Ramona and the Renegade. Marie Ferrarella

      He gave her options, although only one was really viable. “Well, I could call Mick and you could wait here for him to come with his tow truck—if you don’t wash away first. Or I could give you a ride into town and you could talk to Mick yourself, face-to-face.”

      Mona was in no mood to share a car ride with him, even though she knew it was her best bet. “No third option, huh?”

      “Sure.” Joe raised his voice again, competing with the increasing sound of the wind and the rain. “You could wait here for the tire spirits to come and perform the miracle of the reinflating tire.”

      His expression was so serious that anyone not knowing Joe would have thought that he actually believed in the spirits he’d just invoked. But she had grown up witnessing displays of his deadpan sense of humor.

      With a sigh, Mona resigned herself to her only real alternative. “I guess I’ll have to pick option number two.”

      “Good choice,” he answered.

      Turning on his heel, he started to lead the short distance back to his parked vehicle. It took him less than a minute to realize that Mona wasn’t following behind him. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. She was still next to her Jeep.

      “Change your mind?”

      Crawling into the rear of the vehicle, Mona hauled out a large suitcase. She had no choice but to set it down in the mud.

      “No,” she told him, “I don’t want anyone making off with my clothes.” She didn’t bother looking at him as she leaned into the back and grabbed a second suitcase. This one, lodged behind the driver’s seat, proved to be less cooperative and she struggled to get it out of the vehicle.

      Joe shook his head at the woman’s unadulterated stubbornness. He crossed back to her in a couple of long strides. Firmly taking hold of her shoulders for a second time, he moved her out of the way and easily pulled the large suitcase out. Instead of putting it down next to the first one, he held on to it, keeping it out of the mud.

      Mona squared her shoulders. “I could have managed,” she protested.

      Arguing with her served no purpose. “No one said you couldn’t,” he answered. Still holding one suitcase, he deliberately picked up the other with his free hand. “This it?” he asked. “Or are there more?”

      She’d never been one to be careless with her hard-earned money, but she had accumulated a few things in the past eight years. “The rest are being shipped,” she told him.

      Something small and hopeful zipped through him. He banked it down quickly, giving absolutely no indication of its momentary existence. Instead, he asked in what passed for a disinterested voice, “You moving back?”

      She wanted to. But there were things she needed to work out. Not to mention that her brother had said he had other plans for her, plans that included having her move to a large city. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but Forever was really the only home she ever knew. The only place she’d ever felt she really belonged.

      “For now,” she allowed.

      Joe weighed her tone and made a judgment.

      He was forced to raise his voice yet again as he walked to his vehicle. The wind grew louder, the rain more harsh. He felt as if his words were being snatched away even as he uttered them.

      “Set your sights on somewhere else?” he asked.

      She had nothing to carry but the shoulder bag that had seen her through both college and veterinarian school. Holding it tightly against her, Mona moved quickly to keep up. At this point, she wanted nothing more than to get out of the rain and curl up somewhere warm and dry. In lieu of that, Joe’s car would do.

      “Not me,” she told Joe, then repeated the words when he looked at her quizzically. Satisfied he’d heard her, she added, “Rick.”

      Reaching his vehicle, Joe loaded first one suitcase, then the other into the backseat. When he turned to look at Mona, she had already scrambled into the passenger seat in the front.

      He opened the driver’s-side door and got in. “You want to explain that?”

      Mona felt around for the seat belt. Finding it, she secured it around herself. “Rick—” She realized she was still yelling and lowered her voice. “Rick has high hopes that I’ll move to the big city, open an animal hospital and be a big success.”

      “And you?” He put his key into the ignition, but didn’t turn it just yet. “What are your hopes?”

      Mona ran her hands up and down her arms, trying not to shiver. It was unseasonably cold for spring.

      “To get dry again,” she answered.

      She glanced out the side window. The rain was getting worse, but that wasn’t what was bothering her. She heard a distant muffled roar and it was getting louder. That could only mean one thing. She turned toward Joe. Now wasn’t the time for any false bravado or stubborn ploys on her part. They had trouble.

      “Joe—”

      Joe turned the key and after a what seemed like an unnaturally long moment, the engine caught and turned over.

      “Yeah, I know,” he answered. “Looks like we’re in for it.”

      They both knew what he was talking about. “It” was Joe’s loose reference to the flash floods that they were periodically subjected to when Mother Nature decided to be too bountiful with her supply of rain and drenched the lands far too quickly to be of any actual benefit to anyone.

      Mona twisted around in her seat, looking back at her vehicle. She knew she had no choice, but she really hated leaving it behind.

      “My car,” she protested.

      “We’ll find it once it stops raining,” Joe told her with an assurance that defied argument.

      She turned back around and sat facing forward again. Mona watched as his car’s windshield wipers vainly battled the downpour, losing ground with every stroke they spasmodically made. To her dismay, the man beside her slowed down and began driving at a speed that would have brought shame to an arthritic turtle.

      The fearless daredevil she’d once known would have laughed at the rain and gone full throttle into the storm.

      But that boy was gone now and in his place was a cautious man who thought things through.

      She knew that any faster and they risked driving off the road and landing in a ditch.

      Or worse.

      Another thought suddenly struck her. She turned to look at his profile. “We’re not going to make it into town, are we?”

      If this had been anyone else in the car with him, he might have uttered some platitude meant to be reassuring, doling out a spoonful of hope to someone he knew was silently asking for it.

      But this wasn’t anyone else. This was Mona. Mona, who took every white lie as an affront, every sugar-coated fib as an insult to her intelligence. So he said the only thing he knew she would tolerate.

      He told her the truth.

      “Nope.”

      Chapter Two

      “‘Nope’?”

      Stunned, Mona repeated the single-syllable answer Joe had just uttered. If they couldn’t reach town, that meant the oncoming flash flood would cut off access to Forever.

      But she knew Joe, knew him as well as she knew herself and her brother. Joe was not the type to merely give up or surrender, even if his adversary was Nature itself.

      Still, the seconds ticked by and he wasn’t saying anything beyond the one word he’d already uttered. Mona felt herself growing antsy, in direct correlation to the force of the storm.

      If they couldn’t make it to town,