A Baby on the Ranch: A Baby on the RanchRamona and the Renegade

by Marie Ferrarella

  That made two people who were entrusting him with Mona’s care in a short amount of time. Mona would have been fit to be tied if she knew.

  “I’ll try,” Joe promised honestly. “But it won’t be easy.” Rick looked at him quizzically. “She doesn’t like anyone hovering over her,” Joe pointed out.

  “Then don’t let her see you hovering,” said Rick. He looked around the immediate vicinity and frowned slightly. “Speaking of my sister, where is she? I kind of thought I’d see her before we left.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like saying goodbye,” Joe suggested.

  The two men looked at one another, as if communicating in silence what they couldn’t in words.

  Mona had never been much for goodbyes.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Rick agreed vaguely.

  Doc moved forward, taking both of Olivia’s hands in his and managing to secretly slip the envelope he’d been holding into them. It was a little something to help out with expenses when they got to their Southern California destination, a charming little bed-and-breakfast just north of San Diego.

  “You two have a safe flight. Now go,” Doc ordered, releasing Olivia’s hands and taking a step backward away from the couple. “Before someone decides they just have to talk to you before you leave.”

  “Good advice,” Rick agreed.

  He took Olivia’s hand in his and together they made a run for it through the house and out front to his Jeep. The vehicle stood waiting for them, already gaudily decorated to announce to the world at large that they had gotten married today.

  A crowd of well-wishers were at their backs, pelting them not with rice but with choruses of good wishes and orders to enjoy themselves and not to come back too fast. Forever, like the town’s name promised, would be here waiting for them.

  Turning away from the speeding vehicle as it disappeared down the road, Joe scanned the faces that had poured out of the backyard with him.

  Mona wasn’t among them.

  As he looked second time, his eyes met Larry’s. Joe made his way over to the other deputy to enlist his help.

  “You seen Mona around?” he asked Larry, trying his best to keep the impatience gnawing away at him out of his voice.

  Larry didn’t even have to pretend to think. “You mean, just a few minutes ago? Yeah, she was heading your way.” He pointed to the encroaching darkness, indicating the infinite vastness that stood at the back of Doc’s property. “I thought that maybe you were taking my advice and the two of you were rendezvousing.” Larry drew out every one of the four syllables, making the word sound as if it had twice as many letters in it as it did. “Guess I thought wrong.” But he found himself talking to Joe’s back. Joe headed toward the rear of the yard, a purpose to his gait. “You know where she is?” Larry called after his friend.

  “I’ve got a hunch,” Joe tossed over his shoulder, moving quickly. In a few seconds, he was out of earshot.

  Twilight crept in and, as it approached, systematically erased any decent visibility. If he didn’t find her soon, he might not be able to until the next morning. The city proper had streetlights, but if Mona had gone where he thought she might have, there weren’t any streetlights to illuminate the way for her.

  Or him.

  He had a flashlight in the glove compartment of his vehicle, but he hadn’t thought to get it and he was already too far out on the road to the woods to double back for it now.

  He moved quickly, the way he’d learned as a boy. Back then he’d had to jump aside to get of the way of his uncle’s long, powerful reach as the latter swung his fisted hand at him. The man had only done that when he got drunk, but he’d been drunk pretty much most of the time.

  And eventually, alcohol did the six-foot-five man in, and indirectly, alcohol had taken his mother, as well. She was run over by a drunk driver who didn’t even realize that he had hit her.

  As for him, Joe took what he could from every life experience and his uncle’s drunken temper had taught him how to move fast, how to be fast. And while his tolerance for the substance for some reason was unusually high, he never tried to uncover his limits. He didn’t want to know. But his uncle’s substance abuse had at least enabled him to become a fast runner.

  Most nights Joe would be down the road, running for the shelter of the woods behind his house before his uncle even rose to his wobbly feet.

  Joe ran now, ran toward the lake where he’d guessed Mona would be, since they’d talked about it earlier.

  And he’d guessed right, he saw, as the lake came into view.

  The full moon was seductively bouncing its beams off the water. Competing, it seemed, with Mona, who was skimming flat, smooth stones along the lake’s surface.

  Joe stopped running and slowed down to a walk. A languid one. He didn’t want to startle her.

  And he did like looking at Mona when she thought that she was alone. Some of the tension in her face and body had faded and she became more like the girl he’d once known.

  The girl he’d once thought about in the wee hours of the night.

  He’d been right, Joe thought as he continued observing Mona. She hadn’t lost her touch. The stones that left her fingers skimmed along the surface of the lake as if it was solid, made out of spun glass rather than liquid.

  She didn’t seem to notice. The look on her face was one of preoccupation. He guessed that it had little to do with skimming stones along a lake and everything to do with the woman who had returned, uninvited, into her life.

  Chapter Eight

  Several minutes slipped away as Joe continued to stand there, watching her as she skimmed stones. If Mona turned around now and saw him, she might think he was stalking her.

  So he resumed walking, and as he came up to her, he announced his presence by saying, “Told you that you hadn’t lost your touch.”

  Lost in conflicting thoughts that assaulted her from all directions, Mona jumped at the sound of Joe’s voice. She spun around, ready to pelt whomever with the stones in her hand. She let loose with two, aiming them at the source of the voice like a modern-day David firing rocks at Goliath. All that was missing was the slingshot.

  Joe instinctively ducked and dodged to the left as one smooth black stone flew by his head, missing contact by less than an inch.

  “Hey, whoa!” he protested, holding his hands up in semisurrender. “I come in peace.”

  Recognition sank in. Swallowing an oath, Mona dropped the last three stones, the sound of contact with the ground muffled by the grass.

  Realizing that she could have seriously hurt him had he not moved, fear instantly morphed into anger. “Damn it, Joe, you should know better than to sneak up behind a person.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” he pointed out, joining her. “I was talking.”

  She dusted off her hands. Joe couldn’t have been more than a few feet away when he spoke, which meant that he had to have soundlessly crossed over several yards to reach her.

  “You didn’t make any noise when you came up behind me,” she accused. In her book, that qualified as “sneaking.”

  “I’m not supposed to,” he answered glibly. “Moving around without making any noise is incorporated into my genes, remember?”

  Mona frowned, grateful that she hadn’t really hurt him. “I don’t care about your genes, wear noisier boots,” she ordered.

  He liked the way the full moon scattered its light along her hair. She wore it loose and long. It flowed past her shoulders like black steam.

  Joe roused himself, focusing on the conversation. “I’ll look into that as soon as your brother comes back from his honeymoon.” Mona glared at him as if she didn’t follow. “I’m not going to have time for anything else right now. He made me temporary acting sheriff.”

  “Good for you,” she said with more enthusiasm than he thought she would feel, hearing the news. He hadn’t thought that she cared what he did, as long as he stayed on the right side of the law, a fact that had been in some doubt in his earlier years.
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  Right now, she seemed more pleased with this temporary appointment than he was. “Yeah, well, we’ll see,” he said with a careless shrug.

  He was definitely not comfortable with his new role, but he hadn’t thought it right to mount an argument with a new husband driving off on his honeymoon. He doubted if Rick would have heard a word he said in his own defense.

  Joe took in the surroundings. Listening, he could hear the stealth movement of several creatures that called the immediate area home. Looking at Mona, he doubted that she could run very fast in that tight dress should the occasion arise.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone like this,” he said.

  “I know everyone in town,” she argued. Nobody would try to hurt her, or take advantage of the situation. Besides, Rick had taught her enough defensive moves when she was younger.

  “Not the drifters,” he told her. “Forever gets its share.”

  She knew that there were women—probably more than a few—who liked the idea of a big, strong man protecting them. But she didn’t number herself as being one of them. If you depended on no one, then you weren’t disappointed when they didn’t come through.

  “I wasn’t aware that there was a databank somewhere, distributing drifters. What is our share?” she asked flippantly. “One and a half a year? Maybe two?”

  He wasn’t about to let himself get sucked into a mindless argument for no reason. Besides, he knew she picked fights when she was upset. Not that he could blame her for feeling the latter. Having her mother appear out of nowhere was tantamount to a sucker punch.

  “How are you?” he asked quietly.

  As they started to walk back to Doc’s, she plucked a wildflower growing in the grass and began to pull off its petals one by one. No singsong rhyme involving love accompanied their individual descent. Just nervous energy.

  “I’m coming to terms with it,” she answered with a sigh. “Things can’t stay frozen forever, I know that. And if I decide to move to Dallas or Austin the way Rick wants me to, I’ll feel better about leaving him if I know he has someone to watch over him. I guess that it’s just going to take me a bit longer to ad—”

  Joe interrupted her before she got any further. “I’m not talking about Rick getting married.”

  “Oh?” Mona responded innocently, avoiding his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  Her voice always got a little higher when she was lying. “You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb, Mona. You’re smarter than that.”

  She resumed walking again, still avoiding his eyes. But there was no point pretending.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “If I were smarter, then I wouldn’t let it bother me at all.”

  He knew what she was saying, that she would be devoid of any emotions. He’d been that route himself. Hell, most of the time, he still opted for that route. But that wasn’t Mona’s way. “Then you’d be a brick wall,” he told her.

  Maybe that was for the best. “I can handle that.” The wildflower had been plucked clean. She let the stem fall from her fingers. “Brick walls don’t hurt.”

  Everyone hurt sometime, even if they didn’t let on, Joe thought. “Unless someone takes a wrecking ball to them.”

  “They still don’t hurt,” she insisted. “They just crumble, but they don’t hurt.”

  “Do you?” He placed his hand on her shoulder, stopping her from taking another step. Very gently, he turned her around to face him. “Hurt?” he added when she said nothing.

  Mona shrugged off his hand and continued walking. He noticed that she’d raised her chin stubbornly. Another typical move for her. “Why do you care if I do or not?”

  “Because I’m your friend, Mona. That’s what friends do, they care. Even when they want to strangle their friends, they care,” he told her evenly.

  His answer coaxed a half smile out of her. It was his first indication that he had reached her.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  She let out a long breath and slowed her pace to match her cadence.

  “Not really,” she responded. “Why did she have to turn up like this? And now, of all times. What does she want, Joe?”

  Maybe he was wrong, but he didn’t believe there was an ulterior motive involved. “I think she—” he carefully avoided using the label mother “—wants what she said. To make up. To show you she’s sorry.”

  Mona closed her eyes for a second, shaking her head. “It’s too late for that.”

  He thought like that once, thought his life was set on a course to eventual destruction. And then a friend of his uncle pointed out that he was the master of his own destiny—and that nothing was written in stone. That had been his turning point.

  Looking back, it probably saved him from a premature death.

  “It’s only too late if one of you is dead,” he told her firmly.

  “Well, then it’s too late,” she answered with finality. “Because she’s dead to me. And if you’re my friend the way you claim, you’ll stop talking about it. Talk about something else.”

  “Okay.” Joe looked up at the stars, thinking. And then he asked, “Think the Dallas Cowboys have a shot at the Super Bowl this year?”

  She laughed and felt some of the tension drain away. “You don’t like sports.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But I was looking for a topic that wouldn’t make you want to bite my head off.”

  She felt a flash of embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m a little edgy, I guess. This whole wedding thing was really unexpected and then she blows in from nowhere. I guess I got a little out of sorts.”

  He looked at her. “Mount St. Helens was a little out of sorts when it erupted. This is something a whole lot bigger.”

  She stopped walking again. Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked up at the sky. The darkness peaceful.

  “Show me the Big Dipper, Joe,” she asked, glancing toward him. “I always have trouble visualizing it when you’re not there to point it out to me.”

  “There never seem to be as many stars in the big city as there are out here,” he told her. “Maybe they just don’t like all the noise.”

  She laughed and realized that she felt a lot better. Joe always had a way of making her feel better.

  “That has to be it,” she agreed, tongue in cheek.

  He moved directly behind her, to get the same perspective as she had. The breeze shifted just then and the scent of her hair seemed to fill his senses, making him dizzy. But he didn’t step back. Instead, he pointed to a group of stars, drawing imaginary lines between them with his index finger.

  “It’s right there,” he told her.

  She saw it then. Joe always made it seem so easy. “Oh, you’re right,” she cried, turning her head toward him as she spoke.

  Mona was acutely aware that she had brushed against him, not just with her hair, but with parts of her body, as well. Parts that felt as if they were shooting static-electricity pulses all through her.

  She drew in her breath slowly and then took a tentative step back. If she didn’t, she would do something stupid. Like kiss him again. This time, there was no half-filled bottle of aged whiskey to blame it on.

  He could feel the tension. Feel the attraction. He did his best to block both and didn’t quite succeed.

  “Want me to take you home?” Joe heard himself asking.

  Home.

  It would seem really empty tonight, she thought sadly. Without Rick, without her grandmother, it was just an old building with old memories. Rick wouldn’t return for twenty-one days. And once he did get back, her brother would be sharing the house with Olivia. And, very soon, with their baby.

  There wasn’t a place for her in this house. Never mind that there was a third bedroom. She would still be the fifth wheel.

  The thought pressed down heavily on her.

  Mona pushed it aside, unable to deal with it just now.

  She’d come to the wedding with Rick, but he had taken his
car in order to drive himself and Olivia to the airport several towns away. That meant that she would either need a ride or have to walk home. Joe, she was certain, would lecture her if she chose the latter. It was simpler to accept the offer for a ride.

  “Sure,” she answered. “Might as well go home while it still is home.”

  Joe wasn’t sure he understood her meaning. “You want to explain that?”

  Did he need a road map? “Well, when they come back from their honeymoon, Rick and Olivia are going to be living there.” Doc’s house was coming into view in the horizon. She hoped that most of the people at the reception had already gone home. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Except for maybe Joe. He somehow seemed to lure the words right out of her.

  “Last I heard, three’s a crowd unless one of the three is a product of the other two, like the baby,” she continued. “I’m going to need a place to stay.” Her mouth curved. “Maybe I can buy and fix up the old Murphy place.”

  To her surprise, Joe didn’t laugh that off the way she’d expected him to. Instead, he managed to throw her completely by saying, “Well, that’s something to think about.”

  The cabin smelled of the past and creatures that had crawled in there to die. She couldn’t see herself staying in the Murphy place, except in an emergency, the way she had that first night when the storm hit. “I was just kidding, Joe.”

  “I’m not,” he replied matter-of-factly. “It’s not as if there’s a handy apartment building in town. Or even a hotel where you can stay indefinitely. Taking that into consideration, I’m sure Rick and Olivia won’t mind having you around—”

  There was no way she was going to impose on her brother and his wife unless both her legs were broken. Which they weren’t. “Right. A couple just back from their honeymoon really love having an extra person hovering around.”

  Ordinarily, she would have considered moving in with Miss Joan, who had room to spare. But that was no longer an option. “Tina and Bobby have already moved in with Miss Joan,” she murmured, voicing her thoughts.