The fear of that started in his belly and swallowed him whole. And the stars blurred together as tears ran down his face.

Sharon turned her face up to a heaven as black as pitch and studded with pinpoints of light. She tried to imagine the heat of all the stars flowing into her and feeding her, recharging her, but their light was cold and white, and she felt nothing but emptiness.

She lay on a chaise on the balcony outside the bedroom, naked and alone, her long, angular body stretched out, silicone-enlarged breasts thrusting toward the sky like pyramids. She knew she was fully visible to the ranch hands who lived in an apartment above the horses in the stable. She knew one was watching her now, but she didn’t care. On another night she might have performed for him. On another night she might have invited him to join her as she had on other occasions because he shared her taste for the rough stuff and because the idea of that kind of sex with a man who was dirty and ugly seemed only fitting to her. But tonight she had other things on her mind.

Bryce had yet to come up to bed. He had sequestered himself in the inner sanctum of his study to think.

Not an uncommon occurrence. Bryce’s mind was like a Swiss watch-precision cogs and wheels running perfectly, ideas spinning through the workings. His mind and an absence of conscience had made him a wealthy man. She respected that. But Sharon suspected tonight he wasn’t thinking of business, he was thinking of Samantha Rafferty, and the idea pierced her like a skewer.

The obsession was deepening, as it had with Lucy MacAdam. With Lucy the attraction had been her style and cunning and her self-professed power over men. Theirs had been a clash of wills, a mating of cobras. Samantha Rafferty’s appeal was opposite in every way-guileless, clueless, unsure.

Sharon closed her eyes, blocking out the sky, filling her head with the vision of Bryce and the girl together. Tormenting herself with the vision. Fear slithered through her, twining around her heart, squeezing like a python. Arousal curled through it like a barbed vine. The images tilted and shifted. The partners changed. Other faces came into view, other bodies-her own among the tangle of arms and legs, light skin and dark. Memories of degradations past, the things she would do for Bryce, to Bryce, to herself. All of it for him.

The girl would never be a strong enough partner for Bryce. Her innocence would bore him eventually. His tastes would repulse her. Sharon tried to soothe herself with that promise. She closed her eyes and thought of Bryce, and satisfied herself with her own touch as she visualized him. She loved him. He was the only person in the world she loved-herself included. When the end came and she was thinking of him, there were stars behind her eyelids and heat rushing from within.

But when she opened her eyes she was alone. The stars were a million miles away.

J.D. sat on the porch with his legs hanging over the edge and his narrowed gaze on the night sky. Clear sky. Good weather. They would have a good day to move the cattle tomorrow-only they wouldn’t be moving the cattle tomorrow. They were short a hand.

He should have been glad Will was gone. No more screwups. No more questions of loyalty or duty. No more wondering when he would pick up and leave to go rodeo, or when he would gamble away two months’ worth of bank payments. No more reminder of the long, sad history of the Rafferty boys. He should have been glad. Instead, there was a yawning emptiness inside him.

He could have attributed it to a lot of things-the supper he had missed while tramping along the banks of the Little Snake with Dan Quinn and his deputies, the specter of an uncertain future that loomed over the ranch, the dead ends he’d run down in his attempts to stop Bryce from buying out the Flying K. But those answers were untrue and he’d never been a liar. He prided himself on that and other things that no one seemed to care about in the world beyond his own. Integrity. Accountability. Courage to do the right things, the hard things.

What did it matter if it mattered only to him?

What was any of it worth if he was the last of his kind?

I feel sorry for you, Rafferty. You’ll end up with this land and nothing else.

Christ, he hated irony, and he hated being wrong. He had never wanted Will to be a part of him or a part of this place. Now Will was gone. The relationship they had bent and twisted and abused was finally broken. And he cared. A lot.

He had never wanted a woman to matter to him. Then along came Mary Lee from a world he distrusted and despised, as wrong for him as she could be. And she mattered. Finding Miller Daggrepont’s body had sent a jolt of fear through him. Fear for Mary Lee.

Can’t be afraid for somebody you don’t care anything about, can you, J.D?

Never been a liar. What a lie that was.

He tried to tell himself he hadn’t been affected by her tears or her words outside the lounge at the Mystic Moose. That it didn’t matter that he’d hurt her or that he’d been the biggest son of a bitch this side of Evan Bryce. They weren’t suited. He didn’t need the kind of woman she was. And what would she need with a man like him? She was a bright, modern woman on the brink of a rich new life. He was an antique. His life was obsolete. He was tied to a tradition that was dragging him under like an anchor in high water. Skilled in ways that didn’t matter. A self-trained isolationist who had honed loneliness to perfection and called it inner peace.

Never been a liar.

The hell you say, J.D.

“A fine night.”

Chaske appeared from nowhere and lowered his lean old body to sit down the porch from J.D. By starlight he looked like a Native American version of Willie Nelson-the long braids, the headband, faded jeans, and a Waylon Jennings T-shirt. J.D. glanced at him sideways.

“You gonna tell me I’m a jackass too?” he challenged. “Tucker beat you to it.”

Chaske shrugged as if to say, You win some, you lose some, and dug the makings of a cigarette out of his hip pocket. The thin paper glowed blue-white against the dark.

“I don’t need to hear it,” J.D. said.

“Mmmm.”

“Will is who he is. I am who I am. This day was bound to come.”

“Mmmm.” The old man opened a cotton pouch and stretched a line of tobacco down the crease in the paper. He tightened the pouch string, using his teeth, then rolled the paper and licked the edge in a movement that had been perfected over a great many years.

“Will’s gone,” J.D. said, essentially talking to himself. “We’ll just have to deal with that. I’ll get on the phone tomorrow and find us a hand. We can still have the cattle up the mountain by Wednesday.”

Chaske struck a match against the porch boards and cupped his hands around his smoke, creating a glowing ball of warm light. He took his time, concentrating on the moment, savoring that first lungful of smoke. When he finally exhaled he said, “The cattle can wait. The grass will be better in a week or two. Now that we got rain.”

J.D. studied the weathered old face, an impassive face that gave nothing away and at the same time hinted at many deeper truths than those on the surface of his words.

“He won’t be coming back, Chaske. Not this time.”

Chaske grunted a little, still staring out at the night. Pinching his little cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, he took another long drag and held it deep. When he exhaled, the smell of burning hemp sweetened the air.

“The cattle can wait. You got a lotta cattle. You got one brother.” He took another toke, inhaling until it looked as if he were pinching nothing more than a red-hot spark. He ground the butt out on the porch floor and dropped it over the edge into the dirt. Slowly and gracefully, he rose, stretching like a cat. “Gotta go. Got a date.”