorting Judge Townsend, the shark lawyer Lucas. Maybe Bryce could fly in the sharpshooting Dr. Sheffield just to make things really interesting. Then Del Rafferty could climb up in the turret of Bryce’s rustic palace and pick them all off one by one with an assault rifle. What a swell day that would be.

“I’ll let you know,” she said, brushing the wrinkles out of her jeans as she stood. “Break’s over. Time to entertain the troops.”

“Knock ’em dead, sweetheart.”

He beamed a smile at her. Ever the benevolent monarch. He made his way toward his regular table, the high heels of his cowboy boots tilting his slim hips to an angle that encouraged swaggering. Waiting for him were Lucas, the actress Uma Kimball clinging to him like a limpet. There was no sign of Townsend. At the far end of the table, the bimbob was amusing himself by working his pecs behind a blue muscle shirt that looked like body paint. Sharon Russell was in her right-hand-man seat, wearing a black leather halter top with a neckline that plunged below table level and a scowl that would have done Joan Crawford proud.

Mari grimaced as she shrugged her guitar strap over her shoulder. “Careful, Shar baby,” she muttered. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you your face could stay that way? Guess not.”

Samantha came in the side exit looking on the verge of tears. Bryce intercepted her and steered her back out the door. Drew stalked past the piano, through the crowd, and out the door that led to his office.

Stepping up to the microphone, Mari strummed a chord and sang the opening line of a Mary-Chapin Carpenter tune, thinking that life around New Eden was getting curiouser and curiouser.

J.D. heard her voice before he set foot in the lounge. Smoky and low, strong with emotion-pain, confusion, longing for something beyond her reach. He edged inside the door and stood in the shadows.

She sat on a stool in front of a small band, a soft spotlight gilding her silver-blond hair in an aura of gold. Propped on her knee was the old guitar that seemed almost a part of her when she played it. Her fingers moved over the strings, plucking out a slow, melancholy tune. She sang of a relationship growing cold, a man slipping away behind a wall of silence and indifference; painful words left unspoken and hanging in the air, their invisible weight oppressive. A woman helpless to stop an inevitable loss. Regret for what might have been, but never would be.

He thought he might have heard the song before, but he’d never heard it like this-with the ache of loss an almost palpable thing. He tried to shut out the words, tried to detach himself from the dull throb of guilt that reverberated in his chest with each low note on the guitar. He tried to tell himself he had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn’t taken more than she had offered. Hell, he hadn’t taken that much. With that thought came not vindication, but regret, and he shoved that aside as quickly and ruthlessly as the rest.

Between verses he moved up along the wall and slid into a vacant chair at the far side of the stage area. Her eyes found his unerringly in the gloom. He thought her voice thickened a bit, but her fingers never faltered on the strings. As she plucked out the final notes, she dropped her head down near the body of the old guitar, her unruly mane tumbling forward to hide her face. She sat motionless while the crowd applauded, then set the guitar aside, walked off the stage, and out the side door.

The trio struck up a jazz number. J.D. rose and cut in front of them to exit through the door Mary Lee had taken.

“What’s with you, Rafferty?” she asked as he stepped out onto the veranda.

She stood with her butt against the railing, arms crossed in front of her. A slice of amber light from the last of the sunset cut across her, turning her half-gold, half-shadow.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You ruined my morning. You ruined my afternoon. You won’t be happy until you ruin my evening too?”

“I tried to catch you at the ranch, but you’d gone already.”

“So now you can ruin my evening in front of a hundred witnesses. That should make your day.”

J.D. took the verbal jabs without complaint. He supposed he deserved them. It was better this way, anyhow, that she stay mad at him, that she would rather strike out at him than get close. He would rather be a bastard now than broken later by some emotion that served no useful purpose. Or so he told himself.

“I don’t have to take it, you know,” she said, her voice hoarse, the muscles of her face tightening. Blinking furiously, she shoved herself away from the railing and started past him.

J.D. caught her by the arm and pulled her in alongside him. “I never set out to hurt you, Mary Lee. In fact, I came here to see that you don’t get hurt.”

Mari glared up at him and jerked her arm from his grasp. “That boat sailed a while ago, skipper.” She started away from him again, not sure of where she was going, knowing only that she didn’t want to see Rafferty when she got there. But his next words stopped her cold.