My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay) (7 page)

“I’ll be out in a second, Eddie,” she called quickly. “Just wait a minute.”

She pulled on her slacks and sweater in record time while noting from the babble of voices that Eddie had brought others with him.
 
Reid was shrugging back into his sweater.
 

“Hey, what’s going on, Jenny?” Eddie asked loudly to make himself heard above the stereo. “From outside it sounded like you were having a party in here. Where are all the people?”

Jennifer shot Reid a quick look of apology. Her guests were going to see the truth soon enough. She knew she might as well make the best of it.
 

“It’s kind of a small party, Eddie,” she called back. “All the people are right here.”

She came through the bedroom door and into the hall that led to the living room with Reid right behind her, steeling herself to meet the astonished stares of her friends. Reid might assume her bedroom life matched the abandon of her other adventures, but those who knew her better had never seen any evidence of it—until now, anyway.

“This is Reid Carrington, everybody,” she said, smiling brightly.

“A very old friend,” Eddie repeated automatically from the first introduction, as though he were trying to make sense of it all. “I remember.”

She looked at Reid, wanting to take his arm but not quite daring to. Her mind was racing with conflicting emotions. She was going to have to shelve the thinking for later. She wasn’t sure just what had happened here tonight, or where it was leading. But she knew one thing for sure: he’d wanted her. That much was undeniable. But was there more to it? She hardly dared to hope.
 

“Did you all like the movie?” she asked, trying to break the awkward silence as her friends stared at Reid and he glared defiantly back at them. “Can I make anyone a drink? Why don’t we all sit down.”

Reid’s hand was on her elbow. “I’m afraid there won’t be time for that,” he said smoothly. “I’m sure you all will understand. Jennifer and I were just leaving.”

She twisted, trying to see into his blue eyes.
 

“We were?” she echoed.

He looked down at her, and the moment their eyes met, his expression softened, as if he melted at her warmth. She felt something explode in her chest as she noticed it, catching at her breath, quickening her heartbeat. Of course they were leaving. She would go anywhere with him. She would do anything at all. She hardly heard his next words at first.

“We were,” he repeated. “I came to take you home. Didn’t I mention that?”

The sound of his words didn’t give her a warning at first. It was only when she reached beyond sound and came to the meaning of what he’d said. Her pulse was still racing, but now it was urged on more by fear than by any softer emotion.

He wanted to take her home. Ah, yes. Of course. The glow that had held her a few inches off the ground faded away, and she landed back on earth with a jarring thump. Home. He wanted to take her to Destiny Bay. He wanted to convince her to come back.

“It’s too far,” she said woodenly, vaguely looking around for something to lean on, to hold on to. “It’s too late.”

“One step at a time,” he replied. “I’m taking you to my house first. Then we’ll see if you can face your parents.”

She shook her head, feeling slightly dizzy. When was she going to learn to keep her dreams simple? Every time she’d hoped Reid would see her as someone other than an impossible child who did stupid, crazy things, she was disappointed. He didn’t care about her at all. He just wanted her back home.
 

“I don’t want to go.”

He took her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze again, looking down at her as though they were all alone. “You must come, Jennifer. I’m taking you whether you want to go or not.”

His eyes were filled with starry lights, and she wanted to lose herself there, wandering in some distant universe, never coming back to face reality.
 

“No,” she whispered, knowing she hardly had the strength to resist.

“Yes,” he answered, and then he was leading her toward the door. “Can you see that her apartment is taken care of?” he asked Eddie. “She won’t be back for a few days.”

“But what about the Munch?” he cried, looking stricken.

“Take care of that, too.
 
She needs a small vacation.”

CHAPTER FOUR:
 

Going Home
 

The night was inky black. Jennifer watched the headlights flash by on the freeway. Chances were that real human beings lurked behind the blinding lights, but there was no sign of them from her vantage. She shivered and looked around for something cheery to think about.

“Look!” she cried in delight as she recognized a well-known landmark along the side. “There’s the fancy miniature golf place we used to call Ventura’s little Disneyland!” She smiled affectionately at the lighted crest of the phony snow-capped peak, just barely visible above the buildings and bushes. “Disneyland.
 
My favorite place in the whole world,” she murmured.

“It would be,” Reid muttered.

She glanced at him, wondering if that was an amused comment or an accusation. She couldn’t get a proper fix on the man, even after the scene in her bedroom.

“Do you remember that time we went to Disneyland together?” she asked, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth.

His silver-blue glance flickered over her and then went back to concentrating on the road. “No.”

“Oh, come on.” She gave him a gentle poke in the ribs. “You remember. I was seventeen. My mother fixed me up with Reggie Fairfax, the third, and your mother fixed you up with that snooty girl—what was her name?
 
Pamela Bennet. They made us all four go together
.
I think you were supposed to be chaperoning me or something. Do you remember now?”

He was keeping a straight face, but it was obviously an effort. “Probably not,” he said gruffly, not looking at her.

She chuckled. “Yes, you do. We were both with the world’s worst dates. They refused to go on any decent rides. So we ditched them. Remember? We left them at that ice cream plaza watching Mickey Mouse dancing around with Pluto, and we snuck off.”

He was shaking his head, but he was smiling.

“Yes. And you held my hand on the Matterhorn.” She poked him again, and his smile widened into a grin. “And tried to make me sick in the spinning tea cups.” He actually chuckled. Her eyes narrowed. “And made mad, passionate love to me on the Pirates of the Caribbean.”

His head spun and he stared at her. “I don’t remember that.”

She shrugged, eyes dancing. “Neither do I. But it would have been fun.”

The slow smile forgave her for the teasing, but his attention was back on the road. She turned and reached into the back of the car for her guitar, glad she’d managed to persuade Reid to give her time to pack a few things before they actually left her apartment.

Propping herself in the corner, leaning one shoulder against the car door, she strummed softly, humming one tune, then another.

“Sing something,” he suggested.

She’d sung for him before, but somehow she couldn’t do it right now. Singing was too intimate, too personal. She didn’t trust Reid or the situation they were in. Until the boundaries were more certain, she wouldn’t risk exposing too much. She let her nail travel the length of a string.
 

“Tell you what,” she said, remembering his passion when he was in college, “I’ll play old folk songs, and you try to name them.”

He grinned, and she felt her heart lighten. “The last time I heard you play, you were trying to adapt a Michael Buble song to a reggae beat.
 
‘Feeling Good’,
 
wasn’t it?”
 

He slid a sideways glance her way. “When did you become an expert on folk music?”

She lifted her nose in the air. “I was young and foolish then. Believe it or not, I’ve matured.”

“In your own inimitable fashion.” His voice was full of amusement. “But where did the folk music come from?”

She shrugged, settling in to get more comfortable, glad to have hit upon something he approved of. “I’ve met a lot of interesting people in the last few years, including some old hippies and a couple who were beatniks in the fifties. They turned me on to the Weavers and Woodie Guthrie and all those people.”

He seemed bemused. “Wow, the real thing. I’m afraid I’m not quite that esoteric. My background runs more along the lines of Peter, Paul and Mary . . . and the Kingston Trio ... but go ahead. Try me.”

He was just being modest, she soon found out. She played a few notes, and he murmured, “Joan Baez, ‘Plaisir D’Amour.’”

She nodded, impressed, and began a new tune.

“ ‘Buy for Me the Rain,’ Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 1967,” he shot back before she had a chance to get into it.

Her jaw dropped. “Hey,” she cried, “you’ve played this before!”

“Do another,” he urged, like a gambler on a roll.

She did another. Or at least a note or two of it. And he guessed it again. “You ought to go on that game show,” she grumbled when he’d guessed the tenth in a row without a hitch. She grimaced and put on a baritone that attempted to mimic his. “ ‘I can name that tune in half a note.’ “

His mouth twisted in a mocking sneer. “Listen, honey, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of my many talents,” he teased back. And for just a moment, she caught a hint of the old Reid.

The old Reid. He’d always been a little stuffy, but the “kid” had always been lurking below. What had happened to change him? she wondered. She didn’t bother to ask. He would just claim maturity, and once again they’d have to discuss how maturity seemed to have eluded her. But it was more than maturity that had given him that wary look, that dark, deep line between his brows.

She looked out at the blackness. There were fewer cars on the road now. It was getting late. They seemed to be going faster and faster, chewing up the miles— the miles between freedom and pain. She bit her lip.

“San Feliz,” she read on the freeway sign as they whizzed by. “The place all the swifts fly back to every year, like the swallows to Capistrano.”

 
I wonder if they’re ever as scared to go home as I am, she thought.

Her mother’s face seemed to loom in the black sky, and then her father’s appeared beside it. Their faces were sad. Their eyes were full of disappointment. Disappointment in her.

That feeling whipped through her again. Halfway between dread and melancholy, it made her shiver. She used to feel it all the time that last year at home.

“
What were we thinking of, to adopt this child? She’s not at all what we wanted
.” Those must have been the thoughts behind her parents’ sad expressions. But despite their disappointment in the way she’d turned out, despite their unhappiness with her, she loved them. They’d raised her. They’d loved her, in their own way. And she saw no reason to hurt them. How could she make Reid understand that seeing her would do exactly that?

She strummed the guitar and tried to sing “Country Roads,” but the words stuck in her throat, and she gave it up.

“Reid?” She put the guitar away and sank back down in her seat, staring at her hands clutched together in her lap. “I can’t do this, Reid. Please . . . please turn around and take me back.”

His ice-blue gaze stabbed her in the darkness of the car. “Sorry, Jennifer,” he said simply, “this is one time you’re going to shoulder your responsibility.”

He couldn’t have said anything calculated to make her more angry. Her head snapped up, and her dark eyes burned.
 

“Just who do you think you are, Reid Carrington? Who the hell do you think you are?” She ran a hand through her soft curls, tumbling them wildly. “What makes you think you know so much about what I need and what my parents need? If you really knew ...”

She choked, stopping herself, closing her eyes against the red tide of anger rising in her. She was about to go too far, say too much. She mustn’t let herself do that.

She went on carefully, her voice lower. “You came roaring back into my life, ripping it apart. I didn’t ask for this. You—you came into my apartment . . .”

You made me think you wanted me,
she thought, but didn’t add aloud. It was by far the worst of his sins, as she saw it now. He made her think he wanted her—when all he really wanted was to manipulate her.

“You whisked me off before I had time to think things through. What gives you the right to do all this?”

Her voice quivered with emotion, and he glanced at her, a little alarmed. “Calm down, Jennifer. I’m only doing what’s best.”

“What’s best!” Her laugh had a hollow ring. “You missed your calling. You should have been a minister. Or perhaps the dictator of a small Latin American country. Then you could go around telling everyone what to do—for their own good, of course!”

He didn’t answer, but from the set of his jaw, she could tell he didn’t appreciate her rantings.

“You can drive me back to Destiny Bay, if you like,” she said hoarsely. “You can even drag me up to my mother’s door. But you can’t make me speak. And you can’t watch me every moment.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll go back to L.A. if I want to.” She cringed at how childish it sounded.

Again he didn’t answer—
and why should he
? she thought. She was acting like a child. He was probably embarrassed for her. She rubbed her forehead and tried to think of a way to make him understand.

The car pulled off the freeway and she looked up, startled, but they were only stopping at a filling station. Reid pulled up to the pump and got out. When Jennifer got out on her side, he demanded to know where she was going.

“Where do you
think I’m going? Out to hitch a ride on the freeway? Even I’m not that dumb.” She stalked angrily toward the ladies’ room.

Once inside, she went straight to the sink, pulled down a handful of paper towels, wet them, and mopped her face, patting the cool towels down around her neck. Her trip with Reid had started out hopefully, but it was taking on a nightmarish quality. It was a journey to nowhere. Why on earth had she let him talk her into coming?