by Ruth Wind
Louise would not give up until she extracted a promise, and Ramona gave her a resigned smile. “All right. I’ll see what I can do, okay? No promises. If Jake is suffering posttraumatic stress disorder from his combat duty, he’ll need more than a friendly shoulder to cry on.”
Louise winked and patted her hand. “Good girl. I knew I could count on you.”
“Louise, don’t expect too much. It’s a serious condition.”
“I understand.”
“Are you taking your blood pressure medicine properly?”
“Like clockwork.”
The man Louise had been dancing with joined them. “I must steal this woman,” he said to Ramona. “She is the only one here who can dance. Okay? You done?”
Ramona was charmed to her toes by the lilting accent and twinkling eyes. “I’m done.”
“This is the doctor, Alonzo. Ramona Hardy. She said she’d like to see your work sometime.”
“A lady doctor? You must be very smart.” He inclined his head. “Sure, sure you can come. Anytime. I am always working.”
“Thank you.”
Louise pushed none too gently at Ramona’s arm. “Go get something to eat,” she said, and sent a meaningful glance behind Ramona. Jake had filled a plate and now sat at his place at the table. Ramona’s bouquet was on the chair next to him. As she watched, Jake took a long breath as if preparing himself for some painful task, then picked up his fork.
For one moment, Ramona was transported backward over the years. She was sixteen and very studious, a shy girl who hid behind thick glasses and tried her best to camouflage her overdeveloped bosom under baggy clothes. Her shyness was only increased by the comments the boys constantly made about her chest, as if it belonged to them. As if it had something to do with who she was.
And across the years, she remembered standing in the doorway of the cafeteria, mortified by a knot of boys who had trapped her as she went in to buy her lunch. They made crude remarks in quiet, snickering voices and shoved each other until one “accidentally” put his hand right there.
Jake Forrest had come to her rescue. Big and strong, and as clean-cut then as he now was ragged, he had grabbed the boy manhandling her and twisted his arm behind his back. With a quick jerk of his head, he indicated Ramona should go, and she had. When she tried to thank him the next day, he’d just shrugged. “No big deal.”
He didn’t remember her, Ramona thought now—and maybe that was for the best. He wouldn’t remember what a terrible, nerdy little wallflower she had been. How many times had she wished there had been someone like Jake Forrest to rescue her a year later from another group of boys?
She shoved the thoughts away. She was over the trauma of that awful day. More, she’d won. The boys had gone to jail.
And because she had survived that brutal day when she was seventeen, because she had built a solid, warm life in spite of the evils in the world, she knew she could help Jake Forrest.
If he would let her.
At the very least, she could offer kindness to repay him in some small way for that long-ago act in her defense. Catching up the skirt of her ridiculous bridesmaid’s dress, she headed across the room.
Jake felt better after he allowed himself a solid belt of single malt Scotch on the rocks. Scotch was good medicine—and not only for sleeping. It blunted the edges of his rage and sorrow and lostness. Enough of it could even make him forget everything entirely for an hour or two. Some days, the idea of simply crawling into that tall green bottle and never coming out was very appealing.
Trouble was, a drunk couldn’t afford imported Scotch, and Jake really didn’t care for anything else.
The food was very good—catered by an upscale establishment that had grown used to satisfying celebrities and the simply wealthy who kept second homes in Red Creek to be close to the best skiing to be had this side of the Atlantic. He ate wafer-thin slices of smoked salmon and strawberries and whole-grain bread with real butter, and the knot in his gut eased. By the time he spotted Ramona returning to the table, he felt much mellower and not nearly as defensive about her all-too-knowing eyes.
Pretty eyes, he could think now, without danger. Big, soft, get-lost-in-them brown. As she made her way across the room, he noticed that people stopped her often—and bent down to hear her gentle voice. They smiled after her, and even the restlessness of children confined by patentleather shoes and unfamiliar dress clothes seemed to settle a little as she moved among them, stopping to touch this one’s shoulder, murmur a joke in that one’s ear, scold another who was teasing his sister.
Peace and calm followed after her like the glow of a good wine.
He grimaced. Fine and well if you were looking for a mother, or maybe even a mother for your children. She was the type of woman who wanted to domesticate the world—probably had herbs hanging from her kitchen rafters and rows of home-canned tomatoes and beans on her shelves.
Not his style.
Restlessly, he scanned the room, feeling his disturbance rumble in his loins. Sometimes sex helped almost as much as liquor, and there were several possibilities in the room. Somehow, he couldn’t seem to rouse himself enough to get out of the chair.
When Ramona sat down beside him, Jake briefly imagined her in his arms, all warmth and softness. A little of the tight anxiety eased out of his neck. “I bet you put up your own jelly, don’t you?” he said before he could help himself.
To his surprise, she laughed. The sound was much huskier and richer than he expected. It made him think of thick woolen blankets on a cold, cold night. “You make it sound like something criminal. Don’t you like jelly?”
“I don’t think about it.” He picked up a roll and suddenly did think about the rows of ruby soldiers his mother had made every year. “Do you ever make chokecherry?”
That laugh again. A little fuller this time. “I made a lot this year. There were so many chokecherries last fall I gave thought to starting a new hunger drive—chokecherries for the world.” Her dark eyes danced. “What do you think?”
He smiled, almost against his will. “So do you have any left?”
“Well, I don’t know. If putting up jelly is a criminal activity, maybe you ought to be careful about becoming an accomplice.” She speared an artichoke heart on her fork. “Did you taste these? The sauce is wonderful.”
“Slimy green vegetables aren’t my thing.”
“Shame on you.” She popped it into her mouth and made a noise of pleasure. “Wonderful!” Spearing another, she held it out to him. “Try one. Really. You’ll be glad.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Maybe she wasn’t as plain as he first thought. Her coloring was nice—the hair that was swept up into some elaborate system of braids was not just brown, but brown and blond all mixed together, and very healthy. He wondered how long it was and what it would look like spread over her shoulders.
A faint, almost unnoticeable ripple moved down his thighs. Impulsively, he leaned forward and snagged the triangle off her fork, knowing she had meant him to take it with his fingers.
The taste exploded on his tongue. He widened his eyes to show his approval. “That’s good.”
She grinned, and he decided her mouth was very nice. A nice mouth was one of his requirements in a woman. How had he missed it earlier?
“You might be surprised how many wonderful, slimy green vegetables there are,” she said.
He picked up his fork. “May I have another one?”
“Of course.” She leaned back to give him access, and Jake speared another from her plate. He smelled something nice coming from her skin, very light, a perfume or something.
“You smell good,” he said.
“Thanks. So do you.”
He met her gaze and felt a flame arc between them—that undeniable frisson that passed between a man and a woman, a frisson that had nothing to do with anything except perfect chemical alignment. Chemicals didn’t care if her figure was the kind he usually admired, or whether she had home-can
ned peas on her shelf. He let his gaze sweep over her face, light on her mouth, travel downward to the plump breasts too tightly confined in the ridiculous dress. For a minute, he was a little dizzy—his exhaustion rising to the fore—and had to close his eyes. With an effort, he opened them again and made a stab at flirting. “You like my cologne, huh?”
Maybe he’d expected her to be flustered. She was not. She met his gaze steadily, a tiny smile hovering at the corner of her mouth. “Yes.”
Something about that expression teased his memory, and he frowned for a minute, trying to place her. The snippet jelled and he saw her laughing with an old soldier as she checked his blood pressure. “You work at the VA home, don’t you?”
“That’s one of my stops, yes.”
“Are you a nurse or something?”
She raised her eyebrows. “These days, women aren’t only nurses.”
“A doctor?” He couldn’t keep the slight surprise from his voice. Not because she was a woman, but because he associated women who achieved such grueling positions with a much more aggressive personality. “You’re a doctor?”
“Amazing as it may seem, I am.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He shrugged and took another artichoke heart from her plate. “Most women with big-time careers are kind of...” He stopped, noticing the tightness of her mouth. “Ah, never mind.”
“No, please,” she said in a silky tone, “I love to hear sexist comments from the lips of macho soldier boys.”
He laughed. It just came out of him all at once, sounding rusty and unused because it was. “Touché,” he said. “I’m sonny.”
“Accepted.” Tiny flames of humor danced in her eyes. “I mean, you can’t really expect a soldier to be politically correct, now can you?”
“Ex-soldier,” he said automatically.
“Ah, that’s right. You’re retired, aren’t you?”
“No,” he said without the usual pang. Amazing how far a little Scotch, a little food, and a woman to flirt with went toward silencing his demons. “You have to complete your commission to retire. I resigned.”
“I see.” She picked out a perfectly shaped, bright red strawberry and admired it on her fork. “That’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Look at it again. This is the queen of all strawberries, and by some fine accident, she ended up on my plate. And my mouth.” She bit into the flesh, and Jake found himself admiring the movements of her pretty lips. A bawdy comment bloomed in his mind as he watched her savor it, eyes closed, all concentration focused on the task. Another prickling wave of desire washed down his thighs. A little more insistent this time.
“Are you flirting with me, Doctor?”
She smiled. “Maybe a little. Isn’t that what one does at these things?”
She made it sound so harmless and innocent and simple. He’d forgotten innocent pleasures even existed and he was suddenly quite glad to realize they still did. “I guess it is.” Impulsively, maybe because she made him laugh, he held out his hand. “In that spirit, I think you should dance with me and let me flirt back.”
She frowned. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
“It’s easy.” He stood up, still patiently holding out his hand. “Just follow me.”
She hesitated for a moment, just long enough to make Jake want to reconsider. He wasn’t kidding himself for a second. He wanted to get laid, and this was the woman his body wanted, no matter how inappropriate it was. Or impossible. He couldn’t go around sleeping with the local doctor.
Plus, in his current mood, it was dangerous to give in to any whim. Once he had her softness close to him, he wouldn’t be thinking about appropriate or inappropriate. He’d be thinking about how to seduce her.
Bad idea. Even Jake had some honor. He stuck to the fast, brittle women his mother despised, simply because they didn’t want anything more than he did—a quick, impersonal roll in the hay. Ramona, with her soft eyes and plush warmth, was not the same kind of woman at all.
But before he could sit back down, she took his hand and rose gracefully. “I hope you don’t fall down from exhaustion,” she said.
“You can hold me up,” he replied, and led her onto the floor.
Chapter 2
Ramona followed Jake out to the small square cleared for dancing, all too aware of the eyes that followed their progress. She’d seen the measuring examination of the women here, many of them the kind of woman Jake was known to enjoy.
When he stopped in front of her, waiting for her to catch up, she felt a strange, quick swoop of dizziness. She wished she were wearing something besides the unflattering bridesmaid’s dress. She wished she were tall and lean and elegant, with a swath of butter-colored hair. She wished she had spent her youth making small talk instead of buried in her studies, so now she would know what to say to catch this big, beautiful man’s attention for more than a moment.
But because she had no illusions, she simply smiled up at him and moved into the circle of his arms.
She tipped her head back to look at him. “I hope I don’t trip you.”
He simply shook his head, not even a faint pretend smile breaking the graveness of his dark face. Against black lashes, his eyes were almost painfully blue, that bright, rare shade that defied naming. Only the mountain sky on a hot summer day in the mountains ever came close to that color.
“Dancing is just two bodies moving,” he said. “Relax and let yourself feel me.”
Feel me. An image of her putting her hands on his skin rose up with vivid and erotic insistence—a vision all the more surprising because she simply didn’t get those kinds of thoughts very often. Her introduction to sex had been violent, and it had been a long time afterward before she’d even allowed a man to hold her hand. Once in a while, she saw a movie that made her wonder what it would be like to feel passion, or she dreamed of a man whose face never came clear, a man of vast tenderness who disrobed and worshiped her as if she were an angel.
But Jake was real and male, and smelled not only of his cologne, but of a distinctly earthy note that she thought must be that skin she thought of touching. Beneath the fabric of his coat, she felt the muscles of his arm moving easily, and she wondered what color his skin was there. Tanned a golden shade? Or white from the long winter?
With a frown, she realized she was making too big a thing out of it. He had only asked her to dance, for heaven’s sake. Not a particularly revolutionary act at a wedding reception.
Taking a deep breath, Ramona exhaled slowly and tried to release the tension in her shoulders, tried to let her hands rest lightly upon him instead of gripping so tightly.
“There you go,” he said. “Relax and listen to the music. Let it move inside of you.” As if to make it easier for her, he stepped a little closer.
Her breasts brushed his chest, and his knee rubbed the side of her thigh. Trying to ignore those details, Ramona concentrated on the music. It was a song from high school, and she knew it well enough that she didn’t have to stumble. When she finally relaxed a little, she caught a glimmering of what he meant by letting herself feel his body. A dozen nearly imperceptible movements signaled her to move this way or that—the faint pull of his hand, the nudge of his knee, the sway of his hips.
But then her awareness of his body led to an increased awareness of her own, and she tripped on his feet. “Oops,” she said with a grin. “I don’t think that’s what you meant.”
“You’re still thinking too much.” Now there was a little humor in his eyes. “Have you ever ridden a motorcycle with someone?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Jake put one of her hands on his waist and settled his free hand on her shoulder. His palm was cool against the bare flesh above her gown. “You know how you have to lean into turns and both of you have to lean together?”
Ramona nodded. He slipped his arms closer around her, and their bodies touched at chest and thighs. She swallowed against the sudden jolt of desir
e that passed through her, fast and hot.
“Close your eyes,” he instructed.
“If I close mine, you have to do it, too,” she countered. “I don’t want anyone thinking I’m swooning over you.”
A grin cracked the somberness of his face. “It’s a deal.”
So she did. Closed her eyes and leaned into him lightly, then let him lead her in a dance. He smelled of coffee and Scotch and the heady after-shave she liked so much. His jacket brushed her arms. And dancing, which had always eluded her, seemed an effortless thing.
“You’re a very good dancer,” she said quietly.
“Mmm.”
The song changed, sliding into something else from the same era. “‘American Pie,”’ Jake said, his voice coming to her both through his chest and from above. “They played it at the homecoming dance when I was a senior.”
Ramona smiled. “I remember it, too. I bought the 45.”
“Forty-fives. Do you still have them?”
“Probably some.”
“I’d love to see what you have sometime.”
“No problem.”
At his urging, she gave in to the impulse to rest her cheek against his shoulder, to relax completely against his body, moving sinuously against her. Their thighs slipped and slid, and their hips swayed in perfect harmony.
Distantly, she was aware of his hands moving almost absently against her back, up and down. Was it normal to dance like this with a stranger? Ramona didn’t really know—nor, oddly, did she care. It felt as if it were the right thing to do, and that was all that mattered. Maybe it would give Jake a little peace.
“Am I leaning on you too much?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
A silent sigh moved his chest, and Ramona felt the tension ease out of him as if someone had pulled a plug.
The song ended, and the band suddenly switched gears, moving into a rowdy reel. Jake straightened abruptly, blinking. Ramona thought he looked as if he’d been suddenly awakened from a nap—and that probably wasn’t far from the truth.
She smiled. “Thank you for the lesson.”
