My Little Runaway (Destiny Bay) (20 page)

“I don’t blame him.” Her mother had always been frank. “I’d like to wring your neck myself.”

Jennifer nodded sadly and leaned over her coffee cup. She felt the same way. It had all seemed so simple last night. She’d decided she was nothing but a burden to Reid. She’d thought he would welcome her doing something really outrageous so that he could cut her loose. But in the morning light, things looked a bit different.

Now, nothing was quite that clear-cut. She didn’t want to leave him. She couldn’t. She loved him, and she couldn’t live without him.

He hadn’t said a word to her the night before. In the morning, when she’d felt him leaving the bed that they’d shared for the last few weeks, she’d opened one eye and asked, “Where are you going?”

“We’ll talk this afternoon,” he’d said evenly, as though he didn’t trust himself to say more. She’d watched him leave, wondering if she would be able to stay long enough to hear what he had to say.

“I’m really sorry I did this to Reid,” she told her mother now. “It was stupid, childish. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought,” she ended lamely.

“It’s not working, is it?” her mother said quietly.

Jennifer looked up quickly. “Maybe I’m not trying hard enough,” she began, but her mother slowly shook her head.

“You tried, Jenny,” she said affectionately. “We all watched you try. You just aren’t cut out for life in society. You never were.”

Jennifer stared at her. She’d been desperately searching for reasons to stay, rationalizations to do what she wanted to do rather than what she should do.
 

Her mother hit the nail on the head. Who would know better than she? Once that had hurt, but now it only seemed inevitable. She was secure in her mother’s love. She could look at the truth.

“I’ll have to go, won’t I?” she said at last in a very small voice.

Mrs. Thornton nodded. “I think it would be best if you did. You’ll just make yourself—and Reid—miserable staying here.” She leaned forward and brushed the hair away from Jennifer’s eyes. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. But you’re just trying to do the impossible again, and it’s bound to be the same disaster.”

Jennifer nodded. “I’ll go,” she said softly. “I’ll go tonight.”

She was packing when Reid came home. “What are you doing?” he demanded, his eyes cold and unrelenting.

“I’m leaving.” She threw her last nightgown into the suitcase and turned to face him.

No thaw appeared in his gaze, but his mouth twisted. “I don’t want you to go,” he said coldly.

She tried to smile. “No? Not even after the spectacle I made of myself last night?”

He shook his head. “Though I will admit, having you exhibit yourself on the high dive in your underwear-—“

“That wasn’t my underwear!” Jennifer interrupted. “That was a swimsuit one of the boys dug up for me to wear.”

“ ‘One of the boys’?” he echoed sarcastically. “One of your playmates?”

Holding his gaze, she nodded slowly. “One of my playmates,” she repeated bleakly. “That’s why I have to go. I can’t seem to pull away from play . . . and you’ve forgotten how.”

“This time I won’t come after you,” he warned. “I’ve forced you back often enough. If you can’t come on your own . . .” His voice trailed off, but the implication was clear. If she left, they were through.

Slowly, deliberately, she turned back to her suitcase and tucked in a sweater. She heard his harsh curse, then he was gone.

Tears blurred her eyes, making packing difficult, but she managed to get it done. She carried her case downstairs and called a cab. Then she went into the study to say good-bye to Reid.

He was sitting in the gloomy room, smoking and staring out the window at the sunlight on the ocean. She listened for a moment to the steady rush of the waves on the beach and watched the smoke rise in purple spirals from his hand.

“I’m going,” she said at last, and he turned to look at her. “I—I just want to thank you ...”

“Do you need a ride to the airport?” he asked harshly.

“No, I called a cab.”

One eyebrow raised. “None of your playmates could bother to drive you?”

She flushed. “I’d like to part as friends.”

“No.” His eyes darkened stormily. “We can never be friends.” He rose and came to help her carry her bag outside. “It’s been interesting, Jennifer,” he said evenly as they waited for the cab. “You’re a real education.”

She swallowed hard; Tears were stinging, and she didn’t want him to see them. The cab drove up the driveway, and she turned to look at him.
“I love you, Reid.”
The words were on her lips, but when she tried to get them out, she choked.

“Good-bye,” he said gruffly, turning on his heel and striding back into the house.

She got into the cab and drove away, dissolving into sobs as the car made the bottom of the drive.

It was great to be back at work at The Magnificent Munch. A few days to get back into the routine and it was as if she’d never left. Almost.

“Good to have you back,” said Eddie, satisfaction
glowing in his eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t last with
that stick-in-the-mud for long.”
-

“I don’t want to talk about Reid,” Jennifer had answered, her eyes flashing dangerously. “The subject is off limits.”

He must have passed the word, because no one else asked her a thing about her weeks away.

The days passed sluggishly at first. Every time she turned around, she thought she saw Reid.
 

“He’s not coming again, you idiot,” she chided herself. But then the back of a man’s head would catch her eye and she’d rush forward, heart thumping, and find a total stranger staring into her flushed face.
 

A week went by without a sign of him, then two weeks; finally, her emotions began to simmer down. Dark haired men only gave her a momentary twinge, not near-heart failure, and blue eyes only made her smile, remembering.

She heard from her mother occasionally. They had a good relationship now, a comfortable one, though they’d never have the closeness Jennifer might have wished for. Still, it was fine. They cared about one another, and if her father couldn’t bring himself to forgive—well, that was his problem. Jennifer was ready, should he ever find a way. She was satisfied that she had done all she could to bring about a change of heart. The rest was up to him.

“Reid’s doing fine,” her mother said one Sunday evening. “He took us out for dinner at the club last night. Wasn’t that nice of him? We hadn’t been there since Tony died. Astrid Marvel came along. Such a lovely girl. Did you meet her when you were here?”

The lump in her throat affected her speech, and she had to lie to her mother and claim she was coming down with a cold.

It sounded as though Reid had picked his life right back up where he’d left off before she’d fallen into it. That was good. That was as it should be. But it made her cry.

Her life was pretty much the same as well, with a few major exceptions. She no longer had much interest in the things she used to do. When Eddie and Martha suggested a night on the town, she found a reason to stay home instead. And when she turned down a chance to race power boats off Catalina, Eddie couldn’t believe his ears.

“Come on. Are you sick-—or what?”

She smiled at him. “Just tired. I’ve got some things I want to think over.” He had to be satisfied with that.

In truth she did have things to think over. She was considering applying to the Business Management School at UCLA. They’d done awfully well with The Magnificent Munch, but she knew she had a lot to learn about running a business. And she was anxious to learn all she could.

“Going back to class?” Eddie groaned. “Don’t be ridiculous. How boring!”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say, in an annoyed voice, “Grow up, Eddie,” then she remembered where she’d last heard that.

She enrolled in the extension division. Classes began. Suddenly it had been almost three months since she’d seen Reid. She had survived.

September turned to October, and the evenings got cooler. She had a new reason to keep her home when the others went carousing. She had to study.

She’d used that very excuse one Friday night a week before Halloween. She’d spread her books all over her living room, sharpened her pencils, put out stacks of fresh paper, then stared at a wall, listening to soft jazz on the radio.

News came on. She didn’t want to hear about more terrible things happening in the world, so she turned the dial, searching for something else to listen to. The clearest signal she came to was an oldies station.

She stopped there, listening, a smile on her face. That summer before she’d run away when she was a girl, Reid had listened to an oldies station. She’d listened with him, while he worked on his car, and she’d learned every old song from the fifties and early sixties by heart. That summer feeling came back to her again, that summer of being close to Reid.

She left the station on and sat in the corner of her couch, remembering, feeling. “Tears on My Pillow” and “Only the Lonely” seemed to get right to the heart of her misery. Tears came, but they brought relief. When her buzzer rang, she almost ignored it, not wanting company. But it rang again, and she lifted the receiver.

“What is it, Carl?” she asked the security guard.

“There’s a guy here to see you,” the security guard said, his voice doubtful. “I don’t know, Miss Thornton. He looks a little scruffy to me.”

Scruffy? Even Eddie was into the latest styles these days. She didn’t know anyone who still dressed scruffy. “What name did he give?”

“See,” Carl muttered darkly into the phone, “that’s another thing. He wouldn’t give me any name. He just said, ‘Tell her Golden Boy is here.’ Just like that.”

Jennifer’s breath caught, then came more quickly. “’Golden Boy’?”

“That’s it. What shall I do, Miss Thornton?”

Hope beat like a wild bird in her chest. “Let him up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Let him up! I’m sure!” Her voice had gone up an octave, and she cleared her throat to force-it back down. “I’ll handle him.”

“Well, okay, if you say so.”

She glanced around her messy apartment, thinking she should clean it up, but she couldn’t move. All she could do was sit and stare at the door, waiting, fingers trembling.

It had to be Reid. Why had he come? Just passing through? To see how she was doing? To tell her he was marrying Astrid? A thousand possibilities flew through her mind, and she held her breath, waiting to hear his step outside her door.

When the knock came, she rushed to let him in, flinging open the door and staring out into the hall. For just a moment she couldn’t speak. It was Reid all right. But not the Reid she’d come to love during the last summer. Somehow, this was much more the Reid she’d loved years ago.

His dark hair was sun-tipped and tousled and much longer than it had been a few short months before, curling about his ears and creeping down to touch the edge of his collar. Instead of the crisp slacks and shirts or sweaters she’d grown accustomed to seeing him in, he was wearing an old T-shirt with “Insanity Is a State of Mind” written across it in lurid fluorescent script and raggedy jeans.
 

Familiar-looking jeans. She stared, then looked again. Did she recognize those patches? The paisley material over one knee, material that had come from her own shirt; the embroidered patch over the other knee, flowers that she had worked herself; the large store-bought patch over the back pocket that said, “If Today Was a Fish, I’d Throw It Back.”

Her gaze slowly rose to his eyes. They shimmered, unreadable.

“Hi,” she said tentatively.

“Hi, yourself,” he said back. “May I come in?”

“Oh—sure.” She stood back and watched as he entered. “Where—why—I mean, what are you doing here?”

He turned and gave her his lopsided smile. “Not the most gracious welcome I’ve ever had, but I guess it’ll have to do.”

He looked so good she wanted to take hold of him with both hands, but she didn’t dare. Not yet.

“It’s been a long time,” she said mindlessly.

He nodded, staring at her. Then he turned and began going through her apartment, studying the figures she had displayed on her shelves, looking through her cd’s
.

“I suppose you’re busy tonight,” he said with elaborate casualness.

“No . . . no.” She found herself following him around the room. “Actually, I’m staying home to study.”

“Study?” He whirled and stared at her, surprised.

“Yes.” She gestured toward her books. “I’m taking courses at UCLA.”

He digested that bit of information for a long moment. “Courses in what?”

“Business.”

“You’re kidding.”

That did it. Anger kindled in her dark eyes.
 

“No, Reid, I’m not kidding. I’ve been running a business for a long time now. I want to get better at it, even though I’ve been pretty darn successful. It may be hard for you to believe, but I’m not a total flake.”

He nodded slowly but didn’t speak. Turning, he went back to leafing through her things.
 

“Well,” he drawled, “I just came by to tell you I’ve got a new address. I’ve moved.”

“Moved?” She frowned. “How can you move? You’re not selling your parents’ house!”

“No”—he shook his head—“but I closed it. I also resigned from the law firm, leaving everything in Dan’s capable hands. I’m going to live down by the embarcadero.
 
A cute little cottage with an ocean view.
 
If you climb up on the roof, anyway.”

“What?”

“Yes, well, you see . ....”. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the old jeans, looking up at her from under his eyebrows, James Dean style, looking so much like the young Reid. “There’s this lady I’ve been in love with for a long, long time. She likes little ramshackle places to live in.
 
As long as there are flowers in the yard.”

Jennifer’s heart was a butterfly, and it was interfering with her breathing. He was talking about her . . . Wasn’t he? But what if he wasn’t?
 

“Oh, really?” she managed to say.

“Yes. I thought it would be the sort of place that might tempt her to come back to me.”