Ramona didn’t know if her grandfather had continued his ill deeds from the grave, but someone had turned this dreadful day into a disaster. Coming to his funeral had been a terrible idea. She should have just stuck with her original plan to fly in for the benefit gala in a few days, then fly right out. She’d successfully avoided Lucas during her lightening-quick visits all these years. Clearly, lingering in Virginia was the quickest way to get screwed. In both ways.

She stepped down the stairs, keeping a tight hold on the cool banister. The house was still bursting with bodies, none of whom she gave a shit about. Her father hadn’t moved from his spot, his expressionless face breaking into a smile as she approached.

“How are you doing, Dad?”

He swayed his head from side to side. “Not too well, Pumpkin. I think I’d like to go home.”

Best news she’d heard all day. “Of course. Let’s go.”

There was nothing there for her anyway. Tyler would be leaving any minute, and she couldn’t stand to look at Lucas’ face. Her brother was nowhere to be found, likely smothered in suits and fake smiles.

Ramona made the executive decision to take the limo back. Connor was resourceful enough to find his own way home.

She supported her father into the house and to his room. His slumped body made her wonder if she should offer to help him get undressed. This was new territory for her and incredibly awkward.

“What can I do for you, Dad? Can I get you some pajamas?”

He lifted his head as if it weighed a hundred pounds. “Oh, no, I’m fine, Pumpkin. I’m just going to sit here for a minute. Gather myself.”

It was so hard to see him like this. “Alright… I’m just down the hall if you need anything.”

She looked back, fingers gripping the door. “Goodnight, Dad. I love you.”

“Oh, sweet girl. I’m so happy you’re here with me. It makes everything better.” His face brightened the tiniest bit as he smiled. “I love you, too.”

The short walk to her room felt like an odyssey. She was done with the crappy day, but her father looked absolutely broken. The mixture of emotions he must have been feeling would have kept her in bed all day.

Before he’d lost himself to booze, her father had taken the brunt of Grandad’s cruelty. Maybe what he was feeling was relief. At least she hoped so. A grand helping of relief all around.

Ramona arrived at her door and remembered tiptoeing down that same hallway, like a delinquent teenager, the night before. Except she’d never done anything that courageous as a teenager. Mostly she just hid. Maybe if she’d had a chance to act out more when she was younger, she’d have gotten all this risk-taking out of her system. She’d heed consequences and be less impulsive. She wouldn’t find herself in a tizzy about some guy, wasting precious moments she could be spending with her father.

Exhaustion pulled her into the room, longing for rest. She’d hardly slept the night before. How foolish, going to bed all sexed-up and excited. Sure, it had been a night to remember. Scorching hot. Great material to replay during her many nights alone. And wrong, wrong, wrong.

Anger gave her enough of a spurt of energy that her clothes and shoes hit the ground with added velocity. That fucker. Lucas had made a fool of her. No. He made a fool of himself. How had he turned out to be such a louse?

As she looked around the room with bright pink walls, nostalgia weaved itself into the fist of her anger and forced it open. Too many nights had been spent cowering in her bed, wanting to be transported anywhere but there. It was his voice on the other end of her gold princess phone that had helped her calm down. Sometimes even his arms around her while she cried, helping her get to sleep. The boy and the man didn’t align. It was all too hard to believe.

She plopped herself onto the large bed, the only item in the room she could tell had been replaced. Even the chair she and her brother had painted with orange polka dots still sat in the corner.

She slid between the cool sheets, so grateful that the day was over. There’d be plenty of time tomorrow to figure out this mess. A good night’s sleep would help. Her eyes drifted shut as her body relaxed. Despite her room’s history, a sense of safety, the first she’d had all day, wrapped itself around her.

Heavy footsteps sounded through the house. Her initial startle passed quickly - it must be Connor coming to check on Dad - but the sound continued getting louder and closer to her room. Maybe something had happened and he wanted to talk. He opened the door and she squinted at the silhouette. Something was different about the frame of the body, the line of the hair. Her eyes snapped open. It wasn’t Connor. It was Lucas.

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?”

He stepped over her clothes and shoes, strewn across the carpet, and walked over to her bed. “Because your father has yet to ever lock the side door.”

She sat up, trying her best to cover what was not being sufficiently concealed by her skimpy nightgown. “What do you want, Lucas? I’ve really had enough. Today was…”

“I know. It was a spectacularly shitty day for you. And I didn’t help things by coming after you that way. I wasn’t being rational. So, I'm here to apologize.”

“Really? You couldn’t just send me a text or apologize tomorrow?”

“No.” He took off his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, dropping them both on the back of the chair. “Because I also came here to do this.”

Ramona watched, mesmerized, as he stripped down to his shorts and slid into bed with her. The shock of it stole her ability to respond. It was all déja vu, although instead of sneaking into her room through the window, he had walked down the hall. And instead of her house burning with the rage of her parents, the inferno was happening inside her own body.

He turned her away from him and enveloped her in his body. He had always been bigger than her, but the size difference had magnified. His breath brushed against the top of her shoulder as he held the pressure that forced her to soften into him. Tension and anger gave way to grief. She closed her eyes and let the tears flow.

“I'm sorry, Mo. I'm sorry about your grandfather. I'm sorry about your father. I'm sorry about what happened today. I'm sorry you got blind-sided. I'm sorry that I didn’t get to talk to you about last night. I'm sorry that I didn’t tell you how much I loved being with you.”

With each statement, he touched his lips to her shoulder or her hair or the edge of her ear. She fell asleep to the poem of his apologies.

The pressure of a warm body behind her and the rumble of breath in her ear startled her from sleep. “Baloo.” She wiggled her body. “Baloo. Are you awake?”

He pressed his hips into her back and sighed.

“Lucas! Wake up.”

The breathing stopped. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I'm okay. I'm awake.”

She rolled over to face him.

He squeezed his eyes shut and then blinked several times. “You want an awake friend.”

His job. To talk to her when she couldn’t sleep. To ease her back into safety. “Yes.”

His face softened. “I’m here. Talk to me.”

“I'm worried about my Dad. He looks so weak, like he’s just going to break any minute. I mean it’s just not fair, now that he’s finally getting his life together, he’s sober, he’s painting again, he even has a girlfriend, then his body decides to give out. It’s not fair.”

“It’s definitely not fair. Is the dialysis helping?”

“It’s keeping him alive, but I don’t know for how long. That’s where he met his girlfriend, you know. She’s the receptionist at the dialysis place. They see each other three days a week, whenever he goes there. And Connor says she stays over some weekends. They’re so cute together. She looks like Mom, but she’s super fiery. Brazilian, I think. He always smiles when he talks about her.”

“I’ve met Leni - she’s wonderful. And I'm so happy for him. Maybe this is his slice of happiness.”

“He deserves more. I deserve to have more. I finally have a dad who’s not drunk and angry all the time, and I don’t know how long…”

He ran his thumb over her cheek, catching the tears before they tumbled over her nose. “I'm sorry. But he seems happy. Like he’s lived through so much physical pain that this medical stuff is nothing. Let him have this time knowing how much you love him, not how much you’ve missed.”

And that’s what he did best. Listen, support, bring a sense of perspective to her scary thoughts. Nothing but compassion shone in his eyes.

As if it was the most natural thing in the world, she reached forward and kissed him. He pulled away.

Reality punched her in the gut. “Shit. I'm sorry. You’re not-”

Her sentence was stopped by his lips, much more insistent than her delicate kiss. His hand wrapped around the back of her head, gripping, while her leg slid over his hip, pinning his bottom half to her. She ground into him, pressing the length of his erection between her legs, bare under her nightgown. Resistance could not survive the heat of her desire.

In one move, she was on her back, with him on top of her and her hands pushing his shorts down. The tip of his cock pressed against her, reigniting the cascade of sensations from the previous night. The delightful sense of being pushed open as he slid himself into her. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before the rhythm of his stroking, the fierceness of his mouth on hers, and the squeeze of her nipple in his hand tore a moan from her throat. He plunged into her and joined in the cries of delight.

She fell asleep much more deeply after that, but awoke, once again, to surprise at the man in her bed and a desire to be taken by him. She lifted herself above him and dangled a breast into his mouth. He sucked fiercely while she placed him inside her. Crouched over him, she let his hands guide her hips, not just over his length, but in small circles. He finally slid a finger over her clit and kept it there as she rode him to another orgasm.

Before she could recover, he placed her on her knees and entered her in one firm stroke. Her legs nearly gave way as the tremble became an explosive series of pulses voiced with a repeated call of her name.

They collapsed into sleep for the final time.

He was already awake, looking at her, when she opened her eyes. Before she could speak, he pressed his mouth to hers and left it there. She moved away to take a breath.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

That seemed an insufficient greeting after the past twenty-four hours. Her own flinch of realization was interrupted by his look of concern.

He gave his head a brisk shake. “I just can’t believe my eyes. What I see and what I feel aren’t making sense.”

She wanted his words to make sense. They didn’t. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“When I look at you, I see this remarkable, stunning woman. But it’s someone I don’t completely recognize. It’s all new to me – how you look, how you sound, how you feel in my hands, on my body.”

She didn’t like where this was going.

“But then, on the inside, it feels like us. Like Mowgli and Baloo and nothing has changed. You’re still the person I love most in the world. You just happen to-”

“You can’t say that, Luc.” Like an old-fashioned alarm clock, the blaring mistake of his words brought her just short of panic.

A crease formed between his brows. “Why not? It’s true.”

“Because we don’t know each other… like that… anymore.” All the goodness had drained from her awareness. “And frankly, I don’t think you’re in a position to say those things to me.”

He scanned down to her breasts. “A position? Are you being ironic?”

She pulled the blanket up higher. “No, I'm not being ironic. I'm being realistic. This situation is not going to be about… that.”

“Now I don’t understand what you’re saying.” He spoke in full voice. The sexy whispers were gone.

“I'm asking you not to go there. It’s too hard, already.” It hardly made sense in her head, but she hoped he understood. Or even that she might understand.

“So it’s okay to have sex, but not okay to have feelings?”

“No. None of it is okay, Luc. That’s the point!”

He opened his mouth several times, as if to speak, and stopped.

“Do you have something to say?” Each word bit more sharply.

He worked his jaw. “I… I’m sorry, Mo. I can’t.”

She sat up. “I'm getting up now. It’s probably time for you to go.”

He took a firm grip on her shoulders. “We’re not going to do that, Ramona. We’re not going to spoil this amazing time together with bad feelings. I'm going to respect your request. I won’t talk about… feelings. But being with me and hating yourself isn’t going to work.”

Damn. She couldn’t even be pleased that he had deciphered her jumble of thoughts. He shouldn’t have known she was hating herself. Guilt burned at her throat and filled her mouth with bitterness.

She looked away as he got dressed, afraid that the sight of him would force her to pull him back into the bed and confess that her heart was bursting as much as her body was burning. But none of that was possible. He wasn’t her Baloo anymore. He belonged to someone else.

The clink of his belt was followed by the sound of a zipper. “What are you doing today?”

She didn’t want to tell him about her day. She didn’t want to make small talk. Her first choice would have been to pack up all her stuff and get the hell out of Virginia. It was just as toxic as she remembered. Barring that, she would have wanted to force Lucas to tell the truth about Abigail. About his engagement. About why he had spent the night in her bed and not with his fiancée.

She couldn’t leave - had the foundation benefit in three days. And she didn’t want to hear the whole story, either. The truth was almost certainly going to make things much, much worse. At least now she could pretend that there was a perfectly good explanation for all of it. She could live in a fantasy that made her actions free from consequence and something she could easily walk away from. Ignorance was the price she would pay to stave off the admission that she had repeatedly done the most terrible thing, ever.

“Ramona, please don’t shut me out. I know you can tell what’s real and what’s not.”

It was impossible to not look at him. He pulled his jacket off the back of the spotted chair and slipped it on. That arm had just been around her. That chest beneath her. Those fingers inside her.

“You agreed you wouldn’t talk about it.” Besides, she had no idea what was real.

He did not make a move toward the door. “All right. So tell me about your day.”

A sigh rattled out of her. “I’m taking Dad to dialysis, then Connor and I are going to get started on packing up Granddad’s house. That is, unless our cousins have already looted it.”

“Good luck with that. The Governor wasn’t short on possessions.”

“Tell me about it.” This small talk wasn’t so bad. “What are you up to today?”

“It’s paperwork day. Light at the restaurant on Mondays and Tuesdays so I catch up on all the administrative stuff. I actually like it, the business side of things.”

She stood up. I can do this. “And that’s why you’re the hottest chef in town.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “Am I? And by hot do you mean sexy?”

That mouth…. No. She pushed out of his grip. “I actually meant award-winning, acclaimed restaurant kind of hot.”

He frowned. “Oh.”

He kissed her lightly on each cheek, then on her lips. “Have a great day, Mowgli. I’ll talk to you later.”

She held herself together long enough to watch him walk out of her bedroom, and then fell back onto the bed, exhausted. So much for a good night’s sleep making it all better. Which, of course, she hadn’t gotten because she decided that screwing him - twice! - was a better idea.

Fuck. She’d managed to make the horrible situation even worse. Maybe she wasn’t that different from old Grandad after all.