He stood in the curve of the baby grand’s side, no more than two feet from her. Mari shook her head a little. Forcing a smile, she rose and pulled the guitar case up into her arms and held it like a dance partner.

“There’s not much to tell. I led with my heart. That’s never a very intelligent thing to do.”

Drew frowned. “Perhaps not, but think what a grand place the world would be if we all dared do it.”

He slipped his arms around her and the guitar and hugged her tight. “If you decide you need an ear to bend or a shoulder to cry on, you know who to come to.”

“Thanks.”

“Get some sleep tonight, luv,” he said, stepping back. “You look all done in.”

“Yeah, well…” Mari shrugged. “It started out as a bad hair day and went downhill from there.”

He smiled gently then grew serious. “And as for the other…” He reached out and brushed back an errant strand of her hair. “Let it go, darling. No good can come of it now. I shouldn’t want to see you hurt trying to change something that can’t be changed.”

She watched him as he glided between the tables to the bar, another line of Lucy’s coming back to her-All the good ones are married or gay. She was sure Drew knew something more about Lucy’s life here than he was telling her, but he claimed he couldn’t shed any light on her death and she had to accept that as truth. He was just too good a friend to hide something so ugly.

Saying good night to Tony, she let herself out the side door and wandered down the boardwalk along the side of the lodge. Echoes of her fight with J.D. rang in her hollow footfalls. She ignored them as best she could. Even though she’d gotten little sleep the past two nights, she was too wired to go straight to her room. She couldn’t imagine finding much solace in sleep. She had too much stewing in her subconscious to allow her to rest.

She thought fleetingly of going out to the ranch, dragging blankets out to the field to sleep beneath the stars among the llamas, but visions of grizzly bears and wandering madmen chased the fantasy away. Miller Daggrepont had been found dead in the middle of nowhere. And Lucy. There would be no sleeping in the guest bed at the ranch either. Aside from spooking her, the mere thought of spending the night way out there alone filled her head with Rafferty’s warm male scent. Damned mule-headed cowboy.

He thought he had to take on the whole world with one hand tied behind his back and no one standing on his sidelines. He was Alan Ladd in Shane, only bigger and ornerier. John Wayne without the knee-knocking walk. Hercules on a horse. Superman in a Stetson. Chivalrous and cruel. As hard as granite. As vulnerable as a broken heart. He didn’t want to admit caring about anyone who could possibly care about him-not Tucker or Will, certainly not Mary Lee the outsider.

Romanticizing again, Marilee? How like you.

Rafferty was no silver-screen cowboy hero. He was hard as nails and he didn’t want her for anything other than to relieve his testosterone imbalance and increase his property holdings. Nothing terribly romantic about that.

Even as she tried to convince herself of his villainy, she saw him in her mind’s eye, standing at the end of his barn where he thought no one could see him, looking out at the land he loved, his face a bleak mask of desperation.

Half resigned and half disgusted, she waded through the dew-damp meadow grass to her rock and climbed up to sit and stare back at New Eden. Oblongs of golden light marked windows of individual rooms in the Moose, where other people were having trouble winding down. She wondered which of the lights belonged to Drew and Kevin. She wondered how much Drew kept from his partner. She wondered if they ever had the kind of fights where one of them walked away feeling as if his heart had been kicked black and blue.

Things were still going strong at the Hell and Gone. The place lit up the night like a house afire. Noise pounded out through the walls and doors and windows, losing definition with distance so that all Mari could make out was the distorted thump of a bass guitar and the high crash of cymbals like glass shattering. She wondered if Will was inside, drinking himself blind again.

Her heart ached for him. Will, the screwup, the Rafferty black sheep. Funny he wasn’t the one she had fallen for; they had the most in common. But then, he had a wife.

She started to think about Samantha and shook her head. What a mess. She’d come to Montana for a break from reality and had fallen splat in the middle of a soap opera-good versus evil, greedy land baron versus the small family rancher, intrigue, infidelity, and God only knew what else. The road less traveled was turning out to be pretty damned crowded and rougher than a son of a bitch.

There was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to walk away. But it was a small part, a remnant of the old Marilee. She pushed it away like a dry husk and felt a little stronger. She didn’t want to leave Montana. She wanted to belong here-not just live here, belong here. She wanted to be as much a part of the place as Rafferty and the mountains and the big, big sky. And if she was to be worthy of the place, then she would have to adopt its codes-to do the right thing, to prize integrity and courage and accountability. And her first mission on this quest would be to find out the truth about Lucy’s death.

No small task with no easy answers. And no one to help her.

Tipping her head back, she looked up at the millions of stars that were scattered across the night sky and found the North Star shining bright above the peaks. Star light, star bright. She stared up at the blue-white diamond points and wished for just one thing, knowing in her heart of hearts it wouldn’t be coming tonight.

Will lay in the bed of Tucker’s old H truck, staring up at the stars through a sheen that might have been tears or the blur of too much booze. He was beyond knowing. Too bad he wasn’t beyond remembering. Images rolled across the back of his mind like a silent movie: sleeping out in the pickup bed when he was a kid, J.D. slipping into the cab and taking the truck out of gear to roll down through the yard, scaring the piss out of him. The two of them staying out all night then down in the high grass beyond the pens, where you couldn’t make out the yard light because of the barn, and you could pretend you were anywhere.

Then suddenly he was fifteen, sleeping off a bender in the back of Tucker’s H, staring up at the spinning sky and cursing God for giving him a stubborn son of a bitch for a father and a brother who made Tom Rafferty look soft by comparison. Wishing he could be free and at the same time wishing he could be more like J.D. He wanted to be everything to everybody. Instead, he was nothing. Not good enough to be a Rafferty. Not tough enough to run the Stars and Bars. His mother’s son-a crime that made him suspect in the eyes of every rancher in the valley, a title that made him a prince among the crowd his mother ran with. Prince of the do-nothings.

Then a few more years spun past and he was lying in the back of his own truck with Sam tucked in beside him. A silly grin on his face. A big warm feeling in the middle of his chest. Feeling edgy and wild. On the brink of something new, something he couldn’t name.

And then he was alone, parked on Third Avenue in front of the house the Jerry Masons had vacated in the dead of night six months before on account of a little discrepancy with Jerry’s creditors. Alone and drunk, listening to the airy purr of a Mercedes engine as it idled in front of the house he used to share with his ex-wife, ex-wife, ex-wife…

You’re gonna be free now, Willie-boy.

Free of the ranch. Free of J.D. Free of Sam.

Free to be me.