Chapter Seven
Ramona
I opened my eyes slowly and stared at the wall across from me while my brain tried to catch up with the rest of my body.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was.
The room was dark except for a thin strip of morning light slipping around the curtains, and there was something heavy resting against my leg.
Then I remembered.
Ashland.
Bob.
I closed my eyes again. Oh, God. I was in bed with Ashland.
I hadn’t forgotten that part when I’d fallen asleep. It had actually been pretty damn hard to forget there was a man lying beside me, especially when that man was Ashland Moore. But sometime during the night, we’d apparently stopped caring about keeping our respective sides of the mattress.
I looked down.
One of Ash’s legs was pressed against mine from the knee down, and his arm was stretched across the mattress between us. My hand was resting against his forearm.
That wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t like I was sprawled across his chest with my leg hooked over his hip and drool running down my chin.
But we were definitely touching, and I definitely didn’t hate it.
I lifted my eyes to his face. Ash was still sleeping.
I’d never seen him asleep before. At least, I didn’t think I had. Twenty years was a long time, and there were plenty of things about those years after high school that had gotten fuzzy around the edges. But I was pretty sure sleeping Ashland Moore hadn’t been something I’d ever witnessed.
He looked different.
Not younger, exactly. There was no mistaking the man lying beside me for the eighteen-year-old I remembered.
His beard was thicker than anything he’d been able to grow back then, and there were lines around his eyes that hadn’t existed twenty years ago.
The scar across his throat was impossible to miss even in the dim light.
But he looked peaceful.
Yesterday, even when he’d been smiling or giving me shit, there had been pain around his eyes. Exhaustion. Every movement had looked like it took more out of him than he wanted anyone to know.
That scared me more than I wanted to admit.
I’d spent three days driving to Skull Island because I needed Ashland. Then I’d gotten here and found out someone had almost killed him.
My eyes moved to the scar again.
I’d told him last night that I was glad he wasn’t dead. That might have been the biggest understatement I’d made in my entire life.
I didn’t know what I would have done if I’d arrived here and found out I was too late.
It had been twenty years since I’d seen him, and I hadn’t exactly spent those years pining away for Ashland Moore.
I’d lived my life. I’d gone places. Worked jobs.
Met people. I’d built something that worked for me, even if most people would probably look at my RV and my constantly changing address and wonder what the hell I was doing.
But through all of it, Ashland had existed somewhere in the back of my mind.
The guy who’d stepped between me and my father when he hadn’t needed to.
The guy who’d changed everything without ever knowing he’d done it.
And when things at the campground had started getting weird enough that I’d finally admitted I might actually need someone, Ashland was the person I’d thought of.
Except Ashland wasn’t really Ashland anymore.
He was Bob.
I looked at him again. I still didn’t understand that name.
My fingers moved slightly against his arm before I caught myself.
Okay. Enough staring at the sleeping man.
I carefully lifted my hand and eased my leg away from his. Ash made a low sound in his sleep, and I froze.
He didn’t wake up.
I waited another second before slowly sliding toward the edge of the bed. My feet hit the floor, and I stood. Ash still didn’t move.
Good. He needed the sleep.
I grabbed my clothes and slipped into the bathroom, quietly shutting the door behind me.
Twenty minutes later, I’d brushed my teeth, washed my face, changed clothes, and spent entirely too long staring at myself in the mirror while wondering when exactly my life had gotten this weird.
I had no answer.
I opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the bedroom.
Ash was awake. He was sitting up with his back against the headboard, the blankets pooled around his waist. His hair was messed up from sleeping, and one hand rested loosely on his stomach.
I stopped. He looked better.
Not magically healed. The scar was still there. His voice probably wasn’t going to suddenly sound normal, and I doubted his legs had miraculously decided to start cooperating overnight.
But there was color in his face. Yesterday, he’d been pale enough that every time I’d looked at him, I’d wanted to shove him back into the hospital myself.
This morning, he actually looked alive.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning.” His voice was still rough, but it sounded better too.
I pointed at him. “You look better.”
He glanced down at himself. “Yeah, I’m fucking gorgeous.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not what I said.”
“Close enough.”
“You have some color back in your face.”
Ash rubbed his beard. “Amazing what sleeping in my own bed can do.”
“Your own bed?” I repeated. “Pretty sure possession is nine-tenths of the law, and I was here first.”
He stared at me.
I smiled.
“You were in my room for two nights.”
“Exactly. Established residency.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know.”
His mouth twitched.
I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed near his feet. “How do you feel?”
“Good.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Better,” he corrected.
“That I believe.”
“My throat doesn’t hurt as much.”
“And your legs?”
He shifted them under the blanket. “Still attached.”
“Good. That would’ve been awkward for physical therapy.”
His eyes met mine. Something about the way he looked at me made me very aware that we were sitting on a bed together.
I cleared my throat and looked toward the window. Right, moving on. “So, what’s on the agenda today?”
“First, you’re going to tell me why you came to Skull Island.”
My eyes snapped back to him. Ashland looked entirely too pleased with himself. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
“I meant breakfast. Maybe coffee. Possibly seeing if Piney managed to get my RV running.”
“All after.”
“After what?”
“You tell me what happened at the campground.”
I sighed. There was clearly no easing into the morning with this man. “You’ve been awake for what? Ten minutes?”
“Long enough.”
“Maybe you should conserve your voice.”
“Talk.”
I stared at him. He stared right back.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said.
His expression didn’t change.
“Really,” I tried to convince him.
“Ramona.”
“What?”
“You drove three days to Skull Island in an RV that barely made it across the bridge because of probably nothing?” he asked.
“When you say it like that, it sounds dramatic.”
“It is dramatic.”
“I didn’t know my RV was going to die.”
“Not the important part.”
I sighed and pulled one leg onto the mattress so I could turn toward him. “I worked at a campground.”
“I know that part.”
“For six months.”
He nodded.
“I worked in the office. Reservations, payments, deposits, basic bookkeeping. Whatever needed to be done.”
“Clint said you were doing the books.”
“Some of them.”
Ash waited.
I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “After I’d been there a few months, I started noticing things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Money things.”
His eyebrows pulled together.
“Deposits that didn’t match what we had taken in. Payments that were entered one way and then moved around later. Expenses for things we hadn’t bought. Refunds that didn’t make sense.” I shrugged. “Little things at first.”
“And then?”
“And then there were a lot of little things.”
“Your boss was stealing.”
“Pretty much.”
“How much?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Ramona.”
“I really don’t.” I held up my hands. “I wasn’t conducting a forensic audit, Ashland. I worked at a campground.”
His eyes narrowed at the name.
I smiled.
“Keep talking.”
“I started paying closer attention. I thought maybe he was just bad with money. Some people should absolutely not be allowed to run businesses.”
“He wasn’t bad with money.”
“No.”
“He was stealing,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I still don’t know.”
“Thousands?”
“Probably.”
“Tens of thousands?” he probed.
I made a face.
“Fuck.”
“Maybe.”
His jaw tightened. “And you confronted him?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to keep doing his books and pretending I didn’t see it.”
“Why the fuck not?”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You could’ve quit.”
“I did quit.”
“Before you confronted him.”
“Oh.”
He stared at me.
“That would’ve been smarter,” I admitted.
“Yeah.”
“Hindsight,” I shrugged.
“Jesus Christ, Ramona.”
I threw my hands in the air. “I didn’t think he was going to lose his mind.”
“What’d he do?”
“Yelled mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“He got pissed. Accused me of snooping. Told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.” What anyone would do when confronted with something bad they did.
“You were doing his books.”
“Parts of his books.”
“He threaten you?”
“Not exactly.”
Ash’s expression told me that answer wasn’t going to work.
“He said I needed to mind my own business.”
“That’s a threat.”
“That’s an asshole telling me to mind my own business,” I laughed flatly.
“What happened after you quit?”
I looked away.
“Ramona.”
“This is where it starts sounding a little more dramatic,” I winced.
“Tell me.”
I sighed. “I was looking for another job. I wasn’t planning to stay at the campground after that.”
“No shit.”
“I’d started checking around online and making some calls. I figured I’d find something within a week or two and move on.”
Ash nodded.
“Then somebody broke into my RV.”
Every trace of amusement disappeared from his face. “Somebody broke into your RV?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“A couple days after I quit.”
“What’d they take?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes narrowed. “Nothing?”
“Nothing I could find. That’s why I thought maybe I’d forgotten to lock the door.”
“You don’t forget to lock your door.”
That shut me up for a second. “No,” I admitted.
“What else?”
I sighed. “I started seeing the same truck.”
“What truck?”
“Dark pickup. Black or maybe dark blue. I never got close enough to see the plate.”
“Where?”
“Around.”
His eyes narrowed.