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Authors: Ruth Wind

BOOK: Reckless
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“And you, Jake? What would you wish for, knowing what you know?”
The vivid blue eyes flickered, and in the space of a second, all the honest thoughtfulness was safely hidden beneath a smooth, untroubled expression. “Are you counseling me, Doc?”
“Sorry.”
They dropped the conversation after that and concentrated on the game, reminiscing idly about the various people in their past. Ramona had been on the alumni committee for several years and knew at least a little about most of the kids they had graduated with. Not many had stayed in Red Creek.
Learning that, Jake shook his head. “Seems odd, doesn't it, that all the natives are fleeing and so many outsiders are coming in?”
“You never appreciate your own backyard.”
“That's true, I guess.” He pursed his lips. “There's always been a lot of tourist traffic, but it wasn't like it is now. Some mornings this past winter, I walked where I wanted to go. It was faster than driving.” A short, comfortable pause fell between them. Jake asked after a while, “Do you ski?”
A cold fist struck her heart, then was gone—the last, and probably permanent reminder of her own trauma. “I used to cross-country, but I don't anymore.”
“I like cross-country, too. Why'd you give it up? Get too old to hack it?” He grinned.
Ramona swallowed and forced herself to meet his friendly, guileless gaze. “I guess so.”
“Maybe I can drag you out there this winter. I've missed it.”
“Maybe.” She glanced at her watch. “I'm going to have to call it a night. I have to work tomorrow.”
“No problem.” He reached for the check and called the waiter.
He drove her back to the hospital to pick up her car. It was a very quiet drive, but not awkward. She liked the fact that she didn't feel obligated to fill the silence. Nor did he.
By the time he had come to a full stop next to her car, Ramona had her hand on the door handle. “Thanks, Jake,” she said.
He caught her arm. “Do I have bad breath or something?”
Ramona blinked. “What do you mean?”
“It's like you can't wait to get out of the car.”
He held her arm loosely, and their faces were only inches apart. Ramona stared for one longing moment at his beautiful mouth, then eased away. “I'm just avoiding temptation,” she said, and her voice was a lot throatier than usual.
His fingers moved on the bare underside of her arm, and Ramona felt the shivery reaction all the way down her spine. “Fair enough.”
He straightened, and Ramona was aware of a tinge of regret. Firmly, she reminded herself it had been she who had set the parameters of this relationship. “Good night, Jake. I had a nice time. We'll have to do it again.”
“Yeah.” When she was about to close the door, he suddenly leaned over to look at her. “Hey!”
Moonlight silvered the planes of his face and glittered in the uncommon and beautiful eyes. “What?”
“Would you bring me some of that chokecherry jelly?”
Ramona chuckled. “Sure. I'll leave it with Harry the next time I come over here.”
“Thanks.”
He waited until she had safely climbed into her car and started it, then he drove away much too fast. Ramona watched the retreating lights musingly, then put her own car in gear and headed home.
Chapter 5
T
here was an odd little lump of sorrow and regret in her chest, vague and unfocused, as she drove home through the moonlit forest toward her mountainside house. Part of it was the lingering trace of that long-ago day, a trace that would never entirely disappear, but that wasn't all of it. She felt uneasy about Jake. He had seemed much better tonight, but she couldn't forget the sudden, raw pain she had glimpsed in his eyes.
At the gate to her long drive, she got out, unfastened it and drove through, then latched it again behind her. It wasn't so much a security measure—though she did value her privacy and had fenced the entire twelve-acre spread some years ago to keep out the tourists—but rather a means of protecting her dogs.
They gathered around as she stepped out of the car, and Ramona greeted each one by name. Her three dogs barked or whined according to their temperaments, and she rubbed each head in turn, murmuring greetings. Some of the knot in her chest dissolved. “What would I do without you guys, huh?”
They happily trailed her inside. The cats, eager not to be overlooked, jumped on the back of the couch and on the table near the door, and she greeted both of them, too.
All five animals padded behind her into the kitchen. Ramona dutifully filled food dishes and checked water levels, then sat at her kitchen table to take off her shoes and give each creature a little one-on-one attention.
She had never intended to be responsible for so many animals, but each was a rescue of one kind or another. Venus, a delicate little white female cat, had been huddled under a car, shivering in the November cold. Her consort, Pandora, a mixed Siamese with enormous blue eyes and a skittish nature, had shown up on the clinic steps as a starving and wary kitten.
The dogs had similar stories. Manuelito, a lean, rangy husky with wolf blood, had been abandoned in the woods nearby before finding his way to her house to beg for food. Guinevere, a homely terrier-shepherd mix, had belonged to a hospital patient. Arthur, a black Lab with more jubilance than good sense, had followed her home from the grocery store, and none of her repeated ads, signs or posters had led his owner to her.
She loved them all, especially tonight when they blunted her sorrow and loneliness. Rubbing the head of Manuelito, while Venus curled up in her lap, Ramona also had to admit she was helplessly softhearted, unable to resist helping those in distress.
And that was what made Jake so dangerous. He brought to the fore every Mother Earth instinct she possessed. She wanted to cradle his head on her breast and stroke his glossy hair and chase his demons away.
Wearily, she sighed, stretching the stiffness from her neck. The fantasy went deeper than that, actually. Jake was the ultimate warrior. He had all those old-fashioned attitudes about honor and integrity and noble quests. He would fight to the death to protect the small and weak and vulnerable.
Those were the qualities that made him suffer now. She would put money on it. For all that the sleeping pills had given him respite, she knew he was a long way from being healed. His demons, whatever they were, had not been scared away, only buried.
The healer in her recognized he needed to release those demons before they destroyed him. The woman in her knew more—that the real fantasy was not the actual soothing of his wounds, but a wish to have him trust her enough so he'd be willing to dismantle his protective walls and let her in. As a woman, she ached to win that trust.
Which led to a very real, very dangerous conflict. Since she was a doctor, it would be wrong for her to allow an attraction to her patient to grow. She would lose her objectivity. It was also unethical. To treat him effectively, she would have to maintain some kind of emotional distance.
It wouldn't be easy. She was very, very attracted to Jake Forrest. He had an air of almost magnetic virility about him. She liked his hair and his eyes and his long body and his laughter. She had really liked his kiss....
She breathed out a sigh of frustration. “Enough of this,” she said aloud. “I'm going to bed.”
 
The dream was always the same. She glided along in the stillness of a clear mountain morning, the sky overhead a vivid turquoise in contrast to the blinding white of the snow. She skied well and often made a five-mile circle up the mountain and back to her house on weekend afternoons. She liked the way her blood pumped harder in her veins, and how the sunlight caressed her face, and the easy, graceful movements of the skis and poles. It made her feel strong.
The dream ended the same way every time, too—with Ramona hiking out of the forest at dark, minus skis, her body bruised and almost preternaturally sensitized. She tasted the cold night air in her lungs and breathed thanks. She trudged down the hill on trembling legs that threatened to collapse beneath her and wept in relief. Without gloves, her fingers were almost surely frostbitten, but Ramona only put them against her belly and prayed she would not lose any of them.
And then, like always, she awakened in her big bed with the animals arrayed around her and moonlight spilling in the lace-curtained windows. The familiar hollow feeling was back in her stomach. She reached over the side of the bed to touch Manuelito. He groaned and stretched, then settled back into sleep.
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.

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