They came to a stop on the edge of the dance floor. Mona turned her face up to his. “You sure your date won’t mind you dancing with me?” she asked.
“I didn’t bring a date—unless you count Larry.” He looked down at her as if to probe her thoughts. “You’re not counting Larry, are you?”
“No, I’m not counting Larry,” she said with a wide grin. “You don’t strike me as a couple.”
She laughed and the light sound instantly burrowed under his skin, the way it always used to whenever he heard it. Though he wasn’t prone to poetic thoughts by any stretch of the imagination, the sound of Mona’s laughter always made him think of bluebells growing wild in the field. He wasn’t sure as to why that was, but felt it was safer if he didn’t explore his reaction.
The less he thought about Mona in general, the better. Except that since she’d returned two weeks ago, and especially since that first night in the cabin, he couldn’t seem to make himself stop thinking about her. Mona was one of the reasons he’d allowed himself to get roped into decorating the outside of Doc’s place.
One? Hell, Mona was the reason he’d agreed to lend a hand. Sure, the sheriff was a man he not only admired but also liked, and he wished Rick nothing but the very best with this marriage, but in general, outside of his job, Joe made it a rule to keep to himself whenever possible. Keeping to himself didn’t include picking up a hammer and hanging up streamers or building a dance floor or the trellis where the happy twosome and one-quarter—if you counted the baby—exchanged their marriage vows.
But the sheriff was Mona’s brother and pitching in with the decorating allowed him to be around her. He’d assumed, rightly so, that she would be in the thick of it, at least working if not actually ordering people around, telling them what to do and, more likely than not, how to do it.
“Something wrong?” he asked her as he threaded one hand through hers while lightly placing the other around her waist. He tried not to think how good she felt in his arms.
And how much he wanted to kiss her again.
Mona gazed up at him, cocking her head as if she was trying to understand. “No. Why? Do I look like there’s something wrong?”
“Well…” Backtracking, he reconsidered his assessment. “You don’t exactly look like there’s something right.”
She pretended to shake her head as if she was trying to clear it. “Is this something new? I don’t remember you talking in riddles.”
“I don’t remember you sidestepping and being evasive,” he countered. He told himself to remember to sway to the music. The natural rhythm within his body took over. “C’mon, Mona, this is me. You used to be able to tell me what was bothering you,” he reminded her.
“I also used to be able to skim rocks along the surface of the lake,” she answered flippantly. “I can’t do that anymore.”
He stared at her for a moment. The sun was still in the sky, allowing him to look into her eyes, to see the things that she wasn’t saying. “When was the last time you tried?”
Shrugging, Mona deliberately looked away. “I don’t remember.”
Just as he thought. “Then how do you know you can’t still skim rocks on the lake?” he challenged. He saw the exasperation that entered her eyes as she turned back and raised her chin. He knew that stance. She was on the brink of picking a fight. “Tell you what, after your brother and his wife make a break for it to go on their honeymoon, why don’t you and I go down to the lake and test that theory of yours?”
She shook her head, rejecting the suggestion. “It’s not that important.”
He surprised Mona by agreeing with her. “No, but maybe if you find out that you can still skim rocks over the lake, you’ll think of me as your friend again and tell me what’s bothering you.”
He was making sense. She had no use for sense right now and just wanted to be agreed with and left alone.
“Shut up and dance,” she ordered in barely suppressed exasperation.
“There’s that winning personality of yours again,” he declared with a grin. If looks could kill, he’d be lying on the floor, dead on the spot, he thought. He feigned ducking her glare. “I’m dancing, I’m dancing,” he told her.
The silence between them lasted less than thirty seconds. The look she flashed him when she leaned back was apologetic. “I’m being prickly again, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, but your brother just got married, so I’m cutting you a little slack.”
Mona eyed him sharply. “Get out of my head, Joe.”
A so-called contrite expression on his face, he danced her in a semicircle. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mona closed her eyes. “Oh, God, I’m not a ‘ma’am,’ Joe. Don’t call me that,” she told him sharply. “It makes me feel totally ancient.”
“Every female above the age of ten in this part of the country is politely addressed as ‘ma’am.’ You know that. You also know that you’re not ancient,” he pointed out. The song came to an end and, reluctantly, Joe released her. Or at least he dropped his hands. But his eyes held her in place far more effectively than his hands could ever do. “You want to go somewhere and talk?”
The suggestion did not meet with her approval. She knew that if she went with him, she’d say far too much, and right now she didn’t like herself, didn’t like how she was feeling. It didn’t point to the person she really was. What it did was make her out to be a spoiled, self-centered child and it was bad enough that she knew that. She didn’t need anyone else aware of the fact.
“No,” she answered much too quickly, then shrugged as she looked away. She tossed him a bone, hoping it would get him to back away. “Maybe later.”
“How much later?” he pressed. “A couple of hours? A couple of days? A couple of decades?”
She sighed. “Just later.”
By then she hoped to have worked out what was bothering her. Hoped to finally react maturely, the way she knew in her heart she should.
The way she knew that right now, she wasn’t.
That was what bothered her. That she should be putting Rick first, the way he’d always done with her. She should just be happy for him with his new life.
But all she could think was that their paths had suddenly diverged and he was going off in another direction. A direction she would never be able to follow. Not even with his example leading the way. Because in her heart, she knew she would never trust anyone else, never give them her heart the way Rick had given his to Olivia.
Mona knew, as surely as she was standing here on this temporary dance floor, that someday, the person she gave her heart to—if she was ever so foolish—would desert her. Would leave her behind as surely as her father had, as surely as her grandmother had.
As her mother had.
Except for Rick, none of the important people in her life had remained. Granted she’d never known her father and both he and her grandmother had died, but the bottom line was that they were gone.
As gone as her mother was. Her mother who had left both Rick and her with Abuela, promising to be back “soon.” And “soon,” it seemed, had no end, no finite definition.
At least not to Elena Santiago.
“Okay,” Joe was saying to her gamely. “You got it. Later it is.”
She sighed. “You’re like some kind of a pit bull, aren’t you? Latching on and refusing to let go.”
If she thought she was insulting him, she miscalculated. He grinned at her instead. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“And I don’t think I want to know,” she told him. She saw a strange, alert look come into his eyes as he glanced past her. “Okay, now what?” she asked.
Instead of Joe answering, she heard a woman behind her say, “Hello, Ramona.”
Curious, not recognizing the voice, Mona turned around. And found herself looking up into a face that was familiar to her even though she couldn’t really place it.
A face that looked like an older version of hers.
“Hello,” she replied gu
ardedly. No name came to her as she appraised the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“No, not really,” the woman answered. “But I’m hoping to change that.” Before Mona could ask how she intended to do that or why she wanted to, the woman said, “I’m your mother, Ramona,” and promptly generated an earthquake in her world.
Chapter Seven
Joe knew that Mona hated having anyone butt in to her business. She took it as an insinuation that she was incapable of handling her own affairs, of dealing with whatever curve nature happened to throw at her. A smart man would have just kept to the shadows and let things play out without interfering.
Maybe, when it came to things that concerned Mona, he just wasn’t smart.
Because, despite all he knew to the contrary, he could feel that same protective instinct that had kicked in the evening of the flash floods.
Mona had visibly stiffened when the woman said she was her mother. He knew this would not turn into a happy reunion complete with tears of joy. Mona had told him a long time ago that she wanted nothing to do with the woman who had been able to walk away from her and her brother without so much as a single qualm.
He also knew that Elena Santiago had come back to Forever once before. She’d shown up on Rick’s doorstep eighteen years after she’d disappeared out of her children’s lives. The way he’d heard the story, Elena had wanted to make amends, but Rick would have none of it. He had deliberately sent her away before Mona came home from school. He hadn’t wanted his sister to be upset by the reappearance of a mother who didn’t know the meaning of the title.
As far as Joe knew, Mona never met her mother that day. Judging from the way she’d blankly stared at the woman, before Elena had told her who she was, he was right. Mona had no idea what her mother looked like.
Until now.
Taking his cue from Mona’s stiff posture, Joe moved forward, ever so slightly placing himself between her and the woman claiming to be her mother.
In her day, Elena had been a very beautiful woman who turned the heads of men and women alike as she passed. Even now, she was still a very attractive woman and it was obvious that she was accustomed to getting by on her looks and using those looks.
After giving him a flirtatious smile, making no secret of the fact that she took full measure of him, Elena turned to Mona. “Is this your man?”
Mona’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “You don’t have the right to ask me anything or know anything about me.”
It was obvious that Elena didn’t think her daughter meant what she said. With a tolerant smile, she tried again. “Ramona—”
Mona was not about to be won over. Her brother and his wife had gone to change into their traveling clothes. She wanted this woman gone before they returned. “You gave up that right a long time ago. Now, please leave before Rick sees you.”
“Protective,” Elena said with a nod. “Like your brother. Your brother’s wedding is why I came back.”
“Why?” Mona demanded, struggling to keep her voice down. For her brother’s sake, she wanted no undue attention drawn to this woman. “So you can ruin that, too?”
Elena appeared a little hurt by her daughter’s accusation. Joe noted that she rallied, keeping her smile in place.
“No,” Elena told her. “So I could make amends. A wedding is a celebration of a new beginning. I thought Enrique might want to make that new beginning knowing he had a mother in the background who wanted—”
Mona cut her off. She didn’t want to listen to theatrical rhetoric.
“Don’t you understand? You have no right to want anything,” she informed the other woman coldly. “Now, I’m asking you nicely, please leave. If you care anything at all about Rick the way you claim, you’ll go without causing a scene. Rick doesn’t need to know that you’re here.”
Joe could see that the woman struggled between her own desire to put the sins of her past behind her and doing as her daughter requested.
In the end, Joe took over. He politely but firmly took hold of Mona’s mother by the arm and escorted her out of the backyard.
“This way, please, Mrs. Santiago,” he said, gesturing toward the front of the two-story house.
Elena gave him no opposition, allowing herself to be led away.
“Ruiz,” she corrected him, regally walking toward the front of the house as if all eyes were on her. “It’s Mrs. Ruiz now.”
“You got married again?” Joe asked, not because he was curious but because he saw that the woman wanted him to ask. It cost him nothing to play along.
Elena nodded. “Twice.” She leaned her head in toward him and lowered her voice as if she was sharing something in confidence. “Men keep dying on me,” she said with a deep sigh. “I seem to have the worst luck.”
“Not as bad as the men,” Joe commented without a hint of humor.
Elena laughed anyway. In contrast to her daughter, Elena’s laugh was deep and throaty, as if she had spent a good deal of the past eighteen years sipping whiskey at the elbows of fawning men.
But something about the way she cocked her head and her stance, that reminded him of Mona. Like it or not, the two women were connected.
Elena pressed her lips together, clearly debating asking him a question. She decided to put it to him. “Think that Ramona will ever forgive me?” she asked without preamble.
He considered the question in light of what he remembered about Mona’s character when they were much younger.
“She’s stubborn, but she’s got a good heart. But getting Mona to come around won’t come easy,” he warned the other woman.
Elena barely suppressed a sigh and nodded. “I didn’t think it would, but I knew I had to take that first step.”
In her eyes, Joe saw a sadness that transcended the bravado she presented to the world.
“Be good to Ramona and protect her,” she instructed him.
Joe could just see the way Mona would react if she overheard her mother telling him that. “That’s not my call,” he answered.
Elena watched him for a long moment and he could almost feel her eyes burrowing into him.
“Oh, but I think it is,” Elena contradicted. She slipped her hand into his and then shook it. “Tell her I’ll be seeing her again.” She flashed a broad, telling smile. “And maybe next time, we can work things out.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you, Mrs. Ruiz, Joe thought. But he kept his opinion to himself. No sense in getting the woman upset.
She squeezed his hand, as if they had made some sort of a pact, and then walked away, making her way to her black sedan.
He didn’t waste any more time watching her. The noise from behind the house picked up and that could only mean one thing. Rick and Olivia were about to leave on their honeymoon. He didn’t want to miss saying goodbye to the couple.
Or being there for Mona when they finally left. He had a feeling she’d need him.
Joe made it around to the back just in time. Rick and Olivia had all but come to the end of the line of people who wanted to wish them well.
Rick glanced his way as he approached and grinned, looking somewhat relieved. “Thought maybe you decided to back out on me,” Rick said.
Joe thought it was an odd choice of words. But the sheriff’s flippant tone told him that Rick hadn’t noticed his mother crashing the party, which, all things considered, was a good thing. He was careful, though, not to look relieved. He didn’t want to trigger any questions. It wasn’t in his nature to lie outright.
Instead, he picked up the thread of what Rick had just said. “Back out?” he echoed.
“Yeah. I’m leaving the office—and the post—in your hands.” Rick seemed pleased with the decision he made earlier while making arrangements to book his honeymoon. “You’re going to be the sheriff of Forever for the next three weeks.”
Joe looked at the bridegroom, stunned. “Sheriff?” he repeated numbly.
Rick laughed at the completely stoic
expression. “Yeah. Sheriff. What’s the matter?” he asked. “You forget you’re the senior deputy?”
He hadn’t forgotten, he just never thought it put him at the head of the line for anything. He wasn’t the competitive type. “No, but I just thought that Larry—or maybe Alma—would be your first choice to fill the position.”
But Rick shook his head. “Larry and Alma are good people, but you’re the head deputy and it’s about time you tried out your wings to see if you can fly, Joe.”
“Flying” held no appeal to him. He liked being under the radar. Liked just doing his job, taking care of what he was responsible for and not worrying about any big pictures that might be lying around, needing to be considered.
“Maybe I don’t want to fly,” he told Rick. “Maybe I just want to walk to wherever it is that I’m supposed to be going.”
“Sorry.” Rick clapped him heartily on the back. “Decision’s been made. Right now, you’ve gotta fly.” He gave his senior deputy an encouraging look. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
“We’ll see you when we get back,” Olivia corrected, slipping her arm through his and smiling up at her husband’s face with the eyes of a woman who was head over heels in love.
“Right. We’ll see you when I—when we—get back,” he amended with a quick grin to Olivia. “This ‘couple’ business is going to take a while for me to get the hang of,” he confided more to Olivia than to the reluctant deputy standing before him.
“You’ll get used to it,” Doc assured him with a hearty laugh. The veterinarian had come up behind Joe as Rick was telling the deputy that he had been temporarily promoted. Doc curled his fingers about the letter-sized envelope he was holding. “Of course, I wouldn’t know about that from firsthand experience, but that’s what people tell me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I hear, too,” Rick told him, looking at his bride with a boundless affection. And then he turned toward Joe again. “In the meantime, I want you to look after Mona for me.”
A Baby on the Ranch: A Baby on the RanchRamona and the Renegade Page 22
