The owner of the diner had taken a real shine to Tina’s baby and enjoyed having her quiet home finally filled with the sound of voices. In exchange, Olivia’s younger sister was taking care of the house for the older woman, gladly doing all the things that Miss Joan found exceptionally tedious.
“You could move in with me,” Joe suggested, catching her completely off guard with his suggestion.
Mona started, then regained her composure. “Yeah, that’ll go over really well.” And then she smiled, amused. “It’ll certainly give the town something new to gossip about.”
Gossip had never bothered him. No matter where he was, he’d always thought of himself as an outsider. Living in Forever and working as a deputy was the closest he’d ever come to being part of something.
“Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” he told her.
She stopped walking and looked at him for a long moment. Was Joe saying what she thought he was saying—or was he completely oblivious to the way his offer could be interpreted?
“If you’re still living where you were when I went away to school, you’ve only got one bedroom,” she said pointedly.
She wasn’t exactly telling him something new. “I am and I know. You take the bed, I’ll take the sofa—like in the cabin,” he added, humor entering his voice, as well as his eyes. “Anyway, it’s just until we get the Murphy cabin fixed up.” There was also another possibility, he reminded himself. “Or you decide to move away.”
She didn’t hear the last sentence, or the forced nonchalance that he’d woven through it. “You’re serious about the cabin, aren’t you?” she asked.
The more he thought about it, the better the solution seemed. “Why not? The foundation’s solid. We can go to the county office and find out who owns the property and make a bid for it.”
There was one little thing wrong with his reasoning now that she gave it some serious thought. “I’m not exactly flush at the moment. I’ve got about two hundred dollars to my name,” she calculated, then amended, “Maybe less.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got more.”
For as long as she’d known him, Joe had never had much. In high school he’d worked odd jobs on weekends in order to pay for things like clothes and whatever else he needed. He never had any extra money to throw around, the way a few of the more privileged kids did.
“How much more?” she asked now, curious.
“More,” he repeated. When she looked at him quizzically, he said, “I’ve got simple needs. Don’t need much,” he emphasized, “so I’ve been banking the rest.” He spared her a glance, allowing himself a smile. “Waiting for a rainy day.”
“And I qualify as a rainy day?” she guessed.
“You qualify as a whole storm on the horizon,” he corrected her. They were almost at Doc’s property, so Joe tabled the discussion. “We’ll talk about this on Monday,” he promised. “Right now, let’s just get you home.”
That was when she remembered.
“Can’t just yet.” Joe looked at her, waiting for an explanation. “I just remembered that I volunteered for the cleanup committee.” She felt she had to, since she was, after all, the groom’s sister.
“I can wait,” he told her.
Knowing that Joe would be taking her home made her feel a great deal better without her really understanding why. Right now, it was just too much to deal with, she told herself, mentally shoving all of it to the side for the time being.
She grinned at Joe. “You can do better than that. You can help me with the cleanup.”
When she had gotten him to “help set up” he’d found himself pulled into a frenzy of work that had only ended in the early hours of this morning. This had the makings of the same thing. He didn’t want her to think that he could be won over so easily. It might make her guess how he really felt about her.
“Do I have a choice in this?” Joe wanted to know.
Mona gave him a look that clearly said, “Not really,” even though out loud she said, “Yes.”
“But if I make the wrong choice, you won’t be happy about it,” he wisely guessed.
The smile on her lips had made its way to her eyes. He remembered how much he liked to see her that way. If he wasn’t careful, he could lose himself in her eyes.
“Something like that,” Mona answered.
“You know,” Joe said with a reminiscent note in his voice as he entered Doc’s side yard directly behind her, “I forgot how peaceful things were without having you around.”
She sniffed. “The word is boring.”
Joe inclined his head and said in a voice that was devoid of emotion, “If you say so.”
Miss Joan was still there at the diner, overseeing her waitresses who bussed the tables and stacked dishes in Doc’s kitchen. Some of the men were taking down the different-sized tables that had been donated from various households, giving the reception a very unique look.
Still another group, coed this time, took down the gaily colored crepe lanterns and other decorations that had been made just for the occasion.
A wave of nostalgia hit Mona as she looked around. All of this struck her as a beehive of activity. There was nothing like this to be found in the big city, she thought with a touch of pride. People were just not that invested in their neighbors.
“Hey, Doc,” Miss Joan called out, crossing back to the yard. The large man currently supervised the dismantling of the trellis used in the wedding. As he turned in her direction, graying tufts of unruly eyebrows raised silently in response to his name. “Where do you keep your dishwasher?” Miss Joan asked.
The veterinarian held up his wide, hamlike hands and wiggled them in the air. “At the ends of my wrists,” he told her.
The girl who had come out with Miss Joan groaned. “No dishwasher?”
“It’s all in how you look at it.” Doc Whitman chuckled.
“I’ll do them,” Mona volunteered.
Miss Joan eyed at her skeptically. “Careful what you raise your hand for, honey. You know how many dishes there are?” the woman asked.
Mona grinned. “I was at the reception, remember? The place was packed. Everyone had at least one dish if not two or three. I know what I’m up against.”
“You’re going to be washing dishes into the middle of next Tuesday,” Miss Joan warned.
“Not if she has help,” Joe muttered under his breath. He pretty much knew what was coming. If he had to pitch in, then he might as well be doing it on a joint project with Mona.
“Nice of you to volunteer,” Miss Joan declared with a vigorous nod of her head. After stripping off her apron, she held it out to Joe.
Try as she might, Mona couldn’t picture Joe doing something so utterly domestic. “You don’t have to do this,” Mona told him.
He shrugged. “Gotta do something, waiting to take you home.”
“You could come back,” she suggested, feeling guilty for having roped him in. “Or I could get a ride from someone else.”
“Shut up and wash,” he instructed, nodding toward the house.
“Yes, Joe,” she answered meekly as she walked into the kitchen.
He wasn’t buying her meek act for a second, Joe thought, following her inside. But he really did like the way it sounded.
Chapter Nine
The two-story house looked unusually dark to Mona as she and Joe drove toward it. As if the life, the heart, had been siphoned out, leaving the shell.
That morning, as she and Rick had driven away from the house on their way to Doc’s and the wedding, the sun had been bright overhead and the air had been pregnant with the promise of a new beginning. Rick had been so nervous that she’d volunteered to drive.
She was happy for him while sad for herself. But the main thing was that Rick deserved to be happy. He’d always put her and their grandmother first, becoming the man of the house way before a male should have to even consider taking on the role.
In all the excitement and rush this morning, she ha
dn’t thought to leave a light on for tonight when she returned alone. Hadn’t thought about how dark and gloomy it would seem to come back to a house where there was no one to respond to the sound of her voice.
She thought about it now.
Joe drove his Jeep up to front of the old house. Stopping, he pulled up the hand brake, put the vehicle into Park and turned off the ignition. Only then did he look in Mona’s direction. He sensed rather than saw the tension roaming through her.
“We’re here,” he said when she made no move to get out.
She glanced at him. “You really didn’t have to tell me that. I do recognize the house.”
Mona took a deep breath, not wanting to go inside just yet. Once she shut the door behind her, that was it. She would be alone with her thoughts, and right now, especially with her mother’s sudden reappearance, she really didn’t want to have time to think. Tired, she still felt way too wound up to fall asleep.
The night loomed before her like an unfriendly stranger.
She supposed that she could find something to do to keep busy until she felt ready to go to bed. There were still boxes that she’d shipped from Dallas when she’d relocated. This would be a good time to unpack them.
Settling in at Doc’s Animal Clinic had gone far better. She’d already shelved all her references books and brought in a few things to personalize her space. But when it came to this house where she’d been raised, she had only unpacked the bare necessities.
Subconsciously, she supposed that pointed to her feeling that she was just a temporary guest and that she needed to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
She was lost in thought, not reaching for the door handle. Joe interpreted it the only way he could. Mona didn’t want to be alone tonight. “You want me to go in with you?”
Joe’s low voice cut into her thoughts, bringing her back to the Jeep and the fact that she was still sitting in it. Shaking free of the mood that had all but wrapped itself around her, she looked at Joe, doing her best to appear bright-eyed and alert. But she still didn’t know what he’d just said to her.
“What?”
“Inside.” Joe nodded toward the house. “Do you want me to go into the house with you?” he asked pointedly.
There was no pity in his voice, but she could swear that it was implied. Mona squared her shoulders. “I’m not needy.”
“No one said you were needy,” he told her. This defensiveness was getting old. He was ready to be sympathetic, to talk or to listen, or just be there with her in total silence. But she had to stop beating him back every time he made a gesture. “Hell, Mona, I don’t remember the chip on your shoulder ever being this big before.”
Green lightning flashed from her eyes. “There is no chip on my shoulder.”
Okay, he’d had enough. Unbuckling his seat belt, Joe shifted in his seat and gave it to her full blast.
“The hell there isn’t. You could ram a hole in a brick building with that chip and still keep it in one piece. We’re friends, remember?” he reminded her tersely. “Friends from way back. I was just offering you company if you wanted some.”
“Well, I don’t,” Mona fairly snapped, then felt guilty about it. This was becoming an unfortunate pattern. Snapping, feeling guilty and then apologizing. If she could just manage to control her temper, she wouldn’t be dancing this boring two-step with Joe over and over again. For some reason, he seemed to be the only one who could set her off like this, but that was no excuse for her acting like such a shrew.
“But I appreciate the offer,” she said in a far more even tone. She didn’t apologize to him outright, but she did try to explain her behavior. “A lot has happened in a short amount of time,” she told him. With a sigh, she looked up at the sky outside the windshield. “I guess I was really hoping that nothing had changed while I was away. That I could just come back, pick up the reins of my life and slip back into it as if I’d never been gone—except that I’d be a lot better at diagnosing and taking care of animals,” she added with a glimmer of a self-deprecating smile that came and went from her lips.
“That’s not possible.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “I know.”
No, she didn’t, Joe thought. She’d misunderstood him.
“No, I mean, the part about you being a lot better at taking care of animals. If anyone ever had a gift for it, you do. Sometimes, I’d swear you even speak their language. You’re better at it than any Apache I’ve ever known—but then,” he remembered, “you are one-third Native.”
His low-keyed praise made her smile. “You always did know how to make me feel better about things, even when you weren’t trying.” Smiling her appreciation, she said, “Thanks.” Opening the door on her side, Mona climbed out of the Jeep, then turned to look at Joe one last time. “See you around, ‘Sheriff.’”
He frowned. He’d forgotten about that for a moment. The title made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he didn’t think himself equal to the task. Ever since he’d turned over a new leaf all those years ago, he’d always done what needed to be done. He’d been a deputy for a number of years now and knew all the basic fundamentals of law enforcement in Forever.
The problem was he just didn’t look forward to interacting with some of the citizens in Forever. The people who clung to drama and made mountains out of proverbial molehills. The ones who needed special kid-glove treatment. Rick was good at handling them, at returning Joanna Mendoza back to her home when she went for one of her moonlight walks in her flannel nightgown, sleepwalking with her eyes wide-open.
Rick was equally as diplomatic tucking Charlie Halpern in for the night when the senior citizen had consumed more than he could comfortably imbibe and still walk a straight line. Rick had patience and knew how to talk to people like that.
Him, he hardly talked at all, unless it was to Mona and look how well that was going tonight. She snapped out every second sentence at him. That didn’t exactly attest to his people skills.
“Offer still stands,” he told Mona as she closed the passenger door behind her and began to walk away.
“I know.”
And she did. She knew he was there for her, her own personal human safety net. That more than anything else urged her to behave like an adult. She didn’t want Joe to know she needed him. Or to suspect the depths of her loneliness.
In response to his assurance, she didn’t even bother turning around. Instead, she raised her hand over her head and waved at him as she continued walking up to her front door.
Had she been alone, she might have started whistling to keep herself company, but if she did that now, she knew Joe would take it as an indication that she was not up to facing the empty house. He had an annoying habit of being able to read her and guess what she was thinking. She didn’t want to add this to his tally.
After letting herself in, Mona locked the door and began the process of turning on all the lights on the first floor. Granted it was a waste of energy, but it made her feel better. The light chased away the eerie shadows on the walls.
She was about to turn on the TV and leave it on a channel running an old movie—the voices would provide a form of company—when she heard someone knocking on the front door. Since the house was located on the outskirts of town, she doubted if this was a neighbor who had a sudden urge to call on her at this hour of the night. Or borrow a cup of sugar.
It had to be Joe.
Mona looked at her watch. It hadn’t even been five minutes. She hadn’t even had the opportunity to change out of her cocktail dress and get comfortable.
“I’m still fine, Joe!” she called out, raising her voice to compensate for the distance.
“Yeah, but he’s not,” she heard Joe say through the door.
“He?” she repeated. Mona quickly crossed the rest of the way to the door. “Who is ‘he’?” she wanted to know as she unlocked the door and pulled it open. The next moment she had her answer.
Joe was holding a dirty, pathetically sk
inny, shaggy dog of dubious parentage in his arms. The dog looked frightened and far from happy. The whining sound he emitted wrenched her heart.
Mona never hesitated. All her better instincts instantly rose to the foreground. She took the dog from Joe and held the frightened animal against her chest, allowing the stray to absorb her warmth, to “sense” that he had nothing to be afraid of.
Speaking to the dog in a low, soft, soothing voice, she gently stroked his head. The whining subsided by degrees.
“Where did you find him?” she asked Joe.
“Right outside your house, in the street. Maybe he was coming to pay you a visit,” he quipped, then grew a little more serious. “He was almost roadkill. I came this close—” he held the thumb and index finger of his right hand barely two inches apart “—to hitting him. He walked right in front of my Jeep. I swerved at the last second. I didn’t see him before then.” The downtrodden animal had been slinking by right in front of him, as if trying to avoid being noticed. “He doesn’t have any tags and he’s pretty dirty, so I’m guessing he’s a stray. I thought that maybe you could check him out.”
She was already won over. “Poor little guy,” she murmured to the dog, still stroking him.
Though he’d stopped whining, he continued to shake even though she held him against her. Because he was severely underweight and seemed so frightened, Mona was fairly certain that someone had abused the animal severely. People like that, she thought angrily, should be filleted.
“You want to adopt him?” she asked Joe, since he’d brought the dog to her and asked her to check him out.
The question surprised him. Why would she think that? He liked his life simple. He believed that if a man had too many possessions, the possessions really had him. That especially applied to pets.
Joe wanted to own nothing. That way, there were no expectations, no disappointments. No ties to be severed if he wanted to pick up and leave.
“No,” he answered. “But I thought that maybe you would.”
Mona looked at him curiously. “Me?”
“Yeah.”
A Baby on the Ranch: A Baby on the RanchRamona and the Renegade Page 24
