Renegades and Pretty Women

Chapter Nineteen

"It's easy to be strong, I've done it for so long, but this time i have to remember. This time to get what I want, I have to surrender." Ty Herndon 'Surrender'

Joe no longer had finger nails to chew and had simply begun nibbling on her fingers themselves.

She knew that Jonah and the men were going to be sleeping in the room beside her own and she was trying to think of a reason to get Jonah into her room to discuss with him what she wanted to do.

The more she thought about it, the more nervous she became, which of course only served to make her angrier and angrier. She was angry that she was nervous. Joe didn’t like feeling nervous and what the hell would she do if Jonah turned her down?

Shoot him. That was all there was to it. If she had gone through all this stress of worrying and building herself up for giving her body to him and he turned her down then she would shoot him directly in the face.

Joe was pacing the room, coming close to wearing a hole straight through the soft rug covering it when a knock came to her door.

Instantly she moved to the side and pulled her revolver.

“Who is it?”

“Jonah.”

Joe nearly chickened out and told him to go away. But then that wouldn’t have been something that Joe Redding would have done. She had never run from anything and she wouldn’t run from this. She wanted to learn everything that a man and woman could share behind closed doors and she wanted Jonah to be the one to teach her.

“Come on in then, Jonah.” she urged as she holstered her gun. Jonah stepped into the room and Joe hated the way her body responded to just the sight of him.

It was so purely feminine, such a basic female reaction, that it confused her. Joe had spent every day of the last twelve years of her life ignoring the feminine part of herself but meeting Jonah had it roaring back to life.

“I was on my way to bed and thought I’d check on you. Bart said he didn’t think you were feeling good.”

Joe snorted. “Felt good enough to take every damn dime o’his money.”

“Well that isn’t a surprise to anybody. You can beat just about anybody at poker.”

“Just about?” Joe asked with a grin as she sat down on the end of the bed and tugged at the worn knees of her pants. Jonah frowned and stepped a little further into the room.

“Are you okay, Joe? Are you upset with me over what I said by the river because if you are then I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you mad at me…”

“Can you shut the door, Jonah?” Joe asked quickly, cutting him off. Jonah gave her an odd look and then nodded, his gray eyes concerned as he shut the door and walked over to the four poster bed and leaned his shoulder against one of the thick mahogany posts.