My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay) (12 page)

The laughter melted away from his gaze. “I haven’t had the time, or the inclination, for anyone special,” he told her. “I’ve been busy the last few years.”

She took a deep breath and plunged in. “What does Astrid think about these strange women you collect on weekends?”

He looked surprised. “Astrid? What has Astrid to do with it?”

“I . . . had the impression you and she were kind of . . . dating.”

He nodded. “Occasionally. She understands me. Her father is an attorney, and she studied law herself for a year or so. I can talk to her, and we both enjoy some of the same activities.”

Jennifer’s eyebrow lifted in question. Was her theory wrong? Was there really no woman he was pledged to? “No romance?”

“With Astrid?” A slight smile turned his mouth. “No.”

That certainly wasn’t the impression she’d had from the lady herself. “Are you sure
she
knows that?”

He gazed at her, bemused. “She ought to know it. I’ve never pretended to want any sort of binding relationship with her.” He shrugged. “There’s nothing physical between us at all.”

Jennifer shook her head. Now
that
she really couldn’t understand. How any woman could be in a room alone with Reid and not want to tear his clothes off. A flush crept up her cheeks.
Big talk, Jennifer Thornton
, she chided herself silently.
When are you going to follow through?

She put on a phony smile. “Maybe you ought to think twice before ruling Astrid out. After all, she’d be ideal for you. Just the right wife for an up-and-coming young attorney.”

He hardly seemed to hear her. His mind was somewhere else. And there it was again, that line between his eyebrows, that cloud over his expression. She had to know what had done this to him.

“You’ve changed,” she told him softly, turning the hand he held so that her fingers circled what they could of his wrist. “You’re not the idealistic young man you once were. And I don’t buy that ‘it’s only maturity’ stuff.” Her fingers tightened on him. “Tell me what happened, Reid. Tell me why you threw away all those dreams and opted for the gray flannel suit.”

His eyes stared into hers, holding her mesmerized, then he pulled his hand away from hers and ran it through his thick hair. “I suppose it’s time I told you ... I don’t know why I didn’t tell you from the first.”

Icy dread slivered down her spine. “What is it?”

He tore his gaze away from hers and stared into space. “It happened just about three years ago. My father got into big trouble.”

“Your father?” Richard Carrington had always seemed to her the ideal patrician—handsome, cultured, intelligent. She couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble he might have been in—though she did remember getting hints of something illegal he was being charged with.
 
She’d hardly given it any credence at the time.
 
He wasn’t the type to cheat—and even if he did, he wasn’t the type to get caught at it.
 

“It seems he and his law partner, David Winslow—.”
 
He glanced at her.
 
“Did you know him?
 
Dan’s father.
 
You might have seen him coming and going in the old days.”

She nodded.
 
“Probably.
 
But I don’t think I ever formally met him.”

He shrugged.
 
“Well, the two of them had been supplementing their legal practice with some forays into the world of high finance. They’d been doing creative bookkeeping, taking funds from one place to apply them to another where they thought more benefit might accrue. They’d kept accounts in two sets of books. They’d taken funds entrusted to them by clients for investment purposes and used them for themselves-—covering bad stock decisions and old debts. It worked fine for years. Everyone got rich, and while that was happening, no one was complaining. Eventually, as these things always do, it all began to fall apart. They skated through a bad patch by kiting checks, but then it fell down like a house of cards. They were indicted for embezzlement.”

That seemed impossible. A nightmare.
 
“Oh, Reid, no!”

He took a deep breath and went on.
 
“We got them off with probation. But the whole incident ruined my father’s health. And David Winslow…”
 
He paused and looked toward the window.
 
“David committed suicide.”

Jennifer closed her eyes. Now she understood the tie between Reid and Dan.

“The worst of it, in a way, was that all their friends turned their backs on them. Most of their associates knew what they were doing all along, and while it worked, they were big heroes. But as soon as they got caught—even though the money was made up and no one ended up losing—they were pariahs.”

“How awful for your father.” He’d been a gregarious man, as she remembered him, much more socially inclined than his more serious sons
.

Reid shrugged, his eyes flat and hard. “It was his own fault. He’d started out doing what seemed best for everyone involved, and it had run away from him like a snowball rolling downhill. He’d been wrong. But no one ended up losing any money.”

“You and Dan saw to that,” she said with sudden intuition.

He nodded, a slight smile twisting his lips. “I was working with that small law firm downtown at the time. I quit immediately and joined Dan to save our fathers’ firm. We worked like dogs to make sure the money would be there to cover all debts.”

“Oh, Reid.” That was where the idealism had flown. He’d moved from helping society to helping his own father. How could she fault him for that?

“He was wrong, and in his way, he paid. But people were slow to forgive.” His gaze came back to rest on her. “The only people who stood by my parents when they were going through this ordeal were your parents. When the invitations stopped coming, when people avoided them on the street, your parents were there, acting as though nothing had happened. I really think my father might have gone the way David did if your father hadn’t been there for him all that time. His trust gave my father hope that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Jennifer was stunned. “My father did that?”

Reid nodded. “It was during that time that Tony and I became especially close. He came to work for us at the firm, as a law clerk. He worked the same long hours I did, often without compensation.”

He paused as though it were hard for him to go on, and she waited. She wanted to cry. The lump was in her throat, the tightness was in her chest, but the tears wouldn’t come.

Finally, he went on. “Now do you see why it’s so important to me that I pay them back?”

She saw. With a pain in her chest that might have been her heart breaking, she saw only too well. “How are your parents now?”

“They’re doing just fine. But they still spend most of the year in Europe—or in Florida. They don’t come home much.”

She shook her head.
 
The Carrington family was considered the rock
 
Destiny Bay had been founded on.
 
“What about Matt and Grant?
 
Weren’t your brothers involved in any of this?”

Reid hesitated.
 
“Matt came back when he heard about the indictment.
 
We…we disagreed about my handling of things and ....
 
Well, we had a pretty intense fight about it.
 
We haven’t spoken since.”

She sighed.
 
She remembered the boys when she used to watch them from her own bedroom window.
 
They never seemed to be able to agree about anything.

“And Grant?”

He shook his head.
 
“He didn’t show up.”

“And you’re still the one holding down the fort.” Reid had grown from a very nice boy into an exceptional man. Had he also become tied to a career he wasn’t meant for?

His next words refuted her thoughts. “Yes. But I enjoy the work. I’ve rebuilt trust in the Carrington name, which was my main objective, originally. But I’ve also turned into a pretty good attorney as a fringe benefit.”

Another fringe benefit was that crease in his forehead, but she didn’t tell him so. It was obvious he’d chosen the life that suited him best. That was hard for her to understand—but only because it was a life she could never have chosen for herself.

But she was glad to know what had happened to Reid and why he was so insistent upon her reconciliation with her parents. It didn’t make things any easier, but it did make them more comprehensible.

“Shall we do dishes?” she asked as they cleared the table.

“No.” He made a face. “Not this time. Let’s take a walk on the beach instead.”

She joined him willingly. After what he’d just told her, they needed something to release the unhappy tension.

It was already long after dark. The beach was deserted, the waves inky black in the silver light.

“Look, a full moon,” Jennifer noted, wrapping her shawl around her. The night air was cool and stimulating, and they took off their shoes to feel the sand between their toes.

“A full moon is for madness, you know,” she told Reid as they walked along. She reached out and hooked an arm through his, and they bumped companionably as they went toward the sea.

“You don’t need a full moon as an excuse,” he teased her. “You’re full of madness all the time.”

She laughed, feeling suddenly free and happy and close to him. “But it’s especially made for old stick-in-the-muds like you,” she told him. “It’s your night to be a little mad.” She tugged on his arm, laughing up into his face. “Come on, Reid. Be a little mad tonight.”

He never could resist her smile. “All right, Jennifer,” he replied, his gaze devouring her face, “what sort of madness do you suggest?”

Ah, if she only dared tell him! “Let’s race,” she challenged. “Down to the pier and back. The winner gets ... a kiss,” she said wildly, dropping his arm.

“You’re on,” he replied, to her surprise.

“You have to give me a head start,” she cried, racing off, her bare feet digging into the sand.

“Why?” he called from behind her. “You always start off with an advantage over me, Jennifer Thornton.”

He came thundering up behind, easily outdistancing her.
 
When they reached the pier they both collapsed in the sand
,
laughing.

“I said ‘and back,’ you know,” she chided him.

“We’ll do the ‘and back’ later, when we’ve got our second wind.”

His face looked utterly fierce in the moonlight, like a Nordic god without the beard. She wanted his touch more than she’d ever wanted anything before. She shivered, needing him, and looked away at the silver sea.

“You know what I remember most of all?” he said suddenly, touching her hair. “I remember Saturday afternoons when I would go out and work on that ancient ’54 Chevy I bought with my own money. You would sit cross-legged in the grass and hand me tools, or a cold soda, and I would tell you all about how the world ought to be run.”

She laughed softly, turning quickly so that his hand touched her cheek before he could draw it away. “You taught me about helping others, about a larger good than self-interest.”

He shook his head. “You could have learned that best from your father. He actually practiced it.”

She didn’t want to talk about her father. “I loved those days, watching you work, listening to you talk.”

“You were so cute with your mop of shiny curls. I used to look at you sitting there, and I would think . . .” His voice trailed off. With his index finger he touched her lower lip. “Never mind what I thought,” he said gruffly, rolling away from her. “Let’s run back.”

She jumped up alongside him, frustrated. Why did he always avoid exactly what she wanted to hear?

“Let’s make the race more exciting,” she suggested, pulling his ring of keys from his back pocket. Before he had time to react, she was running across the sand, waving them in the air. He came up behind her, and she altered her course, swooping down across the wet sand where a wave had just retreated.

The wind slapped her hair across her eyes. She sensed Reid right behind her, and she felt a new wave burgeoning just offshore. Laughing, she evaded Reid, zigging and zagging. When the wave came, she turned right into it, and it never wavered, sweeping over both of them and soaking them to the skin.

“Oh!” she gasped, clinging to him, half laughing, half in distress. Water streamed in rivulets down her face.

“You little twit!” he cried, but he was laughing, too.

Another wave hit them, and they went down, lying in the sopping sand and holding one another.

“This would be wonderfully romantic . . .” she laughed at him, “just like
From Here to Eternity
or something—if it wasn’t so darn cold!”

“From Here to Eternity
just looked romantic,” he said, rising and pulling her back to her feet. “I’ll bet it was cold, too.” He put an arm around her and began to help her up. “Somehow having sand in my pants never did feel romantic to me.”

They made higher ground, away from the waves. Reid pocketed the ring of keys, and they held each other to keep warm
.

She swung around and looked up at him. “Who won the race?” she asked, reaching to brush drops of water from his face.

He shook his head, his hand covering hers and keeping it against his cheek. “What difference does it make?”

She smiled. “A lot. Someone’s got to be kissed.”

The drops of water on his lashes looked like diamonds in the moonlight, but the wariness was back in his face. He moved her hand away from touching him, but he didn’t let go of it. “Someone?” he asked softly. “Anyone in particular?”

She searched his gaze, wishing she could read his mind, wishing she knew why he couldn’t reach out and take what she was so ready to give. “Well . . . There’s only you and me. It’s got to be one of us.”

“You’ve got a point there.” His arms came around and held her by the waist. Her heart began to pound. “Let’s say it’s a tie.”

“All right.” She lifted her face to his, and he brought his mouth down, ready for a quick, brushing token of affection. That wasn’t going to be enough for Jennifer. She put every bit of feeling she had into the kiss, and before he knew it, Reid was wrapping her more tightly to him, surging into the warm sweetness of her mouth, feeling her hands slip under his sweater to search for his heat.