Runaway

by Katie Cross

  Mark didn't move his arm and I had to force myself not to look at it. He tipped his head toward her with a broad grin.

  “Seiko is a literal rock star.”

  She grinned but didn't correct him.

  “And,” he continued easily, but his eyes had latched onto mine with an intent stare, “she's here to regroup before going on tour with the rest of her rock band. Needs some space to be alone.”

  Oohhh, I thought to myself.

  The music scene wasn't one I dove into very often, particularly not any brand of rock. When I wasn't listening to non-fiction audiobooks, I'd throw on a movie to fill the noise, or maybe a soundtrack. I hadn't heard of or seen Seiko before, but had no trouble imagining her on a stage.

  “Sounds amazing,” I said.

  Mark leaned forward. “She not only needs a place to stay but a place to play. An open floor where there aren't noise restrictions but space for them to lay out. I think we may or may not have an entire building that would serve that purpose.”

  The we in his statement gave me unusual comfort.

  “Yes, the dining hall would be perfect.”

  While my head flooded with implications—noise ordinances in the mountains? Desired square footage?—Mark turned back to Seiko. They migrated to another table where two other people with equally bright hair sat nursing coffee cups. While Mark flexed his charm muscle, I tried to school a rush of hope. This wasn't a sure thing yet.

  But it could be.

  While waiting for him to work his magic, I kept an eye on the outside of the diner. The mountain peaks loomed to the south, giant, green sentinels still on fire with the fall leaves. Who would ever think I'd be here, running from a manager that ran a company I used to really admire?

  No one.

  A flash of orange caught my eye, and I glanced over to see a man standing outside a car in the parking lot. He wore a pair of sunglasses, his body canted away, but had an unmistakably familiar look about him.

  My heart squeezed like a fist had grabbed it from behind.

  Was that . . . Joshua?

  My breath caught as I straightened. The man stood, a phone to his ear, as he sauntered farther away, just out of sight around a corner. Heart racing, I had to force myself to sit back down and not chase him.

  The tousled golden hair, firm shoulders, and sharp way of holding his body had all spoken to Joshua.

  But . . . maybe I imagined it.

  For what felt like an eternity, I stared out the window in a half-stance, half-sit. Willed that person to show himself again. Five minutes later, and with the occasional blip of sound from Mark whenever he laughed, I still hadn't seen the man return.

  The more time passed, the more I was convinced it had been a trick of my mind. Of fear. Eventually, my body unwound. Relaxed back.

  Still, my insides felt cold at the thought of Joshua out there. His email surfaced back through my mind, unbidden. Emails from Joshua weren't unusual. There were twenty of them unread in my inbox. But that one had been oddly sinister. Combined with seeing him today?

  No, I didn't know that was him. I couldn't play this game. Couldn't make up false realities that felt so real. But if it was real, the implications were terrifying.

  Joshua had been more than just a manager. He'd shown interest in me to a level that, over time, equated with a stalker. Physical touches. Requests to have drinks. He'd happen to take his lunch break at the same time as me. I'd never gone with him on a date because I didn’t date married men, and he wasn’t my type anyway. Sometimes, I could sense his frustration, which only drove me farther away. Which seemed to make him chase harder.

  Me, the forbidden fruit.

  For a moment, I knew a shot of fear. What if Mark ended up being like Joshua? But I instantly dashed that. No, Mark was many things but he was not Joshua.

  The man in question dropped back into the chair across from me with a wide smile that wrenched my heartstrings. I tried to conjure up one in return, but I couldn't. Something inside of me felt too cold.

  16

  Mark

  Stella's face had gone white as paper.

  “Stell?”

  “I'm fine,” she whispered. “I just . . .”

  A jumbled explanation rolled out of her, but after a few quick questions, I was able to make sense of the conversation. Joshua at large, basically. Possibly here. I slid out of the booth.

  “Be right back.”

  “Wait, no!”

  Ignoring that, I stepped outside the restaurant, gazed around, and headed to the right, where she'd indicated she'd seen him. But nothing was there except the empty side of the building and the hill that dropped away from it, into a river ravine. I hung out there for a few minutes, watching for an orange parka. None appeared.

  When I returned, she was an adorable mixture of furious and terrified. Her first question, however, was telling.

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No one wearing orange or fitting that description.”

  She bit her bottom lip and frowned. She shook her head as she huffed a breath. “It's . . . it's kind of hard to believe, right? A little wild for him to be here of all places? I feel like I'm making a big deal out of something that isn't that big of a deal.”

  “Seems wild, yes. But has the potential to be a big freaking deal, Stell. You have to assume the worst in a situation like this. Joshua doesn't sound stable. He sounds like he seeks for power over women, and then exploits it.”

  She sighed. “I don't . . . I don't want this to come back on my grandma or on you.” Her concerned expression lifted to mine. “I should probably go somewhere else, just in case. What if he is really here?”

  Panic ripped through me at the thought, but I set that aside. “As the king of bad ideas,” I said instead, “I think that one is the worst I've ever heard.”

  A twitch of a smile appeared before her hyper-focus on reality stepped in. “Mark, this could be an unsafe situation. Between the email last night and this today . . . but then . . . maybe it wasn't him? Maybe I'm paranoid. Or not.”

  She growled, more frustrated than ever.

  “Which is why you shouldn't go anywhere. That would make it more unsafe for you. Who would ever look at Adventura, Stell?”

  She shrugged. “I don't know? Who would ever do the things Joshua has done? He called my clients. Found my number. This isn't a game of logic and it never has been.” She threw a hand in the air. “Joshua is possessive and brilliant and a little scary. I don't want that to have an impact on you.”

  “Could be positive,” I reasoned. “Think of the free advertising we'd get from the news announcements if he came to Adventura.”

  She glared at me.

  “Okay.” I lifted a hand in surrender. She needed logic now. “Granted that's not a great spin either. Regardless, Stell, where else would you go and be safe?”

  The image of her curled up on my couch filtered back through my mind. My jacket covered part of her cheek as if she'd smelled it and then fell asleep. She hadn't even felt safe in her very-secure cabin. The thought of her in an RV in some forsaken park in the middle of nowhere was . . . not going to happen.

  But Stella had to realize that herself.

  “I don't know,” she mumbled.

  “Besides,” I said, “you said you were my friend and friends don't just abandon each other when they most need saving. Adventura still definitely needs saving, so there's that. You're a cold-hearted woman if you leave me to handle this myself.”

  If possible, the smallest crack formed in her stubbornness. Maybe she felt awkward about being at Adventura or something. I'd always had family and friends to crash back on. I spent ten years of my life flopping around like a dying fish without any apology. To ask others for help bailing us out of a bad streak had sort of been . . . a Bailey-twins thing.

  But not for her, obviously.

  “Stell, I want you at Adventura. We have so many 007 movies to go through that I don't even want to number them. We haven't even gotten
to Moore yet. I can't watch those alone now. Who's going to spit stupid movie-making accounting figures at me if you aren't there? They totally ruin the movie and it's way more fun that way. And who's going to stop me from renting land to horse owners? Because yes, that is still on my mind.”

  This time, she chuckled. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Finally, her shoulders drooped.

  “Plus,” I added, just to frost the cake. “Justin just called me before I came back in and found Seiko.”

  “Does your phone ever stop ringing?”

  “No.”

  She laughed again, but I had been totally serious.

  “He's on his way back. Was helping Meg do some home improvement things and went to visit his Mom or something. I don't know. That means Atticus will be back too. Not only will Atticus be helpful for the little kitty we've adopted, but also for any strangers. Atticus is a tank. He'll keep you safe too. If anyone comes to Adventura, we'll know. Justin is the gladiator and a stud. Nothing could get through him. He can't out-lift me, but he tries,” I tacked on, just to be gracious.

  Not to my surprise, she did seem a little more relieved. More trusted eyes—and canine ears—were only a good thing. I leaned forward, ready for the grand finale now.

  “Besides,” I added smoothly. “Justin will let Atticus sleep in the cabin with us.”

  Her eyebrow rose. Enough that I could tell the tension had gone out of her face. I grinned my biggest smile.

  “Us?” she asked.

  “Because Seiko just rented your cabin for the next three days and she wanted the dining hall.”

  “What?”

  “She's going to stay at Adventura for a few days in the quiet to get ready for her tour, then bring the band in for two days of rock metal jamming.” I leaned back to pretend an electric guitar solo, smug that I hadn't spent a single dollar in advertising but still landed a booking.

  “Take that rock music, big kitty,” I said as I leaned back.

  Stella managed a real smile this time.

  I motioned for the waitress to bring the check. “We're going to head to the cell phone store, then head back. I think it's time you had a phone again.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. It won't be that expensive to add to our family plan. Justin's on it too, for what it's worth. Which he thinks gives him the rights to date my sister, but we’re still debating that point. Besides, Joshua won't be able to track you through my family, right?”

  A look of relief crossed her face when she nodded.

  “Thanks, Mark.”

  I winked at her. “You save me, I save you.”

  17

  Stella

  A blue-eyed, brown-haired man with broad shoulders and a quick smile met us when we returned to Adventura. Laugh lines framed his tanned face when he smiled. I felt a little swoony under his masculine mein.

  “Justin,” he said as he shook my hand with a firm grip. “It's good to meet you.”

  At his feet sat a muscled black dog with a charming quirk of his ears. He looked like a German Shepherd without the brown coloring. Big dogs had never really been my thing. Grandma preferred the little yappers. But the moment Atticus licked my hand, I adored him. He whined and shifted, as if he wanted to move closer, but didn't budge.

  A good sign.

  “The gladiator returns,” Mark cried as they slammed into a hug. “Took you long enough, brother.”

  “It's not too hard choosing your sister over your ugly mug.”

  Mark laughed, hands spread in surrender. “Fair enough.” Then he knelt down, giving Atticus a full scrub on either side of his rib cage. Atticus licked his face with what I figured was a happy whine, because Justin laughed.

  Already, my nerves felt more settled. Back in the folds of the mountains, away from people, felt much safer. Atticus would not only alert us to the mountain lion, but people, as Mark had pointed out. And the likelihood that Joshua would search here for me was low anyway.

  This will work out for the best, I told myself again, desperately searching for Grandma's natural positivity.

  My muscles unwound a little bit while Mark and Justin started to talk. I couldn't even lie to myself about it: I felt better because I was with Mark. Although I didn't understand exactly how, I knew that he'd notched up in my mind. Gone from client to friend to . . .

  Something.

  Friends had never made me feel physically safe before. Not like Mark. Nor had they talked me out of my darkest, most frightening moment without a single thought to their own safety or situation.

  No, Mark was something else. The question that haunted me was what.

  Mark and Justin, now lost in conversation about the mountain lion, headed back to the house. I followed not far behind, then slipped a hand into my to-go box, grabbed a slice of leftover bacon, and pulled it out. Atticus trotted faithfully at Justin's side, then suddenly stopped. I grinned as he whirled around and trotted over, then gobbled the bacon up and remained next to me, nose to the white styrofoam.

  Before we made it all the way in, I gave him one more slice with a mental note to order some really delicious dog treats the next time we bought groceries.

  Strategic alliances at the ready.

  Seiko arrived the next morning.

  A long night of restless tossing and turning kept me up until 4:00 a.m., when I finally slipped into a jagged sleep and woke up at 6:00, bleary-eyed and frustrated by dreams of Joshua and orange parkas.

  With a growl and pathetic attempt to get into a better headspace, I packed up all my things and moved into Mark’s cabin. At his insistence, I had the entire attic at my use. He'd stripped the bed, replaced the sheets, and cleared off a table that I suspected had once held all his unfolded clean clothes. The attic smelled like an alluring mix of aftershave and pine. The perfect scent combination to describe Mark.

  It soothed me for a moment, but five more emails from Joshua brought my energy right back down to a witchy level. As usual, I left them unopened in my inbox. I could block them, but for some reason, they made me feel like I had some visibility on him. Like it kept a tab on whatever his brain was doing, even though I didn't look at them.

  I assumed Mark planned to sleep on the couch, but I doubted even he knew where he'd end up. So I sat at his desk downstairs, paperwork cluttered around me and my laptop, and tried to forget Joshua. To lose myself in saving Adventura and Mark, because I couldn't save myself these days.

  Maybe I didn't need to price out every single aspect of Mark's rental plan right this second—down to the cost for catering, including the gas it would take JJ to bring the food that, at some point, he'd agreed to provide—but the numbers soothed me. Digging my fingers back into the calculations, formatting spreadsheets, and mind lanes soothed my agitation.

  “Seiko just texted me that she left,” Mark said as he stepped out of the bathroom, toweling his wild black hair. “She'll be here in forty-five minutes.”

  I snuck a quick glance up, then froze. He'd forgotten to put a shirt on after his shower, and the half-naked view from the first moment that I met him lay back before my eyes. Only now I knew Mark better. For some reason, that made his thick, sculpted body even more beautiful.

  With a hard swallow, I forced my gaze back to the table.

  “Great,” I said, and managed to sound just this side of strangled. He riffled through a laundry basket on the couch, grabbed a shirt from it, and pulled it over his head. The ease of it was oddly intimate.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Just running the numbers before she gets here. Did we already figure out the cost for housekeeping?”

  “No cost.” He sauntered past me to the cupboard. “I'll do it.”

  “Heaven help us all,” I muttered.

  “I heard that. “

  “Cleaning supplies cost money.” I chewed on the bottom of my pen. We were talking details now, and Mark tended to tune out when those came up. But I needed them. Details were the only certainty we had.
/>
  “Like ten dollars maybe?”

  “Depends on how thorough you are,” I quipped back. “Water. Laundry. Cleaning supplies. Your time. That sort of thing all has a cost attached to it. If it were me, I'd figure it all the way out but . . .”

  “We don't even have the official license yet.” He waved a spoon through the air. “I'm not worried about $10 cleaning fees yet. With my other HomeBnB's, don't we just have a general fund to figure this out with?”

  A general fund? What in the doggone world did that mean?

  “You pay a cleaning company,” I pointed out to the sound of running water behind me. I didn't dare look at him. My eye roll would be so great it would knock him over.

  “Right.” The water turned off. “Well, we'll figure that out later. Seiko is a friend that's willing to pay to use our space, that's it. We can still move ahead without that detailed of a cost analysis.”

  With a sigh, I pressed a hand to my forehead to hide my irritation. He wasn't entirely wrong, but it wasn't being smart either. Mark's ability to pay his bills was narrowing with every day that passed. A mere $50 could make a big difference. The details he hated so much mattered.

  But how to make him see that?

  I shook my head. Time to move onto the next hurdle. “Did she pay you cash or with an app or a check?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Hadn't thought of that.”

  Of course he hadn't.

  “How long is she staying?” I tried next.

  “Three days?”

  Why was that a question? My blood felt like it was getting too warm. I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down. I knew Mark didn't like the details, just as I knew this would be a hard aspect of working with him. Expecting him to change was just wasted effort, but didn't alter the fact that I wanted him to pay attention more. To care about the little things more, because he should.

  “You're not sure how long she will be here?” I asked.

  “Not officially, no. But three days sounds right.”