her only family, and she wanted very much to be part of all this. Wanted, she supposed, to be assured that even after the wedding, she would still be a part of his life.
It was all well and good for her to go gallivanting out of town for long spates of time as long as she knew that Rick would be there when she got back. But the thought that he might not be, that he could go off and have a life that didn’t directly include her rattled Mona to her very core.
Changing the subject in her attempt to get back on a more even keel, Mona frowned. She zigzagged across the small room and looked around at her surroundings in the limited light. There was hardly any furniture and what did exist was falling apart.
“Can you imagine living here?” she asked Joe, marveling at the poor quality of life the last inhabitants of the cabin must have had.
“I’ve seen worse,” Joe replied matter-of-factly.
Mona bit her tongue. She could have kicked herself. For a moment, she’d forgotten that he’d spent his early years living on the reservation where poverty and deprivation had been a vivid part of everyday life, not just for Joe, but for everyone there. More than likely, she realized, he’d grown up in a place like this.
She hadn’t meant to insult him.
Mona pressed her lips together as she turned to look at him. An apology hovered on her tongue.
“Joe, I didn’t mean—”
He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to glimpse the pity he was certain would come into her eyes, accompanying whatever words would ease her conscience. He wasn’t proud of his background, but he wasn’t ashamed if it, either. It was what it was. And what it was now was behind him.
Joe waved his hand, dismissing what she was about to say. “Forget it.”
Turning his back to her, he focused his attention on the fireplace. Specifically, on making it useful. Squatting down, he angled his head to try to look up the chimney.
Curious, Mona came up behind him. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to see if the chimney’s blocked. Last thing you want, if I get a fire going, is to have smoke filling this room.” He leaned in a little farther. “Damn,” he uttered sharply, pulling back.
Mona moved quickly to get out of his way. “Is it blocked?” she guessed.
“No,” he muttered almost grudgingly, “the chimney’s clear.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said gamely. “Why are you cursing?”
Disgusted, he rose to his feet for a moment. “Because I wasn’t expecting to be hit with big fat raindrops.” The last one had been a direct hit into his eye.
Mona laughed. “Especially dirty ones,” she observed. He looked at her quizzically. With a flourish, Mona pulled a handkerchief out of the back pocket of her jeans. “Hold still,” she ordered.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously. Mona was nothing if not unpredictable. Added to that she had a wicked sense of humor.
“Because I can’t hit a moving target,” she deadpanned, then said seriously, “Because I want to wipe the dirt off your face.” Doing so in gentle strokes, she shook her head. “God, but you’ve gotten to be really distrusting since I was last home.”
“No, I haven’t,” he protested.
Saying that, he took the handkerchief from her and wiped his own face. He told himself it was in the interest of efficiency and that reacting to the way she stroked his face with the handkerchief had nothing to do with it. Some lies, he argued, were necessary, even if they were transparent.
“I never trusted you in the first place.” He raised his chin a little, presenting his face for Mona’s scrutiny. “Did I get it all?”
“Why ask me?” she asked innocently. “After all, I could be lying.”
“True,” he agreed, “but seeing as how you’re the only one around this cabin besides me who talks, I have no choice. You’ll have to do.”
“You look fine,” she told him, playfully running her index finger down his cheek. “You got it all, Deputy Lone Wolf.”
He held out the handkerchief to her. “Thanks.” When she took it from him, Joe turned his attention back to the fireplace and getting a fire going. There was kindling beside the stone fireplace. It didn’t appear to be that old. Someone had obviously been here and used the fireplace since the last owner had vacated the premises. He shifted several pieces, positioning them in the hearth.
Mona went over to the lone window that faced the front of the house and looked out. The rain seemed to be coming down even harder, if that was possible. She shivered slightly, not so much from the cold as from the feeling of isolation.
“Think this’ll last all night?” she asked Joe, still staring out the window.
He hefted another log, putting it on top of the others. “That’s what they say.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. Turning away from the window, she addressed her words to his back. “You mean, we have to stay here until morning?”
Joe fished a book of matches out of his front pocket. He didn’t smoke anymore, hadn’t for years now, but he still liked to have a book of matches in his possession. You never knew when they might come in handy—like now. He had no patience with the old ways when it came to making fire, even though, when push came to shove, he was good at it.
“Unless you want to risk being caught in a flash flood the way we almost were back there.”
She sighed, moving about restlessly. The cabin was sinking into darkness and although she’d grown up in Forever, this setup was disquieting.
“Not exactly the way I pictured spending my first night back home,” she told him.
“You mean, stranded and hungry?” he guessed.
“For openers,” she agreed. Mona ran her hand along her extremely flat abdomen. It had been rumbling for a while now.
He crossed to her. It might have been her imagination, but Joe seemed somehow taller to her in this cabin.
“When did you eat last?” he wanted to know.
“This morning. I skipped lunch to get an early start driving down to Forever.” It had seemed like a good idea at the time. She hadn’t bothered to listen to the weather forecast. She wished she had now. “I figured I’d be in time to grab a late lunch at Miss Joan’s,” she added. Miss Joan, the owner of the diner, had been a fixture around Forever for as long as she could remember.
Arms wrapped around her to ward off the chill, Mona glanced around the cabin’s main room again. “Doesn’t look as if there’s been food around here for a good long while.”
“Except for maybe the four-footed kind,” Joe interjected as the sound of something small and swift was heard rustling toward the rear of the room. A rat?
“I’ll pass, thanks,” she muttered.
