Authors: Ruth Wind
Reckless (5 page)
He sobered. “I mean it, too, Ramona. It would be nice to have a friend.” To his amazement, he was sincere. “I'd better get back to Harry. Think about where you want to eat.”
“Okay. Take your time with Harry. I've got rounds to finish, and I'll wait for you in my office. Ask one of the nurses where it is.”
Â
Ramona couldn't help a shiver of anticipation as she walked out into the cool night with Jake Forrest at her side. She had meant what she said about a sexual relationship. It would be disastrous. Aside from the very real problem of his PTSD, Jake brought an intensity and a kind of wildness with him, and she didn't have the time or the inclination to deal with that personality.
As he opened the car door for her, however, she couldn't halt the rush of awareness he aroused. Standing there bathed in the weak white light of a gibbous moon, his hair shone fiercely, and his face was an alluring arrangement of planes and shadows. One high, arched cheekbone and the bridge of his elegant nose caught edges of moonlight.
She paused, remembering a moment when she was sixteen. She'd been late for class and had rushed to her locker for a forgotten notebook, then rounded a corner at a run. There, in a secluded hallway, had been Jake and his girlfriend, making out. Jake's hand had covered the sweatered breast of the girl, and she had a nearly delirious expression on her face as he kissed her neck. Petrified and shocked and aroused all at once, Ramona had stared at them for a long minute, mesmerized by those long fingers stroking and teasing and moving over the girl's flesh.
Finally, ashamed, she had hurried away, her face burning.
The memory had lost little of its power over the years, and Ramona felt a familiar heat flood through her.
As if he noticed nothing amiss, Jake said now, “How about the Moon Café? I hear they have a pretty good Celtic trio. You seem as if you'd be the sort to like Celtic music.”
She smiled. “I do, but it doesn't strike me as your kind of thing.”
“Oh, really?” He raised a brow. “What would be my kind of thing?”
Ramona shrugged. “I haven't thought about it. Something loud.”
He gave her a pained look and closed the door, then climbed into the driver's side. “That makes me sound so uncivilized.”
The car was small and Jake seemed to fill every inch of it. Ramona smelled the same cologne he had used at the reception and inhaled appreciatively. “You do smell good.”
“Thanks.” His smile flashed in the darkness, and Ramona reminded herself that he was quite practiced with women. The car, the cologne, the easy, knowing smile. His confidence showed even in the way he droveâtoo fast, but very much in controlâas if the machine were only an extension of his body.
“So what kind of music do you like?” she asked.
“I think you should guess. No more stereotypes.”
“Stereotypes?”
“You assumed I'd like something loud.”
Ramona shook her head. “I wasn't stereotyping any more than you were when you said I seemed the type to like Celtic music.”
“Ah, but you do like it, don't you?”
“Yes.”
“So I wasn't stereotyping. I was making a judgment call about you and what I know of you.” He negotiated a steep, tight curve, then shot an amused glance her way. “You, on the other hand, were making a sweeping generalization.”
“Touché. I was thinking of soldiers and what I used to hear on their car stereos when they went blazing down the street.” She narrowed her eyes. “Let me see, then. Country or bluegrass, maybe?”
“Not my thing, though I don't mind it.”
“Hmm. Blues? Jazz?”
“Closer.”
Ramona frowned. “I don't know...you might get excited about some classical, but I have to put my money on fancy guitar.” His face went blank and Ramona knew she'd scored. “Let's see...you're a year older than I am...so what? Led Zepplin, ZZ Top, maybe a little old Aerosmith?”
Jake pulled smoothly into the downtown lot behind the café, then turned off the engine before he spoke. He looked at Ramona and gave her a singularly gorgeous grin. It lit his eyes and warmed his face and kindled a tiny fire in the nether regions of her body.
“Pretty good, Doc.” He pulled out a hand-lettered cassette tape, and gave it to her.
Ramona read the handwriting:
La Grange
. She laughed. “ZZ Top!”
La Grange
. She laughed. “ZZ Top!”
“Pretty adolescent, huh?”
“Not at all. I used to love this. I haven't heard it in a long time, though. My friends and I used to play it while we got dressed for parties, just to get us in the mood.”
“I don't remember seeing you at parties.”
“We didn't exactly travel with the same crowd.”
“True.” He slipped the cassette back into the tape deck. “I'll play it on the way back. Let's go eat. I'm starving.”
. The Moon Café was as up to the moment as any place in Red Creek, a coffee shop that would have been at home in any downtown string of upscale shops in any city in the U.S. It had been established by a San Francisco couple who'd fled the coast after the last earthquake. Ramona often stopped in for lunch and the owner waved to her as she took a seat.
The late-evening crowd was mostly young and at least pseudointellectual, local kids who listened to Enya and dreamed of wider horizons, and summer-idle ski bums. They sat in the dimly lit room and listened to the Celtic trio and talked of world hunger and white witchcraft and fantasy novels. Ramona liked them.
“I guess you've been here before, huh?” Jake remarked.
“Sure.” She flashed him a grin. “In spite of being stereotypically my kind of place, it really is my kind of place.”
Jake smiled appreciatively. “Too bad there were no coffee shops like this when you were in high school. Then you wouldn't have had to suffer through parties.”
“I found the coffee shops in college just fine, thank you.”
“And I bet you dated really earnest guys with round glasses and long hair.”
She couldn't help the chuckle that rose in her throat. Mark, her college sweetheart, had looked as gentle as he wasâblond, thin and bespectacled. “My main squeeze was a music major. He played in all the clubs.”
“I'll bet he didn't play electric guitar.”
“No. Fiddle.”
His eyes twinkled. “Bingo.”
The waiter stopped by and they ordered the coffee of the day, something dark and rich and African. When hers came, Ramona sprinkled nutmeg over the top and stirred in sugar. Jake, not surprisingly, drank his straight.
They ate exotic sandwiches made of sprouts and tomatoes and guacamole on thick slices of multigrain bread. Ramona had to fight to keep her weight even in the moderately plump range and usually watched every gram she put in her mouth, but she felt beautiful tonight, and free, and for once she allowed herself to eat until she was really full.
The trio, a harper, a flutist and a wistfully beautiful singer who looked about thirteen, was very good. A waiter brought a backgammon board over at Jake's request, and as they set it up, Ramona asked, “How do you like the music?”
“Not bad. It would be nice if they sang in English.”
“Some groups do.”
“Didn't you have a girlfriend at one time who was Irish? An exchange student or something?”
“Bridget.”
“Yeah. The little red-haired girl. She was scared of her own shadow.”
“She's a writer now. Big, glitzy potboilers about the English upper classes. She's done quite well.”
“Really? That's amazing. You'll have to point her books out to me sometime.”
“I have all of them. If you're serious, I'll send them to you.”
“I'd love to borrow them. It's interesting to find out something like that about some kid you knew way back when. Seems to me most of my friends from high school didn't ever...” He shrugged.
“Didn't what?” She rolled the dice and got a natural, five and six, and moved automatically.
“I don't know. They just didn't do anything. Or at least not what they thought they'd do.”
“Like what?”
He moved his pieces, then lifted his head. “Like my friend, Jed, who wanted to be an astronaut. He really wanted to go up into space. I mean, his room was covered with model rockets and star maps and all kinds of things. He was good at math and science and all thatâbut he's selling insurance.”
Ramona's healing instincts prickled, and although she hated herself for it, she found she could not resist drawing him out on the subject. Perhaps he would reveal some key to his own troubles. “Okay. I set out to be a doctor, and I am one. You were a soldier.”
“âWere' being the operative word in my case.” There was only a hint of rancor in his voice. “I don't know what I mean, really. It just seems at times that nobody ever really gets what they want.” He gestured toward a table nearby, filled with a crowd of young people. “I mean, look at those kids. I bet there are aspiring writers and singers and world leaders among them, and how many will really do what they want to do?”
Ramona didn't speak for a moment, mulling over the right words. He looked at her, and for a fleeting heartbeat, she saw raw, screaming pain in the depths of his eyes.
Then it was gone and he nudged the dice toward her. “Your turn.”
She rolled and moved. “Your friend, Jed, leads the local astronomy society.”
“Oh, that's very exciting.”
“No, now that's not fair. He loves the stars, and he gets to share that love with others. Maybe he isn't going to walk on the moon, but that doesn't change his love of it or the passion he feels toward space, does it?”
“It isn't the same, Ramona, and you know it.” His eyes narrowed. “Leading the astronomy society is not the same as being in space.”
“You're right,” she said slowly. “But I know Jed. He's one of the happiest men I know.” She smiled gently. “He has six children, did you know that? Two are foster children he adopted. His wife worships the ground he walks on and she's one of the kindest, most loving people you'd find anywhere. Jed didn't become an astronaut because she got pregnant when they were first married, and he chose to come back to Red Creek so his child would have the same childhood he did.”
“Don't you think he ever wishes things turned out differently?”
“I have no idea. Maybe. We can't ever know what's way down deep in someone's heart, but my guess would be no. I don't think he minds. Maybe sometimes when he's gazing up at the Pleiades, he wonders what it would have been like to build a space station, but I bet it's just a moment's twinge. I doubt he would trade the life he has for the life he wanted.” She looked at the table of earnest young people. “The aspiring writer in that group might end up doing technical writing, and the singer might only end up with one of the biggest CD collections in the state, but both of them will be the richer for having dreamed, for having striven to reach something beyond themselves.”
He nodded, but Ramona could tell he didn't agree with her. Not for one second.
“You don't buy it,” she said. “Why not?”
“It's not that. Look, I'm sure Jed is happy. He always liked kids,” he said slowly. A thoughtful frown creased his brow, and he looked consideringly over his shoulder at the crowd. “Maybe it's like that old expression, âBe careful what you ask for.' My mom always told us to be careful, because what you end up getting may prove to be a disaster.”
Ramona only murmured assent quietly, afraid to disturb the flow of his words.
“She wanted a rich manâor thought she did.” Jake gave Ramona a wry smile. “Hard to believe she really thought that was what she wanted, isn't it?”
She nodded. “She's a very down-to-earth woman.”
“She is. But her dad ran off after the war, and her mother had to take in sewing and clean houses and work as a waitress to make ends meet. They didn't have anything, and my mother hated it, so she made up her mind to find a rich man.”
“Was your father rich? I had the impression he was a self-made man.”
“He wasn't rich when they met, but she said she could tell he was going to be. And he was.” Jake suddenly seemed to realize where he was and rolled the dice, then moved his pieces. “He was also one of the most selfish, hard-nosed men I've ever met.”
It was hard to find words of praise for Olan Forrest, that was sure. But Ramona was more interested in Jake at the moment. “So what do you think your mother should have wished for?”
The question surprised him. “I don't know. A good life, maybe. A good man.”
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