Reckless Read online

  It had been a long time since she’d had the dream, but it wasn’t surprising after the casual question from Jake. She had never skied again and now and then she wondered if that were healthy. She’d managed to keep the incident from ruining her life. She had pursued her goals and moved onward, but the truth was, if she tried to put on skis, she felt sick to her stomach.

  Thankfully, she only dreamed the beginning and end of that day, not the part in between. At least she wasn’t tormented by that.

  She had been seventeen, three months from her high school graduation. That day, there had been three boys skiing, too, which in itself was not unusual. She waved companionably, and they waved back.

  But near the top of the mountain, she had come across them again, swilling something out of a wineskin. People never realized how fast alcohol went to your head at high altitudes, and the boys were very drunk.

  She recognized their state in an instant and tried to turn around, but they were on her before she could escape.

  They had raped her. It was that simple and that brutal. When at last they passed out, Ramona had gathered her clothes and hiked down the mountainside. She had seriously considered letting them freeze to death, but had instead gone to the police, allowed the humiliating tests that would confirm the crime and told the forest service where to find them.

  They had been hospitalized for exposure, under guard. Three Eastern college boys who had come to Colorado to ski during spring break. The local paper did not run a story, and the few officials who knew what had happened did not wish to add to Ramona’s troubles by making the story public. The prosecutor in the case asked for a change of venue for the trial in order to protect Ramona’s reputation, and it had been granted.

  Within a year, all three were behind bars, with sentences as severe as the law would allow....

  Beyond her moonlit window, a blackbird began to sing, and Ramona lifted her eyes to the sky. It was almost morning.

  She knew she had been very lucky. Because the crime had been so brutal—three against one—and because Ramona was a small, studious girl with a good reputation, the jury had thrown the book at them. One boy had eventually written Ramona a letter of apology. She read it, then in a choking fit of violence, tore it to tiny pieces, which she then burned.

  Most of the time now, she didn’t think about it. But back then, she had suffered her own case of PTSD. For months afterward, she had been fearful and easily shaken. Her belief that the world was a benevolent, supportive place had been totally shattered, and Ramona was afraid to do anything or go anywhere alone. That included the grocery store or even out in the backyard. It wasn’t so much that she expected to be raped again, but she’d come to believe there were dangers everywhere. No place was safe. Only longstanding study habits had saved her grades, and she had almost delayed going to college—a move her mother had fought.

  Over that long summer, Ramona had become angry. She had raged against the unfairness of the rape, against the shattering of her innocence, against the theft of her safe, calm world. In spite of her mother’s efforts to help her, Ramona became bitter and unable to trust anyone.

  But when fall came, she went off to college, teeth gritted. She even managed to function, after a fashion, by pouring her rage and alienation into her studies.

  And then there had been a rape, on the campus. But the circumstances of this attack were quite different from Ramona’s. It happened to a girl who, unfortunately, had a less than pristine reputation. She’d been partying late at night with two boys from a neighboring dorm when it happened. The crime was reported in all the local papers, and the entire dorm seemed alive with the news.

  Ramona knew the girl only marginally from a couple of her classes. But for a week, she watched her trying to continue with her life and ached for her. The need to love and heal would not let her leave the girl alone, and finally, Ramona had gone to the girl’s room. There she had spilled her own story, and the two of them had cried bitterly together. All the seething poisons that had been destroying Ramona’s life were flushed away. In offering support to another victim, she herself had been healed.

  The other girl had not fared as well. By the end of the term, she’d left school. Ramona never heard from her again, although she thought of her often.

  One of the cats crept up Ramona’s leg and settled on her hip to purr. Smiling softly, Ramona reached out a hand to stroke Pandora’s silky head and took comfort in the warmth. The animals always seemed to know when she was upset.

  Even after the initial healing, it was a long time before Ramona was able to get interested in men again. She didn’t dislike them or avoid them, she just felt nothing. Nothing.

  This lack of response had frightened her. Before the rape, she enjoyed a healthy fantasy life, if not the real thing. Like most girls her age, she spent endless hours daydreaming about kissing various boys who caught her attention. Jake Forrest had starred in more than a few of those daydreams, if Ramona was honest with herself. After the incident in the hallway, she had a hard time avoiding the occasional, forbidden fantasy about his hand on her breast.

  In other words, her developing teenage libido was quite healthy and normal.

  After the rape, she couldn’t summon any interest in boys, and it scared her. She’d been afraid she would never be able to have a normal relationship, that her enjoyment of sex would be forever destroyed by her brutal introduction to it.

  A music student at the college had shown her that was not true. She met Mark at a student-union meeting. He was gentle almost to a fault, a sweet, soft-spoken man whose greatest trait was his sensitivity. For more than a year, they had been only friends, but Ramona found herself trusting him enough to let him kiss her. Then touch her. Then finally introduce her to the pleasurable side of physical union.

  Their relationship had been comfortable and satisfying, bounded by mutual respect, but when the inevitable decisions had to be made at graduation, they mutually agreed to pursue their own dreams—his to be a musician, hers to continue with her education.

  The parting had been a friendly one. Ramona still heard from him on the odd occasion. He had married and had children and worked as a studio musician. She was quite fond of him. Because of Mark’s gentle, loving touch, she had been able to heal all her old wounds. With him, she had learned to love making love, to make the distinction between sex and violence.

  In the end, she had triumphed.

  The memory gave her a smile, and she yawned. Her last thought before she drifted off was that she needed to find the key to help Jake unlock his demons, too.

  A woman’s hand roved over his back, warm and small and ever so enticing. A tumble of hair fell over his stomach. Jake, not even a quarter of the way to actual awakening, felt himself go hard and shifted in the bed, pulling the warm female into the cradle of his arms. A plump breast pressed into his ribs. Jake sleepily reached for the comfortable weight, feeling deeply aroused, but in no hurry. He skimmed his fingers over the round flesh and slid lower, to a belly as soft and round as her breast.

  Her hands moved on his body, spreading heat and arousal through his every nerve, teasing closer and closer to his ever more fiercely aroused sex. He awoke, ready to reach for her, a pleased growl in his throat.

  He was alone. Sunlight streamed in through the high windows of the loft in his condo and lay on his body in warm bands. Disoriented, he blinked twice and then swore.

  His body took a few minutes longer to catch on to the fact that he’d only been dreaming. There was no plush, warm body in his bed, no small hands edging close to his engorged organ.

  With a curse, he rolled over on his belly and pulled a pillow over his head and tried to call the dream of Ramona back.

  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. D
efinitely 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

  At 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 eye—unless 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 us—” she gestured meaningfully toward her body “—don’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 men—you’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 opposite—he’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 him—a cloth napkin of all things—that 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 almos
t 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 first—the 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.