My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay) (3 page)

Her responsibilities.
 
What were those, exactly?
 
If he only knew.
 
But she could never tell him the truth about why she’d left. It was best to try to make him think she was nothing but an unrepentant runaway, just like so many of the young who littered the streets of Southern California. That way at least the questions might stop.

“Home?” she repeated bitterly. “What’s that? I don’t believe I ever had one of those.” A blatant lie, but in a way it had almost become true.

He swore softly, lips thinning. She could feel the anger building in him, but she’d started this tack. She had to finish it.
 

“Are you talking about that sweet little cottage by the sea where a dear little gray-haired couple waits for their only living child to return?” Tears were stinging the rims of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “Is that the home you’re talking about, Reid? Because you can take that cute little cottage and dump it into the ocean as far as I’m—“

Fury overcame Reid, and he grabbed her hard. Eddie was alarmed, moving forward and putting a restraining hand on Reid’s shoulder.
 

“Hey, man, take your hands off her!”

Reid turned on the other man, as though hoping to find an outlet for his anger, and suddenly, he looked twice as big as he had before.
 

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” he asked, his voice deceptively casual, steel gleaming beneath velvet, his hands still holding Jennifer in a viselike grip.

Eddie’s eyes widened, then shifted. “Just don’t hurt her, okay?” he said more mildly, dropping his hand away from Reid’s shoulder.

“Hurt her?” Reid snapped coldly, looking into her wide brown eyes. “There’s no way to hurt someone with skin this thick.” But his fingers loosened.

“I’ve been thinking about you for a long time, Jennifer,” he said evenly. “What you’re doing to your parents isn’t right. Now that Tony’s gone, they have nothing. They need you more than ever, and you’ve deserted them.
 
You’ve got to face reality at some point in your life.
 
Someone ought to make you come home and do just that.”

His attack had stunned her into uncharacteristic silence, but now she had her tongue back. She knew she had to cut him off or they were going to regret it. If he pushed too hard, the truth was likely to come out. And that was what she’d been dreading all these years.
 

“Someone like you?” she retorted as tauntingly as she was able, hoping to make him wash his hands of her once and for all. “Some brave Lone Ranger crusading for justice? Don’t make me laugh, Reid. You don’t know a thing about what happened between me and my parents—and you never will.”

Reid’s friends had come out across the field from the gallery, arriving uneasily, obviously as alarmed by Reid's uncharacteristic behavior as Eddie was.
 

“Say, Reid,” the neatly dressed auburn-haired man called over, “is there some problem here?”
 

Reid glanced their way, then looked back at Jennifer.
 

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he said softly.

“Reid”—one of the women, a tall, slender blonde with hair as smooth as silk and a face made for a magazine cover, called to him now—“it is getting late, darling. We’re due at the club for dinner.”

Jennifer glanced at her. She knew the type, only too well. It was a type she’d been expected to use as a pattern for her own life, only she’d never fit the mold.
 

“You’re late for the club, Reid,” she said with artificial cheerfulllness. “Don’t let your friends down."
 
She smirked.
 
"Making your own meaningful contribution to
society,
aren’t you?”
 

He swore softly just under his breath, shaking his head as he looked down at her, but he let her go. “I’ll be back, Jennifer,” he told her coldly. “Now that I know where to find you, I’ll be back.”

He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, just barely grazing the skin, then turned on his heel and strode toward his friends.
 
The four of them walked quickly toward the parking lot. Jennifer watched them go, aware that she was shaking like a leaf but unable to do a thing to stop it.

“Are you sure that guy’s a friend of yours?” Eddie said, only half teasing.
 
“Maybe you have him mixed up with some other guy.
 
Someone actually friendly.”

Jennifer pulled her arms in tightly over her chest, shuddering.
 

“Are you okay?” Eddie asked anxiously. “What was wrong with that creep, anyway?”

“Creep?” Jennifer felt a thread of hysteria in her forced laugh. “That’s probably the first time Reid Carrington was ever called anything like that,” she mused, more to herself than to Eddie. “But maybe that’s part of his problem.”

“All I know is, that guy was hardcore.
 
I thought he was going to throw you over his shoulder and go find a cave somewhere.”

She turned her face away so that he wouldn’t see how red her cheeks had gone from his obviously sex-filled allusion. Suddenly, she was breathless and not sure why.
 

She bent to scoop up her soggy boots and looked tiredly at her wet parachute. “Sorry, Eddie. But I don’t think I’ve got the energy for another jump today.”

“You go on,” he said gently, grinning at her with obvious affection. “I’ll take care of this.”

She smiled her gratitude. “Thanks.” Waving to Martha, another friend who was coming out to help Eddie, she started the long trek back to the preparation room.

Reid stood by his car.
 
He watched her walk away and felt the knot tighten in his throat. She was laughing back at Eddie. Her legs were as long as a dancer’s, her hair a shower of curls that caught the light and turned it into sparkling stars.

He assumed she was preparing to jump again, and he wanted to go back to her, to stop her. She was always poking at fate with a sharp stick. One of these days, fate was going to strike back. Why couldn’t he protect her from that? If he could only take her in his arms and hold her ...

He smiled ruefully, his gaze still following her progress. He’d never been able to catch her. She was always dancing just out of reach. Trying to take her in his hand would be like trying to catch a sunbeam.

She disappeared into a building, and he slumped down against the car, impressed with his own analogy.
That’s just what she’s like
, he thought.
A sunbeam. You could bask in her warmth when you were lucky enough to find it, but there was no way to capture her, to hold her down.
And any other light seemed strained and artificial. Until he’d seen her, mud-spattered and beautiful, he’d forgotten how important she had been in his life.

“Reid, are you coming or not?”

He looked up, startled. He’d forgotten the others. They were waiting, already seated in the car.

“Yes, I’m coming,” he said, slowly straightening
and pulling away from where he’d been leaning. Despite the aching longing seeing her had set up in his chest, he
wasn’t going to stay to watch her challenge the sky
again.

Jennifer came out of the building, glanced toward the road, and noted the sleek silver Mercedes gliding out of the parking lot and heading for the highway. “
Now that I know where to find you, I’ll be back,
” he’d said.
 

“Oh, God,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a second, “I hope he didn’t mean it.”

CHAPTER TWO:
 

Picnic in the Park
 

Jennifer was almost able to lull herself into believing his words had been a bluff. As the days went by, the chances that he meant what he’d said seemed to grow smaller. After all, Destiny Bay wasn’t all that far from where she lived in Los Angeles. A two hour drive and he’d almost be there. If he’d really meant to come, he’d have done it by now.

So she tried to tell herself as she went about her daily business. She’d gone to work on Monday expecting to see him around every corner, but when Friday rolled around and he still hadn’t made an appearance, she began to relax.

After all, knowing she was in the LA area wasn’t the same as knowing where she lived.
 
He probably still couldn’t find her.
 

Working helped. She wondered if he realized she had a job. He seemed to have some idea that she spent all her time playing. She did her share, but work was just as important to her.

Work meant The Magnificent Munch, a gourmet food shop she’d started three years before with Eddie and another friend, Martha Barnes. They’d all been working at Sheffield Gourmet, a ritzy place on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, when they’d had the idea of a gourmet shop for regular people.

“We won’t tack on the markup that most of these places charge,” she’d argued successfully to Eddie and Martha. “We won’t make as much profit, but we’ll have a lot of fun.”

They’d found a little hole-in-the-wall on Melrose just at the start of the New Wave clothing boom, and before they knew what was happening, they were part of what was “in” with the young people of the area. Even without the huge markup, they were doing very well. They specialized in providing interesting, unusual foods with knowledgeable service at a bargain-basement price.

They worked long hours to do it. Jennifer was in charge on Friday. At opening time she was hurrying from station to station, making sure every section of her store, from the bakery, with its oven right in the middle of the floor so that customers could see their goods being baked, to the wine rack with its special supply of vintage vinegars, was ready for customers. The Magnificent Munch was a success partly because of this attention to detail.

“Tilly,” she said reprovingly to the girl who worked behind the chocolate counter, “look at those mint truffles. They look all gummed together.”

“They probably
are
all gummed together,” the plump, pink-cheeked blond wailed. “One look from these hungry eyes of mine and they begin to melt like butter. Jennifer, you’ve got to move me out of here! I’m blowing up like a blimp. All I have to do is breathe the chocolate fumes and I gain another pound.”

Jennifer smiled sympathetically. “I know, I’m working on it. But you’re the best chocolatier we’ve got. You know so much about the subject ...”

“Yeah, and how do you think I learned?” She patted her rounded tummy. “I’m a regular example of on-the-job training.” She reached out and took Jennifer’s hand. “Please give me the produce section! Or pate. I hate pate.”

Jennifer gave her a hug and laughed. “I can’t have you work in a section where you hate the product. Our customers expect expertise with their service.”

“I’ll be an expert—I promise! I’ll learn everything there is to know about pate. Just as long as you don’t make me eat it.”

Jennifer assured Tilly that she would find her a place in another section of the store, then she hurried to the counter they called “Custom Food to Go.” Danny Lopez, their regular picnic preparer, was out sick, and she was taking over for the day.

At exactly ten o’clock the doors opened, and the customers began streaming in. Friday was their busy day, as so many people wanted something special for entertaining over the weekend or a picnic basket to take along on a trip. Jennifer took orders by phone and had a delivery boy for most of the baskets she was making up.

She loved setting up picnic baskets—lining the sides with a checkered tablecloth, filling the bottom with cold crab claws in cocktail sauce or artichoke hearts vinaigrette, some sliced smoked salmon or cold lemon chicken, a French pastry or a tin of baklava, some imported cheese, and freshly baked rolls. Then, of course, there was the chilled wine, along with highly polished wineglasses. Plates, knives, forks, and napkins were fitted into the top, and the basket was ready to make some couple happy out in the country, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, or at the Hollywood Bowl, waiting for the orchestra to tune up.

Meanwhile, she still had to keep things rolling in the rest of the store.

“The distributor is here for that new line of pasta. You want to take a look?” Jimmy Buffer, one of her oldest employees, asked as she fitted a box with raspberry tarts.

“I’ll let you make the decision,” she told him with a smile. “You know more about that than I do.”

“Hey, Jennifer, shall I weed out some of these slower-moving canned goods?” he asked her a bit later. “These escargots are just about es-car-gone.”

“Do,” she agreed. “And make room for a new line of natural fruit juices I want to bring in.”

As noon drew closer, people began coming in off the street for lunchtime food as well, and pretty soon there was a line snaking through the store.

“Help!” she whispered to Fred, the produce man, as he delivered more sliced tomatoes, torn lettuce, and alfalfa sprouts. “How does Danny keep up with this crowd?”

“He gets someone else in here to take the orders, for one thing,” he reminded her.

“You’re hired,” she announced with a grin. Pretty soon she’d drafted Tilly, too, and it was almost one thirty before the line had dwindled to just a few more hungry customers.

“What can we do for you, sir?” she vaguely heard Fred ask the last man in line.

“I’ll have a ham sandwich,” came the answer, and at the sound of Reid’s voice, she straightened, her breath coming just a little faster.

Here he was, and she realized she’d been waiting for him all week. She hadn’t been sure what would happen once he arrived, but she’d known all along she would have to find out.
 

“Better make that Black Forest ham,” she told Fred without looking around, her pulse flickering in the hollow of her throat, “with plenty of hot mustard.”

She turned and smiled at Fred, still avoiding looking at Reid. “Why don’t you go on back to produce?” she said. “Thanks for all your help. I think I can handle it now.”
 

Tilly left, too, and Jennifer pulled the ham out of the deli case.