Ramona and the Renegade

“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.”