Authors: Ruth Wind

Reckless (3 page)

BOOK: Reckless

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“Now that would be typical macho behavior.”

Jake chuckled. “We've already established I don't have to be politically correct.” With a quick movement, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

“Jake!” she cried. “Put me down before I have to scream.”

She wasn't exactly light, and he did set her on her feet. “Let's go, then.”

“Fine. But I'm not going to stand on your feet like a four-year-old.”

“That's up to you.” In spite of the little scene at the bar, no one paid them much attention. Jake slid into a spot on the darkened floor and pulled Ramona close, bending over a little to do so. “You are short, Miss Hen.”

She slapped his arm. “I tried to warn you.”

“That's all right. This will work.”

It worked just fine. Her breasts pushed softly into his ribs, plush and comfortable. He slid his hands down her back and put his hands on the upper edge of her hips, liking the flare of solid flesh under his palms.

But she was a little stiff again, and he rubbed the hollow of her back for a moment. “Just relax, Ramona. Remember?”

He felt her breasts push into him as she took a breath. Under his hands, the stiffness in her back eased. Jake closed his eyes. Gently, he used one hand to push her head into the hollow of his shoulder. Her hair felt as healthy as it looked, and he allowed himself one moment to savor the sensation. Cool, thick, clean hair.

“There,” he said. “Isn't that better?”

Her answer was low and faintly muffled. “I guess.”

Jake took a deep breath and let himself fall into the simple movements of a slow dance. Holding Ramona was as comforting as hugging a favorite stuffed animal. All thought, all worry, all despair simply flowed out of him, leaving his mind to drift on the quiet eddies of a romantic song.

He didn't know how long they danced like that. By now, the band was playing all slow songs for the romances developing at the reception. The lights were low, and the crowd had thinned enough so that there were no real distractions.

And he didn't know exactly when the feeling of Ramona's body changed against him, either. When she stopped being simply a comforting teddy bear and became a warm, lush woman. The awareness drifted in slowly. The change came in snippets: the smell of her citrusy shampoo, the slight sway of her breasts against him, the giving warmth of her body against his faint arousal, the swishing sound of her satin skirts. The sensation of slippery satin over warm flesh proved an alluring combination, and he couldn't seem to keep his hands still. Up and down her back they moved, over the curves and into the channel of her spine, down again to the dip of flesh over her bottom, then along the swell of her hips and over her dress up to the bare skin of her shoulders. The sudden encounter with pliant flesh after the slick satin gave him a pleasant jolt each time.

What would it be like to make love to so small and lush a woman as this? How would they fit together, and how would she sound when she made love? The questions flitted through his mind, undemanding and unalarming. He didn't open his eyes or resist, only allowed a vision of their lovemaking to drift through his mind. It was surprisingly erotic to imagine her nude and aroused beneath him, surprisingly inviting.

And because he was so tired, because he had no will to think or consider, he acted on impulse, guiding her into a darkened hallway that led to the back rooms of the hall.

Ramona didn't notice until the darkness around them was absolute. She lifted her head and, with a half-dazed look around, said, “Jake, whatâ”

Her uptilted face was white in the darkness, her eyes dark and limpid and deep. He curled his hand around her neck and bent his head close.

And kissed her.

She made a faint, surprised sound as their lips touched, and one of her hands flew up to his chest. But she did not push him away, only tilted her head to fit her mouth to his more perfectly: Her lips were as warm as the rest of her, and he liked the plumpness that molded to the shape of his own mouth. He liked the taste of lemon and caramel that lingered there, and the sudden catch of her breath.

Deepening the kiss, he pulled her tightly to him, pressing all of her against all of him. Her body and his seemed to meld, and Jake felt himself respond, felt her notice that response, and he told himself he should stop, that he was taking greater liberties than he ought.

But just then, she opened her lips to his tongue and invited him in, and Jake gave a groan of pleasure. Women liked kissing. He had perfected his technique for that reason, learning how to coax a soft response or a furious one, learning to kindle the flames that he needed for his own satisfaction.

Now as he kissed Ramona, he remembered those techniques, the slide of a tongue, a grazing nibble, the suckling of a lip.

Somehow, he did not use them. He meant to, but he kept getting lost in the feeling of her tongue against his, parrying and darting and tangling. He lost himself in the tenderness of her inner lip and the feeling of her body against his. She smelled right and felt right, and in the darkness, with music playing softly in the distance, it was a uniquely sensual experience. It had never seemed so easy to simply drift along on a kiss, to take such pleasure in the soft heat of her breath coming in a little rush.

He wasn't ready for the flare of heat that exploded inside him, sending a message of urgent need into his belly. Reacting to this overwhelming desire, he shifted to press her close against the wall, thrusting his hips against her in an instinctive and earthy movement that was totally unlike him. She did not protest or make a sound of disgust, only arched against him with the same instinctive need as his own. The kiss grew wilder, more demanding. He plunged and retreated and finally grasped her face in his hands so he could kiss her as deeply as he wished.

He yearned to slide his hands over her breasts, to lift that ugly skirt and touch her thighs, but he didn't. He only kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, as if they were really at a high school dance, where they had to be careful and they both had parents waiting up to ask questions when they got home.

It was this feeling that made him finally reel himself under control and slow their kiss, letting its fierceness ebb into a low, soft burn.

At last, he lifted his head.... And only then, seeing the stunned expression on her face, the look of vulnerability in her eyes, did he realize what he had done. A thud of regret erased all his pleasure. What had he been thinking? She wasn't the kind of woman who would take such a kiss casually.

Gently, he brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek. A dozen possible responses rose to his lips, but in the end, he only murmured, “That was nice.” His voice sounded raw.

Ramona managed even less. She simply nodded, her doe eyes round and stricken in her face.

He didn't move, even though he knew he should. “I shouldn't have done that. I'm really not your kind of guy, am I?”

“No,” she said, “you aren't.”

A thread of dismay wound through him, but he forced himself to straighten, move away from her and plaster an ironic and well-practiced grin on his face. “Well, you can't blame a guy for trying.”

“No,” she said again. She, too, smiled, and he was relieved to see it wasn't a cowed or uncertain smile at all, but wise and teasing. “And as kisses go, I've had worse.”

His smile turned real. “Me, too, Ramona.”

A sudden commotion from beyond the dark hallway drew their attention. Both looked toward the reception room without moving, then listened to the announcement that Tamara and Lance were off to their honeymoon.

“Well, I guess we're free to go at last,” Jake said, and reached for his bow tie. “Thank God.”

“Amen,” Ramona returned. “I can't wait to get out of this dress.”

His erotic vision of her nude and pliant body beneath him rushed back, bringing with it a certain heat and hunger that surprised him. “I'd be glad to help,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

She only smiled and held out her hand. “I'll see you around, I'm sure.”

Jake shook her hand, faintly aware of the absurdity of such a formal gesture after the kiss they had just shared. “I'm sure.”

“Go get some rest. Doctor's orders.”

Then she was gone, disappearing out into the bright room, leaving Jake to stare after her with the oddest sensation in the area of his chest. Finally, he blinked, put the whole strange thing down to exhaustion and decided to follow the doctor's orders.

He'd go home and get some sleep.

Chapter 3

B
ut still Jake didn't sleep. Not that night, or the next, or the next Not real sleep anyway. Sometimes exhaustion simply kicked in and he fell into a state of virtually comatose oblivion for an hour, or if he was very lucky, two. If the cards were in his favor, he might catch a couple of those short naps in a twenty-four-hour period.

In the four years since he'd quit the army, these insomniac episodes had occurred on a regular basis, but they'd been worse since his father died last year and Jake had come home to Red Creek for the first time in almost twenty years. If he'd had the energy, he would have worried about it.

Instead, he relied on a steady intake of sugar and caffeine to keep him going. His thoughts grew brittle, easy to shatter. He found it hard to concentrate. His face looked whittled away to pure bone. He had trouble holding conversations. The persistent sense of the world as being a movie he could only watch from a distance increased.

Since he'd be a danger in a kitchen, he stayed clear of the restaurant and left it in the capable hands of the manager.

He was fortunate his father had left him investments and the profits of the restaurant could support him. Work of any kind was impossible when he had one of these episodes.

That left only one place for him to feel comfortableâat the VA home, in the company of a World War II vet named Harry, a Medal of Honor winner, though he never discussed it. As a youth who revered all things military, Jake had mowed lawns for the old man and had hung on his every word. When it came time for Jake to apply to West Point, Harry's letter of recommendation had been key to his acceptance.

So now, every other day, Jake smuggled in a bottle of Guinness and a pack of Winstons to his old friend.

The Friday after the wedding, he showed up in the morning and nodded to the nurse on duty. She grinned at him and shook her head. “He's in the sun-room.”

They all knew Jake and Harry's small duplicity and looked the other way. Harry had been pronounced terminal four years before and no one had the faintest idea why he was still alive. Jakeâand he suspected many of the nurses along with himâfigured Harry had earned the right to indulge these last small pleasures.

“Hey, old man,” Jake said as he entered the euphemistically labeled sun-room. It had a wall of windows, but the planning committee had neglected to realize that the windows faced north. North and mountains pretty well assured it would be the coldest, dimmest room in the hospital, but it was set up with checkers and a television, and the view was spectacular. Harry especially liked the view of Mount Gordon since he'd spent his life gauging the weather by the way the light fell on the peak.

Harry turned at the sound of Jake's voice. Wizened and frail, he nonetheless dressed in a clean white shirt every morning and wet combed his thinning hair back neatly. “Jake!” he said, his voice reflecting the same surprise it always did. He frowned and peered over his round, wire-framed glasses. “You look like hell. You aren't a young man anymore, you know.”

“Don't I know it. You ready to take a little spin in the garden, you old codger?”

“Hell, yes, I am. They found my last pack in my shoe and took it away last night.” He scowled. “Treat us like a bunch of children.”

“I got you covered.” Jake pushed the wheelchair outside and down a bricked pathway to a sunny spot next to a grove of scrubby trees, twisted and anemic from the long, icy winters. From beneath his jean jacket, worn for the express purpose of hiding the dark brew, Jake pulled out the bottle of Guinness, a keyhole opener and a red pack of Winstons. He glanced over his shoulder, checking the area for an orderly or a nurse who might feel obligated to reprimand them. “All clear,” he said, and popped the lid off the ale.

Harry drank gustily and lit a cigarette with hands as steady as a twenty-year-old's. With a contented sigh, he exhaled. “At my age, that's a hell of a lot better than sex,” he declared. “Though I wouldn't object to that, either. Got a woman in that coat of yours?”

“Well, Harry, the trouble is, I keep trying to bring one, but they're plumb worn out by the time I get done with them.”

“Huh. Selfish little upstart.”

Jake chuckled and leaned back against a tree. He closed his eyes against the warm sunlight and let it seep into him. “Nice day,” he commented idly.

“Be better with a woman.”

“Nah, women talk too much.”

“True enough.” Harry lifted his cigarette and inhaled with satisfaction. “That was what I always liked about my Jean. Never much of a talker, that girl.”

Harry's wife, Jean, had died, while Jake was away. From his days mowing Harry's lawn, Jake remembered her as a small, birdlike woman with curly hair that never stayed brushed. She was always busy with some household task, washing windows or mending clothes or digging in her pretty garden. “I remember,” he said.

Harry settled into some place a long way from the veterans' home. Maybe he was thinking about Jean. Though she had died some ten years before, Harry still spoke of her daily.

Letting the sun soak into his bones, Jake lazily wondered what it would be like to have loved a woman so long and so well. To have shared a life with another person day in and day out, so by the time you were old and sitting in a garden on a sunny summer morning, the fabric of your life would be so interwoven with that of your spouse that the whole color of your existence would have changed. In his lazy, musing state, the metaphor pleased him, and he imagined that Harry was red and Jean blue, and their lives had woven together to make a warm, rich purple.

Nice, but it didn't always work out that way. His own parents had been ill-matched and their life together had been an uneven and blotchy weave. No blend. Just clumps of one color or the other, jarring the eye no matter how many times you expected you'd get used to it.

He might have drifted in the color metaphor for a long time, but Harry said, “You gotta get some sleep sometime, boy.”

Jake jolted and leaned on his knees. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

“I had a nightmare about Bataan last night,” Harry said, picking a bit of tobacco from his tongue before lifting the cigarette to his lips again. “Always the same one, for more than fifty years now.” He cracked a grin. “Sometimes I think heaven would just be never having that dream again.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah, I reckon you do.” He drank a little more Guinness. “You oughta join one of the support groups. Good bunch of fellows. Nobody else is ever gonna know what you're feeling.”

Jake rubbed his face. “Yeah, maybe.” He was reluctant to turn down Harry's advice straight out, but the idea of wandering into that group of World War II and Korean and Vietnam vets shamed him.

“It don't get better on its own, boy.”

Jake nodded. That much was obvious. It had been more than five years now, and he only seemed to be getting worse, not better. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I really think I'm going insane.”

Harry merely nodded and went back to smoking, his pale blue eyes fixed on something far, far away. Feeling safe and protected with Harry only a few feet away, Jake leaned back against the tree and slept with the sunlight against his lids, burning away any image that might sneak in.

Ramona pressed her stethoscope against her pregnant patient's belly, and listened quietly. “Sounds good. Fast heartbeat stillâprobably a boy.”

The young woman smiled. “My husband is dying for a boy.”

The nurse popped her head in the door. “Dr. Hardy, do you have time to see Louise Forrest before lunch? Her son just brought her in with a sprained ankle.”

“Of course,” Ramona said. “Which son brought her?”

“The oldest boy. Jack? Jake?”

Ramona smiled. Now why wasn't she surprised that Louise would have a little accident just before the end of office hours on a Friday and just happen to call her eldest son to take her to the doctor's office?

“No problem,” she said to her nurse. “Put her in three, and I'll be in there in a few minutes.”

“Okay. I'm going on, then, if you don't mind. I need to leave early for the school party.”

“That's fine. See you Monday.”

Ramona finished with her expectant mother, then headed down to exam three, half-smiling at Louise's predictability. She would bet a large sum of money there would be nothing at all wrong with the ankleâLouise wasn't above subterfuge to get what she wanted.

“Good morning, Mrs. Forrest,” Ramona said cheerfully as she came in. Louise sat on the table, an ice pack on her bare ankle. Jake sprawled on the chair in the corner, his face turned away, and Ramona frowned. He looked haggard as hell. “How are you, Jake?”

It seemed to take him a long time to turn his head, and when he did, Ramona found that his eyes were just exactly as blue as she remembered. The color called Persian blue, the color of columbines. “Fine, thank you,” he replied politely.

A lie. His jaw was shaded with the dark bristles of an unshaved beard, and his eyes were sunk into purple hollows. She thought that in the short week since she'd last seen him he'd lost weight. The wonder was that he was able to sit upright at all.

But she let the lie slide for the moment and turned to Louise. “What did you do?”

“Oh, it was the silliest thing. I slipped on the steps going to take out the trash.”

“Hmm.” Ramona lifted the ice bag to examine an ankle as trim and neat as a girl's. She poked at the unswollen, unbruised, untraumatized flesh with two fingers. “Does that hurt?”

Louise frowned. “A little.”

“We'll fix you up.”

“Jake,” Louise said, “why don't you wait outside and let me talk to the doctor about my medication while I'm here.”

He shrugged and stood. Ramona resisted the temptation to gawk at his long, lanky form, but it was impossible to avoid sneaking a peek from the corner of her eye. She had not forgotten the way he'd felt against her, nor the wonder of the kiss they had shared.

Not to mention the sheer size of him. In the small examining room, he seemed to take up most of the available space. “I'll be in the waiting room,” he said, and ducked out.

As soon as the door was closed, Ramona put a hand on her hip. “There's nothing wrong with this ankle. You want to tell me what's going on?”

“I know, I know. I'll pay your regular fee, just like a patient who really has something wrong.”

“Louise, you know it isn't the money.”

The older woman raised a hand and waved all that away. “I had to get him in here somehow. He's bad, Ramona. I don't think he's had any real sleep since before the wedding. For a bit there, right after he bought the restaurant, he seemed to be getting better, but he's gotten worse again. You can see it for yourself. I'm scared to death he's going to kill himself.”

Ramona frowned. “You think he might be suicidal?”

“Not strictly.” She pursed her lips. “Not as in taking a rope and hanging himself or anything like that, but he could very well kill himself another wayâwreck his car, drink too much one night, fall, something. You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“I just want you to talk to him, Dr. Hardy. Maybe he'd take sleeping pills.”

Ramona sighed. “He needs more than I can give him, Louise. I'm only a medical doctor, and he needs counseling. He can get it through the veterans' office.”

“He won't do it.” Louise grabbed her hand. “Honey, I feel certain you can help him a little, maybe just get him going in the right direction. Everybody knows those old soldiers love you like you're some kind of queen. Please?”

Ramona narrowed her eyes. Much of what Louise said was true. She had survived her own case of PTSD and she'd been able to use that knowledge with some success. She was also predisposed to take combat veterans under her wing. “The thing you have to understand is that I can't help him until he's ready. It's like trying to get an alcoholic to stop drinking. You can beg and plead all you like, but the decision to accept help comes from within or it isn't successful.”

“So you'll talk to him?”

Ramona laughed. “I knew we should have barred you stubborn Texans from this state a long time ago.”

Louise jumped nimbly off the table. “Right, you go, then. I'll just wait until you call him into your office.”

“Okay.” Her hands in her lab-coat pockets, Ramona paused by the door and felt compelled to offer another warning. “Don't expect miracles, Louise.”

The stubborn Texan winked. “Oh, I'm always looking for miracles, sugar.”

Ramona left Louise and walked down a short hall to the waiting room.

BOOK: Reckless

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