Authors: Ruth Wind
Reckless (7 page)
Instead, he only noticed that his mouth tasted like ashes, and there was a thick, thudding headache in the back of his skull. Sure signs of too much Scotch.
Scotch? But he hadn't been drinking, not with the pills. He knew better. He rubbed his tongue over his teeth and frowned. Definitely Scotch.
The night rushed back, unreeling like a badly lit French film. Feeling restless and caged, he'd left the apartment last night at nearly ten. He'd worked all day, but the work was mental, not physical, and he'd felt the need for activity. He drove out to the VA home, hoping to find Ramona somewhere about, but she'd already left.
Instead, he'd gone to a trendy little bar nearby, where long-legged, good-looking, coldhearted women were known to hang out. He'd drunk quite a lot of whiskey, danced with a blurry parade of partners, and sometime after closing, he'd let someone drive him home. She came in with him, too.
Then what? He couldn't really remember, and it made him faintly sick. He couldn't recall the woman's name, or call up her face.
He pulled the pillow more tightly over his head, the guilt from his hangover crashing into him. What kind of man did these things?
And suddenly, he remembered resisting the woman's overtures, her passionate, skillful kiss and his gentle refusal. She had only smiled. “Your loss,” she said as she left.
Relief, vast and clear as a plunge into a mountain lake, washed through him. Thank God. He hadn't driven drunk and he hadn't had anonymous sex with some faceless woman.
He felt so much better, he jumped up and showered, ignoring his headache. In the same restless mood as the night before, he rushed through shaving and left the apartment with his hair still damp.
Surely Ramona would be home on a Sunday morning.
Chapter 6
A
t the entrance to her property, Jake parked his car and walked up to the gate. “Hello!” he called. “Anyone home?”
t the entrance to her property, Jake parked his car and walked up to the gate. “Hello!” he called. “Anyone home?”
The lot was thick with spruce and pine and aspen, and Jake couldn't tell how far back the house might sit. When there was no answer to his call, he went back to the car, grabbed the bag with his goodies and opened the gate.
It was beautiful up here. From some hidden place, he could hear a creek gurgling, and bird song filled the air. The trees looked healthy and Jake thought he saw the flash of a deer's tail, but when he turned to check, the only sign was a bobbing branch. He ambled up the walk, breathing deeply of the spicy mountain air.
“Hello!” he called again. Still nothing. Jake frowned. It was awfully isolated up here. If she didn't have any kind of alarm system in place, he didn't like to think how dangerous it was for a woman alone.
The house came into view, just a slice of bright blue through the trees, and he called again, “Hello! Ramona, are you home?”
A beast exploded out of the trees, rushing Jake, who immediately froze. He had an impression of bared teeth and a savage bark and enormous size before the animal halted a few feet away, growling a low warning for Jake to stay put.
He didn't argue. The dog was at least half his weight, and by the look of the long snout and the unmistakable eyes, it was at least half wolf. Probably more.
Ramona came behind, carrying a rifle. Cocked. When she saw Jake, she put on the safety and lowered the gun. “Manuelito,” she said to her dog, touching his back in a soothing gesture. “Good dog. This is a friend.” Holding on to his collar, Ramona said to Jake, “Come here and let him smell you, and see me touch you. Don't lower your hands until I tell you to.”
Jake moved with slow, deliberate movements. The beast stopped growling, but there was a fierce, intelligent awareness in his eyes. “What a beautiful creature,” he said quietly.
Ramona, one hand firmly grasping Manuelito's collar, put her other hand on Jake's arm. “Friend,” she said. Manuelito stretched his nose out to sniff the seam of Jake's jeans and followed a line down to his feet. Apparently satisfied, the dog licked his chops and sat down. Ramona scrubbed his neck. “You're my baby, aren't you?” He licked her chin in agreement.
Ramona grinned at Jake. “Okay, you're safe. Hold out your hand and let him lick you if he will, and the next time you come sneaking up my driveway, he might not tear out your throat.”
Slowly, Jake extended a hand and Manuelito nosed it curiously, then with more interest as he whiffed the sugar glaze from the doughnuts Jake had bought at a grocery store on the way over. Manuelito gave his palm a dry lick, then another, then sniffed around his wrist.
“Okay, Manuelito, that's enough,” Ramona ordered.
“It's okay,” Jake said. “Can I pet him now? Will he let me?”
“Sure. He's not really mean. He's just a good watchdog. If I had brought you in here, he wouldn't have blinked an eyeâunless you tried to hurt me.”
“Will you take this for a minute?” Jake asked, handing her the grocery bag. He knelt in the dirt at the dog's level and lifted his hands to scratch the wolf dog's ears. “Oh, you're a beauty, aren't you?” he said, smiling as Manuelito made a low, approving noise in his throat. “Smart and fierce and beautiful.”
Manuelito lifted his head and gave Jake a delicate lick on the chin.
Ramona laughed. “In like Flynn, Jake Forrest You're one of those dog charmers, aren't you?”
Jake got to his feet and brushed the dirt off the knees of his jeans. “I don't know about that. We seem to get along well enough. This one is pretty fantastic.”
“He is.” She turned toward the house. “Come in and I'll get some coffee. What did you bring?”
“Doughnuts.”
She opened the bag and inhaled. “You evil, evil man.”
“Evil?”
“Evil,” she repeated. “Big, strapping soldier boys with muscles all over them can afford to eat doughnuts. Some of usâ” she gestured meaningfully toward her body “âdon't have that luxury.”
She was wearing a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a simple gauzy blouse with a low neck. Like the rest of her, her legs were rounded, a little fuller than the current fashion dictated, but the skin was smooth and tanned, and he saw muscles shifting when she walked. Strong legs.
“You look all right to me,” he said mildly.
Her grin was wry. “And your reputation precedes you, Mr. Forrest.”
“What reputation is that?”
“The same reputation as all the Forrest menâyou're skirt chasers.”
He laughed at the old-fashioned word. “Well, my dad was, that's for sure. I think Lance was just a ladies' man until he met the right woman.” He sobered, thinking of his youngest brother, Tyler. “Ty's problem is just the oppositeâhe's a one-woman man and she died on him.”
Ramona paused one step above him on the porch. “Poor Tyler,” she said in her throaty voice. The sound purred down Jake's spine, and he found himself remembering his dream. “He still hasn't come out of his recluse mode?”
“No. I'm not sure he ever will.”
“His wife was my patient. I felt sick about it for weeks afterward. I warned her against pregnancy, but she was adamant.”
Her eyes, up close, were not an unbroken, unwavering dark brown. At the edges of the irises, Jake saw tiny flecks of gold and light brown. Her lashes were extraordinarily long and thick, which gave her that doe-eyed look. “You really have pretty eyes,” he said without thinking.
“And you,” she said with a grin, “are an incorrigible flirt.”
“I like skirt chaser better.”
She laughed and led the way into the kitchen.
It wasn't until she had brewed the coffee and settled a napkin in front of himâa cloth napkin of all thingsâthat he realized his imaginary picture of her kitchen could not have been more on the mark. There were herbs hanging from the ceiling in neat bundles, and rows of home-canned goods in the glass-fronted cupboards. Plants grew in a tangle on every windowsill and more hung from hooks in the ceiling or tumbled from atop ledges and cabinets. A braided rug covered the pine floor. The wallpaper border, her dish towels and her curtains all sported a pattern of unruly sunflowers.
Ramona herself, in bare feet, her tanned skin glowing and her hair shining, her good health obvious, could have been on a poster extolling the virtues of natural foods.
With almost a zooming sound, the surrealistic sense of distance Jake so loathed suddenly reappeared. One minute, he was smiling and admiring her long hair, the next he was yanked from the scene and forced to view it from a distant perspective, as if some cruel puppet master wanted to remind him that life was only a foolish drama played out on stage. Everything now seemed ridiculous. Her airy humming as she poured the coffee, the bands of rich gold sunlight in the room, the fecund plants...
Panic suffused him. His mouth went dry so fast he couldn't even swallow the bite of doughnut, and he reached blindly for his coffee. He knocked it over and the hot liquid spilled over his leg, scalding him. At the same moment, he choked on the doughnut. He jumped up, pulling at his jeans and trying to catch his breath.
He couldn't breathe and couldn't see and couldn't decide which problem to address firstâthe searing pain of the coffee burning his thigh or the doughnut cutting off his air. Every second seemed to last an eternity. Then he became vaguely aware of Ramona moving toward him. Her sharp blow on his back that dislodged the doughnut. She pressed a napkin into his hand and he spit the food out.
Tears streamed from his eyes and he inhaled a huge gulp of air.
“Take off your jeans,” she barked. “You'll have third degree burns if you don't.”
Jake didn't wait for a second invitation. He unbuttoned and unzipped and peeled off his jeans in an instant. Cool air struck his thigh and he looked down to see an angry, already-blistering-burn that stretched from his knee to midthigh in a wide angry slash.
“Damn,” Ramona said. “Sit down. I'll be right back.”
She returned carrying a big plant with pointy spikes and knelt in front of him. With a steak knife, she sliced a thick branch from the plant and slit it lengthwise, then slapped the opened side onto the burn. It was cold and stung at first, but almost immediately, the heat went out of the scald. “That helps,” he said, embarrassed that his voice sounded rough. Like he was some kid getting a scrape bandaged and trying not to cry.
She repeated the procedure several times until the burn was covered with the cool, moist leaves. The incident had jolted him violently back into reality, and Jake found himself watching her small, efficient hands moving on his thigh, so close to his briefs. As she leaned over him, her blouse revealed a fulsome display of cleavage, creamy smooth flesh that invited a man to open his mouth wide and taste...
No. If he started fantasizing, there wasn't much between them to hide his reaction. He focused on a pair of wrens quarreling in a tree beyond the screen door.
“There,” she said. “Is that better?”
Jake raised his eyes. She was kneeling in front of him, her braid tumbling down over one breast. The blouse had slipped to one side and her shoulder was gorgeousâsatinskinned and round and smooth. She seemed completely unaware of the provocative pose or how seductive she looked. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”
“You need to sit there for a minute and let the plant take the heat out of the burn. I'll get you another cup of coffee if you like.” She stood and gave him a wicked smile. “And maybe a towel to wrap around your waist.”
He looked down at his briefs. “My swimming trunks are a lot smaller than this.” He grinned. “It's up to you.”
A touch of color pinkened her cheeks. “I'll bring you a towel.”
Jake laughed. “Whatever makes you comfortable, Doc.”
Chapter 7
R
amona carried the aloe plant back to its sunny spot in the living room, then went to the bathroom for a towel.
amona carried the aloe plant back to its sunny spot in the living room, then went to the bathroom for a towel.
Sex sex sex sex sex.
Jake Forrest was sex personified. It emanated from his skin like a scent, danced in his eyes, whispered through his voice. It was in the lazy, easy way he moved, in the careless toss of his head, in the way he touched things. He seemed particularly sensitive to the texture of things. Ordinary things. He'd fingered the cloth of the napkin and rubbed a thumb over the rough finish of the earthenware mug she'd given him. He'd put both hands on her dog and opened his hand as if to feel the fur on every inch of his skin.
Or was she just projecting?
She turned on the cold water and splashed her face repeatedly. She was a doctor. She had treated plenty of menâplenty of gorgeous, sexy menâand had never had a single moment of trouble separating her professional and personal responses.
But it had taken every shred of her self-control to treat Jake's burn. It had to be on his thigh. Coffee spills usually were. And he was rightâhe was wearing more than most bathing suits.
As if her libido cared. It didn't seem to put much trust in logic.
Ramona plunged her face in the water, gasping at the cold. It didn't help. She couldn't seem to dislodge the picture of his sex, cradled between his thighs in a harness of soft cotton. Her fingers tingled with the lingering need to weigh that flesh in her hands. She was thirty-six years old and never in her life had she felt quite such a surge of pure, questing, curiousâwell,
need
.
need
.
Over and over she washed her face in the ice-cold water. It finally began to help. Out of the cupboard she took the biggest bath sheet she could findâappropriately bright red for dangerâand took it back into the kitchen.
At the threshold, she paused. Jake sat by the open back door, his face in his hands. Or rather, on his knuckles, which were white with the tension in his fingers. Scatters of black hair spilled over his hands, hiding his expression, but his posture screamed of both resistance and painâand she doubted very much that it was the burn causing him that much anguish.
She had not questioned his appearance at her door this morning. He wore that vaguely ragged look of a bad night. The hollows had come back to his face, and he hadn't shaved. Although he flirted and teased and gave the impression of a friendly visit, she sensed he just needed her.
She didn't question that. It was something she had grown used to over the yearsâpeople came to her when they hurt. She trusted completely her ability to soothe them. It was something she'd always known how to do, the way some people made perfect bread or sewed wonderful clothes or, like Jake's brother, Tyler, could see the way wood should be cut or carved even before the bark came off a log.
And she had seen that Jake was in the grip of a panic attack seconds before he choked and floundered and burned himself. She'd gone instinctively to the sink to get him a glass of water.
Now she eyed the line of his shoulders, rigid and hard, and the weary set of his head, and knew the sleeping pills had not done him any good at all. If anything, they'd made matters worse by removing the urgent need to confront his demons.
Making no sound in her bare feet, she moved into the room. He did not look up. Remembering his earlier reaction to her awakening him in the office, she started humming as she approached him. He shifted, but didn't immediately look at her. She suspected he was not happy about being caught in such a vulnerable pose.
Gently, she rounded him and put the towel around his waist. “It's for me, okay?” she said lightly. Standing behind him, she put her hands on his shoulders.
He tensed. Ramona used her thumbs on the pressure points in his neck. “Relax a little, okay? I can see you had a bad night. And I'm good at this.”
She had good hands, something else she trusted about herself. They were strong and they could give at least momentary peace. As she worked on the knotted places in his muscles, she hummed a little ballad.
Slowly, he began to relax. Once, she pressed a spot made sore by all the tension, and he groaned.
“Too hard?” she asked.
“No. Just right.”
Golden morning light fell over his dark hair and gilded his strong-looking arms and caught in the dark hair on his legs below the towel. Ramona kneaded his shoulders and neck with expertise and breathed deeply of his exotic scent. She mused about the nature of pheromones, the scent-calls men and women put out for one another, and wondered if Jake had an unusually powerful scent. It would account for a lot.
After a while, he reached up and caught her hand. “That helped. Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
His hand engulfed hers. She started to pull away, but he didn't let her. Instead, he pulled her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm.
A bolt of arousal shot from the center of her hand to her thighs, and Ramona felt her hips melt. His mouth was warm and she could sense the heat just beyond. Against her fingertips, his prickly jaw seemed terribly fragile. Without conscious thought, she stroked the bones that formed his extraordinary face.
He raised his eyes and Ramona felt herself snared in the captivating intensity of his jewel-like blue gaze. With one hand on his shoulder, the other caught close in his against his cheek, she simply let herself fall.
He was unimaginably handsome. No man who looked like this had ever given her a second glance, but in Jake's eyes she saw a hunger mixed with that grave soberness that always seemed to haunt them.
“I dreamed about you last night,” he said, and his mouth moved against her life line.
She couldn't quite remember how to breathe. “What kind of dream?”
“I thought you were in my bed when I woke up.” He pressed a kiss to her inner wrist, oh so gently. “I was very disappointed when you weren't.”
Against the rush of images his words evoked, Ramona closed her eyes. But it only made her other senses more acute, and she felt his mouth, lush and skillful, moving over her hand. It touched her wrist and thumb and lingered on each fleshy rise below her fingers. Tinglings of desire sped up her veins until Ramona was sure her body was glowing a rosy red.
Impossible she should feel so instantly, fiercely, ready to make love to him, right here in the kitchen, when all he had done was kiss her hand, but there it was. She opened her eyes to let in the sight of him and could not resist letting her fingers stray over his cheekbone and the fragile skin at his temple.
“I'm not your type,” she said.
“I know.”
But he didn't look away. Instead, his free hand lit upon her waist and restlessly skimmed up to her ribs, then back down and up again, going even higher until his thumb brushed the underside of her breast. Ramona stilled, her heart thundering in her chest, and she suddenly remembered the sight of his long, elegant, questing fingers hungrily kneading the breast of a girl in a secluded hallway many years ago. A pulse leaped to life low in her belly, and she heard a soft, longing sigh escape her throat.
His hand slid back down to her waist, and he let go the hand he held against his face. Ramona, lost in the erotic shocks of the past few moments, felt a blush rising over her chest, up her face. That sigh had given her away. How...?
Jake didn't move away. He simply stared up at her, a peculiar intensity lending his eyes an electric vividness that seemed almost unreal. There was no teasing there, no glittering amusement, only a fierce solemnityâand yes, a hunger as bewildering and powerful as her own. He shifted so he could pull her into the angle between his thighs, then put both hands on her waist, spreading his fingers as if to absorb the sensation of her body into every cell of his hands.
Waiting, Ramona felt the air in the room grow thick, thick with unspoken needs and wishes and long-buried fantasies and dreams. With a sense of wonder, she stroked his high, intelligent forehead and the thick black line of his brows.
When his hands at last began to move over her chest, Ramona knew she ought to be alarmed. Maybe even uncomfortable. When a man touched a woman's breast for the first time, it seemed he ought to be kissing her when he did it.
But Jake didn't kiss her. He simply skimmed upward over her tummy, his hands rumpling the fabric of her blouse, then over her ribs, and finally, finally, covered her breasts. Bright with passion, his eyes embraced hers as he did it, and Ramona could not look away, even knowing that he'd see how much he affected her.
He touched her breasts the way he'd touched everything else, as if he was extraordinarily aware of each and every nuance. His fingers stroked her nipples, curled around the curves, lifted her flesh to gauge the weight and fit. Each small movement sent new waves of awareness and desire through her.
Nor was Jake unaffected. His breath came unevenly, and when he lowered his gaze to look at what his fingers touched, he made a low, soft sound that was almost a growl of yearning. She touched his cheeks, the edges of his jaw and the fan of lines around his eyes. And when her knees would no longer hold her, she swayed forward and pressed a kiss to his brow.
His mouth grazed the upper swell of her breast, and he moved his hands to pull her close against him, pressing his face into the hollow of her throat, his fingers fierce against her back. She ran her fingers through his thick, dark hair and stroked the long, corded muscles at the back of his neck.
“I dreamed you were naked.” His voice was a quiet rasp. Moving his mouth in tiny kisses along the curve of her shoulder, he murmured, “I dreamed of your breasts and belly, all soft and round next to me.”
Ramona found herself kissing his silky crown and cradled his head against her breasts. A wave of something much too deep and hungry washed through her. Dangerous. Dangerous to care too much about a man who was so lost.
This was too much, too fast, and she couldn't let herself just fall into bed with him. Gently, she pulled away. “Jake...” she began.
His fingers clenched on her sides. “I know. I do know.”
With an obvious effort, he straightened, and Ramona stepped back, then away, moving toward the counter to hide her face from him and give him time to compose himself. “Do you want some more coffee?”
“Ah, sure, I guess.” He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was utterly normal. “How long do I have to keep these leaves on here?”
Ramona grasped at the distraction. “You can take them off now, if you like.” She poured his coffee and put it on the table, frowning as she looked at the burn. “You are not going to want to wear jeans for at least a few days.”
“Which does present a quandary, doesn't it?”
She grinned. “You don't want to walk down my driveway in your underwear?”
“Not particularly. And I doubt you have anything in your closet that will fit.”
“No, that's certain. What about Tyler? He lives close byâcall him and ask him to bring you some sweats or shorts.”
Jake nodded. “Listen, I know you probably don't trust me, and I'd understand if you didn't think I could behave myself, but I came up here intending to ask you to go sailing with me. Would you think about it?” He held up three fingers. “I swear I won't come on to you again.”
Sailing. With Jake Forrest. In the sunshine and heady air of the mountains. She hesitated, aware again that he was very dangerous indeed. She had this appalling tendency to really like him, in addition to being furiously attracted. Bad combination.
He caught her hand. “Please. I don't know why, but you make me feel alive.”
Ramona looked away. Of course. He needed healing, and she was the healer. Because he was a very sexual man, his visions of healing came to him in those terms. “You'd make more progress with a therapist, Jake.”
“What?”
With an effort, she looked at him. He dropped her hand. “You're lost and needy and you sense that I'll be able to offer healing. But I'm not that kind of healer. You aren't broken physically, but wounded emotionally. A good therapist can help you more than I can.”
“No, you don't understand. It's not like that.” He seemed to struggle to find the right words. “Most of the time, I feel like I'm watching a movie, you know? Like I'm by myself out in the audience, just watching. Like I can't make contact.”
Disassociationâa classic symptom. She nodded to let him know she understood.
“When I'm around you, the movie goes away, and everything seems real again.” He paused. “Somehow, you're alive and no one else really is.”
A sensation of pain squeezed through her chest. Humbled, she said quietly, “I'll go sailing with you.” She paused. “But you have to let me ask you one question today. One question you answer honestly.”
“What kind of question?”
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