Ramona and the Renegade

“We’re going to have to drink straight out of the bottle,” he told her, crossing back to Mona and placing the bottle in the middle of the table. “Seems like the last owner didn’t believe in glasses.” His eyes briefly met hers. “I can’t find any.”

Mona scrutinized the bottle. The light from the fireplace bathed it with gentle strokes, making it gleam amber. But there was no missing the thick dust. She hesitated. “Think it’s safe to drink?” she asked him.

“Only one way to find out,” Joe answered gamely. Before Mona could say anything further, he tilted the bottle back and took a small swig. Even that little bit jolted him. It took him a couple of seconds to find his breath. “Hell of a kick,” he told her.

Suddenly, Joe grabbed his chest and began making strangling noises. His eyes rolled back in his head. Horrified, Mona was instantly on her feet. Throwing her arms around him, she struggled to lower him to the floor. She needed to get him to a flat surface before she could start CPR.

Mona did her best to fight back panic. “Joe, talk to me, what do you feel? Can you breathe? Damn it, you shouldn’t have—”

The words dried up on her tongue when she caught a glimpse of Joe’s face. He wasn’t choking, he was laughing.

Furious, she opened her arms and his upper torso dropped, hitting the floor with a thud.

“Idiot!” she bit off. “I thought you were poisoned.” She crossed her arms before her angrily. “I should have known the poison hadn’t been invented that could do away with you.”

Getting up off the floor, Joe dusted himself off. “A second ago, you were worried that I was dying. Now you’re mad that I’m not. You sure do blow hot and cold, don’t you?” he asked with a laugh.

Mona frowned as she sat down at the table again. For a moment, she said nothing, just ate the rest of her sandwich in silence.

He supposed it was a dirty trick. Sitting down opposite her, he apologized. Sort of. It would have carried more weight if he wasn’t grinning. “Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.”

She raised her eyes to his face, glaring at him. “That was a rotten trick.”

“Yes, it was,” he responded solemnly. She knew he was just humoring her.

“So? How is it?” she pressed, changing the subject. When he looked at her quizzically, she nodded at the bottle on the table. “The whiskey.”

“Pretty smooth for rot-gut,” he told her. When he saw her reaching for the bottle, he advised, “Go slow if you’re going to try it.”

He realized his mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth.

“The day I can’t hold my liquor as well as you can is the day I’ll admit myself into a nursing home and spend the rest of my days sitting in a rocking chair in a corner—rocking.”

He didn’t crack a smile. “There is middle ground, you know.”

“Not for people like you and me,” she told him just before she took a swig from the bottle, determined to match him.

Joe watched her eyes tear up as the whiskey hit bottom. He knew better than to laugh, or even point the fact out. That would only goad her on. For all her education, she really hadn’t changed that much, he mused. She still had that sharp, competitive edge that made her see everything as a personal challenge, even when it wasn’t.

She would have never made it as a Navajo, he thought. The Native American tribe was known for not competing. They saw competing against their fellow man as being impolite.

Mona had never been hampered by those kinds of feelings.

“How is it?” he asked, infusing just enough disinterest in his voice to sound believable.

“Smooth, like you said,” she managed to get out, her voice a raspy whisper. It felt as if the whiskey had instantly stripped her vocal cords, but she wasn’t about to let on. Mona deliberately took another swig.

Liquid flames poured through her body. Even so, this time it was a little less jarring than the first sip she’d taken.

He wanted to tell her not to overdo it, but he knew better. Mona was nothing if not contrary. When she set the bottle down, the look in her eyes wasn’t hard to read. She dared him to take another swig himself.

So he did.

And then it was her turn again. Joe caught himself thinking that he was grateful the pint bottle was half empty when they found it. The damage caused by the whiskey wouldn’t be too great.

Worst case, Mona would get light-headed and giddy for a bit, but since she was with him, she was safe.

Lucky for her, Joe thought rather grudgingly.

Yeah, you’re a regular Boy Scout, aren’t you?

The bottle was passed back and forth between them, traveling faster with each handoff. Before either one of them realized it, nothing was left.

With a sigh, Mona tilted the bottle all the way over, trying to coax another drop out, but without success.

She felt oddly relaxed and revved up at the same time, as if sliding around in a bright, shiny echo chamber.

Setting the bottle down on its side, she planted her hands on the tabletop and pushed herself up into a standing position. The chair behind her fell. There was a crash accompanied by a cracking sound as parts splintered against the floor.

Mona glanced behind her, mildly surprised. “Oops,” she murmured. “Don’t make them like they used to, do they?” Drawing herself up to her full height, she turned to her left a bit too quickly and found herself wavering unsteadily on her feet.

The sudden action had intensified her dizziness. “I think the wind is pushing the room around,” she told Joe just before she tilted too far to the right.

Jumping to his feet quickly, Joe managed to grab her before Mona could fall over. “Guess that must be it,” he agreed.

Her eyes narrowed as she forgot what had brought her to her feet to begin with.

“What are you doing over here? You were just over there.” She pointed to his chair as if it was located on the other side of town.

“Wind blew me over here, too.” He figured she’d accept that, thinking that if the wind was responsible for moving the room around, it could just as easily have moved him, too.

He should have known better.

Grabbing the front of his shirt with her hands in an effort to really steady herself—or the room—Mona stared up into his face rather intently. “Know what I think?” she asked him.

The woman was entirely too close to him, Joe thought. Her sweet breath mingled with the distinct scent of the whiskey she’d consumed, creating a very odd combination that reeled him in. He was acutely aware of every single supple inch of her. As well as his own body. Struggling, he did his best to appear indifferent.

He wasn’t, but in her present state, he hoped Mona wouldn’t notice. If she pressed up against him, all bets were off.

“What?” he finally asked her.

She was really trying to focus and not doing an overly good job of it. “I think that you’re trying to take advantage of me, Joe.”

That was when she moved in closer to him, as if that could somehow help her read him better. She pressed all her curves against the hard contours of his body and in turn threatened to create Joe’s own personal meltdown.

“Are you trying to take advantage of me?” Mona asked.

He did his best to try to make her turn toward the rear of the cabin. Hands ever so lightly on her shoulders, he maneuvered her toward it. “Right now, I think you should lie down. There’s a bed in the other room.”

“Ah-ha! I was right. I knew it,” Mona declared triumphantly, swinging around so that she could grasp hold of his shirtfront again, crumpling it beneath her fingers. “You are trying to take advantage of me. Oh, Joe—”

Every fiber of his being wanted to give in, but he continued to fight it. “No, I’m—”

The rest of his adamant protest went unspoken. He found it impossible to speak when Mona’s lips were suddenly and firmly pressed against his.

She was quick, he’d give her that.

She was also damn intoxicating, far more potent than an old, half-empty bottle of aged whiskey, Joe caught himself thinking—while he could still think.

But that ability quickly faded as the taste of Mona’s lips steadily got to him, weakening his resolve. Making him want Mona with a fierceness that jarred him.

The will to push her away, to do the right thing, was not nearly as strong as it should have been. As strong as it had been only moments ago.

His lips worked over hers, deepening the kiss.

He tasted her moan and felt the blood surge through his veins as if it had been set on fire.

Maybe it had been.

He needed to put a stop to this.

In a moment. Just one more moment.

He promised himself that he would do the right thing in a moment. Right now, just for this erotic half a heartbeat, he wanted to enjoy this completely unexpected turn of events.

Wanted to enjoy the feel of her warm body pressed so urgently against his.

Wanted to savor the taste of her mouth as it drained his soul away. With the least bit of encouragement, he would have fallen to his knees, silently begging her for more.

But that wasn’t going to happen for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which was pride.

His.

So, realizing that this was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, like Halley’s Comet, he took his time ending it.

Took full enjoyment of the moment—and her.

The very act, even as it was occurring, left him vulnerable, unmasking the secret that he had tried to keep, even from himself. That he wanted this woman with the laughing eyes and the sinful mouth. Had always wanted her and would, most likely, go to his grave wanting her.

In silence.

Because a man had his pride and any admission as to the depth and breadth of his feelings—his unrequited feelings—for Mona would expose him and leave him open to ridicule and pity, neither one of which he could endure.

With a jolt, Joe realized that he was very close to the edge of the vortex. To the point of no return. Any second now, it would suck him in, rendering him a prisoner of this feeling and leaving him incapable of cutting off this kiss.

Incapable of walking away.

He already didn’t want to. Fiercely.

If he didn’t back away in a moment, there would be no backing away. Because he was only a man, only flesh and blood, and his flesh and blood craved hers.

Now! Stop it now! Before you can’t!

Inflamed, Joe went on kissing her.

And she was kissing him back just as urgently.

Chapter Four

The sound of her own groan rudely nudged Mona into semiwakefulness.

An elephant tap-danced on her head. A heavy elephant that threatened to crush her skull any second now.

Mona curled up into herself, trying to hide from the creature, from the pain that his lumbering movements created.

But there was nowhere to hide.

As the haze lifted, scraping slowly along her awakening consciousness, she realized that she was squeezing her eyes shut. Squeezing them shut in self-defense.

Why?

Was she afraid of seeing something? Someone?

Very cautiously, Mona pried her eyelids open. The moment she did, she instantly shut them again.

The sunlight hurt her head.

Sunlight?

Her eyes popped open and she jackknifed up into a sitting position. The pain doubled but she valiantly struggled to ignore it as urgent messages telegraphed themselves to her throbbing brain.

The incessant, heavy rain had stopped. As had the moaning wind. The world was still.

She was on a striped, bare mattress that smelled as if it had been used every day for the past two centuries, all without being cleaned.

She’d gotten drunk, she suddenly recalled.

Drunk with Joe. Joe! Omigod, Joe!

Shock raced through her aching mind as bits and pieces of last night came back to her, jumbled and completely out of order. The only thing she specifically remembered was throwing herself at him.

Hard.

And then nothing.

She covered her mouth in growing agitation. She couldn’t remember what happened after she’d hermetically sealed her mouth to his.

Had he—

Had they—

“Oh, God,” Mona groaned more loudly this time as her distress mounted. She dragged her hand through her hair. The roots hurt. Her skull hurt.

Did that mean that she…?

That he…?

“Oh, God,” Mona groaned again, confused, embarrassed and absolutely, unequivocally miserable.

“He’s busy. Will I do in a pinch?” Joe asked.

The sound of her groaning voice had drawn him in. The expression on her face as she looked up at him told him everything he needed to know. She remembered last night.

That made two of them.

“You—you—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, hoping against hope that nothing had happened. Afraid that it had. And worse, not knowing how to bluff her way through this to get him to tell her the details—or the lack of any—without admitting that there was a huge void in her aching brain.

“It stopped raining,” Joe informed her mildly as if he hadn’t noticed her sudden inability to form a complete, coherent sentence. “Hell, it looks as if it never even rained at all.” There were only a few small puddles to hint at the rising waters that had encroached around the cabin yesterday. “I can get you into town now.”

And then, because he wasn’t entirely a plastered saint and because he couldn’t resist teasing her just a little, he stood in the doorway of the tiny bedroom where he’d deposited her passed-out body last night and grinned wickedly at her.

“Unless, of course, you’d rather stay here for a while longer….” His voice trailed off, leaving the rest to her imagination.

Mona instantly stiffened. Something had happened last night. “No, I don’t want to stay here a second longer,” she informed him woodenly, scrambling off the sagging, weathered mattress. “Not one second longer.”

Feet planted firmly on the floor, her head still throbbing like a war drum pressed into use, Mona raised her chin pugnaciously, ready to go toe to toe with him in order to get at the truth.

“What happened last night, Joe?”

The wicked grin remained. “You weren’t yourself,” he answered.

There were so many different ways to take that, and from where she stood, none of them were good. “Exactly who was I?” she demanded.

Enjoying himself, Joe played it out a little longer. He turned on his heel, ready to leave the room and the cabin. “Maybe we’d better leave that to another time.” He kept his voice deliberately vague.

He figured she owed him, seeing as how he’d been the personification of honorableness last night. Turning a deaf ear to the demands that his body fairly shouted at him.

Stunned that he wasn’t answering her, Mona launched herself at the doorway, making it half a step before he reached it. Hands on either side of the doorjamb, trying not to wince from the pain in her head, Mona blocked his way.

“Maybe we better not,” she countered. Damn but her head was killing her. Any sudden movement on her part just intensified the crushing pounding. “What happened?” she asked again, enunciating each word slowly, her teeth clenched.

Silent, Joe watched her for a long moment. She didn’t remember anything. Hadn’t witnessed his superhuman struggles with himself to finally separate her lips from his and hold her at arm’s length. Didn’t remember that she’d pushed his hands away and snuggled up against him again, her soft, inviting body promising him a time he wouldn’t soon forget—and she wouldn’t remember.

That had been just the trouble. Whether it was just the liquor talking, or the liquor dissolving the inhibitions that kept her from him, he didn’t know. What he did know was that if he made love with a woman, she would damn well be conscious of her decision to meet him halfway, not slide to meet him on a slick path of mind-numbing alcohol.

“Nothing happened,” he finally said.

If it was nothing, then why had it taken him so long to say the word? And why couldn’t she remember anything beyond—

Oh, God, she’d kissed him.

Kissed him? She’d all but swallowed his mouth up whole, she realized as the memory came vividly crashing back to her, heating her blood at the same time. Heating all of her.

Embarrassed, Mona could feel her cheeks suddenly blazing. It took everything she had not to try to cover them up with her hands.

She tried diversion. “Don’t lie to me,” she snapped angrily.

His eyes captured hers, making a soul-to-soul connection, the way he used to back when he would walk her home from school and dreams were cheap.

“When have you ever known me to lie?” he asked her quietly.

Mona shrugged, struggling to recapture the dignity she felt she’d forfeited by allowing her old, and secret, girlhood crush on Joe to come out last night.

“For the most part, I’ve been gone these past eight years.” Although she had come home almost every summer. “I don’t know. You could have changed.”

But even as she said it, Mona knew she didn’t really believe that.

“I didn’t,” he replied flatly.

“So what did happen after I glued my mouth to yours?”

“You passed out.”

Mona froze inside. This was worse than she’d thought. No wonder she didn’t remember anything. She wasn’t conscious for it. “And then what?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“And then I carried you into this room and put you to bed,” he told her matter-of-factly.

“And?” she asked, her voice hitching in her throat as she waited for the rest of the details. Joe never said all that much, but he had a way of stringing it out, and right now, he drove her crazy. It was hard not to let her irritation just jump out at him.

“And I slept on the couch.”

Mona drew in a shaky breath, trying to do it quietly. Was he really saying nothing happened? “And that’s all?” she questioned.

“That’s all.” He cocked his head. “Why, what else did you want to have happen?” he asked innocently.

“Want?” she repeated indignantly. Did Joe suspect that she’d had feelings for him? No, how could he? She’d never given him any reason to suspect—until last night, she thought ruefully. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Mona retorted with emphasis.

One dark eyebrow arched higher than the other. “That why you kissed me, Mona?”

“I didn’t kiss you!” Mona shot back. And then, because he was grinning at her knowingly, and because she actually had kissed him, she added, “Like you said, that wasn’t me.”

“Sure looked like you,” he told her.

He got a real kick out of watching her squirm. Since he’d played the noble guy while everything inside of him screamed not to allow this one once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip through his fingers, she owed him a little entertainment at her expense. After all, he’d been noble even though it had cost him.

Joe had taken off her boots, she noted, grabbing them from the floor. Going out into the main room, she hobbled over to the sofa. Overall, she was grateful to him, but right now, the humiliation of her unscheduled transformation into a passion-laced woman haunted her and she wanted nothing more than to divert his attention from that image.

Planting herself on the sofa so she could pull on her boots, she addressed Joe in a clipped voice, “Can we just get going?”

He nodded. “The rain didn’t sweep away the Jeep, so whenever you’re ready, we’re good to go.”

Boots on, she jumped up to her feet. “Ready,” she announced. The next moment she winced again from the pain shooting through her temples.

“Bad?” he asked sympathetically.

“What do you think?” She eyed him accusingly. They had both had the same amount to drink last night, that much she remembered. So why wasn’t his head splitting in two like hers was? “Why didn’t that whiskey affect you?”

“Oh, it did,” he told her, thinking of how his resistance to her had been lowered. Had the whiskey not affected him, he wouldn’t have let things go as far as they had. If nothing else, his background had taught him how to stoically do without. Not having her was part of that. “I just handle it better.”

Had she not been feeling sick, she would have taken that as a challenge to her own capabilities when it came to tolerating alcohol. But that was a catch-22 situation, she thought. So she said nothing as she lowered herself into the passenger seat and buckled up.

The less said, she decided, the less her head hurt, and right now, that was all that counted.

IT DIDN’T TAKE THAT LONG to get into the heart of Forever. Joe made the decision to go there instead of stopping at the house that Mona shared with her brother. He’d already gathered that her main purpose was to see Rick first, and at this hour, the sheriff was most likely in his office.

The additional benefit of going straight to town was that he could get Mick moving. The sooner he got the mechanic to tow in her vehicle and fix the flat, the sooner life would begin to get back to normal for Mona, he reasoned.

As for him, well, the memory of last night and what had almost gone down would linger in his mind for a very long time, as would the revelation that, just as he’d always believed, her lips had tasted incredibly sweet. That, too, would have to sustain him for an indefinite period to come. He knew there would be no replays, instant or otherwise.

Joe brought the Jeep to a halt before the sheriff’s building, parking it in the only space still available. Turning off the ignition and pulling up the hand brake, he was surprised that Mona remained beside him. He’d expected her to hop out. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d have to grab her to keep her inside the vehicle until it stopped moving.

“Something wrong?” he asked her.

Mona sat looking straight ahead, as if debating answering or just quietly getting out of the vehicle.

With a suppressed sigh, she turned toward him and said, “I’m sorry if I took your head off back there.”

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