Free Dark Paradise by Tami Hoag Page B

of sharp emotion she knew nothing
    about.
     
    "I have to go," she blurted out. Then she wheeled and ran for the
    service door beside the bar, laughter ringing in her ears, her long
    black braid slapping her back like a whip as she went.
     
    A long red-carpeted hall was at the rear of the building. Doors off it
    led into the kitchen, into Mr. Van Dellen's and Mr. Bronson's offices.
    Samantha went past these and hit the bar of the door that led outside.
    The stone terrace ran most of the length of the hotel, but the north end
    was divided from the rest by a tall, weathered lattice screen, giving
    the employees an area to slip out to for breaks.
     
    Samantha thanked God it was empty at the moment.
     
    She had never been one to cry in front of people. Even the night
    he'd left she had managed to keep tears at bay until he was out the
    door.
     
    Damn you, Will.
     
    She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't loved Will Rafferty. Even
    in school she had secretly pined away over him, when she had been a
    lowly eighth-grader and he was one of the coolest boys in the senior
    class. Will Rafferty with his devil's grin and to-die-for blue eyes.
     
    Practically every girl in school had a crush on him.   He   was a rebel, a
    rascal, and a small-time rodeo star. And for a while he had been all
    hers.
     
    The thought that that time was over, maybe for good, made her shake
    inside. She leaned over the split-wood railing at the edge of the
    terrace, doubling over in emotional pain, the tears crowding her throat
    like jagged rocks. It wasn't fair. She loved him. He was the one thing
    she had ever asked for in her whole miserable life. Why couldn't he love
    her back in the same way?
     
    She knew he had married her on a whim. He had won a little money in the
    saddle bronc riding at the Memorial Day rodeo in Gardiner. She had
    won a little money barrel racing. They had ended up at the same
    celebratory party. Will, full of himself as always, caught up in the
    thrill of victory, and made uninhibited by Innumerable shots of Jack
    Daniel's, had declared his love for her.
     
    Three days later they had driven to Nevada in his new red and white
    pickup and tied the knot.
     
    In her heart of hearts Samantha had suspected at the time he wasn't
    truly serious about getting married, but she had grabbed the chance with
    both hands and hung on tight. Now she was living alone in the little
    cottage they had rented over on Jackson Street. She had her freedom from
    her family. She had a ring on her finger. And now she had nothing at
    all.
     
    The loneliness that gripped her was hard as a fist.
     
    "Can it really be all that bad?"
     
    At the sound of the soft voice, Samantha startled ready to run, but
    there was no running away this time. She'd already made enough of a fool
    of herself. Evan Bryce took a position at the rail beside her. When he
    offered her a monogrammed linen handkerchief, she took it and dabbed her
    eyes.
     
    He didn't watch, looking instead toward the mountains, giving her a
    moment of privacy, a moment to compose herself.
     
    She used it to study him.
     
    She supposed he was about the same age as her father, though all
    similarities stopped there. Her father was a hulking brute of a man,
    coarse and dark. Bryce was small. Catlike, she thought; lean, wiry, and
    graceful. His forehead was very high and broad, and beneath a ledge of
    brow, his eyes were a pale, startling shade of blue, his mouth a wide, thin
    line above a small chin. He wore his shoulder-length sun-streaked blond
    hair swept back, emphasizing his forehead.
     
    She had seen him in the Moose Head many times. He came to hold court.
    The people he brought with him treated him like royalty. Sometimes he
    came in looking like something out of Gentleman's Quarterly. Most of the
    time he was dressed as he was now - in faded jeans that fit him like a
    glove and a loose, faded chambray shirt, which he wore with the sleeves
    neatly rolled up and the front open halfway