My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay)

by Conrad, Helen

  Then he was rolling away from her, and she sat up quickly, scared and excited and thrilled and wary of being hurt.

  What did he think of her now? Was he angry?

  He lay back on his towel and looked up at her, his eyes a shimmering mask of silver in the sunlight. For a long moment he didn’t speak, and she couldn’t. Finally, his mouth curved into a wistful smile.

  “Don’t grow up too fast, Jennifer Thornton,” he’d said softly. “You’ve got plenty of time.”

  That was all. He’d vaulted to his feet, grabbed his books and towel, and left her there. But she’d treasured that moment. She had to. He never kissed her again.

  “You want another bite?” he asked now. “Last chance.”

  “No, thanks. You can have it.” She couldn’t have eaten another bite if she’d tried. There was an excitement brewing in her, fluttering her pulse and putting color in her cheeks. She watched Reid finish the sandwich and enjoyed his enjoyment.

  “Wait a minute,” she said as he crumpled up the paper and tossed it back in the little plastic basket. She picked up the napkin she’d packed with the lunch and reached up to dab at a spot of mustard at the corner of his mouth.

  Suddenly, his hand was stopping her. She looked up into his eyes and held her breath, caught by the silver mystery of his gaze. For a long, long moment they sat there, held by a force she didn’t quite understand. She thought at first he might kiss her. Her mouth went dry but he didn’t make that move. He only looked as though he wanted to, staring into her dark eyes. Then he let her go and turned away, breaking the spell, and she put the napkin in the basket.

  “Are you always this helpful?” he asked, his voice husky.

  She took a quivering breath and tried to smile. “Sure. Don’t you remember? I used to be so helpful, you couldn’t get rid of me even when you tried.”

  “I never wanted to get rid of you,” he said as though astonished she would think such a thing.

  She laughed softly. “Time does distort memory, doesn’t it?” But a glow settled in her heart. He didn’t remember her as a pest. That alone was worth a lot.

  “Time hasn’t distorted my memories of you,” he replied quietly, not looking at her. “They’re some of the best memories I’ve got. I wouldn’t do anything to alter them.”

  She gasped, uncertain of her ears. Could he really be saying these things?

  “When you were young, you always made me smile. And then when you grew up . . .” He turned and grinned at her a bit sheepishly. “Every young man has a fantasy girl. Mine always had brown curly hair and a smile that lit up the sky.”

  She felt herself flush, and she could hardly meet his eyes. “She did?” she croaked.

  “She did.” His hand was on her hair, touching its bounciness experimentally. “I remember watching you go out with other boys and wishing . . .”

  “Wishing what?” she asked breathlessly, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “That you were older,” he said decisively, his hand cupping her cheek with obvious affection. “You were much too young for me then. I had to be careful.”

  “Careful!” she cried. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck, but some new restraint held her back, some new shyness. “You were so careful, I never had a clue.” Even now she could hardly believe it.

  “You weren’t supposed to.” His fingers felt warm on her neck, stroking softly. “You were supposed to grow up, then I was going to wean you to the idea of going out with me.”

  She swallowed. “You were a little too gradual.”

  He nodded, his eyes serious. “You’re right. Before I had a chance to get started, you ran away.” His face clouded, and he turned away, dropping his hand and looking out over the playground.

  She was tingling with excitement, tingling with his presence. She wondered how she could have been so blind when she was younger. What if she had gone to him right away? What if she’d gone to him instead of running?

  No. She could never have gone to him. She could never go to anyone else. It was her nightmare, hers alone. And she had to keep it that way.

  “I have changed, Reid,” she said, answering at last his statement of a few moments before, hoping to get his mind off his purpose for being with her. “But not as much as you have. What’s with the three-piece suit, anyway? I thought you swore you’d never get caught up in that trap.”

  She remembered his rebellious youth. He’d spent a few years working at a legal aid clinic for virtually no money. Then he’d joined an obscure law firm on the wrong side of the business district, determined to stay away from the old money connections his father could give him. It was obvious something had happened to change his mind about all that. She wondered what it could have been.

  “We swear a lot of things when we’re young, Jennifer,” he said quietly, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “We all grow up sometime.”

  She didn’t buy it. Reid Carrington selling out for prestige and money? It didn’t fit the image she had of him. There had to be another reason. She was just about to pursue it when he turned the conversation to the subject she dreaded most.

  “I don’t want to talk anymore about me, Jennifer. I want to talk about you. You and your parents.”

  She closed her eyes and turned her head away. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  She rose and started toward the street, but he was right behind her.

  “You know that’s what I’m here for, don’t you?” he told her frankly. “I want you to go back and see your parents.”

  “No,” she repeated, walking faster. “I can never do that.”

  “You have to do that.” He kept pace with her. Even when she turned down the busy street and tried to lose herself in the foot traffic, he stayed right beside her. “If you could see your father, Jenny ... If you could see how he’s aged since Tony died—“

  Tony—her older brother, Reid’s friend, her parents’ beloved son. He’d died six months before of leukemia, and no one had even told her he was ill.

  “I didn’t make Tony die,” she managed to choke out. “You can’t blame that one on me.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her around to face him, his eyes wide with shock. “No one is suggesting any such thing,” he told her harshly. “What’s the matter with you?”

  She stared up at him, holding back the stinging tears with great difficulty. “I can’t go back,” she whispered, pleading with him.

  He frowned, puzzled. “Your father hardly ever goes to the office anymore,” he said, speaking quickly as though he meant to get out as much as possible before she made a run for it. “He walks on the beach and stares at the waves for hours on end. When I try to go up and speak to him, he hardly recognizes who I am.”

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to hear this.

  “Your mother watches television all day long, Jennifer. I’ve gone over at three in the afternoon, seven in the morning, midnight—it’s all the same. She stares at the screen and won’t even look up when I talk to her. The maid says she won’t eat.”

  “No, no,” Jennifer murmured, shaking her head, “I can’t do anything about this. I can’t.”

  “I know it’s the shock of losing Tony. He was their only son, their pride and joy. He was supposed to take over your father’s company, and now that he’s gone, your father has no more hope for the future. But think about it, Jennifer. Before they lost their son, they lost a daughter. What if they got her back?”

  Jennifer broke away and started down the sidewalk again, walking as fast as she could. She wouldn’t listen to any more. He didn’t know what kind of pain he was inflicting on her. She couldn’t go back—even if she wanted to.

  He was at her shoulder again, and she cursed his stubbornness.

  “Jennifer,” he went on doggedly, “I know you ran away because you thought they were too strict, and because you couldn’t fit into the sort of life-style they wanted for you. But you’re older now. I think they’ll be able to accept you for what you ar
e. After all, you seem to have made a success of your life. If you come back and tell them you’re sorry you ran away—“

  Jennifer stopped dead, whirled, and glared into Reid’s handsome face.

  “Stop it!’ she cried. “Don’t you understand? I didn’t run away to go out looking for the good life. I ran away because I had to. Because staying would have meant destroying everyone— Tony, my mother, my father. And I couldn’t do that to them. I still can’t.”

  Tears were streaming down her face now, but when he tried to reach for her, his face white with disbelief, she jumped away from his touch.

  “Leave me alone, Reid Carrington,” she cried, consumed with pain and anger. “Just stay away from me. Go and do your good deeds somewhere else.”

  And she turned on her heel and ran into The Magnificent Munch, her only refuge from the nightmare he’d let loose in her soul.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  Have I Ever Kissed You?

  Jennifer stood in front of the full-length mirror that covered the end of the hallway of her apartment and stared into her own huge dark eyes.

  “I’m getting bags,” she said softly. “Good.”

  There was nothing more frustrating than feeling terrible and still looking like a million dollars. If she was going to be miserable, at least she should have the satisfaction of looking the part.

  She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning back against the wall. Her life had been going so well. She’d been happy, healthy, doing well at her work. True, she’d found herself chasing thrills a little too frantically, playing a little too hard, as though that could blot out bad memories. But she’d always done that.

  Then Reid had walked back into her life, bringing his moral judgments and his sense of responsibility. And his distorted memories.

  Could it be possible that he had felt about her the same way she’d felt about him? She’d believed what he’d told her this afternoon. But now she wasn’t so sure. It didn’t seem credible. Now she was afraid he was only trying to soften her up and get her to come home.

  Reid Carrington with a secret crush on Jennifer Thornton? No. It was too much like a dime-store fantasy. Why hadn’t he stayed away? She’d spent the last seven years slowly wiping him from her memory, and now it was all back again.

  There was a black cloud hanging over her. All of her usual remedies for depression weren’t working. She felt enveloped by darkness, by moves badly made and decisions wrongly taken. She’d spent so many years going over and over the missteps; she couldn’t bear to do that again. There had to be another way.

  Restlessly, she wandered out into her living room. Muted lighting made her chocolate and mauve decor look less vibrant than usual. Her hardwood floors were covered with South American throw rugs, and her walls were lined with bookcases displaying odd woodcarvings and hand-thrown pottery along with books of every description. A beautiful voice warbled the blues from the speakers of her stereo, filling the air with a sense of loss and betrayal.

  It was all so sad. She sighed again, wishing she could think of some way out of this horrible mood she’d been in ever since lunchtime, when she’d run from Reid and tried to bury herself in work. It hadn’t worked, so she’d come home early. This wasn’t working either.

  She looked around her room and began to smile. No wonder she was in such a state! Here she’d been wandering around in a flowing caftan for the last three hours, wallowing in her misery and playing old Billie Holiday blues albums over and over. What was the matter with her, anyway? If there was one thing she’d learned, it was this: Act happy, and even if you don’t become happy, you’ll have the next best thing. Enough of this despair!

  She continued to pace through her apartment trying to shake the blues. Reid Carrington was what was the matter with her. What a fool she was to let him get to her again.

  She’d had a crush on Reid from the first time she’d seen him when she was nine and he was sixteen. She and her family had moved into the Destiny Bay beach house, and she was riding her bike when she first saw the tall, lanky teenager washing his father’s car.

  “Look, no hands!” she’d called to him, then promptly run into the fence. She hadn’t hurt anything but her pride, yet that first encounter had set the tone for the rest of their relationship. She was always doing wild things and getting into trouble. And he was always just out of reach.

  For ten years she’d watched him, liking him, respecting him, and finally, falling in love with him. “Puppy love” she’d call it now, but then—it had seemed real enough. But he’d never seemed to love her back, no matter what he claimed now. He’d been caught up in law school, then the altruistic work he did in the community. He’d had time for other women, but he’d never asked her out.

  She’d been so mature about it when she’d left seven years before. She hadn’t cried on his shoulder as she’d always done. She remembered that sad night, leaving in the dark, looking over toward the Carrington house, seeing the light in Reid’s window.

  She’d been tempted then. But she’d fought it. So she’d left, found her way to San Francisco, and a few years later to Los Angeles, all by herself, and hardly even cried over him.

  Look, she’d told herself proudly, I’m over him. No more knife blade applied to the heartstrings. No more mooning over something you can’t have. It’s over.

  A new life would begin, and Reid Carrington could join her parents in the closed scrapbook of her childhood.

  It had taken some time, but in the end she’d been just fine. It had seemed so easy. She’d hardly given him a second thought for years. Now Reid had walked back into her heart as casually as a summer breeze, and here she was, a hopeless wreck again.

  Enough. She refused to do it. She refused to let the guilt build again, to let the longings surface. Her parents were better off without her, and so was Reid, if only he knew it. Jennifer Thornton could only bring heartbreak to the people she loved best. It had always been that way.

  Why couldn’t they accept it and leave her alone? She’d made herself a new life, and it was a good life. It was all she needed. She wouldn’t let Reid take it away. She flopped down on her ultramodern linen couch with a sense of firm determination.

  Whatever else, she must not fall in love with Reid. She’d been that route before, and it led to a very steep drop-off.

  “No, thank you,” she whispered, punching a couch pillow.

  What would he want with you, anyway? she wondered to herself, thinking of all the well-bred, elegantly dressed women she’d seen him with in the past, including the woman he’d been with at the field on the weekend. Reid wanted someone with grace and manners, competence and intelligence. So what would he want with you? she asked herself scathingly. You who jump out of airplanes and fall off your shoes? Face it: you’re not his type. You never were. Forget him.

  Now, that was a good idea. It was time for some changes around here. Forget him and get back to life as we know it in—well, not the fast lane; actually, more like the median strip.

  The first thing to do was change the ambience. She bounced to the player and pulled Billie Holiday out.

  “Lady, you may sing your blues somewhere else,” she stated grandly. “What I need is some good-time music.” She found an old Journey CD, put it on the player, and turned up the volume.

  Amazing how quickly it began to work! She felt better already just listening to the rhythmic music. “Those summer nights,” she hummed as she swept through the room, pulling the chin-to-waist zipper of her caftan open as she started to peel it away. The crashing chimes of her apartment doorbell stopped her in her tracks.

  Great! Eddie and Martha and the gang had said they might stop by after taking in an early film. She’d hemmed and hawed at the time, thinking she’d be too miserable for company, but now she was ready. The apartment security guard must have let them up, knowing them as well as he did. The timing was perfect.

  “Hi, Martha, Eddie, and the rest of you. I’m unlocking the door,” she called above the booming
sound of the electric guitar that filled the room. “But give me a second to get back to my bedroom, okay? I’m in the middle of dressing.”

  “Stone in love,” she sang at the top of her lungs as she disappeared into her bedroom, not bothering to close the door, since she could stay out of sight of the living room by dressing in front of her wall-to-wall closet. The front door closed with a bang, but she hardly noticed. She threw her caftan across her bed, then started digging for a fresh set of underwear from her drawer before turning to the closet to search out a light sweater and slacks. Her friends might want to go out for a late snack, and she wanted to be ready for anything.

  “Ready for anything, that’s me,” she hummed to herself, reaching through the clothes on hangers.

  Anything, that is, except for what actually happened next.

  “You’ve always been the soul of informality, Jennifer, but don’t you think this is carrying things a little far?”

  She whirled at the first sound of Reid’s voice, knowing she was dressed only in her lacy pale blue panties and camisole, staring at the tall man who stood in the doorway of her bedroom, unable to move.

  “Of course,” he added, nonchalantly leaning against her doorframe, arms folded across his chest, his brilliant gaze raking across her. “I’m open for new experiences. What comes next?”

  In a sudden rush of motion she reached down for her caftan and jerked it up and clutched it just below her chin.

  “So dramatic, Jennifer,” he teased, his eyes hooded and unreadable. “You’ve got more on than the average person on the beach. Why are you so shy?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. This was very different from a public beach, and he knew it.

  “What are you doing in here?” she hissed at last.

  His blue eyes hardened to a steel gray. “Sorry if I’m not the man you were expecting. But when you invite people into your bedroom without checking their identity, you’ve got to be ready for surprises.”