Dark Paradise

Mari’s first instinctive fear had been for her guitar, but it sat unharmed in a corner. The rest of the room was strewn with clothes and upended furniture. She didn’t have anything worth taking. No expensive jewelry, no stashes of cash or traveler’s checks. The thief had struck out picking her room-if it had been a thief at all.

Her head boomed and echoed with the possibilities.

“Nothing was taken as far as I could tell,” she said. She looked sideways at the big sheriff, wondering if he would be receptive to hearing her theories concerning Lucy. Not, she decided. Dan Qui

He glanced at Drew. “Anybody else report hearing anything, seeing anything unusual?”

“Not at all. It was a normal night until this.” Drew dropped down on one knee in front of Mari and gazed up at her, tortured with guilt. “I’m so very sorry, luv.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’ll have Raoul move your things to a suite while we’re gone to the emergency room.” At the door, the night manager brightened like a terrier at the prospect of importance. Drew’s expression toughened as Mari opened her mouth to protest. “You’re having that bump checked, and that’s the end of it. I’ll drive you myself.”

“We’ll dust the room for prints,” Qui

He looked as if he needed his peeled with a paring knife. The man was ready to fall asleep on his feet. Mari bit back her own questions. They could wait until morning, at least until the sheriff had gotten some sleep.

As promised, Drew delivered her to the New Eden Community Hospital himself. Kevin, admittedly woozy at the prospect of needles and blood, stayed behind to supervise while the deputy dusted the room for fingerprints and Raoul began the moving process. They took Drew’s black Porsche to the small hospital. Mari leaned back in the reclining leather seat and tried to concentrate on something other than the need to throw up.

“It’s such a shock,” Drew said. “One simply doesn’t expect crime in a place like New Eden. That’s part of the lure, isn’t it? Clean air, idyllic setting, utopian values.”

He was talking to himself. Trying to reason away the shock. Mari listened, understanding perfectly. Paradise wasn’t supposed to have a dark side. She felt as if that were the only side she was seeing-the parallel universe, where everything was cast in sinister shadows. Like cutting open a perfect apple and finding it full of rot and worms.

Her stomach rolled at the analogy.

“Drew,” she said weakly as sweat misted across her skin. “Do you have any idea what Lucy might have been into?”

“Into?” He wheeled the Porsche under the portico at the emergency room entrance. The white glow of fluorescent lighting spilled out of the hospital doors like artificial moonlight. “How do you mean?” he asked carefully.

“You said she liked to be in the thick of things, stirring up trouble. What if she poked at the wrong hornet’s nest? Did you ever think about that?”

He frowned, looking handsome and rumpled, his lean cheeks shadowed with stubble, his brows slashing down above his green eyes. “I think you took a nasty smack on the noggin. We ought to concentrate on that for the moment. Don’t let’s worry about Lucy. There’s nothing we can do to help her now.”

He started to turn for the door, but Mari caught his arm. Just that much movement unbalanced her enough to send di

“Drew?” she asked, wanting desperately to slide into unconsciousness again. “Do you think Lucy could have been blackmailing someone?”

“I think you’re on the verge of delirium,” he said brusquely. “Let’s get you inside.”

She spent what was left of the night in the hospital. Dr. Larimer-who also had to be called in from the comfort of his bed-checked her eyes and reflexes, put three stitches in the cut on her head, and pronounced her fit.

“Fit for what?” Drew demanded, incensed at the man’s lack of concern.

The doctor, a squat man with unflattering horn-rimmed glasses and a retreating dark hairline, gave Drew an impatient look. “For whatever. It’s just a mild concussion.”

Nothing he didn’t see every day in the course of treating ranch hands and rodeo cowboys. This was tough country full of hardy folk. The look he leveled at Drew clearly set him outside that realm.

“We’ll keep you overnight for observation,” Larimer pronounced to Mari, obviously sensing the potential for trouble from these outsiders.

Mari sent Drew back to the Moose. All she wanted was a bed and a handful of painkillers, something to shut out the pounding and the suspicions for a few hours. What she got was a room across the hall from a crying baby. She lay in bed, the smell of bleach from the pillowcase burning her nose, thoughts of Lucy chasing each other through her head, the sound of crying rubbing her nerve endings raw.

She longed for comfort and thought of J.D. Had it been only hours earlier that she had lain in bed with him, listening to the rain? The memory was real enough for her to recall the warmth of his body, the strength of his arm around her, the pleasant scent of man and love-making. And yet it seemed surreal enough to make her wonder if she hadn’t imagined the whole encounter. She didn’t fall in lust with alpha males. She hadn’t come to Montana looking to bed a cowboy.

Even so, she closed her eyes and pretended he was there now, that she was tucked back to front against his big, muscular body. She pretended they belonged together, she pretended that he cared. The alternative was to feel alone. And on a night when thoughts of Lucy haunted her, thoughts of a death in the wilderness and a life with no one to love, alone was the last thing she wanted to feel.

Qui

Marilee Je

Qui

Life here had been a whole hell of a lot simpler B.C.-before celebrities.

“How are you doing this morning, Miz Je

She gave him a crooked smile that held more humor than he would have expected. “I have a new sympathy for soccer balls-which is exactly what my head feels like. I’m told I’ll be fine in a day or two.”